“With a noose, when they’re sunning themselves.  An alligator lies on a bank, half in and half out of the water, most of the time, with his eyes shut.  Sometimes he really is asleep, and sometimes he isn’t.  That’s where the fun comes in.  Of course, if you can get the boat right up to where he is, close enough to slip the noose over his jaws, you’ve got him all right.  There’s a knob on the snout that keeps the noose from slipping off, and he sort of strangles when you tow him through the water.  But if you can’t get there with the boat you have to go it on foot.”

“You mean you have to get out of the boat and walk right up to his jaws?”

“Yes, just that.”

“It doesn’t sound particularly good to me,” Hamilton remarked.

“It isn’t nearly as bad as it sounds,” the other replied.  “As long as you don’t make too much noise, and keep out of reach of his tail, you’re all right.  If you slip up, you want to jump out of the way about as lively as you know how.  But he’ll never come after you, or mighty seldom.  If you get a slip-knot over his snout, and can throw a half-hitch over his tail, why, the biggest of them is easy enough to handle.”

“But what are they caught for?”

“There’s quite a steady sale.  The big fellows are sometimes sold alive to parks and aquariums and circuses, but most of them are killed and the whole skins dressed and used for hanging on the walls of dens, like trophies.  The real market is for the skins of the little fellows, which are made up into all sorts of alligator leather bags.  Most of that stuff is imitation, but still quite a lot of it is real.  It’s plenty of fun catching the little ’gators, because even the smallest of them can give you quite a nip and a reptile three feet long is a handful.  I did well enough out of it, because in addition to the sport I had, my brother-in-law let me have the skins of all those I caught myself.  Some people, too, want to have baby ones as pets, but I don’t think I’d want to have them around, myself, after they grew to any size,” he added, as the boys rose and went back to the Pullman.

By the time the train had reached Washington the two had become thoroughly friendly, and Hamilton liked his new acquaintance so much that he would gladly have seen more of him than merely as a traveling companion.  But as the other lad was going out to San Francisco, there was no likelihood of their being thrown together at all.  Indeed, on his arrival, Hamilton found that he had been assigned to an Eastern city, so he had to bid his new-made friend “Good-by.”