mal of his
breed you ever see. Jumping on a dead level was his strong suit, you
understand; and when it came to that, Smiley would ante up money on him
as long as he had a red. Smiley was monstrous proud of his frog, and
well he might be, for fellers that had travelled and been everywheres
all said he laid over any frog that ever they see.

Well, Smiley kep' the beast in a little lattice box, and he used to
fetch him down-town sometimes and lay for a bet. One day a feller--a
stranger in the camp, he was--come acrost him with his box, and says:

'What might it be that you've got in the box?'

And Smiley says, sorter indifferent-like, 'It might be a parrot, or it
might be a canary, maybe, but it's ain't--it's only just a frog.'

And the feller took it, and looked at it careful, and turned it round
this way and that, and says, 'H'm--so 'tis. Well, what's he good for?'

'Well,' Smiley says, easy and careless, 'he's good enough for one thing,
I should judge--he can outjump any frog in Calaveras County.'

The feller took the box again and took another long, particular look,
and give it back to Smiley, and says, very deliberate, 'Well,' he says,
'I don't see no p'ints about that frog that's any better'n any other
frog.'

'Maybe you don't,' Smiley says. 'Maybe you understand frogs and maybe
you don't understand 'em; maybe you've had experience, and maybe you
ain't only a amature, as it were. Anyways, I've got my opinion, and I'll
resk forty dollars that he can outjump any frog in Calaveras County.'

And the feller studies a minute, and then says, kinder sad like, 'Well,
I'm only a stranger here, and I ain't got no frog, but if I had a frog
I'd bet you.'

And then Smiley says: 'That's all right--that's all right; if you'll
hold my box a minute, I'll go and get you a frog.' And so the feller
took the box and put up his forty dollars along with Smiley's and set
down to wait.

So he set there a good while thinking and thinking to hisself, and then
he got the frog out and prized his mouth open and took a teaspoon
and filled him full of quail shot--filled him pretty near up to his
chin--and set him on the floor. Smiley he went to the swamp and slopped
around in the mud for a long time, and finally he ketched a frog and
fetched him in and give him to this feller, and says:

'Now, if you're ready, set him alongside of Dan'l, with his fore-paws
just even with Dan'l's, and I'll give the word.' Then he says,
'One--two--three-