He says, “Gimme your pistol.”

“Here ’tis.”

Nub shot him in one eye, one ear and the neck. The ’gator lays quiet. We goes on fishing the net. Then we piled the net on board the boat. We like to turned it over, loading the alligator. We finally got him in, facing to the rear. He had his front legs laying on a seat. Nub, he climbs in the bow of the boat by the ’gator’s tail. I got back in the stern on the pile of webbing, me and the ’gator face to face. I reloaded my pistol and picked up one of the twelve-foot oars and Nub takened the other.

Here we go, a-paddling. That alligator commences raising up on his toes on that seat.

I says, “Nub, I’m going to shoot him.”

He says, “Fred, don’t shoot him! You’ll kill me. He’ll settle down right where he is.”

Sure enough, he did. He settled down. Then he begun winking that good eye at me. He raised up again that high to where I had to look up at him. He settles down and goes to winking. I ain’t never objected to nothing much more’n that alligator setting there winking that red eye at me. I shot him in the good eye and in t’other ear, and that quieted him down for a little while. Directly he rared up and give a flounce. He hit that pile of webbing just about the time I left it. Now, if he’d hit where I’d done been, there’d of been no funeral—just a water burial.

We makes it on in to shore. We had about three hundred pounds of fish. Nub takes a fish scoop and goes to shoveling fish.

I says, “Nub, never mind the fish. Let’s get this alligator out of this boat.”

When I said that, the daggone alligator rared up and knocked that fish scoop out of Nub’s hands to where it ain’t never been found.

Nub says, “Hand me another scoop.”

About then the alligator takened a notion it was time to leave the boat. I want to tell you, the only way we kept him from going out was Nub lost his patience and takened a ax and chopped him through the backbone. He was thirteen feet and nine inches—and he was really hard to kill.

Now, that’s just the way it’s always been with me and alligators. I don’t never mess up with ’em on purpose. No, no; the one time I fooled with one deliberate don’t count. No use scarcely telling about it. ’Twasn’t nothing in the world but the banana brandy. If ’twasn’t for that, hell nor high water couldn’t of got me to ride no alligator. And even then, now mind you, even then I didn’t, so to speak, figure on doing it. It was old man Crocky aimed to do it. Old man Crocky had done set the Fourth of July to catch the alligator that had been bothering people swimming at Lochloosy Station.