When E. J. Watson came back south on October 21st, he was red-eyed with hard travel, looked half crazy with exhaustion; his eyes were dull and his teeth mossy, and that shiny auburn hair looked dank and dead. While Ted fueled his boat, he stretched out on our long counter with his revolver on his chest, breathing heavy, one eye on the door. Told us Sheriff Tippins had refused to deputize the only man who could come up on John Smith unsuspected so he had no choice but to deputize himself. We advised him to shoot Smith down same as a panther or a wolf, and he said he needed a few buckshot loads to put a stop to that mean varmint. (By this time, of course, we knew from Wilson Alderman that John Smith’s real name was Leslie Cox.)
Back then, most shotgun shells were paper-wrapped so all we had were storm-soaked loads, all swollen. “These ain’t the shells you want when you go man-hunting!” Ted told him. And E. J. said, “If these are the best you’ve got, they will do fine.” Which my brother Bill would take to mean he weren’t too serious about shooting Leslie Cox.
That day Bill was working at House Hammock. When Daddy House and Charley Johnson, a few others, showed up with a plan to arrest him, he had his double-barrel out where the men could see it, said he’d come too far to tolerate interference. He called to Edna, “I’ll be back for your birthday, sweetheart!” as if to warn them not to try to stop him. Picked up the gun, walked down to the shore kind of sideways, pushed off in his boat.
Daddy House, who had some dander, called out, “If you are aiming to come back, you better bring Cox with you.” Ed Watson said, “Is that a warning, Mr. House?” And Daddy said, “Take it any way you want to, Mr. Watson.” E. J. didn’t like that, not one bit. “Dead or alive?” he said, and Daddy said, “I reckon dead will do.” And Watson said, “If I don’t bring him, I will bring his head. That good enough?” Gunned his motor loud to drown out Daddy’s answer.
If that feller had one bit of sense, we’d seen the last of him, those men promised one another, same as they did earlier that week. Maybe we were finished with him but he weren’t finished with us, I thought, not with his family left behind for hostage.
E. J. was hardly out of sight when Edna felt a shift in the air like a cold draft through the door crack. Folks moved out of her way, wouldn’t meet her eye. It got so bad she couldn’t let her kids out of her sight for fear they might be harmed. The silence that followed that poor body all around our ruined island was nothing but pure fear turning to hate-fear of her husband and his murdering outlaws, and more fear yet because her being here with his three children might draw that devil back. All of a sudden they resented this fool girl who had never learned what bloody breed of man fathered her children-that’s what Mama and some other biddies took to muttering. And coldest of all, poor Edna told me after it was over, were those fair-weather Watson friends where she and her kids were lodged.