Not long after Elijah Carey fixed up Richard Hamilton's old house, along come a well-knowed plume hunter and common moonshiner from Lemon City way, south of New River. Crossed the Glades and paddled up to Possum Key from Harney River, brought quite a smell of the east coast into our cabin. Kept his old straw hat on even in the house, leather galluses, shirt buttoned to the collar, wore a lot of beard and grime to head off miskeeters. Big chaw of Brown Mule stuck into his face, and spat all over our nice clean dirt floor. What Ed Brewer liked the best, folks said, was to spike a barrel of his shine with some Red Devil lye, then head out into the Glades, pep up his heathen clientele so's they couldn't think straight, let alone chase him, then trade the dregs of what them redskins called wy-omee for every otter pelt and gator flat he could lay his hands on. Rotgut sold by fellers like Ed Brewer killed more Injuns than the soldiery ever done, and give us honest traders a bad name. He had a squaw with him that day, couldn't been more than twelve years old, and so dead drunk he laid her out under the eaves and just forgot about her. Later her band would throw her out for sleeping with a white man, and this was the one who come to a bad end, down Chatham River.
Ed Brewer were a watchful and slow-spoken man, thick-set and sluggish as a cottonmouth till that quick moment when he lets you have it. Passed for white but more likely a breed, with bead-black Injun eyes and straight black hair. His hands set quiet but them black eyes flickered in a funny way, like he was listening to voices in his head that had more interesting business with Ed Brewer than what was happening around our table. Sheriffs was after this poor feller on both coasts for peddling wy-omee to the Mikasukis, so he was looking for a place to settle, get some peace of mind.
When he finally spoke, he cut off Captain Lige like he wasn't there. "Way I heard," Ed Brewer said, handing around his deluxe jug without no lye in it, "that big old Injun mound at Chatham Bend might be just the place for an enterprising citizen such as myself."
Captain Carey, a big red-faced feller with soft and easy ways, took him a snort of Brewer's hospitality that made his eyes pop. He shook it off, banged down the jug, and give a sigh like some old doleful porpoise in the channel.
"Whoa!" he says, and puts a big soft hand up. "Feller already on there, Ed."
"So I heard," Ed Brewer said. Them other two looked at him like they expected him to explain hisself. He didn't.
While we was pondering, the Frenchman poured himself a little lightning, eyebrows way up higher than usual and his bony nose just a-twitching with disgust, as if to say, This shit sure ain't what your quality likes to drink back in the Old World! But Captain Lige grabbed the jug again and hoisted it onto his elbow, American-style, just to be sociable, and helped himself to another slug of our guest's hootch. Next time he surfaced, he coughed out a Key West rumor: The one who cleared the way on Chatham Bend, letting on to the sheriff where he could find the late Will Raymond, was none other than a feller named Ed Watson.
"Heard that one clear across to Lemon City," Brewer said, pushing his jug at Lige again, "Any sonofabitch would do that to another human bein ain't got nothin comin, if I take your meanin."
"In a manner of speaking, yes and no," Captain Lige told him, raising his pink palm to advise caution. "Paid off the widow for the claim, so he has rights. According to the law," Captain Lige added.
"Law!" the Frenchman scoffed, disgusted. "In la belle France, we cut off foking head!" We done our best to work around him, but he went off on one of his tirades, quoting Detockveel and Laffyett and some other old Frog fellers that could tell us boys a thing or two about America.
"Foking!" Ed Brewer said, trying that word out. I can't explain why Ed spoke in French, lest he wanted to befuddle up the Frenchman. Then Brewer told us that the news was out in Lemon City how this skunk Watson were a wanted man in two-three states. Here was our chance, says Ed, to do our duty as good citizens and a good turn to ourselves while we was at it.
So all us citizens sat forward, put our heads together, while Brewer laid his cards upon the table, at least some of 'em. Them three able-bodied men-him and Carey and the Frenchman-was going to get the drop on Watson, claim they had a warrant, hogtie that sonofabitch, Ed Brewer said, and take him in. Even if there weren't no reward, Watson was sure to get sent back to Arkansas, serve out his term, and while he was paying his debt to society, us honest citizens would have the plume trade to ourselves.
