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Alligator Gold by Janet Post

home from a Northern prisoner-of-war camp. Hawk’s been trying to

get his mind off giving the rotten Snake Barber part of the secret to

finding his family’s hidden cache of gold when he was delirious with

malaria at the camp. Now he’s focused on getting back to the D-

Wing, his Florida cattle ranch, and Travis, his only son. But his code

of honor intervenes when he encounters a very pregnant Madelaine

Wilkes along the trail. Hawk is duty-bound to help her, which comes

to include taking her home with him. What he learns about the father

of her baby tarnishes his clear attraction to her. Maddy Wilkes has her

own code of honor, which gets in the way of her strong attraction to

Hawk. And Snake Barber’s singular lack of moral code gets in the

way of any normal life on the D-Wing.

Cracker Westerns

cowboy. Because of the conditions in Florida, cowboys evolved

different tools for working cattle. While cowboys out west used the

lariat rope and the horse almost exclusively, Florida cowboys are

known as crackers because they used a cow whip. The whips have

a popper on the end which makes a distinctive cracking sound,

thus the cracker cowboy.

Florida cowboys also used cattle dogs. These dogs were a

cross between a hound and a bulldog. They’re fierce and brave

and the most useful tool a cowboy could have in the scrubland and

on the palmetto plains. Cowboys used them to find cattle hiding in

the scrub, to drive cows and to catch them. Cow dogs are still bred

and used today, but no longer exclusively in Florida.

The wild cows of Florida originated when sixteenth century

Spanish ranchers came to Florida and then left. When they went

back to Spain, they left behind plenty of cattle. The small Spanish

stock went wild and multiplied. Soon Florida had an excess of wild

cows. Settlers in Florida quickly discovered they could round up

these small, wild cows and sell them to Cuba for gold.

The Spanish also left behind horses. The small sturdy

Florida cracker horse is still bred today.

Florida stayed a wild lawless place for a lot longer than the

west. Arcadia and many other Florida cow towns were still safe

havens for outlaws and rustlers well into the twentieth century. The

cattle industry is still strong in Florida today and the cowboys in

Florida still use their whips and their dogs.

“Alligator Gold” by Janet Post is

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