hich one would
fly first; or if there was a camp-meeting, he would be there reg'lar to
bet on Parson Walker, which he judged to be the best exhorter about
here--and so he was, too, and a good man. If he even seen a straddle-bug
start to go anywheres, he would bet you how long it would take to get
wherever he was going to, and if you took him up, he would foller that
straddle-bug to Mexico, but what he would find out where he was bound
for and how long he was on the road. Lots of boys here has seen that
Smiley, and can tell you about him. Why, it never made no difference to
_him_--he would bet on _any_ thing--the dangest feller. Parson Walker's
wife laid very sick once, for a good while, and it seemed as if they
warn't going to save her; but one morning he come in, and Smiley asked
how she was, and he said she was considerable better--thank the Lord
for his inf'nit mercy--and coming on so smart that, with the blessing of
Prov'dence, she'd get well yet; and Smiley, before he thought, says,
"Well, I'll risk two-and-a-half that she don't, anyway."

Thish-yer Smiley had a mare--the boys called her the fifteen-minute nag,
but that was only in fun, you know, because, of course, she was faster
than that--and he used to win money on that horse, for all she was so
slow and always had the asthma, or the distemper, or the consumption, or
something of that kind. They used to give her two or three hundred
yards' start, and then pass her under way; but always at the fag-end of
the race she'd get excited and desperate-like, and come cavorting and
straddling up, and scattering her legs around limber, sometimes in the
air, and sometimes out to one side amongst the fences, and kicking up
m-o-r-e dust and raising m-o-r-e racket with her coughing and sneezing
and blowing her nose--and always fetch up at the stand, just about a
neck ahead, as near as you could cypher it down.

And he had a little small bull-pup, that to look at him you'd think he
wan't worth a cent, but to set around and look ornery, and lay for a
chance to steal something. But as soon as money was upon him, he was a
different dog; his under-jaw'd begin to stick out like the fo'castle of
a steamboat, and his teeth would uncover, and shine savage like the
furnaces. And a dog might tackle him, and bully-rag him, and bite him,
and throw him over his shoulder two or three times, and Andrew
Jackson--which was the name of the pup--Andrew Jackson would never let
on but what _he_ w