Just as he scrambled out, she caught the heel of his shoe in her teeth and commenced to drop back into the water. As soon as a ’gator catches anything, it’ll go backward. Rance hollered to me to hand him something to bop her. I handed him a hatchet we had with us—had about a two-and-a-half-foot handle. Rance bopped her in the head with it—and you know that alligator let go of his heel and caught the handle of that hatchet in her mouth. Rance hated to lose the hatchet and he rassled with her. He finally got the hatchet, but he never got the alligator. Now, that learned Rance Deese to be right respectful of ’em. He kept that shoe with the heel bit for several years and he showed it to several people. That broke him from getting right in with a alligator. Now, me—I ain’t never been unbroke.

You understand, it don’t do to be too timid with a alligator. It just don’t do. You got to know their ways, like them old ’gator hunters do, and you got to be bold according. If a ’gator faces you in close quarters, you got to watch your chance to shut his mouth for him, and when the chance comes, you got to take it or the ’gator’ll take his. Like the night me and Raymond was gigging frogs in Black Sink Prairie. Raymond shined his light in a ’gator’s eyes and shot him. He was about nine feet long and we dragged him in the boat. I was paddling the boat and Raymond was gigging in the bow. Now, it turned out Raymond had shot the alligator too far down the nose—not backwards to where his brains was. The ’gator wasn’t dead—he was only addled.

I hollered to Raymond, “Shine your light back here!”

He shined his light back for me, and here was the ’gator with his mouth wide open. Right there is where a feller’d be in trouble if he was too timid. Raymond held the light steady. The minute the ’gator closed his mouth, I caught him by the lips and held them shut while Raymond finished him with a knife. You can hold a ’gator’s lips together with one hand if you catch him with his mouth shut. But once he’s got his jaws open, you can’t get the purchase to close them again.

Alligators is mighty strong. They’re that strong to where they can fool you. Like John Milliken at Salt Springs last week. We was gigging mullet. I seen a right small ’gator rise and sink. I whammed the gig into him. When I grabbed the gig handle he commenced a-rolling.

I says, “Here, John, hold him.”

John takes the gig handle and says, “What is it?”

The ’gator was rolling to beat the devil. I like to fell in the spring, laughing.

I says, “Hold him, John—hold him.”