at 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 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 time, till the money was all up;
and then all of a sudden he would grab that other dog just 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
in a minute how he'd been imposed on, and how the other dog had him in
the door, so to speak, and he 'peared surprised, and then he looked
sorter discouraged-like, and didn't try no more to win the fight, and so
he got shucked out bad. He give Smiley a look, as much as to say his
heart was broke,