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 up and asked him how she was, and he said she was
considerable better--thank the Lord for his inf'nite 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 resk two-and-a-half 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
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 among 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 cipher it down.

"And he had a little small bull-pup, that to look at him you'd think he
warn'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 up on 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 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 was
satisfied, and hadn't expected nothing else--and the bets being doubled
and doubled on the other side all the time, till the money was all up;
and then all of a sudden he would grab that other dog jest by the j'int
of his hind leg and freeze to it--not chaw, you understand, but only just
grip and hang on till they throwed up the sponge, if it was a year.
Smiley always come out winner on that pup, till he harnessed a dog once
that didn't have no hind legs, because they'd been sawed off in a
circular saw, and when the thing had gone along far enough, and the money
was all up, and he come to make a snatch for his pet holt, he see