Here's where Brewer got the lowdown on Ed Watson. Over there in Lemon City, Brewer's friend Sam Lewis worked as bartender in Pap Worth's Pool Room, and Sam Lewis introduced him to two hombres on the dodge from Dallas, Texas. They was old friends of the late Maybelle Shirley Starr, and they was asking questions about Watson. Well, they sat down at the bar and told Ed Brewer how they come east to Arcadia to take work in the range wars for a while. A gunslinger from Oklahoma, one Jack Watson, had put some bullets in a Quinn Bass while in town, and they got the idea from the description that this Watson was none other than the polecat that shot poor Maybelle clean out of the saddle on her own birthday, February '89. So Ed Brewer told them Texans, Boys, a feller of that selfsame description sliced the daylights out of somebody down to Key West.
"Jack Watson?" I said.
"E. Jack Watson," said Ed Brewer, waving me off. "Selfsame sorry sonofabitch as we are talking about right here tonight."
That was the first and last I ever heard about Watson traveling under the name Jack-I had my doubts. But the Frenchman hissed at me, "Wheep-aire snap-aire!" so I hushed up.
Well, one of these Texans, name of Ed Highsmith, vowed he would go gunning for Jack Watson soon as he sobered up enough to figure out where Jack Watson was at. "Yessir," Ed Highsmith declared, "when I ain't snot-flyin drunk, this E. Jack Watson goin to be my hobby."
Well, I knew Ed Highsmith weren't made-up, cause I recognized his name, Sam Lewis, too, from Ted Smallwood's story of the year before when him and Isaac Yeomans were clearing citrus land around Lemon City.
Lemon City, north of the Miami River, was a few groves and maybe two hundred people counting all of the outlying homesteads. The east coast railroad coming through brought chain-gang workers to lay track, had foremen out there with black whips to keep them criminals on the job, and ones that died was dumped in the limestone sinkholes by the right-of-way. After that come saloons and a whorehouse, there was a lot of scrapes, a lot of shooting.
Way Ted told it, these two Texans, Ed Highsmith and George Davis, come in and got drunk every Saturday, picked fights with anyone they wanted. Only feller they never fought with was a moonshiner, Ed Brewer, who kept 'em in liquor and told 'em he'd put 'em on the track of E. Jack Watson soon as they put two sober days together.
One day Ted and Isaac run into these fellers, and Davis had a lot of teeth knocked out and bleeding. According to Smallwood, Davis said, "We are old boys from Texas, slightly disfigured but still in the ring." A couple of days later they caused a uproar at Pap Worth's Pool Room & Bar, got to winging billiard balls at the bar-keep's head cause he wouldn't leave off telling 'em to behave.
This barkeep, Sam Lewis, was known to be a hothead and a deadeye shot with his Marlin.44, could shoot a man's bung hole out so clean he'd wonder if he might of cut a fart. So when Sam grabbed his rifle off the wall, them two decided it was time to take their leave. As they went out, Sam's bullet split the doorframe maybe a possum's-pecker-length over Highsmith's head, and only that much because somebody had sense enough to knock his arm up. Highsmith and Davis were so irked on top of being drunk that they hollered at Lewis through the window they would be back to settle their account first thing next morning. Might have had a second thought when they woke up, but having said that, why, they had to do it. In them days there was still some honor, and a man was careful not to say nothing he wouldn't stand by. Otherwise nobody took him serious, they walked all over him.
Ted and Isaac was eating up their grits in Doddy and Rob's Restaurant when them two Texans come along the street, and Sam Lewis stepped out with his Marlin.44 and got the drop on them. He told Highsmith if he did not get down on his knees in that there mud and apologize for braying like a goddamn Texas jackass, he would have to shoot him. So Highsmith said, Well, shoot then or shut up, you sonofabitch! Never thought to ask his partner whether Davis thought them words was wise or not. So Lewis put a bullet through Ed Highsmith, and Highsmith went in by the back door of the restaurant so's not to bother nobody and lay down on the floor to think it over.
George Davis spun sideways to give Lewis a hard target, and Sam Lewis shot him through the heart, dropped Davis dead there in the road. They dragged him in and laid him out beside his partner, and Highsmith opened his eyes up, took a look, and closed his eyes again. "Slightly disfigured," he sighed, "and all my fault."
