At the request of a friend, the narrator comes to a western mining town. In that town the narrator speaks with Simon Wheeler about a man called Leonidas W. Smiley. Wheeler did not answer the questions about Leonidas W. Smiley, instead he started a story about a man called Jim Smiley. The story begins when the narrator meets Wheeler. When the narrator came in town, Simon Wheeler was taking a nap in a bar in a mining town called Angel's Camp. Wheeler is bald, chubby and looks simple. The narrator says to Wheeler that he is trying to find out some information about Rev. Leonidas W. Smiley who used to live in Angel's Camp. Unexpectedly Simon Wheeler trapped the narrator into a corner. Wheeler says that he does not know Leonidas W. Smiley, but he…show more content… He always wins the bet. He bets on dog fighting, horse races, chicken fighting even on the minister, Parson Walker. Jim Smiley had a very old, slow mare with asthma. When the race starts, she would get a head starts, but than she would slow down, and in the end she would barely win. Smiley had a dog names Andrew Jackson, that looked shabby, but when someone bet on him, he would beat any other better looking dog. The dog was learned to catch the opponent's back legs. One time he was in a fight with a dog that did not have back legs. Andrew Jackson looked at Smiley and died. One day Smiley caught a frog and took it home in order to educated it. He named the frog Dan'l Webster. For three months he was teaching the frog to jump. While the frog was jumping it looked like a doughnut whirling in the air, then the frog would come down like a cat. Smiley thought the frog to catch the flies, and the moment the frog saw a fly he would catch it. The frog could jump higher than any other frog. Smiley would keep his frog in a box, and only took him out for bets. One day a stranger asked him what is in the box. Smiley replied that that could be a parrot or a canary in the box, but in fact it is just a
