work, and escaped the noose due to his youth and winning ways, but others said they caught him looting after that October storm of 1909. Whatever he done or didn't do, he got sent out on the chain gang and escaped. First place he thought to go hide out at was the Watson Place, because it was known around Key West that Mister Watson weren't particular about his help so long as a man weren't afraid of work.
Dutchy Melvin never went nowhere without his guns, wore 'em right out where everyone could see 'em, to avoid confusion. Dutchy said, I'll go to hell before I go back on that chain gang, and I ain't going neither place without I take a few of my feller men right along with me. Meant what he said, I do believe, cause the Florida chain gangs, they was hell on earth, no place at all for a well-brung-up young feller.
Dutchy Melvin was a common-sized man, maybe one hundred sixty pounds, kind of dark-complected. My daddy knew his people in Key West, nice people, too, but if you didn't know how much he hated Spaniards, you might of seen a hair of Spaniard in him. In one way young Dutchy was like Mister Watson, very soft-spoke, nice to meet, and everybody liked him, but he was a bad actor all the same. Even Watson, so they say, was kind of leery of him.
Dutchy Melvin was a real acrobat. One day there on the dock front of the Watson Place he took off his gun belts, give 'em to my brother Dexter Hamilton to hold for him, and did a front flip for us kids, not a somersault but a real front flip, he landed on his feet just like a cat. Only time I ever seen that feller with his guns off.
The first year Dutchy come, Mister Watson made him foreman, cause Dutchy's guns scared the help so bad they was glad to work as hard as they was told. They knew this feller hadn't one thing left to lose, and if he got the idea to blow their heads off, he might do it. But him and Mister Watson quarreled because Watson wouldn't pay him, not till they got the last cane in and boiled the syrup.
So that boy waited until Watson was away, and then he spoiled maybe a thousand gallons of good syrup, he threw salt in it. Lit out for New York City, some such place, sent back a sassy postcard,
Well, that crazy fool popped up again, summer of 1910, had jokes for everybody. He had swore he would not go back onto the chain gang, and had no other place to put his feet up, and anyway he was so cocky he thought Mister Watson probably still liked him. Probably true, but 'like' don't mean 'forgive' and never did.
By that time a stranger had showed up there, took Dutchy's place as foreman. When the census come around, spring of 1910, this stranger called himself John Smith, but it come out later that his rightful name was Leslie Cox.
I seen this Cox a time or two but never got acquainted. While he was here, he never left the Bend. He weren't around here long enough so folks can picture him. Had hair short on his head and down his neck, same length all over, looked like fur. It's like Uncle Henry Thompson used to say, I can't recollect just what Cox looked like, but I do recall I never liked his looks.
Cox was a wanted man, and wanted bad, but nobody knowed that at the time. Some way Cox was acquainted with Ed Watson, and come looking for him, fetched up on the Bend. Some said Cox was Watson's cousin, and some said he saved Watson's hide one time, out West, but later we heard he was a killer, he'd run off from the chain gang, same as Dutchy. Leslie Cox was quiet-spoken, too, from being on the run, spoke in a kind of low and raspy voice, had a bad mean mouth. Uncle Henry used to tell us all about it.
Dutchy Melvin wasn't mean, he always had a friendly word, but he didn't take to Cox, wouldn't take his orders. He was fixing to run that somber sonofabitch right off the property, that's what he told Mister Watson. Dutchy grinned when he said that but he meant it. Wasn't room down there for both of 'em, young Dutchy swore. Said he made his grandmother a solemn promise never to consort with common criminals, which was why he had felt honor-bound to run off from the chain gang. Mister Watson thought that was pretty good about honor-bound and common criminals, and him and Dutchy had a good laugh over it, and then Mister Watson sat back a bit, the way he often done, watched that boy laughing. Uncle Henry Thompson, who never did find out how to have fun, Uncle Henry noticed the way Mister Watson done that. But Dutchy was too tickled to notice. That was
In them days Injuns wouldn't work for nobody, but Tant Jenkins, hunting in the Glades, come back that spring with a young squaw girl, left her off at Chatham Bend. Her family had turned their back on her for laying with Ed Brewer to settle up her bill for Brewer's moonshine, and if Tant hadn't of run across her, back up Lost Man's Slough, she might of died. Mister Watson took her in to help young Mrs. Watson with the children, cause Hannah Smith had other business to attend to.
Nobody at Chatham Bend spoke Injun enough to even tell that girl where she should sleep at, they figured Injuns probably slept out in the woods. Leslie Cox didn't hold with talk, just took her over to the shed and raped her, done that regular. Got her pregnant, too, is what we heard. And knowing her people would never take her back, knowing she had no place in this world she could ever go, the poor young critter got so lonesome and pathetic that she hung herself, unborn baby and all, down in the boat shed.
That was a story that never got out about the Watson Place until long after. The nigger told it but nobody believed it, cause by the time the men went down to Chatham Bend, her body was gone. But I was friendly with the Injuns when I lived on Possum Key in later years, and they all knowed about it. How they took care of it they would not say.
My granddaddy James Hamilton and my dad and uncles, they was pioneering at South Lost Man's when Mister Watson got the Atwell claim, which was Lost Man's Key and the farm patch at Little Creek, across the river. My other granddad, Captain Jim Daniels, was down there at that time. Him and his boy Frank, they seen the smoke of Tucker's sloop, burning away as she drifted out to westward in the Gulf, with the sunset like a halo all around her. Looked like she'd been set afire by that ball of light and just melted down into the sea.
Mister Watson got so scarce for a few years that we figured he was probably gone for good, so our bunch started in to farming Little Creek, which had growed over since the Tuckers' day but was handy to our place on Lost Man's Beach. Next thing we knew, Ed Watson had come back, friendly as ever, like he never even heard of Wally Tucker, and he made no trouble over Little Creek. For a start, he had enough to do bringing the Bend back to production and taking care of his north Florida farm. His young wife had him calmed down some, and anyway, he didn't need no fight with neighbors.
However, he had no money left and more work than he could handle, so he took any labor he could get. Chatham Bend got a bad name for escaped convicts and stray niggers, and pretty soon a rumor went around that people down there was just disappearing. Course there was no way to keep track of them runaways that worked that man's plantation, cause nobody knew who was down there in the first place, but more and more, people was saying that Mister Watson was scaring people off the islands, and killing his help when the time come to pay 'em, and who was to say that he would let it go at that? He was a man who had killed before, he had the habit of it, and they couldn't hang him twice if he tried again. Had a carpenter named Jim Dyches there with his wife and children that last summer, and them folks got so nervous at the Watson Place that one day they just left without Jim's pay, took off on the mail boat with Gene Gandees.
Even Uncle Henry Thompson didn't like the feeling in that place, not by the end of it. Uncle Henry will tell you that himself, and he was a feller never failed to speak up for Mister Watson.