Ted and Isaac went in with the crowd to hear Highsmith's last words. "Tell the Freemasons," he said, "that Ed Highsmith is gone. Tell 'em I brought damnation down without no help from nobody at all."
Might seem to some that Lewis done what was meet and proper to keep them highfalutin boys in line. But Sam Lewis come from other parts and was not popular, and poor George Davis left behind a little family, so they called Sam Lewis a bloodthirsty killer that would shoot a family man as quick as look at him, and being family men themselves, they all took cover. Not one would come out, help dig the grave, for fear Sam Lewis might take it in his head to send a few more family men to meet their maker.
The two pretty Douthit girls was looking on, so Isaac and Ted stepped forward. They dug the one grave big enough for both, and them two fellers went to hell together. Bob Douthit and some other fellers formed a posse-Ed Brewer claimed he was on that posse, wanted to try the other side, I guess-but Sam Lewis hid out and got away, went on across to the Bahamas.
The people knew Sam Lewis was dead stubborn. They expected him back to get his gear cause he'd said out plain he had not done one thing wrong, so the whole settlement was armed and laying for him. And out of his honor he come back, knocked on a door after dark and asked for food, and when the woman asked Who's there?, damn if he didn't come right out with it-Sam Lewis! A homesteader guarding that house shot Sam Lewis, broke his leg. He took Sam's Marlin.44, then bent and lit a match, and the woman hollers, If that there is Sam Lewis, shoot again!
There was a young boy on guard, too, and that boy was raring to do his duty and put a bullet in the culprit. Sam Lewis pulled a pistol and put a bullet in the homesteader and sent another singing past that boy. After that he crawled into a shed. He told the lynch mob through the door he would go peaceable if he could go to trial, otherwise he aimed to take as many straight to hell with him as the law allowed.
They rode Sam Lewis to the jail at Juno, Florida. When the homesteader died a few days later-this was July of 1895-the men went to Juno and took Sam Lewis out and lynched him, and shot the nigger jailkeeper while they was at it. Made what you might call a nice clean job.
Anyways Ed Brewer figured that bringing in the famous E. Jack Watson would improve his reputation with the sheriff on top of earning the reward. But Chevelier warned him there was no way of coming up on Watson by surprise. The small stretch that overlooked the Bend was the only break in them green walls, cause the place was surrounded on three sides and more by a mangrove tangle a greased Injun couldn't slip through. Besides that, everybody knowed how that high ground, in storm, drew every critter on these rivers, it was one of the worst places for rattlers, let alone cottonmouths, in all the Islands. Them vipers piled up on Chatham Bend, time of high water, and they never left.
"We'll come down the river in the dark," Ed Brewer said, "surround the house, and take him when he comes out in the morning."
Lige Carey's chuckle didn't sound too good. "Mister Watson never goes unarmed, and he is a dead shot," Lige says. I catch the tightness in his voice and so does Brewer, who says, "That so, Cap'n?" He takes up his rifle and steps out the door and shoots the head clean off a snake bird that's craning down from the top of a dead snag over the creek. He let that bird slap on the water and spin a little upside down, legs kicking. Then he comes back in, sets his gun back by the door, and says, "I reckon three can handle one, we put our mind to it."
I ain't spoke up for a while so I says, "Better make it four!" I ain't got one thing in the world against Ed Watson but I don't want to miss out, and I shoot pretty fair, too, if I do say so. (Also I want to make damn sure that none of these drunks goes over there and shoots poor Henry Thompson, who is somber enough already without getting shot.) Them men just scoff cause the way they see it, I am still a boy. So I missed my chance to join a Watson posse, had to wait another fifteen years.
In Captain Lige's opinion, which me and the Frenchman got to hear a lot, we gentlemen was sick and tired of violence in south Florida. Why, taking the law in your own hands was worse in Florida, yells Lige, than out in the Far West, where men was men, what with so many desperadoes and bad actors hiding out down here in our trackless swamps like dregs in the bottom of a jug of moonshine. Ol' Lige come right out and shouted the word moonshine! as a hint to our guest to do his bounden duty, he give me a big wink when he done it, and Ed Brewer sloshed some shine in my tin cup, glug-glug, glug-glug, to get the whippersnapper liquored up long with the rest.
