I followed Granger out the back and rode around to the new jailhouse. I was Tommy’s hero now, I had saved his life, so he gladly agreed to tend my horse and keep him ready while I went in to collect my reward.
Bass’s body had drawn a crowd to the saloon. Out in the road, they shot their guns into the air as newcomers asked who’d done it. A voice hollered, “Ask that gunslinger who rides for Durrance!”
The sheriff arrived shortly in bad temper, mouth tight as a sprung trap. He wasn’t sorry Quinn was dead nor was he happy about what he would have to deal with. “A lot of them ol’ boys out there are Bass clan first and Bass clan foremost, Watson. Most of ’em know you done this town a favor but that don’t mean that they won’t string you up. And all the rest is just a-rarin to help out for the pure fun and the justice.” He wouldn’t advise me to loiter in this town, he said.
Informed I was only awaiting my reward, he asked me coldly how it felt to be a bounty hunter. When I reminded him I was his deputy, he wrenched my star off my new shirt, leaving a tear. “Not no more you ain’t,” he said, as Durrance came through the door.
Durrance was anxious to inform me that the sheriff ’s reward took care of his own obligation as a private citizen, while the sheriff said it sure looked to him like a gunslinging stranger had baited a local man into an altercation with intent to kill him in cold blood. I reminded them I had done just what they wanted so I sure hoped they would not try to back out of their obligation. I held the rancher’s eye. “I sure would hate to tell the Bass clan, Will, about your private bounty on Quinn’s head.”
Howls rose from without and a great banging on the door: the sheriff refused to lock me up for my own protection. “You better get goin while the gettin’s good,” he said. I went to the window and looked out. “The gettin don’t look so good to me,” I said. I entered an empty cell and slammed the door. Lying back on my bunk, hands behind my head, I suggested he do his bounden duty and send out for some drink and a bite of supper for his prisoner.
“Get the hell out of my cell! You’re trespissin, layin in there like that! I ain’t gettin my new jail burned down for no bounty hunter!”
“Arrest me for trespissin, then.”
He came up to the bars. “Who the hell are you, anyway? And don’t give me no name that you can’t prove: we got a telegraph.”
I told him my new name and lawful occupation: E. Jack Watson, farmer.
“Pretty handy with weapons for a goddamn farmer.” He shook his head while we listened to the yells and banging. “You seen that crowd out there. How come you didn’t keep on riding, mister?”
“You fellers pay what I’ve got coming and I’ll ride.”
Brooding about justice and injustice, the sheriff grunted low down in his chest like an old boar. “You might not have much use for your dirty money when that crowd catches you.” However, he went to fetch me my reward and I waved Durrance over to my bars. “I bet you hoped that crowd would have me hung by the time you got here, Will. Better luck next time.”
Durrance reached into his jacket, his brow all beetled up with honest worry over good money lying loose in a lynched man’s pocket. “Jack, it ain’t like you done this just for me-”
“You offered me blood money, Will. Want them to know?” I nodded toward the window. His fingers had emerged empty from his pockets but now they crept back in. Scowling, he forked over a small bag of gold coins, twenty dollars each.
The sheriff returned with the reward in hundred-dollar bills. He walked me to the jailhouse door, recommending that I leave at once. The Grangers were outside around the corner, tending my horse. They would empty their six-guns in the air when the door opened, to scatter the crowd and give me a head start. “Them citizens ain’t lookin to get shot,” the sheriff said. “Not for Quinn Bass.”
These two seemed cheerful in their confidence that their cash would be retrieved from my remains. Swinging open the jailhouse door, Durrance wished me luck. “Same to you,” I said. I yanked him in front of me and poked my weapon hard into his back, trotting him over to the horses. The Grangers were already yipping, shooting into the air, and the groaning crowd was milling, stupid as spooked steers at the slaughterhouse gate. Durrance hollered, “Don’t shoot, boys! It’s me!” Right then, some fool opened fire and a bullet whined too close past my ear. I mounted quick, dragging Durrance up behind to cover my back.
Taking no chances, I rode Durrance to the river. He fell off, sore-assed and stiff, still belly-aching about his money: he claimed that my new Winchester was not part of the deal. Not wishing to risk my good fortune by being greedy, I tossed him the rifle. He didn’t thank me, only whined about wild beasts. I scattered a few cartridges onto the ground and galloped to the ford. The night was dark, just a sliver of new moon, as I crossed over the Peace River into new country.
From the shack cluster at Alva, I crossed the broad Calusa on the cattle barge and rode down the south bank into Fort Myers, where I boarded my lame horse at the livery stable, bought a new set of clothes and boots (there were no stores south of here, only frontier outposts), and asked some questions about life on this far southwest coast. After a few days, one jump ahead of an inquiry from Arcadia, I sailed downriver to the Gulf of Mexico on the schooner Falcon, which rolled and pitched south past Cape Romaine to the Ten Thousand Islands.
My first impression of the great might of the sea dismayed me, the vastness of it and the unforgiving emptiness and the rough seas that threatened to engulf this craft and all its puking sinners, myself included. But eventually the wind moderated and I splashed my face and struck up acquaintance with the captain, William Collier, who straightened me out with a tin cupful of dark fiery Jamaica rum. Captain Bill imparted a few fundamentals of coastal piloting and entrusted me for a time with the ship’s helm so that I might feel the workings of the deep.
South of Marco Island, the few small settlements lay hidden in the bays behind the barrier islands: the wall of green was as faceless as the sea. Yet the prospect of so much virgin coast awaiting man’s dominion filled me with excitement, even hope. I was still a fugitive, ever farther from my family, but for the first time in my life, I had the capital to establish my own enterprise on my own land, which was here for the claiming. I would find good soil, get a first crop under way while I built a cabin, bring in pigs and chickens, send for Mandy and the children-that was all the plan I needed for a year or two, but all the while, I would look around for opportunity. This Everglades frontier was a huge wilderness to be tamed and harnessed. I had the strength and an ambition made more fierce by so much failure. It was up to me.