Killing Mister Watson

the funeral at Youngers' Bend, Mister Watson was accused by Starr of murdering his dearly beloved wife.

'They tied my hands and they rode me over to Fort Smith, Arkansas, and Jim Starr signed a murder warrant in the federal court. Some of my neighbors gave depositions, mentioned the quarrel, said I lived pretty close by the scene of the killing. But I had a good reputation with the merchants, quiet church-going man who paid his bills, and so the local papers took my side.

'Here's the lesson I learned, Henry, and I learned it well, and it's stood me in good stead all my life: No decent American is going to believe that a man who pays his bills is a common criminal, no matter what!' Mister Watson's laugh come right up from his boots, as if the whole world weren't nothing but plain foolishness, and him right with it. I laughed along with him, never knew why, I heard my own laugh clatter in my ears.

Mister Watson fetched out a cigar box, showed me a yeller clipping from the Fort Smith Elevator. Had to read me it, of course; never had no school back then in Chokoloskee. The reporter told all about how Mister Watson had stood up to that pesky Injun and denied the charge, how the defendant Watson 'was the very opposite of a man who would be supposed to commit such a crime.'

Reading this out, Mister Watson stopped grinning and watched my face. 'By God, Henry, you never let me down! That's the one thing in my life that I can count on-Henry Thompson won't die laughing! I'll have to do the laughing for us both!'

Mister Watson sighed, took his first drink. He was feeling good again.

'The commissioner gave Jim Starr two weeks to come up with some witnesses, some sort of evidence, but he never produced a goddamned thing that would stand up in court. The case was dismissed-I never went to trial.'

By that time, the newspapers had taken up Belle Starr, made her famous all over the country. Mister Watson fished out a old book with a lady on the cover packing two pistols: 'Bella Starr,' he read in a disgusted voice, 'The Bandit Queen, or The Female Jesse James. This book of lies was cooked up in New York in 1889, not six months after she died, and they'll be making up lies about her from now on, to go with the whoppers she told about herself. Remember that time you told me, boy, to take Old Man Johnny Gomez with a grain of salt? You'd need a keg of it for Maybelle Shirley!'

Mister Watson left the Indian Territory in early March of 1889, right after the murder hearing in federal court. He wanted to head farther west but needed money, so he joined the land rush in the Oklahoma Territory, April 1889, when most of the Creek and Seminole land was throwed wide open to the whites under the homestead laws. Unlike most of 'em he knew that country. He rode out on a borrowed horse on the dead run, made a fine claim on some good bottom land he'd had his eye on. Said it almost broke his heart to let it go, cause he could have made a good crop there that very season, but his wife said the claim weren't far enough from Tom Starr's country.

Lots of settlers left behind in that first land rush was willing to pay out ready money, and he sold his claim, went back to Arkansas, leased a good farm. Next thing he knew he was jailed as a horse thief-framed by Belle Starr's horse-thief friends, the way he figured it. He escaped from jail, swum across a river with bullets kicking up the water right around his ears. Got two good horses and a grubstake, headed for Oregon. Leased a farm in the Willamette Valley and done pretty good for a year or two until one night someone who had took a disliking to him fired a shotgun through the window, giving him no choice but to fire back. Didn't wait till daybreak to head east again, for Edgefield County, South Carolina, where he come from.

'I'd been gone from home a good number of years, and I reckoned my father would be dead, and all my boyhood trouble died away. But that old man was living still, and he was unwilling to forget, let alone forgive. I headed for Columbia County, Florida, to see my mother and my sister, see if I could fit my life there back together, but they warned me the warrant was still out, so I kept on moving.

'There was nothing to do but start my life all over. Some Columbia County folks had sent back word they were doing fine down around the Everglades, and people were saying that south Florida was the last place left where a man could farm in peace and quiet, and no questions asked.

'Only thing was, I stopped off in Arcadia, and a bad actor named Quinn Bass came after me with a knife in a saloon, so I had to stop him.' Mister Watson shrugged, then cocked his head as if to see how I was taking it. 'Had to pay good money to get out of that one. But some of that Bass clan was dissatisfied by the transaction, and someone will come after me, sooner or later.'

He nodded his head, like revenge was a philosophy he could approve of. 'I'll know him when he comes, and he'll find me ready,' Mister Watson said. He was always ready, come to think of it, cause any stranger might turn out to be the man he waited for.

Mister Watson seemed pretty honest in his story, and I felt honored he had told me, it was just I could not get the details straight. I couldn't make out from the way he told it if he did or did not kill his brother-in-law, if he did or did not kill Belle Starr. He growled low every time I looked like I might pester him with questions, but them blue eyes seemed to dare me all the same. After a while, when I just kept whittling, his hand shot over quick and nabbed my wrist, and his eyes fixed me. He don't say a word but those eyes want something.

I say, kind of conversational, 'I was just pondering if this Quinn Bass feller died.'

'That's what the coroner claimed,' Mister Watson said.

He kind of tossed my wrist away, like he couldn't understand such a stupid question. It was pretty stupid, I guess. I'd seen him shoot many's the time, and when Ed Watson shot something, it stayed shot.

That evening Mister Watson never talked no more. The man just sat there for a long, long while, hands on his legs, like he aimed to jump up quick and leave but couldn't remember where he had to go. And of course there weren't no place to go, not in the Islands. At night there was only cold, cold stars, so high beyond us, and the awful tangle of black limbs, owl hoot and heron squawk, the slap of a mullet faraway down that lonesome river.

Later days, when he was drinking, Mister Watson would brag around Key West how he took care of Belle Starr and her foreman when they come gunning for him in a narrow neck of woods. Hinted as how he'd took care of a few in his wild and woolly days out West, but claimed he'd never killed nobody less they meant him harm.

Bill House had already advised me that Mister Watson weren't the law-abiding citizen I took him for, him being wanted in three states for murder. Give me something to think about all that long evening when I and Mister Watson were setting there alone by lamplight, yeller shadows flickering, with that old black river licking through them empty mangroves, pouring away into the Gulf of Mexico.

That night I went outside, feeling small and lost. It was like I had woke in some night country on the dark side of the earth that all of us have to go to all alone. First thing I seen, the schooner was gone, just drifted away, like Henry Thompson had forgot to tie her up. My heart begun to race too hard, I was so scared I wanted to cry out and run, but there was nowhere but them blackened fields that I could run to. The earth was ringing in a silver light, the stars gone wild. It was like the whole continent of America, with all us white people and Injuns and niggers, me included, lay sprawled like poor Miss Maybelle Shirley, with her end nearing, blacking out the stars. That poor soul had stared at Heaven like I was staring now, the whole universe grieving, and these night rivers bleeding her to death.

What happened was, Rob left where he was hid and run off with the schooner, just slipped her lines and let her drift with the current. Took her as far as Key West by himself, that's how desperate he was to get away. When word come back, Mister Watson went and got her, but pretty quick he left for other parts, leaving word for Tant and me to keep an eye on his plantation.

When Tant heard how Tucker died at Lost Man's Key, he swore he would never work again for Mister Watson. I never knew Tant any way except lighthearted, I never knew he had such upset in him. Over and over I told Tant, 'It ain't proved it was Mister Watson,' but he never listened.

After Tant left, I stayed on awhile, waiting for Mister Watson. When he never come, I padlocked our white house and went back to Caxambas. That was 1901, when Gertrude Hamilton from Lost Man's River was lodging at Roe's Boarding House along with us. That's James Hamiltons, not Richard-them people was another bunch entirely. Gert didn't last long in Caxambas School on account I married her and took her back to Lost Man's River.

I was borned in Key West back in '79 and lived on Chokoloskee in my later life, but I guess you could say them rivers was my home.

Lately I have come across another pioneer memoir that makes special reference to Mr. Watson. The author, Marie Martin St. John, was a child of Jim Martin, former sheriff of Manatee County, who in the fall of 1899 moved his family from Palmetto, Florida (on Tampa Bay), to the old shack used by Jean Chevelier on Gopher