"Now you take this Watson fellow!" Lige was shouting. Down in Key West, most people said that Dolphus Santini was smart to take that money-well, Elijah P. Carey disagreed and didn't care who knew it, he slapped his hand down on the table, spilling drinks. "Watson had that sum right in his pocket! Nine hundred dollars! And every red cent of it ill-gotten, you may rest assured!" What happened to a leading citizen should not go unpunished, Captain Carey said. Well, nine hundred dollars were pretty good punishment back then, was my opinion; that's what Smallwoods would pay for Santini's whole damn claim on Chokoloskee. Lige Carey never knew Santini, never knew how he got to be leading citizen in the first place. You show Dolphus nine hundred dollars, his eyes would glaze right over like a rattler. He was a rich man by our standards, and he earned every penny, and I guess you could say he earned it this time, too.
Anyway, he took Ed Watson's money. Maybe Dolphus was worried about lawyers' fees, or maybe he thought the federal attorney, who was one of Watson's drinking partners, might bring a poor attitude to the case. This weren't unlikely, cause ol' Ed was just as popular as not around Key West. And maybe Watson had him scared so bad that he didn't want to rile him any further. He had no choice about the scar, so he decided he would take the money. This way, next time they met, there'd be no hard feelings. Watson could say, How's that ol' scar doing, Dolphus? And Dolphus could holler, Why, just fine, E.J.! Coming along fine!
Elijah Carey was still shouting. "How could Santini accept a bribe after such an experience, instead of putting that villain behind bars where he belonged? Gentlemen," he yells, "I am astonished!"
"Astonish!" sniffs the Frenchman, inching a little more lightning into his glass like it was medicine. "I am astonish from first foking day I set foots in America. What is require is la guillotine, in every foking vee-lage in this foking con-trie."
Might seem sassy for a boy to interrupt, but being from Chokoloskee Bay, I was the only one acquainted personal with D. Santini, and the time had come to tell my partners what was what. "Nothing astonishing about it, gentlemen!" pipes up young House.
The other citizens all stared at me, kind of impatient, and I had to get my say in quick before Chevelier could shoo me off. "Old Man Dolphus likes money, that's why he's got so much. For nine hundred dollars he can buy what little farm land he don't already own on Chokoloskee."
There was no law in the Islands, I reminded 'em, a man took care of his own business, and a killing was not what you might call scarce-though the Islands was kind of like them Hamiltons, as Tant Jenkins used to say, they never was as black as they was painted. However, Key West was trying out some law after a long spell without none, so Watson paid Dolphus in hard cash not to take the case to court, let bygones be bygones. That was that. Nobody at home thought much about it.
"It's the principle of the thing!" Ol' Lige cries out. "The principle!" And the Frenchman wags a finger-"Le pran-seep!"
Them two gentlemen are frowning at me kind of outrageous, but I seen from his wink that Ed Brewer thought the same way I did, being a common swamp rat, same as me.
To make a long story somewhat shorter, this Brewer could shoot him a blue streak, and he was a man without no fear of man nor beast, or so he advised us by the time we had his liquor polished off. Chevelier and Carey could shoot pretty good, too, and it sure looked like this deadly bunch had Watson's number. But Cap'n Lige from start to finish had no heart for the job. Maybe he seen that one of his partners was a drunk outlaw with his eye on Watson's property, and the other a loco old Frenchman so fed up with life he couldn't see straight, let alone shoot.
Every few minutes Ol' Lige described Ed Watson cutting loose down in Key West, shooting out light bulbs in the saloons, never known to miss. If he said it once he said a hundred times that drunk or sober, E.J. Watson was no man to fool with, but his partners was just too liquored up to listen. First light, they fell into the skiff and pushed off for Chatham Bend, figuring to float downriver with the tide. Cap'n Lige never had the grit not to go with 'em.
Come Sunday, I snuck off to Chatham Bend. Henry Thompson and me tied up to a mangrove and baited us some snappers while we compared our lowdown on that posse. I told Henry how them three deputies was up all night getting their courage up, and he told me what happened the next morning. Maybe they was bad hung over and their nerves wobbly, he said, because what they done was stand off on the river and holler out, "E. Jack Watson, come out with your hands up! You are under arrest!" That river is pretty broad there on the Bend, and they was way over on the farther side, so they had to shout with might and main just to be heard.
