Killing Mister Watson

passing through that Indian's head. Billie watched us kind of sideways, not as a spy but as a sentinel, like the lone crow. He hung around the city, learning what he could, so's to warn his people of any dangerous new course that the white man's itch might take.

Jim Cole jeered at Billie's silence. 'How'd that go, Chief? Don't talk our ear off, Chief!' He let fly a short laugh like a belch and followed me into the building, heaving himself up the narrow stairs.

I was rapping on Walt Langford's door, ignoring the noisy clumping boots behind, when a shadow appeared behind the glass of the adjoining office. Before his door closed, old James Hendry lifted a finger to his lips to hush my greeting and spare himself an encounter with Jim Cole.

'Climbed a lot of fences,' Hendry had observed two years before, in warning me that 'Cole will own you' if I made the mistake of accepting his help in my campaign. 'Can't say just why they run him out of Taylor County, but that feller arrived here with hot buckshot in his butt, I'll tell you that much.'

Like other cattlemen, Jim Cole invested his war profits in a big new house on First Street, but unlike the Summerlins and Hendrys, and the Langfords, too, this man had no sense of land, no feel for cattle. As Jake Summerlin used to say, Cole sat a horse with as much style as a sack of horse shit. Despite his big coarse cowboy talk, Cole had rarely ridden that wild lonesome country between the Calusa River and Big Cypress, and had more calluses on his broad ass than anywhere else.

Arriving at Langford's door, he boomed, 'Look who's settling right into his dad's seat, and his dad not cold yet!' and shouted that raucous laugh of his to the whole building. Never thought once about Walt's feelings, or whether he himself might be unwelcome.

But Langford grinned at his old family friend, showing him in. 'My office once,' Jim Cole declared, throwing himself back in the big chair and slapping his hands down on its leather arms, his rough boots smearing street mud on the floor. He sprawled back, gut out, getting his breath in a redolence of hard sweat and cigars.

'How's the child-wife, you damn cradle-robber? How come we ain't seen no kiddies yet?'

I ignored his wink, feeling ashamed for wondering the same thing, and also sorry that Walt felt obliged to snicker.

Walt was still ruddy from his years out in the pinelands, and ruddier still because his morning had apparently been blurred somewhat by drinking spirits. Plainly James Hendry gave him too little to do.

'Got some business with you, Walt,' I said. But when Jim Cole said, 'Spit it out, then,' I stayed silent.

Langford said gently, 'No use trying to keep nothing from Captain Jim. A man can't cut a fart here in Fort Myers without your say so, ain't that right, Jim?'

'Isn't,' Cole said, mopping his neck. 'Ain't Carrie told you about 'ain't'? You ain't out hunting cows no more, young feller, you're a damn cattle king, same as your daddy. If I'm putting you up for county commissioner, you got to talk right, same as the rest of us cracker sonsabitches.'

Like him or not, I had to admit there was something shrewd and humorous about Jim Cole, something dead honest in his lack of scruple. All the same, I found it hard to smile.

They were awaiting me. Through the window I could hear faint barking, and the rattle-clop of horse and wagon.

'Heard yesterday your father-in-law might be in town.' Langford moved behind his desk. 'That so?' he said, and glanced at Cole, who had rolled his eyes toward the ceiling. Then he took a seat and waved me to a chair.

I took my hat off but remained standing, gazing out the high and narrow window at the store-front gallery across the street. There on election day a Tippins crowd had been scattered by gunfire and the whine of bullets from the general direction of the saloon owned by the incumbent's cousin, Taff O. Langford. I stayed where I was until a few regathered, then spoke the lines that won me the election: They have the Winchesters, gentlemen. You have the votes. 'Ol' T.W.' was turned out of office the next day.

