When trying to explain to the narrator the extreme nature of Smiley’s gambling habit, Wheeler uses hyperbolic language, as seen in the following passage:

“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 […] Why, it never made no difference to him—he’d bet on any thing—the dangdest feller.”

Here, Wheeler describes how, if Smiley saw a bug walking along the ground, he would try to make a bet with the nearest person about where the bug was going—his gambling habit is that intense. Wheeler goes on to hyperbolically describe how Smiley would “foller that straddle-bug to Mexico” if he had to and how he was willing to “bet on any thing.” Given that the story is set in Northern California—around 500 miles from the Mexican border—Wheeler is clearly exaggerating about Smiley being willing to travel there. Likewise, the notion that Smiley could bet on “any thing” is likely not the literal truth, but a hyperbolic exaggeration meant to help the narrator understand how compulsively and constantly Smiley would make bets.

The first hyperbole here is especially significant because it suggests that, while Smiley clearly did not have control over his gambling habit, he never lost his integrity. The idea that he would follow a bug 500 miles south to make sure that he won the bet fairly demonstrates that being a gambler does not make a person immoral—cheating does.