the way so Miller could pass him by and turn his car around, and then Merritt led the way back across the bridge. Miller and Davis kept looking at each other and grinning. “The Ashley Gang!” Davis said. “
The bandits’ car yet stood in the road and Merritt called for one of the deputies to move it out of the way. He parked his car on the grassy shoulder opposite the side of the road where the bandits were bunched with their hands cuffed behind them. A line of four deputies held them at gunpoint in full glare of the flashlights. As the Ford was backed off the road, Merritt waved Miller on by and Davis said, “Go, man!” and Miller gunned the Dodge and they went.
They sped back toward Sebastian in high excitement, both of them jabbering at once and eager to tell everyone about their witness to the capture of the Ashley Gang. So enrapt were they with their adventure that neither paid the least notice to the green runabout that hurtled past them in the opposite direction.
The instant the flashlights hit them from both sides of the car they knew they had no chance to make a fight of it. They were in a car and in bright light and could not see the men who had them under the gun. Ever the BAR on the floor was of no help under such conditions. Clarence cursed and Ray Lynn sighed and John Ashley’s first thought was that it was going to be godawful hard to break out of prison this time without Daddy’s help. But he had Laura out there. He’d find a way.
As he got out of the car and put up his hands and squinted his eye against the glaring lights he decided the first thing he would ask of her was to find Ben Tracey and kill him. The bastard ratted. That was how this trap got set.
And now they stood cuffed and under gunpoint in the blaze of the flashlights and the Dodge was heading off back toward Sebastian and the leader of this bunch came across the road and said, “Mister Ashley, I’m pleased to meet you. My name’s Merritt.”
John Ashley knew him by reputation. “Pleasure’s mine, Sheriff,” John Ashley said. “This was a nice piece of work.”
Beside him Hanford Mobley snorted and spat.
Merritt grinned. “Thank you, I believe it was. Now what I’d like for you to do is to step on over to my car and—” They heard the high raspy flutter of a Model T motor working hard and both of them looked up the road and saw a pair of headlamps closing in.
The runabout slowed and its brakes screeched and the car halted and then lurched against the sudden application of its hand break. Bob Baker stepped down from the car without cutting off the motor. He held a Winchester carbine in one hand.
J. R. Merritt said, “Well
Bob Baker stepped past him without a glance, his eyes on John Ashley. He looked like a man in a bad waking dream. He stood before John Ashley and held a hand up in front of him and said, “Remember this?”
John Ashley saw that he was holding a rifle cartridge. He grinned. “Got my message, hey? But damn, Bobby, I sent that thing—when?—a year ago? I like to died of old age waitin for you to come out to the Glades for the other one.”
Without taking his eyes off him Bob Baker slipped the round into the Winchester and levered it home and held the carbine pointed at him from the hip.
The deputies backed away from John Ashley and glanced at J. R. Merritt, who looked on and said nothing. In the sideglow of headlamps and flashlights Bob Baker’s face looked as hard and bloodless as barked pine. His eyes seemed fixed on something more than John Ashley, something no man else could see but which John Ashley believed he could smell. A faint odor of rage undercut by fear. It was the smell of one more victory over this man who could never beat him.
He grinned. “You gonna shoot me, Bobby? In front of all these witnesses and with my hands locked behind my back? I dont reckon. But tell you what: you just wait for me. I’ll break out soon enough and come see you. You know I will. Maybe by then you’ll find you a pair of balls. Your wife told me she’ll be glad of it when you do.” He laughed in Bob Baker’s face.
And got the surprise of his life when Bob Baker shot him in the heart.
As John Ashley went sprawling back Hanford Mobley screamed and kicked at Baker and Deputy Wiggins shot him in the throat and blood jumped off Hanford’s neck as Clarence and Ray Lynn stood agape and then the darkness detonated into speaking blasts of gunfire and every prisoner went down in the fusillade and the shooters stepped up to the fallen men and shot them repeatedly and then ceased.
They stood for a time in deep silence and the rising haze of gunsmoke. Then Bob Baker went to John Ashley and squatted beside him and none saw what he did but every man of them knew. Then he stood and his hand went to his pocket and he looked around at them all and they looked back at him mutely.
He went to his car and got in and turned it around and drove away into the darkness.
And behind him seven policemen drew together and even though no living soul could overhear they conversed in whispers.
TWENTY-EIGHT
The Liars Club
THE FIRST ANYBODY HEARD ABOUT WHAT HAPPENED WAS WHEN A coupla Sebastian boys named Miller and Davis come tearing into town in their car late one Saturday night hollering that the cops had captured the Ashley Gang out at Sebastian Bridge. Folk was standing out in the street jabbering about the news when here come the High Sheriff J.R. Merritt to tell them his deputies had killed John Ashley and three of the gang when they tried to resist arrest. Some people cussed at the news and some cheered and said it was about time somebody killed that whole bunch of lowdown outlaws. Sheriff Merritt picked out six men to serve as a coroner’s jury and the got in cars and all went out to the bridge. The way we heard the story, when the jury got there the dead men were all neatly laid out next to the road. The jury had their official look at them and then the bodies were stacked in a car and driven to the Fee Hardware and Mortuary in Fort Pierce. It was the middle of the night when they got there but the news had traveled ahead by telephone and they say it was a good-sized crowd waiting on them. The cops laid the bodies on the sidewalk so everybody could have a good look. the undertaker, W.I. Fee, showed up early that Sunday morning and had the bodies taken inside and by that afternoon he’d embalmed all four.
The news just flew up the coast. That afternoon Jack Middleton came into Fort Pierce on the train from Jacksonville and claimed the body of his brother Clarence. Ma and Bill Ashley came with the elder Mobleys to take home the bodies of John And Hanford. When they were told Ray Lynn had no known kin and would go in a pauper’s grave Ma Ashley said no he would not, he could be buried in the graveyard at Twin Oaks. Some who were there and saw her said she looked to be a hundred years old.
The bodies were in the ground by the time of the inquest three days later. The day before the inquest J.R. Merritt was elected to remain sheriff of St. Lucie County for another two years—despite the rumor going around that the Miller and Davis boys had seen John Ashley and his men under arrest and handcuffed at the Sebastian Bridge and it might be the police had executed them in cold blood. The lawmen who’d been at the scene refused to talk to reporters about the rumor and they hired lawyers to represent them at the inquest. They say when Ma Ashley heard the rumor she cussed the cops for murderers with badges and hired a lawyer named Alto L. Adams to attend the inquest and make sure some important questions got asked.
The presiding judge was Angus Sumner and the first witness was undertaker W.I. Fee. One of the first questions Adams asked him was if he had seen any marks on the dead men’s wrists, especially marks that might of been made by handcuffs. Fee said he hadnt seen any such a thing. They say the undertaker was sweating bullets and kept licking his lips and looking over at the seven cops who never took their eyes off him the whole time he was testifying. They say the judge dint seem too pleased with Adam’s line of questioning but the jury looked mighty interested.
Then the Miller and Davis boys took their turns on the stand and both of them testified under oath that they’d