'Shit!' Cole said, and banged his chair legs to the floor. 'Goddammit, Frank, don't stand there looming just cause you're so tall!' His smile looked pinned onto his jowls. 'You got a grudge against this Langford family, Sheriff?' The eyes looked hard in his soft face, just the opposite of Langford. Cole had a long curlicue mouth-kind of a whore's mouth, I decided-and his nostrils, cocked a little high, looked like pink and hairy holes, snuffling and yearning for ripe odors. 'You ain't hardly run off with ol' T.W.'s job and now you're dogging this man's father-in-law, who ain't even in your jurisdiction! And here Walt's daddy ain't been dead a year, and li'l Carrie's mother dying right before our eyes! That's what Walt here has to think about every morning, noon, and night, and you ain't got no more decency than that? Sweet Jesus, boy-!'

'Easy, now.' Walter was holding both hands high. 'Frank and I been friends for a long time. It's okay-'

'No, it ain't okay!' shouted Captain Jim, cutting him off with a show of anger as if afraid Walter might concede something, or reveal it.

What Cole was angry about, or angriest about, was the Lee County sheriff's refusal, three months earlier, to back up his alibi when a federal revenue cutter seized the Lily White at Punta Rassa. On her regular run, the Lily White had delivered cattle to the Key West slaughterhouse, and rather than make the return run with her holds empty, she had met a Cuban ship in the Marquesas to take on a cargo of contraband rum on which no duty had been paid. The schooner was held at Key West for five weeks until Jim Cole, still claiming innocence, still gathering testimonials to his civic virtue, had paid the federal government a heavy fine, not because he lost his court appeal-it hadn't been heard at the time that he withdrew it-but because the loss of income from the confiscated ship was far more painful to this feller than any loss of honest reputation. He'd even shouted at the U.S. attorney, 'Don't you people realize there's a war going on?' His lawyer had to remind him that the war was over.

To keep his job, the skipper of the Lily White had supported Cole's version of events, but no one who knew Cole could believe that his ship had taken on illegal cargo without the knowledge of her owner. You had to wonder at the greed that drove rich businessmen to twist the law of the land they claimed to be so proud of, steal from the government by overcharging for their 'patriotic' services, and do their best to cheat it of its taxes-not to make a living, either, but to heap up money.

'No, it ain't okay!' Jim Cole was yelling, so loud that people stopped out there on First Street.

I turn back to Langford. 'There's been trouble, Walt…'

'I know it,' Langford says.

'You know it. He's in town, then?'

'No, he ain't.'

Langford glances at Jim Cole, who is still glaring at me. 'No, he isn't,' Langford corrects himself, looking quickly away because he sees we won't smile with him. 'He already passed through on his way north. Wanted to visit with Carrie's mother one last time, and he told Mrs. Watson there'd been trouble. She told Carrie.' Walt Langford raises his hands high as if I'd said, This is a stick-up. 'I never saw him. I don't know what he told her, and I don't know where he's headed, so don't ask me.'

'Why, dammit, Walt, he's got no right to ask you!' Cole explodes. 'Ain't got no goddam jurisdiction! That's Monroe County down there, Tippins! In Lee County, the man is clean, and aims to keep it that way!'

Because he kills across the county line, he's clean? But mainly I ignore Jim Cole, holding Langford's eye. 'Monroe sheriff sent a telegraph, wants him for questioning. If he's still in town, I'd have to notify Key West.'

Cole snorts with a contemptuous wave of his thick paw, but Langford's nod thanks me for the warning.

'Who was it?' Langford says.

'Young man named Tucker and his wife, some say a boy. Monroe sheriff can't get the whole story. They were squatting on Watson's claim, wouldn't get off.'

'Niggers, you said?' Jim Cole sits up. 'Wouldn't get off?'

This time it is Langford who ignores him. 'And Carrie's father is the usual suspect, right?'

'No known witnesses, no evidence, no proof. And not much doubt.' I tug my hat on.

Langford accompanies me onto the landing. 'No law, you mean.'

'Maybe he thought the Island men might make up their own law. That's why he left, I guess.' I start downstairs.

'Don't pester Carrie with it, all right, Frank? He ain't in town no more. You have my word.'