Sketches New and Old by Mark Twain

bet on it; if there was a cat-fight, he’d bet on it; if there was a

chicken-fight, he’d bet on it; why, if there was two birds setting on a

fence, he would bet you which 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 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 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 Smile) 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 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, and it was his fault, for putting up a dog that hadn’t no hind

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