Watson got up out of bed and poked his shooting iron through the window. He knowed Ed Brewer from saloons down to Key West, so Henry said, knowed him for a moonshiner and durn east coaster, and he also knowed that the Key West sheriff weren't likely to appoint no wanted man to be his deputy. So when Brewer reared up in the boat and hollered, Watson let a bullet fly that clipped that feller's handlebar on the left side. When that bullet sang and Brewer yelped, Cap'n Carey and the Frenchman near fell out of the skiff, that's how hard they put their backs into them oars.
What he should of done, Watson told Henry, was give them varmints a bullet at the waterline, sink the old skiff and let 'em swim for it, cause there weren't nowhere but the Watson Place for them to swim to. When he cooled off some and got to laughing, he let on how he had skinned Brewer a-purpose, and Henry Thompson testified for the rest of his long life that Watson never aimed to kill Ed Brewer or he would have done it. Course Ed Brewer claimed that E. Jack Watson tried to blow his head off. After Watson died, he liked to tell about his shoot-out with the most fearful desperado as ever took a life around south Florida.
When them men slunk back to Possum Key, Ed Brewer shaved off what was left of his mustache, bellering when the razor bit on his burned lip. Although they was feeling weak and poorly, he cussed his partners up and down, he wouldn't talk a civil word to nobody. Before noon he was headed east for the Miami River. At Lemon City, Brewer accused E.J. Watson of attempted murder, which made Watson's reputation even worse. Lige Carey took the story to Key West, where Watson got the name the Barber. That was the first nickname they give him. A few years later they were calling him the Emperor-the Frenchman said it first-because of his big ambitions for the Islands. It was only after he was safe under the ground that anyone dared to call him Bloody Watson.
Ed Brewer's posse weren't the last that went into them rivers after Watson. After all his scrapes down at Key West, the law had enough of him and called for a volunteer to bring him in. Only deputy spoke up said, Well, now, Sheriff, if I go to all that trouble, I might's well run for your job when I come home. Guts was all that poor feller had going for him, because Watson got the drop on him soon as he got there, took away his hardware, and put him to work out in the cane. Got two weeks hard work out of the long arm of the law before he give him back his gun and told him he were lucky to be alive. That deputy must have thought so too, cause he went away with no hard feelings, told everybody in Key West how the Watson Place was the only so-called plantation in the Islands that amounted to more'n a small squirt of sawfish shit. Why, by God, he would say, he was proud to have worked for such a man as Ed J. Watson! Watson were chortling over that till the day he died.
In one way, Henry Thompson said, Watson was riled by being blamed for killings that he didn't do, but he also encouraged them bad stories-not encouraged, exactly, but he never quite denied them, neither. His reputation as a fast gun and willing to use it kept deputies and other nuisances off Chatham Bend and helped him lay claim to abandoned plantations, which was pretty common on the rivers by the time he finished.
So long as he stayed in that lonesome river, he would be all right. All the same, he remained watchful, and when he sailed up to Fort Myers, he went quick and he went armed. Got there after nightfall and laid low. Lee County sheriff, ol' Tom Langford, didn't want no part of him, and as for Frank Tippins, who come in as sheriff round the turn of the century, he didn't know just what he wanted, unless it was Ed Watson's handsome daughter.
For the next few years, after his family come, Mister Watson settled down, stayed out of trouble. He run a fine plantation and successful syrup business and helped his neighbors anywheres he could.
Sometimes of a Sunday them young Hamiltons would sail up Chatham River on the tide, visit the Frenchman, and drop back down to Mormon Key when the tide turned. Mary Elizabeth and John Leon was just youngsters at the time, but Liza was as pretty put together as anything I ever saw, made me ache to look at her, and Leon was a fine big strapping boy. He stuttered a little, but he learned early how to grin at life and never lost that.
