Not long after Captain Eben Carey joined the Frenchman on Possum Key, along come a well-knowed plume hunter and moonshiner from Lemon City on the Miami River. Crossed the Glades, then paddled north from Harney River, brought quite a smell into our cabin. Kept his old straw hat on at the table, never cared about spillin food on his greasy shirt. Claimed beard and grease was all that stood between him and the miskeeters. Had a big chaw of Brown Mule stuck in his face and spat all over our nice clean dirt floor.
Rumor was that this Tom Brewer would spike a barrel of his shine with some Red Devil lye to fire up his heathen clientele so’s they couldn’t think straight, then trade ’em the dregs for every otter pelt and gator flat he could lay his hands on. Rotgut-what Injuns called wy-omee-killed more redskins than the soldiers ever done, give traders a bad name all across the country. Had him a squaw girl, couldn’t been more than nine-ten years of age; lay her down right in his boat and had his way, then rented her out to any man might want her. No harm in that, he said, on account her band had throwed her out for fooling with a white man, namely him.
Tom Brewer were a sleepy and slow-spoken man, thick-set and sluggish as a cottonmouth, but even when his hands lay quiet, them black eyes flickered in a funny way, like he was listening to voices in his head that had more interesting business with Tom Brewer than what was happening around our table. Passed for white but more likely a breed, with bead-black Injun eyes and straight black hair down past the collar. Claimed to be the first and only white man who ever crossed the Glades in both directions so Mister Watson nicknamed him the Double-Crosser. The law on both coasts was after this feller for peddling wy-omee to the Injuns, taking away good business from the traders, so he was looking for a place to settle, get some peace of mind.
“From what I heard,” Tom Brewer said, handing around his deluxe jug that had no lye in it, “that ol’ Injun mound at Chatham Bend might be just the place I’m looking for.” Cap’n Carey, a big pinkish feller, took him a snort of Brewer’s hospitality that made his eyes pop. He banged down the jug and give a sigh like some old doleful porpoise in the channel. “Whoa!” he says. “Count me out! Man already on there, Tom!”
“I heard,” Tom Brewer said. Them other two looked like they expected him to explain hisself. He didn’t.
Whilst we was pondering, the Frenchman sniffed his cup of shine, one eyebrow cocked and bony nose a-twitching with disgust. That nose was sayin, This here shit sure’n hell ain’t up to what your quality is served back in the Old World! But it was plenty good enough for Cap’n Ebe, who grabbed the jug and hoisted it frontier-style on his elbow. Next time he come up for air, he coughed out a Key West rumor: the man who had let on to the sheriff where he could apprehend the late Will Raymond was none other than this selfsame feller Ed J. Watson.
“We heard about that clear across to Lemon City,” Brewer said. “Any sumbitch would snitch on a feller human bean ain’t got no right to private property if you take my meanin.”
“In a manner of speaking, Mr. Brewer, sir, you are correct,” says Captain Ebe. “But he paid off the widow for the claim, so he has rights according to the law.”
“Law!” the Frenchman scoffed, disgusted. “Satan foo! In la belle Frawnce, we cut off fokink head! La geeyo-teen!” And off he went on one of his tirades, quoting Detockveel and Laffyett and some other Frenchified fellers that could tell us dumb Americans a thing or two about America. (Erskine Thompson told me Mister Watson called Chevelier the Small Frog in the Big Pond. Erskine never did know why I laughed, him not being too much of a help when it come to jokes.)
“Fokink!” Brewer repeated, trying out some French. Said the news was out in Lemon City how this skunk Watson were a wanted man in two-three states. Here was our chance to do our duty as good citizens, says he, and a good turn to ourselves while we was at it. So us good citizens sat forward, put our heads together, while Brewer laid his cards upon the table or maybe some of ’em. His plan was that him and Carey and the Frenchman would get the drop on Watson, claim they had a warrant, hogtie that sumbitch, Brewer said, and get his fancy ass sent back to Arkansas, leaving the plume birds to upright citizens such as ourselves. Tom Brewer figured that bringing in a famous desperader would improve his reputation with the sheriff on top of earning the reward.
I tried to warn him there was just no way of coming up on Watson by surprise. His small clearing on the river was the only break in a thick wall of jungle a greased Injun couldn’t slip through, and when the water rose in time of storm and flood, the high ground on the Bend was the worst place for rattlers and cottonmouths in all the Islands.
“We’ll come downriver in the dark,” Brewer decided, “and take him when he comes out in the mornin.”
Cap’n Carey’s chuckle didn’t sound so good. “Mister Watson never goes unarmed and he is a dead shot,” Ebe says, his voice real tight. Brewer takes his rifle, steps to 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 in, sets his gun back by the door. “We got three guns to his one,” he says.
I sing out, “Make it four!” I ain’t got one thing in the world against Mister Watson, I just don’t want to miss out. I shoot pretty good for a young youth, better’n most, and I aimed to make sure none of these drunks shot my friend Erskine, who was down in the mouth enough already without that. But the Frenchman called me whippaire-snappaire, shooed me away, so I never got to join that Watson posse. Had to wait another fifteen years.
