Miami Gundown

by Michael Zimmer

  “Can’t even find it, is what them Klee boys said.”

  I hesitated. “How do you know that?”

  Jim nodded toward Josie, bent over a griddle sizzling with pork chops. “My Josie come sneaking in after dark to listen to them boys talkin’. She heard ’em say so.”

  “Is that right, Josie? You heard them?”

  “Yes, suh, I did.” She set a long, iron fork across the edge of the griddle and straightened with a faint popping of joints in her back and knees. “It was after night come on full. I sneaked in to see could I help Lena, but they was keepin’ her close. Had a rope tied loose around her neck. I heard ’em talkin’, though.”

  “What did they say?”

  “Said they was gonna go find that old man, the daddy.”

  “Judah?”

  “Didn’t say no names, just they was afraid to try findin’ that island without no one to guide ’em, so they was gonna go find the old man and wait for the others there.”

  “Where?”

  “Way off down south, marse. Near Fort Dallas.”

  “Dallas?” I whistled softly, envisioning that route to Fort Dallas, way down on the Miami River. “Is that where they said the old man was, near Fort Dallas?”

  “Yes, suh. Said leastwise they figured he was. Said they was gonna wait there for the others, like they was expectin’ them real soon.”

  “What else did they say?”

  “I reckon that’s all, marse. Just that they was gonna take Lena to Fort Dallas, ’stead of into those swamps.”

  Josie’s words had my thoughts spinning. Going into the swamps to look for a kidnapped slave was one thing, and probably would have been impossible to accomplish without a guide, but Fort Dallas was a whole different bird. In my mind I started putting together what little I knew of the abandoned army post, hidden inside the sheltering cove of Biscayne Bay.

  My knowledge of the place was skimpy. Fort Dallas had been used by the United States Army during the Seminole Wars, then abandoned about the time of Billy Bowlegs’s surrender. Although officially still in Union hands, from what I’d heard, the place hadn’t been permanently reoccupied like the forts at Tampa and Myers. It was probably Dallas’s remote location—a jumping-off point to just about nowhere unless you were looking for Indians in the ’glades—that kept the post outside the sphere of military relevance. Although folks said the Federal Navy sometimes used Dallas to maintain a Yankee presence in the region and would sometimes dock at the wharf that jutted into the river just inside the mouth of the Miami, I don’t think there were ever any real plans to use it against the Confederacy.

  I’d heard there was a town of sorts down there, too, although at the time I didn’t know its name. Of course I’m talking about what would eventually become the city of Miami and the seat of Dade County. They say Miami has turned into a pretty good-sized little burg since Henry Flagler extended his railroad down there in the 1890s—maybe thirty or forty thousand people living in that mosquito-ridden jungle is what I’ve read—but back in ’64 you couldn’t really call it a town at all. Nor was it a place most folks would want to visit. Not unless they were hiding from the law.

  “That where we’re goin’, marse?” Jim asked, drawing my thoughts back to the Flatiron.

  “Yeah, maybe,” I replied absently, then quickly corrected myself. “No, I am. I want you to stay here and start cleaning up.”

  Jim got a real funny look on his face at that. “You wantin’ me to stay behind, marse?”

  “I’m afraid so, Jim. I don’t want what happened here to ever happen again because I pulled all the men off the place.”

  “Marse, I gots to go,” Jim said in a small, anguished tone I’d never heard him use before. “I got to help bring Lena home. I promised Joe-Jim I’d take care of her like she was my own daughter. Like I would you or any of your brothers.”

  “Don’t worry about Lena. We’ll get her back.” I started to walk away, my thoughts already turning to that long journey before us, when Jim’s voice thundered across the darkness.

  “Marse!”

  I spun around, my mouth agape at the Negro’s impertinence.

  Jim had taken a dragging half step forward, his face twisted in suffering made all the worse by the fluctuating light of the fire. “Please, marse, please don’t make me stay to home.”

  There was fear in the black man’s eyes—as well they should have been for such presumptiveness, some would say—but I knew Jim’s apprehension wasn’t for himself.

  “Please, marse,” he nearly whispered.

  “Jim, you know what’s going to happen down there.”

  “Yes’um.”

  “There could be shooting, maybe men getting shot, even dying.”

