judged to be the best exhorter about here, and so he
was, too, and a good man. If he even see a straddle-bug start to go
anywheres, he would bet you how long it would take him to get to--to
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 the boys here has seen that
Smiley, and can tell you about him. Why, it never made no difference to
_him_--he'd bet on _any_ thing--the dangdest 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 came in, and Smiley up and
asked him how she was, and he said she was consid'able 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'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 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 tim