Peter Matthiessen - Shadow Country

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.

I was born in Arcadia in De Soto County and went back there on a cattle drive at the time of the range wars in the early nineties, heard all about how a stranger named Watson wiped out a local gunslinger named Quinn Bass. This Quinn was a killer and a fugitive from justice but when the stranger came by the jail to pick up the reward, a mob of rowdies and Bass kinsmen tried to storm the jailhouse, set to lynch him. Rather than see his new jail torched, the sheriff concluded no injustice would be done by unlocking the cell and encouraging the prisoner to get out of town while the getting was good. The prisoner took one look through the window, then went into a cell and lay down on his bunk. “The getting don’t look so good to me,” he said. “I’ll sleep better behind bars.” Toward daybreak, with the crowd distracted, the sheriff rode him to the edge of town.

“Yessir. E. Jack Watson. Got it wrote right in my ledger. That darn Jack Watson was the friendliest sonofagun I ever met,” the sheriff told me.

At that time, I was working for the Hendrys as a cow hunter, rounding up the long-horned cattle scattered out through the Big Cypress. I did the hunting for the cow camp. I was content with my simple sun-warmed tools of wood and iron, the creak of saddle leather and the stomp and bawl of cattle, the wind whisper in the pines pierced by the woodpecker’s wild cry or the dry sizzle of a diamondback, and always the soft blowing of my woods pony, a stumpy roan. Had me a fine cow dog for turning cattle, became a fair hand with the lariat and cracker whip, and packed a rifle in a scabbard for big rattlers and rustlers, too. The Indians, forever watching, would gather when we moved our cow pens and a family would move in and plant new gardens on that manured ground, sweet potatoes the first year, then corn and peanuts.

The lonely day was Saturday when most of the riders yipped and slapped off through the trees to spend their pay in the Fort Myers saloons. Old Doc Langford’s boy was also a cow hunter for Hendrys, a hard rider and a hard drinker, too. Walt Langford wanted to be liked as a regular feller, not some rich cattleman’s spoiled son, so he led in all the galloping and gunfire that kept nice people shuttered up at home when the riders came to town. Fort Myers was never as uproarious as Arcadia, no cattle wars or hired guns, but that Saturday pandemonium reminded the upset citizens that our new Lee County capital was still a cow town, cut off from the nation’s progress by the broad slow Calusa River and falling farther behind, our businessmen complained, with every passing year.

Walt Langford was the one who told me that E. J. Watson, a new planter in the Islands, was supposed to be the Jack Watson who killed Quinn Bass; the lovely young girl boarding at Walt’s father’s house was Watson’s daughter. The first time I saw her, Carrie Watson was skipping rope and laughing with other girls down at Miss Flossie’s store. I knew right then that when the time came, I would ask her desperado daddy for her hand, but as life turned out, Walt Langford beat me to it.

Cattlemen had run Fort Myers before it was a town at all, starting way back with Jake Summerlin at Punta Rassa. Old Jake was ruthless, people said, but at least he had cow dung on his boots. This newer breed, Jim Cole especially, worked mostly with paper, brokering stock they had never seen, let alone smelled. (With Doc Langford and the Hendrys, who bought out the Summerlins at Punta Rassa, Cole would make a fortune provisioning the Rough Riders. One July day of 1899, according to the Press, these patriotic profiteers shipped three thousand head from Punta Rassa to their Key West slaughterhouse for butchering and delivery to Cuba.)

When I opened my livery stable that same year, I had an idea I might run for sheriff in the next elections. Some way Jim Cole got wind of this, and one day he came and offered help, having already figured what I hadn’t understood, that I was pretty sure to win with or without him. Folks resented the cattle kings and their pet sheriff, T. O. Langford, who ignored our town ordinance against cattle in the streets.

One Saturday Walt Langford and some other drunken riders caught a nigra in Doc Winkler’s yard and told him he would have to dance or have his toes shot off. This old man must have been close to eighty, white-haired, crippled up, bent over. He cried out, “No, suh, Boss, ah jes’ cain’t dance, ah is too old!” And they said, “Well, old man, you better dance,” then started shooting at the earth around his shoes.

Doc Winkler came running with a rifle. “Now you boys clear out of here,” he hollered, “let that old man be!” He ordered the nigra to go behind the house but the cowhands shot into the ground right at his heels. Doc Winkler fired over their heads just as a horse reared and Doc’s bullet drilled a cowboy through the head.

At Cole’s request, Sheriff T. O. Langford called the episode an accident. Walt Langford and his friends were not arrested and there was no inquest; Doc Winkler was left alone with his remorse. But the flying bullets and the senseless death brought new resentment of the cattlemen as well as a new temperance campaign to make Lee County dry. Because Cole was making another fortune on the Cuban rum he smuggled in as a return cargo on his cattle schooner, he led the fight against liquor prohibition, knowing the “drys” had only won thanks to that shooting death in Doc Winkler’s yard.

The Langfords took Jim Cole’s advice to marry off young Walter, get him simmered down. Of the town’s eligible young women, the only one Walt really liked was a pretty Miss Hendry whose parents forbade her to associate with “that young hellion.” This caused the stiff feelings in both families that led to the bust-up of the Langford & Hendry store which was the biggest business in our town.

Because she lived under his own roof, Walt couldn’t help but notice Watson’s daughter. Her mother was a lady by Fort Myers standards, but the husband of the refined and delicate Mrs. Jane Watson was the man identified in a book passed around town as the slayer of the outlaw queen, Belle Starr. The lucky few who had met Mr. Watson had been thrilled to find that this “dangerous” man was handsome and presentable, a devout churchgoer when in Fort Myers, and a prospering planter whose credit was excellent among the merchants. In regard to Carrie, it was said he had met privately with Cole in the hotel salon at Hendry House, though what those two discussed was only rumor.