“Shoot him in that hump behind his eyes.”  Dick took careful aim and fired.  The alligator rolled slowly over, with its yellow belly on top and its four paws uplifted.  Johnny waded into the pond and dragged out the body of the reptile, which Dick helped him skin.  When this had been done Johnny cut from the creature a round strip of white flesh, about a foot long, beginning at the hind leg and running toward the tail.

“What’s that for?” said Dick.

“Fur dinner.  I told ye we’d find ‘nuff t’ eat.”

“Do yon s’pose I’m going to eat that?”

“Sure! ‘nd yer goin’ ter like it.”

“Then I wish I hadn’t helped skin it.”

Just as the boys were leaving the pond they heard a little grunt, and turning around saw a baby alligator, less than two feet long, lying on the surface.

“Want ter ketch that alive?” asked Johnny.

“Can you do it?”

“I’ll show’ yer.”

And Johnny took off his shoes and waded into the pond.  He waded about the pond, feeling in the mud with his toes until he felt the reptile, when, slipping his toes under it he lifted his foot suddenly and brought the alligator near enough to the surface to be able to seize him.  Dick was delighted with the captive, but was frank enough to say: 

“Johnny, I said once that I could learn to do anything that you could.  I take that back.  I couldn’t learn to do what you did then in a thousand years.”

Johnny laughed and said: 

“You’d do it this afternoon, and I’ll bet on it.”

Johnny tied a string around the jaws of their little pet and handed it to Dick, who carried the wiggly thing so awkwardly that Johnny took it back and, opening the bosom of his shirt, put the alligator where he would have a soft bed and plenty of room to prowl around.

“That’s another thing I’d be scared to do,” said Dick.

Johnny led the way to a clump of palmettos beside a clear little spring and a nice shady bit of ground, where they made a camp-fire, after driving away a family of moccasins that seemed to own the place.  A slice of alligator steak, nicely browned, was served on a palmetto fan to Dick, who nibbled squeamishly at the delicate morsel at first, but soon handed back his leafy plate for another helping.

“Wouldn’t have believed it,” said Dick, “but I never tasted any better meat.”

“Wait till I cook ye a rattler.  That beats fried chicken.”

“No, thank you.  I draw the line at snakes.”

“You drawed it at ‘gators this mornin’.  Want some more?”

And Dick shamelessly passed up his plate.

The boys walked and waded several miles, until they were near a heavily wooded tract, which Johnny said was cypress swamp.  It was late in the day, and they were about to turn back when Dick saw a turkey, which was holding her head half as high as his own, step silently into the cover of the woods, followed by half a dozen of her half-grown brood.  Johnny saw the birds almost as soon as Dick, and exclaimed excitedly: