Peter Matthiessen - Killing Mister Watson

One evening in 1901, Little Jim Martin, former sheriff of Manatee County, came to my office to report that Mister Watson had went on a rampage, killed some people down at Lost Man's River. I knew Jim Martin for a man that did not care to back up, but all the same he had moved his family out of their new house on Possum Key, took 'em all the way north to Fakahatchee. I told Jim that Lost Man's River being Monroe County, I had no jurisdiction unless the Monroe sheriff gave it to me. Next morning, in came the young man from the telegraph with a request from Sheriff Frank Knight at Key West that I detain a certain E.J. Watson.

Most mornings, I went unarmed in Fort Myers, but that day in late 1901, I had a revolver holster strapped under my coat. Usually I tipped my hat politely, saying "Howdy" to everybody who came by, but today I wore a squint to warn the citizenry that their sheriff was on serious business and would squander no public time shooting the breeze.

In order to locate Mister Watson it made more sense to go directly to his house, but since Miss Carrie's beloved mother was on her deathbed, I decided halfway to Anderson Avenue that I would not trouble that sad family. Instead I headed for Walter's office to see what kind of information he could give me. If Walt Langford took advantage of my questions to warn Mister Watson, that was not the responsibility of the sheriff's office, and anyway, I had no warrant for an arrest.

If I did cross paths with Mister Watson, what would I do? Was I scared or just alert and leery? Both, I guess. I hoped I wasn't headed for Walt's office just to be careful, but if E.J. Watson was hiding in his wife's house, feeling skittish, whoever went down to the telegraph office to send a message to Key West might not be me.

Remembering Carrie's wide eyes at her wedding, and also my envy of my old partner-brooding how a bad drinker like Walt might fail to treat such a young girl with the reverence Frank Tippins could provide her, and how Walt never deserved her in the first place-all this made me shift my wad and spit my old pang of regret into the dust beside the First Street boardwalk, making old Mrs. Summerlin hop sideways, pretending I was aiming at her shoe. Good morning, ma'am! Carrie had been married three whole years and she still skipped rope sometimes down at Miss Flossie's and it interested me a lot more than it should have that there were no children.

To console myself-"to pick the scab," said that damned Cole, who saw right through me-I continued visiting her mother after Carrie's marriage, when Mrs. Watson and the boys moved to Anderson Avenue. Walter and Carrie were still stuck at home with the Widow Langford, but having no children, Carrie escaped much of the day. My visits gave me an opportunity to observe her for exciting little signs of discontent, and perhaps to hear stray news of Mister Watson. At that time, I had seen him only once, a broad-backed figure in well-cut suit and broad black hat, walking down First Street to the dock one early morning.

Mrs. Watson, who knew why I was so attentive, threw cold water, relating how, when the blushing newlyweds returned from their New Orleans honeymoon, Walter's mother had shown them to separate rooms, saying, "I declare, I can't get used to the idea of those two children in one bed!" Mrs. Watson watched me flush, then soothed me with a quick warm smile.

"Why, heck, ma'am, talk about the West!" I said, trying to change the subject. "We had buffaloes here in Florida, as far south and east as Columbia County, right up until the early eighteenth century!" But I recalled even as I spoke who'd told me that Columbia County lore-it was Walt Langford, who had got it straight from Mister Watson. I went red as a berry, while the Watson ladies feigned astonishment. In a duet, they cried out, "Buffaloes? In Florida?"

I tipped my small chair over backwards in my haste to rise, looking off somewhere so as not to see them smiling. Stung by those smiles all the way to the front door, I called back in desperation, "Why heck, ma'am, it was right here in Fort Myers that Chief Billy Bowlegs surrendered up his warriors and took ship for Wewoka, Oklahoma!"

Like all of the town's small emporiums, Langford & Hendry down on First Street was a scrawny old frame building, slapped up loose, unpainted, on a weedy dirt street with wood sidewalks, ramshackle storefronts, and a cow town's blacksmith sheds, livery stables, and saloons.

Outside the side door which led to the upstairs offices I saw Billie Conapatchie, a Mikasuki Creek raised up and educated by the Hendry family. He wore a long calico shirt with bright red and yellow ribbons, and also a red neckerchief and bowler hat instead of the traditional bright turban. Somehow he had stuffed his shirt into hand-me-down white man's britches, which stopped well short of his scarred ankles and his scuffed brown feet.

Squatting on favorite lookout points all over town, this man spied on city life, attending church services, public meetings, and theatricals without exception, whether he understood the words or not. For learning some English at Fort Myers school back in '78, he came real close to being wiped out by his own people, and he was the only Indian seen in town for years thereafter. All the same, he sent his son, young Josie Billie, to the Seminole School established by the missionaries at Immokalee, where my niece Jane Jernigan, lately of Arcadia, had married the Indian trader William Brown. In my cowboy years, visiting the Browns, I came to know the Billie family well.

"Tell Josie we'll go hunting soon's I get myself caught up," I said. He barely nodded. Billie Conapatchie might speak English but he had not lost his Indian indifference to our white men's hollow social ways.

Past Billie's ear, which pushed through his black hair like a wood fungus, I saw a thickset curly man coming straight for me down the muddy street, fixing me in place with a pointed finger. Jim Cole was a city man at heart, and hated silence. Crossing the street from one group to another, he'd shout jokes to get attention to himself, taking over the conversation before he arrived. "Nailing down the Injun vote, that what you're up to? You go on that way, we'll have to give it to 'em!" The sally was certain to be followed by a backslap and loud laugh, he raised that meaty hand of his as easy as a dog raises its leg. But I didn't crack a smile or stop my squinting, and when his hand faltered, I lifted my own hand toward my hat, which I didn't tip. Being offended for the Indian, I only said, "That so, Captain?" His hand retreated to adjust his trousers at the crotch.

"Which one's gonna get it first, Frank, Injuns or women?"

Under Billie Conapatchie's gaze, we white men smiled in mutual distaste, and you had to wonder what was passing through that Indian's head. Billie watched us kind of sideways, not as a spy but as a sentinel, like the lone crow. He hung around the city, learning what he could, so's to warn his people of any dangerous new course that the white man's itch might take.

Jim Cole jeered at Billie's silence. "How'd that go, Chief? Don't talk our ear off, Chief!" He let fly a short laugh like a belch and followed me into the building, heaving himself up the narrow stairs.

I was rapping on Walt Langford's door, ignoring the noisy clumping boots behind, when a shadow appeared behind the glass of the adjoining office. Before his door closed, old James Hendry lifted a finger to his lips to hush my greeting and spare himself an encounter with Jim Cole.

"Climbed a lot of fences," Hendry had observed two years before, in warning me that "Cole will own you" if I made the mistake of accepting his help in my campaign. "Can't say just why they run him out of Taylor County, but that feller arrived here with hot buckshot in his butt, I'll tell you that much."