“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 risk forty dollars that he can outjump any frog in
Calaveras County.”
And the feller studied 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
forepaws just even with Dan’l’s, and I’ll give the word.” Then he
says, “One—two—three—_git_!” and him and the feller touched up the
frogs from behind, and the new frog hopped off lively, but Dan’l
give a heave, and hysted up his shoulders—so—like a Frenchman, but
it warn’t no use—he couldn’t budge; he was planted as solid as a
church, and he couldn’t no more stir than if he was anchored out.
Smiley was a good deal surprised, and he was disgusted too, but he
didn’t have no idea what the matter was, of course.
The feller took the money and started away; and when he was going
out at the door, he sorter jerked his thumb over his shoulder—so—at
Dan’l, and says again, very deliberate, “Well,” he says, “_I_ don’t
see no p’ints about that frog that’s any better’n any other frog.”
Smiley he stood scratching his head and looking down at Dan’l a
long time, and at last says, “I do wonder what in the nation that
frog throwed off for—I wonder if there ain’t something the matter
with him—he ’pears to look mighty baggy, somehow.” And he ketched
Dan’l up by the nap of the neck, and hefted him, and says, “Why
blame my cats if he don’t weigh five pounds!” and turned him upside
down and he belched out a double handful of shot. And then he see
how it was, and he was the maddest man—he set the frog down and
took out after that feller, but he never ketched him. And——
(Here Simon Wheeler heard his name called from the front yard, and
got up to see what was wanted.) And turning to me as he moved away,
he said: “Just set where you are, stranger, and rest easy—I ain’t
going to be gone a second.”
But, by your leave, I did not think that a continuation of the
history of the enterprising vagabond _Jim_ Smiley would be likely
to afford me much information concerning the Rev. _Leonidas W._
Smiley, and so I started away.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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