Shadow Country (10 page)

SHERIFF FRANK B. TIPPINS

I was born in Arcadia in De Soto County and went back there on a cattle drive at the time of the range wars in the early nineties, heard all about how a stranger named Watson wiped out a local gunslinger named Quinn Bass. This Quinn was a killer and a fugitive from justice but when the stranger came by the jail to pick up the reward, a mob of rowdies and Bass kinsmen tried to storm the jailhouse, set to lynch him. Rather than see his new jail torched, the sheriff concluded no injustice would be done by unlocking the cell and encouraging the prisoner to get out of town while the getting was good. The prisoner took one look through the window, then went into a cell and lay down on his bunk. “The getting don't look so good to me,” he said. “I'll sleep better behind bars.” Toward daybreak, with the crowd distracted, the sheriff rode him to the edge of town.

“Yessir. E. Jack Watson. Got it wrote right in my ledger. That darn Jack Watson was the friendliest sonofagun I ever met,” the sheriff told me.

At that time, I was working for the Hendrys as a cow hunter, rounding up the long-horned cattle scattered out through the Big Cypress. I did the hunting for the cow camp. I was content with my simple sun-warmed tools of wood and iron, the creak of saddle leather and the stomp and bawl of cattle, the wind whisper in the pines pierced by the woodpecker's wild cry or the dry sizzle of a diamondback, and always the soft blowing of my woods pony, a stumpy roan. Had me a fine cow dog for turning cattle, became a fair hand with the lariat and cracker whip, and packed a rifle in a scabbard for big rattlers and rustlers, too. The Indians, forever watching, would gather when we moved our cow pens and a family would move in and plant new gardens on that manured ground, sweet potatoes the first year, then corn and peanuts.

The lonely day was Saturday when most of the riders yipped and slapped off through the trees to spend their pay in the Fort Myers saloons. Old Doc Langford's boy was also a cow hunter for Hendrys, a hard rider and a hard drinker, too. Walt Langford wanted to be liked as a regular feller, not some rich cattleman's spoiled son, so he led in all the galloping and gunfire that kept nice people shuttered up at home when the riders came to town. Fort Myers was never as uproarious as Arcadia, no cattle wars or hired guns, but that Saturday pandemonium reminded the upset citizens that our new Lee County capital was still a cow town, cut off from the nation's progress by the broad slow Calusa River and falling farther behind, our businessmen complained, with every passing year.

Walt Langford was the one who told me that E. J. Watson, a new planter in the Islands, was supposed to be the Jack Watson who killed Quinn Bass; the lovely young girl boarding at Walt's father's house was Watson's daughter. The first time I saw her, Carrie Watson was skipping rope and laughing with other girls down at Miss Flossie's store. I knew right then that when the time came, I would ask her desperado daddy for her hand, but as life turned out, Walt Langford beat me to it.

Cattlemen had run Fort Myers before it was a town at all, starting way back with Jake Summerlin at Punta Rassa. Old Jake was ruthless, people said, but at least he had cow dung on his boots. This newer breed, Jim Cole especially, worked mostly with paper, brokering stock they had never seen, let alone smelled. (With Doc Langford and the Hendrys, who bought out the Summerlins at Punta Rassa, Cole would make a fortune provisioning the Rough Riders. One July day of 1899, according to the
Press,
these patriotic profiteers shipped three thousand head from Punta Rassa to their Key West slaughterhouse for butchering and delivery to Cuba.)

When I opened my livery stable that same year, I had an idea I might run for sheriff in the next elections. Some way Jim Cole got wind of this, and one day he came and offered help, having already figured what I hadn't understood, that I was pretty sure to win with or without him. Folks resented the cattle kings and their pet sheriff, T. O. Langford, who ignored our town ordinance against cattle in the streets.

One Saturday Walt Langford and some other drunken riders caught a nigra in Doc Winkler's yard and told him he would have to dance or have his toes shot off. This old man must have been close to eighty, white-haired, crippled up, bent over. He cried out, “No, suh, Boss, ah jes' cain't dance, ah is too old!” And they said, “Well, old man, you better dance,” then started shooting at the earth around his shoes.

Doc Winkler came running with a rifle. “Now you boys clear out of here,” he hollered, “let that old man be!” He ordered the nigra to go behind the house but the cowhands shot into the ground right at his heels. Doc Winkler fired over their heads just as a horse reared and Doc's bullet drilled a cowboy through the head.

