Shadow Country

way they wanted and no interference from the law, having paid off all the bureaucrats and politicians-he’d go off on a regular tirade.

As time went on, something changed there at the Bend. Mister Watson grew heavy and stayed dirty. The crew took to drinking up Tant’s moonshine, having got the idea they were free to let things go. When he shouted, they would all jump up, rattle things around, go right back to their drinking. Finally he went on a rampage, cleared that whole bunch out. Told ’em they had drunk up all their pay along with all his profits. He picked a day when Tant were gone, not wanting to fire Tant, who drank more than the rest of ’em put together.

That day I come in from Key West, I hardly had the boat tied up when Josie and them others come quacking down the path like a line of ducks, with Mister Watson right behind kicking their bundles. Ought to be kicking their fat bee-hinds, he roared. Hollered at me to haul them whores and riffraff off his river before he blowed their brains out, them’s that had any. Take ’em out into the Gulf and feed ’em to the sharks. His own little thin Pearl looked scared to death.

Nosir, they weren’t sassing him that afternoon! They had played with fire and they knowed it. Only after they was safe downriver did they start in bitchin and moanin about unpaid wages.

CARRIE

SEPTEMBER, 1898

Frank Tippins thinks he loves the girl who married his friend Walter Langford!

Mr. Tippins, who might run for sheriff, is in his early thirties, tall and lanky, black handlebar mustache. His black and bag-kneed Sunday suit, white shirt, string tie and waistcoat, cowboy hat and boots, remind the ladies of Wyatt Earp of the Wild West, a book much admired by our reading circle.

Like his colleague, Mr. Earp, Frank Tippins seems calm, courteous, softspoken, though much more at ease with horses than with me. He confided that his broad Western hat, which provided shelter from the sun and rain in his cow hunter days, had also served as a water vessel for his bathing. (He might still bathe in it, for all I know.)

From Mr. Jim Cole’s point of view, says Walter, Frank Tippins would make a mighty fine sheriff mainly because, as a onetime cow hunter for the Hendrys, he was bound to sympathize with the cattlemen in regard to disorderly conduct by the cowhands and undue enforcement of cattleroaming ordinances. Those men also like Frank Tippins because he is so amiable with Yankee visitors, making a virtue of the flies and cow dung and dirt streets that decent citizens perceive as the greatest of our fair city’s afflictions. (Walter says that honor falls to the disgraceful lack of a river bridge and a road north, far less a railroad, that might permit our isolated town to enter the Twentieth Century.)

After his cow hunter days, Mr. Tippins worked at the newspaper. Being somewhat educated, he no doubt supposes that his education is the way to show a former schoolteacher how serious he is, how deserving of her daughter, never mind that this young flibberty-jibbet is already married. And so he speaks carefully, wishing to display his knowledge of local history (and good grammar) in a modest way.

When he arrived here from Arcadia in the early eighties, the last Florida wolves still howled back in the pinelands and panthers killed stock at the very edge of town. Fort Myers had no newspaper, its school was poor, its churches unattended, and shipping was limited to small coastal schooners. “Even so, Mr. Tippins,” Mama assured him, “your city seems quite splendid to someone from the Ten Thousand Islands, not to mention the Indian Territory or even Columbia County in north Florida where Mr. Watson’s family is located-” She stopped right there. We both sensed this man’s craving to know anything we might reveal about her husband, and knowing he’d been found out, he became uneasy. “Yessir, ladies, this was a cattle town right from the start, the leading cow town in the secondlargest cattle state in our great nation. The only state that has us beat is Texas. Course cowboys are pretty much the same wherever you find ’em. Called us cow hunters around these parts because we had to hunt so many mavericks that would not stick with the others. Some of the older riders called ’em ‘hairy dicks’-”

“Hairy dicks?” inquired the child bride.

“Heretics, I believe Mr. Tippins said.” A rose-petal flush livened Mama’s pallid cheeks. Mr. Tippins glared down at his boots as if he had half a mind to chop his feet off. “Yes, ma’am! Hairy-ticks! Hid back in the hammocks. And some folks called us cracker cowboys because we cracked long hickory-handled whips to run the herd. Besides his whip, each man carried a rifle and pistol to take care of any two-legged or four- legged varmints he might have to deal with. A good cow hunter can whip-snap the head clean off a rattler and cut the fat out of a steak.”

I watched him, eyes wide, biting my lip. He knew we were amused but could not stop talking, like a show-off boy bicycling downhill who gets going too fast and scares himself by risking an accident.

“Between the wolf howl and the panthers screaming and the bull gators chugging in the spring, the nights were pretty noisy in the backcountry, and weekends here in town were even noisier. Saturdays the boys would ride in drunk and make a racket, but we didn’t have houses of ill fame like Arcadia.”

At Mama’s little hymph! I giggled, and Mr. Tippins glared down at his boots again, convinced he had scandalized these genteel Watson ladies. He was probably reminding us of Walter’s youthful scrapes but Mama gave him the benefit of the doubt. “I pray you, please continue, Mr. Tippins.”

“Well, the churches were pretty strong here. Which means good strong women,” he emphasized, to recapture some lost ground. “Maybe that’s why some of our boys had to let off steam. One time they rode their horses right into a restaurant, shot up the crockery. Course the fact that the new owner was a Yankee might had something to do with it. That restaurant closed down right then and there. The owner had to take work as a yard hand. A white man!”

“Wasn’t your friend Walter one of those wild boys, Mr. Tippins?” He took quick cover by inquiring about Mama’s maiden name, only to blush over his own loose talk of maidens.

“Jane Susan Dyal.” Mama offered a sweet smile, spreading her fingers demurely on her shawl. “As a young girl in Deland I was known as Mandy but there is no one now who calls me that.”

“Except for Papa.”

“Except for Mr. Watson.”

When Mr. Tippins suggested that a visit home to see her family might do her good, she shook her head. “I’d already escaped Deland when Mr. Watson found me teaching in the Fort White school.”

“Before his association with Belle Starr?” His innocent expression didn’t fool us. Mama’s long pause was a rebuke.

“Before we emigrated to the Oklahoma Territory, Mr. Tippins.” She looked up from her knitting to consider his expression. “You appear to be very interested in Carrie’s father, Mr. Tippins. He takes care of his family, helps his neighbors, pays his bills. Can all of our upright citizens who gossip and trade rumors say the same?”

This feisty side of Jane S. Dyal of Deland always astonished me. I’d only seen it rise in defense of Papa. Ignoring the man’s stammered answer, she held out a tiny sleeve of pale blue knitting. “I’m starting this for your first boy, sweetheart. Papa’s first grandson.” I recall that little pale blue sleeve because his grandson was never to arrive.

BILL HOUSE

Isaac Yeomans liked to take a risk, see how far he could stretch his luck. One day at Everglade, Mister Watson was tyin up his boat when Isaac sings out, “Any truth to that there readin book about a feller name of Watson and the Outlaw Queen?” And Isaac’s friends grinned kind of nervous, makin it worse.

Mister Watson finished off his hitch before turning around to look us over. “That same book says this Watson feller died breaking out of prison,” he said then. “Nobody asking nosy questions better count on that.”