We got her over in the boat and sets out. And bless Katy, all of a sudden that pebble-hided knocker comes crawling up between my legs, a-bellering. Her tail was going bam-bam. I looked for her to crawl out of the boat and I was fixing to shoot the rest of her head off. She just kept that tail a-going and didn’t make no move to crawl out, and I couldn’t shoot for putting holes in the boat. There wasn’t nothing for me to do but get down there and straddle her. I sets down on her, one hand back of the eyes, and I popped my knife where her head joins together. I must of hit it plumb, for she ain’t moved since.

But that un died easy, compared to some. Now, take the one I caught in my seine—that ’gator was really hard to kill. It was the spring I had me a seine on Lake Lochloosy. I owned a four-hundred-and-fifty-yard seine and two hundred and eighty fish traps and a fish house. Nub-footed Turner pulled the seine for me on shares. The same feller I told you about—a alligator had bit his foot off.

Now all I knowed about a seine at that time was, you put it in the water and drawed it together. I knowed it had a pocket, but that was all. I used to use it, nice moonlight nights, to catch me six-eight bream and fry ’em on shore.

One night me and Nub-footed Turner was at the fish house on Lochloosy. Oh, my, it was a fine night, just as still and pretty. It wasn’t too cold, it wasn’t too hot. It was just a fine, calm night in the spring of the year. The lake was as still as a glass candle.

Nub says, “I’d just naturally love to go fishing tonight.”

I says, “I ain’t never really pulled the net since I’ve owned it, but I’ll pull one end of it.”

We goes out in the launch and throws the seine, and we takes about two hundred pounds of bream on the first haul. Now, Nub-footed Turner liked to fish on the moon.

He says, “I’d love to make a moon haul. I’d love to pull this seine just at moonrise.”

Didn’t neither one of us happen to know the time of moonrise.

I says, “We just as good to go on shore and eat.”

We goes on back to shore and lights us a oak fire and cooks fish and coffee. Nub-footed Turner, he lays down and goes to sleep. I sets a while watching the east for the moon to rise. I commenced getting cold. Our clothes was wet and I couldn’t never sleep right in wet clothes. So I totes up logs and limbs and builds up a big fire. I dried first one side and then t’other. Directly I lays down by the fire and goes to sleep. Now and again I’d raise up and look out east. By then I didn’t want to go fishing.