At Cole's request, Sheriff T. O. Langford called the episode an accident. Walt Langford and his friends were not arrested and there was no inquest; Doc Winkler was left alone with his remorse. But the flying bullets and the senseless death brought new resentment of the cattlemen as well as a new temperance campaign to make Lee County dry. Because Cole was making another fortune on the Cuban rum he smuggled in as a return cargo on his cattle schooner, he led the fight against liquor prohibition, knowing the “drys” had only won thanks to that shooting death in Doc Winkler's yard.

The Langfords took Jim Cole's advice to marry off young Walter, get him simmered down. Of the town's eligible young women, the only one Walt really liked was a pretty Miss Hendry whose parents forbade her to associate with “that young hellion.” This caused the stiff feelings in both families that led to the bust-up of the Langford & Hendry store which was the biggest business in our town.

Because she lived under his own roof, Walt couldn't help but notice Watson's daughter. Her mother was a lady by Fort Myers standards, but the husband of the refined and delicate Mrs. Jane Watson was the man identified in a book passed around town as the slayer of the outlaw queen, Belle Starr. The lucky few who had met Mr. Watson had been thrilled to find that this “dangerous” man was handsome and presentable, a devout churchgoer when in Fort Myers, and a prospering planter whose credit was excellent among the merchants. In regard to Carrie, it was said he had met privately with Cole in the hotel salon at Hendry House, though what those two discussed was only rumor.

Knowing Walt Langford, I feared the marriage was inevitable. Her father's dark past made Carrie Watson all the more attractive to rambunctious Walt. When her engagement was suddenly announced, a rumor spread that “the desperado's daughter” was in a family way. Hearing loose talk about a shotgun wedding, I spoke up, furious, although I'd hardly met her, defending her chastity so passionately that folks began to look at me in a queer way.

Walt and Carrie were married in July. At the wedding, stricken by her big deer eyes, I mourned for my lost bride, this creature so different from the horse-haired women of the backcountry. When the minister asked if anybody present knew why Carrie and Walter should not be united in holy matrimony, my heart cried,
Yes! Because she is too young!
But what I meant was,
Yes! Because I love her!

Love, love, love. Who knows a thing about it? Not me, not me. I never got over Carrie Watson skipping rope at age thirteen, that's all I know. I only put myself through the ordeal of her wedding for the chance to see what her father might look like, but the notorious Mr. E. J. Watson never appeared.

RICHARD HARDEN

What took the fight out of the Frenchman was the news that come from Marco Key in the spring of '95. Bill Collier was digging swamp muck for his tomato vines when his spade hit what turned out to be Calusa war clubs, cordage, and a conch-shell dipper, also some kind of wood carving. Cap'n Bill just had the luck to stumble on what Old Jean had searched for all his life.

Collier weren't much interested in old Calusa stuff but he showed his find to some tarpon-fishing Yankees. Next thing you know, them sports was in there shoveling for fun and what they didn't bust they took for souvenirs. Folks up in Philadelphia heard about it, and a famous bone digger Frank H. Cushing made two expeditions paid for by that Mr. Disston whose money paid for dredging the Calusa Hatchee. Collected bone jewelry and shell cups, wood masks and ladles, a deer head, a carved fish with bits of turtle shell stuck into it for scales, then lugged all this stuff north to Pennsylvania. Them Yankees had went and stole the Frenchman's glory.

What really twisted Jean Chevelier was a wood carving of a cat kneeled like a man. A drawing of that cat made the front page of the Fort Myers paper. When Eben Carey brought that paper to Possum Key, Msyoo give it one look and begun to weep. He never went back to Gopher Key, he just give up on life. He didn't last the year.

I always liked that cantankerous old devil. He spoke too sharp but he knew some things and give me a education. Jean Chevelier was the first to see that E. J. Watson would mean trouble and begged us to shoot him like a dog first chance we got.

Bill House had been gone awhile from Possum Key and Eben Carey only came and went. Toward the end, as lonely as he was, the old man got tired of Cap'n Carey. “I am alone,” he would complain, “no matter he speak or not. Silence is better.”

Ebe Carey was a man who needed talk, he couldn't put up with no damn solitude. He was getting so crazy back in the scrub jungle that he could hear the sun roar in the day and the trees moan in the night, is what he told us. He was listening to his Creator as any redskin could have told him and what he heard put a bad scare in him. Besides that he was always scared that Watson might recall him from that Brewer posse and come put a stop to him.

When Chevelier never answered him, only glared up at the sun, Ebe Carey gave fine speeches to the wild men hid in those green walls. Red devils was spying on him night and day, they was up to no good, in the captain's estimation. Got so he'd
feel
'em, whip around, and see 'em standing there. Tried to laugh real loud and friendly like they'd played a joke to fool him, but they never give him back so much as a blink. Swapped their plumes and pelts for his cheap trade trash and some moonshine, went away as deaf as ghosts.

