Killing Mister Watson

garden, way the Injuns done. Excepting Ed Watson's big strong house at Chatham Bend, there weren't one roof left in that whole stretch of Islands. Course Chokoloskee is four miles inland, with high ground, but Jim Howell's Chokoloskee house, that was lost, too.

Hurricane caught twenty-two clammers out on Plover Key, took all their skiffs but three. Rowed back to Caxambas, but they were in poor shape by the time they got there. Brought the news that Josie Jenkins lost her baby boy to drowning while she hung on where her brother Tant had her hoisted up a tree. Got tore right out of her poor arms when the waves broke all across Pavilion Key. She found him when the seas went down, where his little arms stuck up out of the sand. Later we heard he was a Watson, and far as I know, Aunt Josie never denied it. Some folks made too much of it that Mister Watson's little feller was the only human soul lost in that storm.

Us Hamiltons come out all right, the Lord be praised, but that hurricane blowed what fight was left out of our family. When that storm got done with us, we didn't have no home nor garden, we had to take what help we could at Chokoloskee.

After all them years, the time had come to say good-bye to Lost Man's River. Grandpappy James was old and poorly, and times was plenty hard enough without having to wonder where Cox might of got to. We took Grandpap to Chokoloskee and from there to Fakahatchee but he never come back from the woesome ruin of that hurricane of 1910, and died soon after. Before he passed, he told his sons that his name was James Hopkins and not Hamilton. Said he come from a rich Baltimore family but acted rashly in his youth, had to kill some dastard in a duel, something like that, had to change his name and travel to other parts to seek his fortune. So his sons went down to Everglade to discuss this matter with Justice Storter, and George Storter said, You boys come into this world with the name of Hamilton, so you might's well go out of it that same way.

FRANK B. TIPPINS

'You boys know Sheriff Tippins,' Collier says.

At Marco Island, most of the men are gathered at Bill Collier's Mercantile Store. The small limestone building stands apart from his Marco Hotel, with its twenty small guest rooms, parlor, dining room, and bathroom. Constructed from burnt oyster shell the year before, the store has a hurricane crack three inches across from roof to ground and is still draining eighteen inches of high water. The bare ground around both buildings, littered with brown fronds, is set about with salt-killed planted palms.

Worn by wind and liquor to a nervous edge, the men talk fitfully. Two days before, on the eve of the hurricane, Captain Thad Williams had delivered the black suspect at Fort Myers. I returned with Captain Thad to Marco, where the Cannons and Dick Sawyer and Jim Daniels had confirmed Thad's story that in his first testimony at Pavilion Key, the black suspect had implicated E.J. Watson.

Turns out Watson had come through here on Monday, and crossed to the mainland before the storm struck in. He had probably arrived at Fort Myers this very morning. Said he was looking for the sheriff, Bill said, and might been hunting up that nigra, too, while he was at it.

'You ask me, that nigger told the truth when he claimed that crazy Watson was behind it.'

'Nigra changed his story,' I tell this man. The Monroe sheriff has been notified to come get him, and I wonder if I shouldn't start on back, in case Watson finds a way to get him first.

Teet Weeks snuffles his tin cup, wipes his stubbled chin with the back of his hand, gets my boots in focus. 'Them fucking cattle kings and bankers gone to cover up for him again, ain't that right, Sheriff? Likely got you in their pocket, too-'

Bill Collier sets down the spring line he is braiding and hoists Teet off the floor and sets him down again facing the other way. Weeks spins and draws his fist back for a comic roundhouse punch, knowing that some kinsman will catch his arm before he gets himself in too much trouble. When no one bothers, he feigns imbalance, which carries him back to a safe distance, bobbing and weaving by himself in a small circle. That's how Teeter Weeks, a drunkard at fifteen, had got his name. Taking the laughter as approval, Teet winks and prances, spits on his hands. 'Damn you, Bill Collier, you looking for a fight? You found your man!'

Captain Bill Collier is a broad-backed man, calm and slow to anger. His father founded Marco settlement way back in 1870. Today the son is storekeeper and postmaster, trader and ship's master, he is shipbuilder and keeper of the inn. He has a copra plantation of five thousand palms and a citrus grove on the mainland at Henderson Creek with fifteen hundred orange trees. He designed and owns the floating dredge that works the clam flats at Pavilion Key.

It was Bill Collier who discovered the strange Calusa masks off the Caxambas trail while getting out muck for his tomatoes, Bill Collier who lost two sons when his schooner Speedwell sank off the Marquesas. He has done a lot and seen much more. Ignoring Teet Weeks, he picks up his rope and resumes braiding.

I ask if anyone knows Watson's foreman.

'Your prisoner seen him last, on Chatham Bend. Nobody knows where he might of got to now.'

What I should do, I think, is deputize some men, keep right on going, south to Chatham River, jurisdiction or no jurisdiction, because whoever was responsible for those three killings was not likely to wait there for the sheriff.

'…and no goddam law!' Teet cries. 'Ought to take and put a bullet through them kind of crazy sonsabitches fore they get loose from their damn cradle, be fucking well done with it-'

'That where you're headed, Sheriff? Chatham River?'

'Cross the Monroe line?'

The men grin when I play dumb and say, 'That's not Lee County? Guess I lost my map,' but they keep pressing.

'John Smith. You found out who he is?'

'I believe the nigra knows, but he's not telling.'

'Had that black boy here tonight, I guess he'd tell us.'

'That could be.'

The restless men half listen as Dick Sawyer describes how he once saved Watson's life.

One day he'd seen the Gladiator at Key West, and getting no answer when he hallooed, he went aboard. OF Ed was down with typhoid fever, couldn't move or talk. Dick Sawyer went up the street, brought Dr. Feroni back down to the boat, and the doctor cured him. 'Ed give me not one word of thanks for saving his damn life,' Dick Sawyer says. 'And that is funny, cause Ed's manners was so excellent.'

'Yes, sir,' Jim Daniels says, disgusted. He is worried about his sister Josie on Pavilion Key. 'Very well knowed to settle his accounts, keep on the right side of the storekeepers, but he still owes my oldest boy eighty dollars for motor repair. Watson as much as told my Henry he could go to hell, but he says it real polite, cause his manners is so excellent. A very mannerly man, specially when he has you where he wants you. And he has most everybody where he wants 'em, that right, Dick?'

'Had a couple your sisters, Jim, right where he wanted 'em, as you might say-'

Jim Daniels, in his fifties, hard-armed, dark-haired, with a trace of silver, cuts off Dick Sawyer just by sitting up straight.

'I was down at Lost Man's, 1901, nearby my daughter Blanche's people-that's her brother-in-law, Lewis Hamilton, cooks on the clam dredge? Well, one evening I seen a little boat burning down against the sun, way out there on the Gulf horizon. Went out there to see if we could help, found what was left of Tucker's little sloop, no trace of nobody. Nice mannerly job.' He looks grimly at Sawyer. 'Before that it was mostly rumors. Wasn't till after Tuckers died that folks got scared of him. If he hadn't of took off for the north, he could of had about any mound he wanted cepting Richard Hamiltons'.'

'Old Man Richard's bunch, they's kin to your wife, ain't that right, Jim?'

Jim Daniels says, 'Not so's you'd notice, Dick.'

'Now Netta and Josie-'

'You speaking about my sisters, Albert?'

'I'm speaking about their little girls, over Caxambas. Ain't them kids Watson's?' The speaker is a morose man whose wife, Josephine, had presented him only this year with a chestnut-haired baby boy. Josie Parks-she used the