A friend back East once asked me to look up a fellow named Leonidas W. Smiley at a mining camp in Angel's, out in Calaveras County. I suspected this was a ploy, but I went along with it anyway. I found old Simon Wheeler dozing by the stove in a run-down tavern, and when I mentioned the name Smiley, his eyes lit up and he backed me into a corner.
He launched into the tale of Jim Smiley, a man who would bet on absolutely anything. If there was a horse race, Jim bet on it. If there was a dog fight, Jim was there with money on the line. He would bet on which bird would fly off a fence first, or how long it would take a straddle-bug to get wherever it was going. If he could not get anyone to take the other side, he would switch and bet against himself, so long as there was a wager to be had.
Smiley had a mare that looked half-dead — the boys called her the fifteen-minute nag because she was so slow at the start. But at the end of every race, she would get excited and come clattering in just ahead of the others, coughing and wheezing and kicking up a storm. He also had a small bull pup named Andrew Jackson, and that dog looked worthless until money was on the line. Then it would grab the other dog by the hind legs and simply hold on until its opponent gave up. The pup met its end when it went up against a dog that had no hind legs, and for the first time in its life, it had nothing to latch onto. Jim Smiley never forgave himself for putting his dog in that position.
But the pride of Jim Smiley's menagerie was a frog he named Dan'l Webster. He spent three months training that frog to jump, feeding it flies and keeping it exercised. Dan'l Webster could turn a somersault and land cleaner than any frog in the county. Smiley was convinced he had the champion jumper of all Calaveras County, and he went around telling anyone who would listen.
One day a stranger wandered into camp, and Smiley told him about the frog. The stranger looked at Dan'l Webster with a skeptical eye and said he did not see anything special about that frog. Smiley proposed a bet — forty dollars that Dan'l Webster could out-jump any frog in the county. The stranger said he would take the bet if he had a frog, so Smiley set Dan'l Webster down and went off to the swamp to catch one.
While Smiley was gone, the stranger picked up Dan'l Webster, pried open his mouth, and filled him full of quail shot — tiny lead pellets — until the frog was nearly bursting. When Smiley returned with a frog for the stranger, they set both creatures on the line. Smiley gave the signal and the stranger's frog hopped off smartly. But Dan'l Webster just sat there, heavy as an anvil, unable to budge. He gave a heave with his shoulders but could not move. Smiley was mystified.
The stranger collected his forty dollars and headed for the door. As he left, he remarked once more that he did not see anything so special about that frog. Smiley stood there scratching his head, and when he finally picked Dan'l Webster up and felt how heavy he was, and saw the quail shot come pouring out, he knew he had been cheated. He lit out after the stranger but never caught him.
At this point in Wheeler's telling, someone called him from the front yard, and he stepped out. I seized the opportunity and headed for the door myself. Wheeler caught me on the way out and started up again about Jim Smiley's yellow one-eyed cow with no tail, but I excused myself and left, thoroughly convinced that my friend back East had played a fine joke on me after all.