used to come over from House Hammock on a Sunday to see how young Bill was getting on with the Old Frenchman, who lived up the river, Possum Key. Henry and me got on all right, I never held a thing against him, but when he visited the Hamiltons, them people let that nigger eat right at the table. That ain't James Hamiltons I'm speaking about. This is Richard Hamiltons.
Only one besides me and Mister Watson hunting plume birds in them creeks was Old Chevelier. One afternoon Mister Watson seen the Frenchman's skiff coming out in back of Gopher Key. Sometimes Chevelier had Injuns with him, and this day I seen a log canoe slide back behind the green, soft as a gator. In the Glades Injuns use dugouts made from cypress logs, and they use push poles. Never seen Injuns paddle a canoe in my whole life.
In a dugout, the braves are standing, so they always seen you first, you were lucky to spot a Injun at all. But Injuns was watching you most all the time, that was something you got used to or you didn't. Watched us white men when we come into their country and watched us when we went away, the same way the wild critters did, the deer, the panther, stopping at the edge of cover and looking back over their shoulder. Give you a funny feeling to be watched like that, you begun to think the trees were watching, too. But a man wouldn't hear nothing but the moan of wasps, them creeks used to be full of wasp nests way back then.
If Mister Watson seen that dugout, he never paid it no attention. Chevelier lifts off his straw hat to mop his head, and Mister Watson hikes his gun and shoots that hat out of his hand. That bullet clipped right past his ear, made him skedaddle like a duck into the mangroves.
You won't hear me deny it. I was shocked. There was a silence fell across that water for a mile away. Weren't nothing to be seen in them long mangrove tunnels but green air and brown stilt roots, and that hard sparkle where the sun come through the trees, but I could feel the black eyes in them stone faces right between the leaves.
Mister Watson hollers to them trees, 'Sir, that hat can be replaced at Chatham Bend!' I knew the Frenchman would not see the joke of it. Scared that poor old man to death, I reckon, cause we never heard a whisper from the mangroves.
I told Mister Watson all about Chevelier, how he was a hermit collecting rare birds for museums, used three different-size guns so as not to spoil 'em, and paying his keep by selling plumes; how he had all kinds of books there in his cabin, knew all about Injuns and wild critters, spoke some Injun lingo and had wild Injuns visiting that would never go near to Chokoloskee Bay. Them wild ones traded hides and furs through Richard Hamilton, who claimed to be Choctaw or some such, though nobody never paid that much attention. The Frenchman was always close to that Hamilton bunch, and probably it was Old Man Richard who brought them Injuns to him in the first place.
I could not stop telling all about the Frenchman, because Mister Watson was watching me so hard I just got nervous. That feller would look right past your eyes and not show nothing, or look at you straight for a minute or more without a blink. Then he would blink just once, real slow, like a old turtle, keeping his eyes closed for a moment as if resting 'em up from such an awful sight.
It was that day, while he rested up his eyes, that I first took notice how fiery he looked, that chestnut hair the color of dried blood, and the ruddy skin and sun-burned whiskers. Them whiskers had a little gold to 'em, he looked like he was glowing from inside. Then them blue eyes was watching me again, out of the shadow of that black felt hat he wore winter and summer. Only hat in the Ten Thousand Islands, I imagine, that had a label into it from Fort Smith, Arkansas.
Then he looks up, cuts me off in a hard voice. 'What's that old man up to, back yonder?'
I told him about the clamshell midden that the old Calusas had built back in that hammock, and the clamshell canal that come all the way in there from the open water. The way I figured it, I said, Old Man Chevelier was hunting Calusa treasure back on Gopher Key.
His eyes flicked, but he made no comment, just waited politely for my talking to run out. Then he replied, meaning no offense, that he'd give a lot for some educated company like M'sieu Chevelier-Che-
He was right. I knew that Frenchman, knew he had grit or he wouldn't have made it by himself out in the Islands, where the skeeter whine can get so loud you think some kind of a meteor is coming. Richard Hamilton was going to hear about that bullet, and this story was not over by a long shot. But from that day on, we had the egret rookeries to ourselves.
I worked for Mr. Ed J. Watson for five years in the nineties, and run his boats in later years when he came and went. If he done all the things laid at his door, it seems to me I would have knowed something. S.S. Jenkins worked at Watson's a good while, and if you could take and dig Tant up, he'd say the same. A whole heap of people from Caxambas, Chokoloskee, Fakahatchee, including more'n one of my own kin, worked at Chatham Bend at one time or another, and a heap more had dealings with him here and there. E.J. Watson drove him a hard bargain when that mood was on him, cause he had a good head for business, but the only one would ever claim that Mister Watson done him wrong was Adolphus Santini, who got cut in the neck in that drinking scrape down to Key West. There's men will tell you old Dolphus was drunk, too, and had it coming, but I don't want to say that, cause I wasn't there.
