Court at Fort Smith, Arkansas, in late February and early March of 1889, to determine if evidence of his guilt was sufficient to bring one “Edgar A. Watson” before a grand jury on a murder charge. From this transcript, together with reports from the local newspapers and some speculative testimony winnowed from the literature on the life and death of Maybelle Shirley Reed, one may assume that the “E. A. Watson” accused in Oklahoma was none other than the “E. J. Watson” gunned down in Florida two decades later. Whether or not he was guilty of Belle Starr’s death may never be known, but it should be noted that many if not most of her acquaintances disliked the victim and that almost as many were suspected of her death by her various authors.
What can we conclude about his years on the frontier apart from the widespread allegation that Watson was “the Man Who Killed Belle Starr”? At least three of Mrs. Starr’s biographers declare that after his departure from Oklahoma, Watson was convicted of horse theft in Arkansas and sentenced to fifteen years in the penitentiary and that he was killed while resisting capture after an escape. (Here as elsewhere they follow the lead of Hell on the Border, published within six years of Belle Starr’s death and considerably more accurate than many of the subsequent accounts, despite its premature report of Watson’s end.)
Watson’s destination after his escape from the Arkansas penitientary remains unknown, though he later related that he headed west to Oregon, where he was set upon by enemies in a night raid on his cabin. Obliged to take a life, possibly two, he fled back east. Another account states that on his way to Oklahoma, Ed Watson passed through Georgia, where he killed three men in a fracas. Like the many false rumors from South Carolina and Florida, these seem to be “tall tales” unsupported by separate testimony or even anecdotes within the family.
Ed Watson reappears in Florida in the early nineties, in a shooting at Arcadia in DeSoto County in which, by his own account, he slew a “bad actor” named Quinn Bass. In the rough frontier justice of that region, our subject was permitted to pay his way out of his difficulties, according to one of Belle Starr’s hagiographers, who asserts that “a mob stormed the jail, determined to have Watson, but the sheriff beat them off.” In a different account, outlaws Watson and Bass disputed the spoils of a marauding expedition whereupon Bass was shot dead through the neck.
Though E. J. Watson (as a fugitive, he appears to have changed his middle initial) is rarely identified as an outlaw, it should be noted that in the nineties, range wars, cattle rustling, and general mayhem were rife in De Soto County, and gunmen and bushwhackers from the West found steady work. It is also true that Watson turned up at Chokoloskee Bay not long thereafter with enough cash to buy a schooner, despite his reported recompense to the Bass family for the loss of Quinn. Considering that he was penniless when sent to the penitentiary and without known income or employment after his escape, one can only speculate where that cash might have come from.
In his first years in southwest Florida, Mr. Watson assaulted Adolphus Santini of Chokoloskee in an altercation in a Key West auction house; this knife attack, which did not prove fatal, was also taken care of with a money settlement considered very substantial for that period. Again, our subject’s source of funds after long years as a fugitive remains mysterious. One cannot dismiss the possibility that from the time of his prison escape in Arkansas until he took refuge in the Ten Thousand Islands, E. J. Watson made his living as an outlaw.
In the next days, inviting his guest along on research visits to Fort White, Fort Myers, perhaps Chatham Bend, Lucius was taken aback by the vehemence of Arbie’s refusal. “To hell with that damned place!” he yelled in regard to Chatham Bend. “Burn it to the ground, burn that damned stain out!” When Lucius stared at him, he yelled some more. “Don’t look at me! Rob told me about that bloodstain on the floor- black blood, he told me! Said the only way to get it out was burn it out!”
Arbie had tried to dissuade Lucius from making these research expeditions, but in the end, he decided to go along. Was this curiosity about his Collins kinsmen in Fort White or real interest in his new role as researcher? Unwillingness to be left behind on a remote salt creek or-conceivably-the fun of his host’s company? For even their bickering and hard teasing was good fun. Lucius concluded it was all of these. “Free food,” grumped Arbie.
Driving north to Lake City, where Columbia County records might be found, Arbie picked through Lucius’s research notes, fuming crossly over phrases. Flicking the pages with nicotined fingers, he rolled his eyes and whistled in derision-to no avail, since Lucius ignored his provocations, scanning the citrus orchards and broad cattle country that replaced the subtropical growth of the lower peninsula at the Peace River.
“ ‘E. J. Watson was known from Tampa to Key West as the most ambitious and innovative farmer who ever lived in the Ten Thousand Islands’-that’s what he’s known for?” Arbie slapped the notes down on his knees. His eyes glittered and his tongue flew, hell-bent on outrage. His long black hair and rakish sideburns with their dangerous swerve toward the corners of his mouth gave this taut, irascible man the wild aspect of a peregrine, Lucius noticed. At the same time, he was aware of something brittle, something fractured; he was careful not to feed the instability that flickered like heat lightning in Collins’s eyes.
Perversely then-unwillingly amused by his own indignation-Arbie let a boyish smile suffuse his face, but when Lucius smiled with him, he scowled at once, as if his privacy had been invaded. “L. Watson Collins, P-H-D!” he jeered, fending off any sign of his host’s affection. Behind his abrasiveness, Lucius guessed, was self-dislike, or even detestation of a man who, by his own description, was nothing but “a damn-fool drunk and lifelong drifter.” From the deep pallor, wary eyes, and side-of-the-mouth speech, Lucius was coming to suspect that a good part of Arbie’s life had been spent in prison, which might explain why he had holed up for so long at Gator Hook.
“If this new Everglades park comes through,” Lucius mused, “our attorney Watt Dyer-”
“Watson Dyer? What’s that guy want with you?”
“You know him?”
“Speck caretakes for him at Chatham Bend. Speck can tell you all about that skunk. Big real estate lawyer, made a killing on the land boom. Represents the bunch that’s trying to stop that park.”
“Can’t be. Not if he’s trying to help the Watson claim.”
“Probably working both sides of the street like all the rest of ’em.”
“Don’t you trust anybody? Dyer thinks we might even petition for maintenance of the Watson place as a historic monument.”
Arbie stiffened like a dog on point, and his burnsides fairly bristled. “Historic monument? How about a murder monument? First monument to bloody murder in the whole U.S. and A.! Massacre museum! Gobbet bar! Nice ketchup specialties! Red rubber skeletons!” Unable to maintain the huff and pomp of indignation, Arbie hooted, but within moments he was scowling again. “You really hope to make that house a monument to Pioneer Ed? That’s already a monument to dark and bloody deeds? Dammit, I’m not joking!” He was pointing his finger into Lucius’s face. “Have you ever seen somebody murdered? And heard it, oh my God, and smelled it? It’s terrible and scary. I know what I’m talking about. You don’t. That’s why you can write about a killer as some kind of hero.”
That German soldier with his pants down. Yes, I have seen somebody murdered. Yes. I murdered him.
Arbie had tossed the notes onto the dashboard. Lucius swerved the old car onto the shoulder as a loose page wafted out the window. He jumped out and chased his paper down as Arbie poked his head out. “You’re twisting the evidence to make it look like your father never hurt a fly! I know how much you loved him, Lucius, and I’m sorry, but there’s no way you can write your way around a murderer!”
Out of breath, Lucius got back behind the wheel. “Don’t toss my work around like that, all right?”
That Arbie had witnessed violent death was plain, yet Lucius did not feel he could question him about his past, not yet. Already this tightly wound man had turned away from him, taking refuge in a few loose notes on Lucius’s discussions with the attorney. “By the time you boys get done with Planter Ed,” he said, “folks’ll roll their eyes to the high heavens thanking their Merciful Redeemer for that kindly farmer whose magical seed cane put our
