ddlin'
a canoe. Have you ever bin interduced to a Mississippi catfish? Have you
ever seen an alligator-gar at home in the Lower Mississippi? Naw! You
don't know no more about them than a baby does about a catamount. I have
heard tell of an alligator-gar that was longer'n a fence-rail, and sort
of king of a little bayou down in the Teche country. He got mad because
they run a little stern-wheel steamboat up into his alley to git their
cotton off, an' he made up his mind to stop it. He'd circle 'round
the boat to git a good headway and pick out his man. Then he'd take a
run-and-jump, leap clean across the boat, knock off the man he'd picked
out, an' tow him off under a log an' eat him. He intended to take the
Captain fust, but his appetite got the better of him. He saw a big, fat,
juicy buck nigger of a deck-hand, an' couldn't stand the temptation. He
fetched him easy. Next he took a nice, tender little cabin-boy. Then he
fetched the big old Mate, but found him so full o' terbacker, whisky and
bad language that he couldn't eat him nohow, an' turned him over to the
mudturtles, what'll eat anything. The Captain then got scared an' quit.
He didn't care a hat for the Mate, for he was glad to git rid of him;
but he liked the cabin-boy an' he had to pay the owner o' the nigger
$1,200 for him, an' that made runnin' up the Teche onprofitable."

"Oh, Shorty," Si gasped. He thought he was acquainted with his partner's
brilliant talents for romance, but this was a meteoric flight that he
had not expected.

"But that wasn't nothin'," Shorty continued, "to a he catfish that a man
told me about down near Helena, Ark. He used to swim around in a little
chute near a house-cabin in which lived a man with a mighty good-lookin'
young wife. The man was awful jealous of his woman, an' used to beat
her. The ole he catfish had a fine eye for purty women, and used to
cavort around near the cabin whenever his business would permit. The
woman noticed him, and it tickled him greatly. She'd throw him hunks o'
bread, chunks o' cold meat, and so on. The man'd come out and slap her,
and fling clubs and knots at him. One day the man put his wife in a
basswood canoe, and started to take her across the river. He hadn't got
a rod from the shore when the old he catfish ups and bites the canoe in
two, then nips the man's hand so's he didn't git over it for months, and
then puts his nose under the woman's arm, and helps her ashore as polite
as you please."