Maybe them two was brother and sister but they looked like vanilla and chocolate in the boat. Henry Thompson used to tell that Leon's daddy was a white man, Captain Joe Williams, who got into the pen when Richard Hamilton lived at Fakahatchee, he heard that from the Daniels clan up there. A lot of Island people had it in for Old Man Richard, so I don't know if that story's true or not-can't even figure how folks knew it unless Joe Williams had made a claim on Leon, which he didn't. But the truth don't count for much after all these years, cause folks hang on to what it suits 'em to believe and won't let go of it.
Leon and Liza grew pretty close to that old Frenchman after I left there, right up until the time he died. Nobody knows too much about that. One day he was snapping like a mean old turtle and the next day he was gone for good. This happened when Watson's fame in other parts was catching up with him, so naturally the Frenchman's death was laid on Watson, who was known to have his eye on Possum Key.
Henry Thompson don't believe that. Henry said that Watson took a liking to the Frenchman, took his wife to meet him. Watson called Chevelier the Small Frog in the Big Pond, Henry didn't know why. Henry never was much help when it come to jokes. Anyway, that poor heartbroke old foreigner was dying pretty good without no help.
Ted Smallwood knowed Mr. E.J. Watson from their first days at Half Way Creek, they was always friendly. Families both come from Columbia County, up in the Suwannee River country of north Florida. Ted come down this way from Fort Ogden, near Arcadia, and he worked for us on Turner River for a while. He married our Mamie back in '97, bought a small place from the Santinis when he came over to Chokoloskee that same year. About the only settlers on the island then was McKinneys, Wigginses, Santinis, Browns, and Yeomans. There was still a half dozen families at Half Way Creek, another half dozen at Everglade, and a few more perched here and there down through the Islands.
McKinneys started out the same as we did, farming back in Turner River, set up a sawmill. Wonderful soil there the first year, but once it was cleared, and the sun burned down and killed that land, C.G. McKinney couldn't make a living. So he cleared another mound downriver, made a bumper crop, and the next year it wouldn't grow a onion. Old C.G. had comical names for everything, called that place Needhelp.
McKinney come on to Chokoloskee, built a house and store, got in his supplies from Storters' trading post in Everglade. His billhead said, "No Banking, no Mortgaging, no Insurance, no Borrowing, no Loaning. I Must Have Cash to Buy More Hash." Made no bones about what he sold; called his bread "wasp nest." Had him a gristmill, started the post office, done some doctoring when old Doc Green left Half Way Creek.
C.G. McKinney was a educated man according to our local estimation, and Mr. McKinney didn't hold with plume hunting. Jean Chevelier used to rant and rave at everybody except himself that hunted plumes, but he also hollered "Eepo-creet! Eepo-creet!" about McKinney, who went on just one egret hunt before he give it up for good. C.G. seen all them abandoned nestlings and the crows picking on 'em and figured what he was doing there was not God's will.
Ted Smallwood felt the same way as McKinney when it come to plume hunting, but I guess he had a blank spot in his heart when it come to gators. The year after he married our Mamie was the great drought year of '98, when every gator in the Glades was piled up into the last holes, and a man could take a ox cart across country. Tom Roberts out plume hunting come on a whole heap of gators near the head of Turner River; he went up to Fort Myers for wagons and a load of salt, then got a gang together and went after 'em. There was Tom and me and Ted and a couple of others, we took forty-five hundred in three weeks from them three holes that make up one lake in the rains. That's Roberts Lake, and that's how it got that name. Didn't waste bullets on 'em, we used axes. Skinned off the bellies, what we call the flats. Don't reckon them buzzards got it cleaned up yet today. Floated 'em down Turner River to George Storter's trading post at Everglade, we got in early and we got good money. That year R.B. Storter's schooner carried ten thousand gator hides up to Fort Myers out of Roberts Lake alone.
After that, it was war against the gators, the hides was coming from all over, otter pelts, too. Bill Brown from the Boat Landing trading post east of Immokalee, he brung in one hundred eighty otter on one trip, got a thousand dollars for 'em, and he brought gator skins by the ox-wagon load. One trip he hauled twelve hundred seventy into Fort Myers, might been the record, that was in 19 and 05, and he'd brought eight hundred not three weeks before. Even gators can't stand up to that kind of a massacre.