  “Yes’um, but I ain’t afraid to die, marse. Not if it brings Lena home.”

  “That’s not what I’m talking about. You . . . do you think you can do what you might have to, if it comes to a fight?”

  “Yes’um. Be just like I did with your daddy, during the Indian Wars.”

  My resolve was weakening to the point that I think I was starting to plead more than Jim. “You know what’ll happen if you’re caught with a gun, Jim. Or if I’m hurt or killed and can’t speak up for you?”

  “Yes’um, I know. Them white men down there, they’d hang me real quick.”

  “Can you face that, turning a gun on a white man?”

  “I can if it’s them Klees what took Lena, and chased my Josie into the woods to live like a wild animal. I could kill those men real easy, if you give me the say-so.”

  “Let him go,” a voice said, so gentle it might have been the soughing of the evening breeze. I looked at Josie, standing over her griddle with her eyes cast toward the fire and wondered if I’d really heard someone speak or if it had just been my imagination. Then Josie raised her eyes to mine, and I knew the words had been hers.

  I looked at Jim. “All right,” I said quietly. “You can come.”

  Jim’s smile was like a flash of yellow ivory in the firelight. I wanted to tell him to wipe it off, to remind him that he’d be lucky if he lived to see his wife or son again, let alone find Lena, but I didn’t. Gritting my teeth in helpless frustration, I started to walk away. I hadn’t gone more than a few paces when Jim called to me.

  “Marse Boone.”

  I stopped and turned. “Yeah?”

  “I . . . I’s sorry about the uppity way I talked. I didn’t mean no disrespect. I was just . . . worried. Worried for Lena.”

  I nodded stiffly, my face turning warm with an overwhelming sense of shame. “Jim,” I said raggedly, “I reckon you’re about the last man I know who needs to apologize to me for anything.” Then I spun on my heel and swiftly walked away.

  Excerpted from:

  Florida Reminiscences:

  Personal Recollections from the Highlands

  Edited by

  Wilbur Collinsworth

  Self-Published, 1892

  Host First Edition, June, 1976

  Chapter Seven

  Jack Chandler

  1834–1901

  . . . [P]eople say those Yankees from Fort Myers never came inland, but I know for a fact that is a lie, because I seen them up by Stearn’s Lake once, toward the end of the war. [Ed. Note: Chandler is probably referring here to either Lake Placid or Lake June, south of Sebring, Florida.] I was trapping otter and such, keeping my nose to my own fire, and not traipsing off to fight people I didn’t know, when I seen eight or ten of them Yankees riding hell-bent to the north. Later on I was told by a Indian trader named Dill that they were after some cow hunters that hung some Yankees on the road between Fort Myers and Punta Rassa. Lucky I seen them coming before they seen me and ducked out of sight before they got too close. I seen their faces, though, and they were a mean-looking bunch, them Yankees. I never did see the cow hunters they was chasing, but I’ll bet it was a bloody battle when they finally caught up. . . .

  Session Six

  That machine does make a racke
t when it reaches the end of a disk, doesn’t it? It didn’t bother me, but I can see how it might startle some. Thanks for the warning, though. It might have been more jarring if I hadn’t known it was getting close.

  Before your recorder started clattering like it was coming apart, we were talking about our pulling out for Fort Dallas the next day and how we took along an extra mount for Lena. I packed some grub in the saddlebags, then tied a ten-foot square of oilcloth behind the flat English seat as shelter in case of rain. Although it was the dry season, Florida sometimes forgets there is such a thing, and I wanted to be prepared.

  I’ll admit I was worried about leaving Josie behind. I gave her the loan of Dick Langley’s shotgun, then told her to bury the gold I’d gotten for the herd in the hollow tree after we were gone. I didn’t want to do it while the boys were around, even though I trusted everyone there. That gold was just for the family to know about, not friends.

  “When you’ve got it hidden, take some food and blankets and go hide in the woods until we get back,” I told her. “Or until Pa does.”

  “Shoo, I don’t need to hide in no woods like some scared bunny. I be just fine in my own home, ’specially now that I got this fine shotgun of Mistah Dick’s.”

  “Do what I say, Josie.”

