gather the gator hides they’d left to dry at their waycamp by the north bend of the Loxahatchee River and then make for home and tell their father the news about the Indian.
The eastern sky was showing a pale band of pink light as they drew close to their camp. When they werent slogging through mud they had to step carefully over vinecovered ground. Up ahead the trees abruptly fell away. They paused at the edge of the woods to listen hard and survey the open ground to the east where it came up against a dense palmetto thicket and the pinewoods beyond. Their waycamp lay in a natural clearing a hundred yards into those pines. In addition to the gator hides, they had a wagon in there and a tethered mule. On the far side of the camp was a corduroy track of pine timbers they’d laid over the mucky ground for a distance of a quarter-mile to where the ground was higher and the track became a solid limestone trail. From there the going in the wagon was easier the rest of the way to their father’s whiskey camp at the edge of the deeper swamp and but a few miles from Twin Oaks.
But now they heard the chugging of a motorcar and made out dim headlamps coming along the open ground. The lights progressed on a narrow raised-rock road a timber company had once used to take out pine logs. After clearing the trees for twenty yards on both sides of the road the company went broke and abandoned the site and the Ashleys had since used the road for their own purposes. It originated at the Dixie Highway about a mile to the east and terminated at the palmetto thicket.
“Who you reckon?” Bob asked, looking off at the coming lights.
“Nobody we call friend, I’ll wager,” John Ashley said.
They made for a better vantage point closer to the road as the motorcar came on. They were hiding in the high shrubs near the end of the road when a Model T sedan came clattering into view in the dawn gloam and halted. The motor shut off and the headlamps extinguished and two uniformed county deputies got out of the car and stood staring at the seemingly impenetrable palmetto thicket before them. One of the men said something the brothers couldn’t hear clearly and the other said, “Maybe so but Daddy said check it and thats what we going to do.”
“Bobby Baker,” Bob whispered. “And Sammy Barfield with him. How you reckon they know about this camp?”
“No tellin who’s seen us comin and goin on that road,” John Ashley said. “It’s too open. I told Daddy we ought of quit this camp.”
The deputies now found the narrow path the Ashleys had cut through the palmettos and they trudged into the thicket in the direction of the camp. The Ashleys set out after them, following at a short distance and moving easily as shadows. Halfway to the camp the path abruptly opened into a small clearing where the Ashleys had felled most of the pines they’d used to make the corduroy track—and now John Ashley raised his fist in signal to Bob and they quickly closed in on the lawmen.
The deputies heard them too late. They turned and saw the brothers emerging from the brush not fifteen feet behind them, saw Bob Ashley holding the carbine at his hip like a long-barreled pistol and John Ashley pointing the .44 Colt as he came.
“Oh shit,” the one called Sammy Barfield said, and he quick put up his hands.
The other kept his hands at his sides as Bob Ashley hastened to Sammy and snatched his service revolver from its holster and lowered the carbine and pointed the pistol squarely at Sammy’s chest. Sammy’s arms were up as high as they could go and he said, “Oh shit, Bob, dont shoot me.”
“You’re under arrest, Johnny,” the other deputy said.
John Ashley was smiling widely as he came up to this deputy and said “Hello to you too, Bobby. How’s daddy’s little deputy?” Bob Baker’s father George was the high sheriff of Palm Beach County and had been since the county’s inception three years earlier.
John Ashley relieved him of his revolver and gave the piece cursory examination and stuck it in his waistband. Then said: “Under arrest, you say?” He laughed. “Hell, Bobby, do I
“For murder, John.”
“That right? Who’m I sposed to killed?”
“DeSoto Tiger.”
“
“Quit the bullshit. We know you shot that Indian. We got a witness.’
John Ashley grinned hugely. “Well if I did, I guess it wouldn’t mean nothin to shoot the both you too. I mean, they can only hang me once, aint that right?”
“Even you aint that damn dumb,” Bobby Baker said.
John Ashley laughed. He spun the .44 on his finger like a storybook cowboy and then affected to aim very carefully between the deputy’s eyes from a distance of four feet.
“You dont scare me a goddamn bit and you never have. You shoot me, every police officer for three counties around will come huntin you.”
John Ashley moved the gunsights down to Bobby Baker’s heart and stroked his chin in affected contemplation for a moment, then shook his head and raised the sights to Bobby’s forehead once again. “Bang!” he said and lowered the pistol and grinned. “You that important now, hey Bobby? All them police would be lookin to even the score for you?”
“I aint no Indian, Johnny?”
Bob Ashley said “You sure aint, bubba. You got to be near deaf not to heard us comin up behind you.”
“You’re under arrest too,” Bobby Baker said to him. “As an accomplice.”
Bob Ashley hooted and shook his head. “I guess we
“Oh lord, boys,” the deputy called Sammy said, “dont shoot us, boys.”
“Shut up, Sammy,” Bobby Baker said. “They aint about to shoot anybody.”
“Maybe yes and maybe no,” John Ashley said. He gestured at Bob Baker’s leg and said, “Take that thing off and hand it here.”
Two years earlier Bob Baker had tracked down a Negro fugitive wanted for the murder of his wife and brother and in the ensuing confrontation he had shot the Negro dead at the same moment that the man blew off most of his lower leg with a twelve-gauge buckshot load. The doctors amputated just below the knee and he had since worn a wooden prosthetic. He had become so proficient with it that his walk showed only a hint of awkwardness. None who knew him considered him handicapped. It was a point of pride with him never to mention the leg and his friends knew better than to refer to it in his presence.
“Well dont just stand there gawkin,” John Ashley said. “Take it off and hand it over.” Bob Ashley guffawed.
Bob Baker stood fast and glared at him. John Ashley cocked the .44 and aimed it at Bob Baker’s good foot. “You tirin my patience, peckerwood,” he said. “You dont take that thing off right now, I’m gonna shoot you in the other foot is what I’m gonna do.” The early dawnlight had not yet dispersed the ground darkness and everyone’s feet were but vague entities.
“You aint gonna shoot any part of me, John, and you damn well know it.”
John Ashley fired. The round tore a chunk off the heel of Bob Baker’s boot and the deputy yipped and flinched sidewise and the loud crack of the gunshot was swallowed almost instantly by the breadth of the surrounding country.
“Goddamn me if I aint a piss-poor shot,” John Ashley said. Bob Ashley laughed so hard he had a coughing fit.
John Ashley cocked the piece and this time held it with both hands and aimed at Bob Baker’s foot again and the deputy said, “
John Ashley was enjoying himself immensely. He hefted the prosthetic leg with its boot still attached and said, “Do much dancin with this thing, Bobby? I guess you lost your taste for dancin since before you got crippled, huh? You know, I dont recall seein you at one single dance after that one you took what’s-her-name to. Judy? Junie?
Bob Ashley whooped and had another spasm of coughing laughter. Bob Baker sat in place and said nothing