In Cap’n Ebe’s opinion, which me and the Frenchman got to hear nightly, we gentlemen was sick and tired of bloodshed in south Florida. What with desperaders hiding out here in our swamps like dregs in the bottom of a jug of moonshine, violence on the Everglades frontiers was worse than out in the Wild West where men was men.
There was no law in the Islands, I reminded ’em (though the Islands was kind of like them Hardens, Isaac Yeomans used to say, they never was as black as they was painted). Of course Key West was trying out some law so Watson paid Santini not to take the case to court. Most folks concluded that Dolphus was right to accept Ed Watson’s money but Cap’n Ebe said Ebe P. Carey disagreed and didn’t care who knew it, he slapped his hand down on the table, spilling drinks. “Watson had that money on him! Nine hundred dollars in blood money right there in his pocket! And every red cent of it illgotten, you may be sure!” A wrong done to a wealthy citizen should never go unpunished, Cap’n Carey told us.
Nine hundred dollars was stiff punishment, it seemed to me: that’s what Santini got from Smallwood for his whole darned claim when he cleared out of Chokoloskee. Ebe Carey never knew Santini, never knew how he got to be so rich back in the first place: you show Dolphus nine hundred dollars, his eyes would glaze over like a rattler. But he earned every penny and I guess you could say he earned Ed Watson’s money, too.
Anyways, he took it. Maybe he thought the prosecutor might bring a poor attitude to the case just because he drank with Watson at Joe’s Bar. More likely, Watson had him scared. Having no choice about the scar, he decided he would take the money. This way, next time they met, there’d be no hard feelings. How’s that ol’ throat coming, Dolphus? And Dolphus says, Thanks for asking, Ed! Nice little scar and she’s coming along fine!
“Mr. Santini accepted a bare-faced bribe instead of putting that villain behind bars where he belonged,” Ebe Carey complained. “I was astonished!”
“Ass-toneesh!” The Frenchman inched a little more of Brewer’s lightning into his glass like it was medicine. “I am ass-toneesh from first fokink day I set my foots in fokink Amerique!”
To make a long story somewhat shorter, Tom Brewer could shoot him a blue streak, and by the time they had his moonshine polished off, Chevelier and Carey could shoot pretty good, too, so it sure looked like this deadly bunch would bring Watson to justice. Only trouble was, Ebe Carey had no heart for the job. Maybe he seen that one of his partners was a drunk outlaw with an eye on Watson’s property and the other a loco old foreigner so angered up with life he couldn’t see straight let alone shoot. Every little while, Ebe described Ed Watson cutting loose down in Key West, shooting out lights in the saloons, never known to miss. Drunk or sober, he said, Mister Watson was no man to fool with. His partners was 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, and Cap’n Ebe never had the guts not to go with ’em.
Come Sunday, I snuck off to Chatham Bend, where Erskine and me fished up some snappers while we swapped our stories. I told Erskine how them three deputies was up all night getting their courage up and he told me what happened the next morning. Maybe the posse was bad hung over and nerves wobbly, he said, because all they done was stand off on the river and holler at the house. Chatham River is pretty broad there at the Bend, and being they was way over toward the farther bank, they had to shout their heads off to be heard at all.
Mister Watson got up out of bed and poked his shooting iron through the window. He knowed Tom Brewer from the saloons at Key West, knowed him for a polecat east coast moonshiner, and he also knowed that the Key West sheriff would never appoint no such a man to be his deputy. So when Brewer hollered, Mister Watson fired, and his bullet clipped most of his handlebar mustache on the left side. Brewer yelped and them other citizens near fell out of the skiff, putting their backs into them oars too hard, too quick. What he should have done, his boss told Erskine, after he cooled off some and got to laughing, was give them varmints a bullet at the waterline, sink their skiff and let ’em swim for it, cause there weren’t nowhere but the Watson place for them to swim to.
When that citizens’ posse slunk back to Possum Key, Ed Brewer shaved off what was left of his mustache, cussing real ugly when the razor bit on his burned lip: took it out on that squaw girl of his, knocked her down right on the dock. Before noon he headed east for Lemon City on the Miami River, where he accused E. J. Watson of attempted murder and told all about his shoot-out with the worstest outlaw as ever took a life around south Florida. Cap’n Carey spread his version in Key West-that’s how Watson got that name “the Barber.” A few years later they were calling him “the Emperor”-the Frenchman said that first-because of his grand ambitions for the Islands. It was only when he was safe under the ground that anyone dared to call him Bloody Watson.
After that morning Mrs. Watson made up her mind to leave the Bend. She didn’t want her children risked in a dangerous place where men might come gunning for her husband-Erskine himself heard her say that. A few days later, Mister Watson took his family to Fort Myers, put his kids in school. In Fort Myers, Dr. Langford told him Mrs. Watson was looking too darn old for a woman only in her thirties. Said life in our Islands was too rough for a lady gently reared and he rented her rooms in his own house until she recovered. Miss Carrie stayed there, too, to help take care of her, and the two younger boys were put in school and lodged nearby.