When he got desperate, Cap'n Ebe would call on Hardens, still hurt because that mean old foreign feller wouldn't talk to him. We didn't have nothing to say to that, and anyway nobody spoke much in the Islands. Nothing to talk about. That river silence closed over empty words like rain filling a fresh coon print in the mud. We simmered him down with fish or grits but he would not go home. He'd want to stay up talking half the night even though he was uneasy in our company.

One morning he heaved up from the table and kept right on going, headed south. Left some money but not much, waved good-bye like his life depended on it, that's how afeared he was we might think poorly of him, which I guess we did, knowing this was the last old Jean would see of Eben Carey. His big cabin on Possum Key, that's all thorned over now and windows broke. Varmints slinking in and stinkin up the corners, vines pushin through the chinks.

Msyoo was old and poorly, rotting in his death bed, with just my boy John Owen and our young Liza to tend him. They would set him outside while they cleaned the cabin. “I am home sick,” he would tell my children, to explain his tears. “How you say it? Sick of home?” Called 'em his godchildren, kind of let on how he would leave 'em his property to repay their kindness. And my boy Owen was happy about that, cause Possum Key was our old home. But toward the end the old man never noticed 'em, showed no interest in his feed, just set there staring deep into the sun till it struck him blind. “Earth star,” he sighed. Never let them bath him any more, just waved 'em off so's not to be interrupted while communing with that burning star in his own head.

One day Owen took his brother Earl to Possum because Liza was putting up preserves with my old woman. Owen was maybe nine years at the time, Earl two years older. Going upriver with the tide, the boys passed the Watson place and never seen a soul but when they got to Possum Key, first thing they see was Mister Watson. Earl was all for turning tail and heading home but his brother said, Nosir, not till we give Msyoo Jean his fish and vegetables.

Watson watched them beach the skiff. He never moved. They was kind of sidewinding to walk past him before he said, “Good morning, boys. You want something?” When Owen told him they had vittles for the Frenchman, Watson said, “He won't be needin 'em. He has died off of old age.”

My boys was speechless. One day old Jean was snapping like a mean old turtle and the next day he was gone! Finally Owen gets up his nerve. “Msyoo Jean never left no paper? About me'n Liza?” Watson shakes his head. Tells 'em he owns the quit-claim now and that is all he knows about it, period. Owen blurts out, “Msyoo Jean was lookin pretty good, day before yesterday!” Hearing his suspicion, Watson points at the fresh mound of earth where he has buried him. “Well, Msyoo don't look so good today,” he said. Earl give a moan and lit out for the boat, his brother close behind.

Not wanting to scare 'em, I had never told my kids too much about our neighbor. Owen knew that heartbroke old man would probably die sometime that week without no help from Mister Watson, and they admitted Ed never said nothing to fright 'em. Must of been shock that the old man was dead or maybe the mystery of how Watson come to be there. Anyways, they took off for home as fast as they could row.

Naturally the Frenchman's death was laid on the man from the West who was known to have his eye on Possum Key. Ed Watson was riled by the bad stories but we noticed he never quite denied them. His reputation as a fast gun and willing to use it kept invaders out of his territory and helped him lay claim to abandoned cabins, which was pretty common on the rivers by the time he finished.

•                           •                           •

When I seen E. J. Watson next, in McKinney's trading post at Chokoloskee, I never asked that man a single question. Never asked how a dying man planned to spend the money Watson said he paid him for the quit-claim nor what become of that money after old Jean died. Nobody asked Watson questions such as that. Them men in the store trying to stay out of his way probably told themselves they never knew Chevelier, never liked him: he was some kind of a dirty foreigner who hated God and hobnobbed with the Devil and never cared who knowed it, so maybe it was the Devil come and took him. Maybe them Hardens done him in or maybe his Key Wester crony Eben Carey, who's to say? Never trust a conch Key Wester, ain't that right? Nobody suspected Watson, not out loud, that's how scared they was that he might hear about it.

I seen as quick as I come into the store that Watson was set for trouble. If I spoke up and he drew his knife never mind his pistol, none of these Chokoloskee men would jump in on the side of no damn brown man asking hard questions of a white man—that's what they'd say before they would admit how much they feared him. The only one who would jump in was my boy John Owen, and I'd never risk Owen even if I felt like going up against Ed Watson, which I didn't. I told my boy, Go back outside and stay there.

Watson had on the frock coat he wore when he went anywhere on business. Seeing who was in the doorway, he took out his big watch and looked at it, which is as close as he ever come to a nervous habit. As I moved forward, he shifted his feet and set his canned goods back onto the counter to free his hands and give me warning, both. I could feel him coiling. His expression had no give to it at all, he was just waiting on me.