Yessir, a lot of God's creation was left laying dead out there, it give me a very funny feeling even then. Bill Brown said all them water creatures was going to die off anyway soon as Governor Broward got going on his drainage schemes, said he hated waste so he aimed to take every last gator in the Glades. Three years later, that was 1908, the gator trade was pretty close to finished. And the Injuns was close to finished, too, cause they didn't have good guns or traps, they only took enough to go and trade with. They never killed them critters out, not the way we did.
Ted never said if killing all them gators was in God's service or not, but he sure had some nice cash set aside. Two years later, him and his father bought the whole Santini claim on Chokoloskee. Them Santinis and the son-in-law Santana, they was Catholics, but they was one of our pioneer families, and folks was surprised to see 'em pull up stakes. Nicholas-that's Tino-his wife was Mary Ann Daniels, sister to Aunt Netta, who kept house for Watson, and maybe that led to something ugly Dolphus said to Watson that he wished he hadn't. Tino moved up to Fort Myers, and as for Dolphus, he lit out for the east coast, about as far from E.J. Watson as he could get.
According to Ted Smallwood's reminiscences, E.J. Watson had not been in the Islands long before he assaulted "one of our best citizens," Adolphus Santini of Chokoloskee Island, at Key West. (See the excerpts from the Bill House interviews, which describe the Santini episode in detail.)
In her memoirs, Mary Douthit Conrad corroborates Smallwood's version of the Highsmith/Davis killing, which strengthens one's confidence in the accuracy of his "Ed Watson Story," cited above. She also provides additional details from the perspective of the fair sex. "After all this excitement the Village Improvement Association of Lemon City [now subsumed by Greater Miami] put on a box supper and ice cream social at the church to raise enough money to send Mrs. Davis and her two boys back home to Texas."
In the last year of his life, Jean Chevelier made an ill-advised attempt to arrest Mr. Watson, assisted by his aforementioned associate Elijah Carey, and a plume hunter and moonshiner named Ed. Brewer. The arrest attempt was entirely unsuccessful, and the posse fled.
Due to the paucity of Key West records, there is little to be learned about Captain Carey, but Brewer turns up in Florida frontier literature as early as 1892, in an account of a journey up the Calusa Hatchee from Ft. Myers that voyaged across Lake Okeechobee and emerged at the Miami River. "At the hotel [the Hendry House in Fort Myers] we talked with several men who had been in the employ of the Disston Drainage Co. and who claimed to be familiar with the border of the Everglades. They said no man other than an Indian had ever been through the 'Glades except one 'Brewer' who had been arrested for selling whiskey to the Indians and released on bond, when the Indians in order to effect his escape had carried him across to Miami."
Brewer later served as guide to a Navy lieutenant Hugh L. Willoughby, who crossed the Everglades in 1896. Willoughby recorded this high opinion of the man, despite warnings about his desperate reputation:
Ed. Brewer… had always made a living by hunting and trapping. He would sometimes be in the woods, and partly in the Everglades, for six months at a stretch without seeing a soul except an occasional Indian. He was a man of medium height, heavily built without being fat, black hair, black eyes, inured to hardship, and able to make himself comfortable in his long tramps, with a canoe, a tin pot, a blanket, a deer-skin, a mosquito-bar, and a rifle, with perhaps a plug or two of tobacco as a luxury. My experience in hunting with him the year previous had shown that he was just the man to face with me whatever dangers there might be in store in my attempt to cross the Everglades. Although warned by some of my friends that he was a dangerous character, I preferred to rely upon my own judgment of human nature rather than unproved stories about him. In our solitary companionship, far from the reach of any law but that of our own making, I always found him brave and industrious, constantly denying himself, deceiving me as to his appetite when our supplies ran low that I might be the more comfortable, and many a night did he stay up an extra hour while I was finishing my notes and plotting work, that he might tuck me in my cheesecloth from the outside.
Ed. Brewer is treated with less reverence in a useful book about the south Florida backcountry of that period, which belittles Willoughby's accomplishment (pointing out that the Glades had already been conquered several times, dating back to the Harney crossing in 1842). And he has been remembered elsewhere, usually in reference to the Willoughby journey or his chronic troubles with the law. Whatever his merits, Ed. Brewer was someone to be reckoned with, despite his humiliation at the hands of Watson.