“Morning, Ed,” I said.

“Mm-hm.” His dead tone warned that there weren't no way to ask my questions without insinuating that he knew more than he should, so Mr. Harden better back off while he had time. I did. I sure ain't proud about it, not after my long friendship with Chevelier.

To save my pride, he offered his hand first and a grin with it. “What news from the Choctaw Nation, Richard?” I was raised not far from where he'd lived in the Oklahoma Territory so this teasing was his way of letting me know bygones was bygones. But them men in the store took what he said as a joke on that darned mulatter and laughed real loud to flatter their friend Ed. I grinned, too. “Indins ain't never got no news, you know that, Ed.” I taught myself long, long ago to slip right past and pay no mind to the mangy ways of white people.

Trouble was, my oldest, Earl, just couldn't let it go, kept telling folks he was a witness and how it sure looked like Watson killed the Frenchman. Earl was scared to death of Watson, claimed he hated him, but the rest of us had growed somewhat accustomed to a neighbor who had never failed to help when times was hard. In later years, Owen got friendly with him and Owen's lively Sarah even more so. They knew who Ed was and liked him anyway. He's who he is, who he appears to be, and that ain't all bad by no means, they would say.

Nothing wrong with him that a bullet wouldn't cure, Earl would chime in. I reckon he'd heard that said in Chokoloskee, where some liked Earl because he was ashamed of his own blood.

My opinion? Ed Watson never killed my friend and he never paid a penny for his quit-claim. He was the one who found Jean dead, that's all. He wanted Possum for the high ground and good soil and that freshwater spring just off the shore so he just took it, and with only them Harden kids complaining, folks was content to let him get away with it. No one else would ever squat on Possum Key, not even when he disappeared at the turn of the century. Not till they believed he was never coming back did some say aloud it was Watson done away with that old foreigner and stole his claim along with his hoarded-up money.

In a way that's what Ed wanted people to believe, knowing we'd never do nothing about it. A lot less trouble to scare us off the last pieces of high ground than it was to shoot us, and for a time, he seemed to enjoy the stir he made every place he went. He never learned that cracker people was dangerous enough without scaring 'em, too.

There's a sad ending to that Jean Chevelier story. When the Indins learned what Bill Collier dug up at Marco, they didn't like it. An old Indin burial place had been disturbed and angry spirits set loose because land and life was bleeding bad from the white man's greed and general destruction. So the chief medicine man, Doctor Tommie, tracked a trader from Fort Shackleford hauling his wagonload of gator flats into Fort Myers and climbed up on that wagon bed and give white people fair warning that something bad was bound to happen if them sacred masks dug up on Marco Island were not returned to the mother earth where they belonged. Only thing, none of his listeners spoke Mikasuki.

That was 1898 when they were cranking up the Spanish War and nobody had time to listen to no loco old savage in queer headgear and long skirt. Weren't two weeks after that Indin come to town that Bill Collier's schooner capsized in a squall in the Marquesas. Two of his young sons drowned in the cabin along with a family of his passengers, and Captain Bill, who hardly got away with his own life, would be cursed forever by the sight of them little hands clawing the porthole glass as his ship slid under—Bill Collier, who never had nothing but good fortune all his life!

That ain't all. Mr. Hamilton Disston killed himself who paid for that whole Marco expedition and his archaeologist Frank Cushing died at less than fifty years of age, before he could enjoy his fame from his great discovery. Soon after his death, his house burned down and most everything he took from that sacred ground was returned into the earth by way of fire.

Not bein Indin, you will say this is all funny coincidence. Indins don't know nothing about coincidence. That's just white-man talk.

Toward the turn of the century, every creek and river was crawling with plume hunters and gator skinners, never mind the sports off them big yachts in the winter and gill netters all summer and moonshiners the whole damn year round. You'd see some stranger once a month where before you never seen a man but once every other year, and you'd be leery of that stranger, too. Never wave, just watch him out of sight so he don't follow when you go your way.

Anyways, wild creatures grew so wary that most hunters and trappers from the Bay went over to fishing. But fish was scarce, too, so some of 'em come south and set their trout nets right there on our grassy bank north of Mormon Key. Next, they was wanting our key for their camp. Anchor in too close, shout ashore at night:
You mulatters got no damn claim!
Took to crowding us so much we was fixing to wing one, give the rest something to think about, but Ed Watson warned they was just trying to provoke us, they
wanted
us to shoot. “Give 'em their excuse,” he said, “to run you off or worse.”