  She smiled and patted my cheek affectionately. “You is a good boy, Marse Boone. Your mama would have been real proud of you. We all are.”

  Well, hell! How do you argue with someone like that?

  “Just keep an eye on the horizon,” I finally said, accepting my defeat. “If you see anyone coming, hightail it into the trees until you know who it is.”

  “Yes, suh,” she replied, so that I knew I’d at least made a little progress.

  Stepping into my saddle, I glanced at Casey, who just shrugged. He and Dick had returned well after dark the night before, without having found any sign of the men who’d ransacked the Flatiron.

  “We rode a big arc to the south and east, but didn’t turn up anything I could say for sure was them,” he’d told me as he pulled the saddle from the back of his sweating mount.

  I knew it was chancy, taking the idle chatter of a bunch of hardcases as gospel, but maybe not as bad as plunging into those swamps south of the Caloosahatchee in a blind attempt to locate Jacob Klee’s alleged island hideaway. I’d never been to Fort Dallas, and neither had any of the men riding with me, but I had a general idea of how to get there. Ride due east into the rising sun, then turn south at the Atlantic. It would be more difficult than that, of course, but it was a start. Roy said he knew a cow hunter who had been as far south as Fort Lauderdale without too much trouble, although he claimed the route below there would be hell to get through.

  “Mangrove forests in every direction, ’skeeters big enough to suck the blood out of a ’gator, water moccasins and rattlesnakes under every bush,” was the way Roy described it, and as it turned out, he wasn’t too far off the mark. That’s why I have such a difficult time picturing Miami as being anything more today than the corner of hell it had been in 1864.

  By taking a roundabout course to avoid the swamps below Lake Istokpoga, it was going to be roughly a two-hundred-mile journey from the Flatiron to the Miami River, but even in as much of a hurry as we were, I wanted our first stop to be Dick Langley’s cabin, just west of Istokpoga.

  Like most of us—myself included in those carefree days—Dick had grand visions of the future. He’d talked about some of them on the drive to Punta Rassa, all of us but the night guard sitting around an early-evening fire, drinking chicory for coffee and shooting the bull. Dick wanted five thousand head of longhorns carrying his as-yet unregistered brand by the time he turned thirty and a better home for his wife and son than the tiny cabin they were currently living in.

  “Something like what your daddy’s got, Boone,” he’d said one night not long after we crossed the Caloosahatchee.

  I didn’t point out that Pa had been long past thirty before he got to where he was. Dick would find out how tough it was to build a ranch soon enough, unless he actually pulled it off, in which case I intended to be the first among us to offer up a toast to his success.

  It was a hard day’s ride from the Flatiron to Dick’s cabin, but we were anxious to make up for lost time and pushed our horses more than we probably should have, what with the distance yet to cover. We crossed the Highlands near Jack Creek and came in sight of our destination late that afternoon.

  Dick’s wife was a pretty, dark-haired gal of sixteen at most, though Cracker tough, as only that scrub breed can be. Her name was Emma May, and she was standing next to a washtub of boiling water as we approached. Freshly washed laundry hung from a rope stretched from the cabin to a nearby tripod made of palmetto stalks.

  Emma May was shading her eyes from the westering sun with her palm flat above her brows when she recognized her husband, who had galloped ahead in his eagerness to be home. Dick jumped from his saddle, before his mount could come to a complete stop, and strode quickly over to where Emma May was standing beside her fire-blackened tub. Then he halted a couple of feet away, the two of them standing there gawking at one another like fools as the rest of us rode into the yard.

  “Well, go ahead and hug her, ya damn’ numbskull!” Ardell called, and the rest of us hooted laughter to see them so happy. Dick took Emma May in his arms like she was made of clay, then glanced over his shoulder to see if we were still watching. We were, of course, until Ardell said: “Come on, boys, let’s give them some privacy.”

  We rode around the north side of the cabin where we were out of sight and dismounted to rest our sweaty shanks. I could see Lake Istokpoga off in the distance, its deep, blue waters looking griddle-flat beneath a haze of humidity.

  “We gonna stay the night, Boone?” Punch asked.

  I already knew the answer, but glanced off to the west anyway. We still had a good two hours of daylight left. Three if we wanted to push on into the smoky dusk. “No,” I replied, “but Dick is.” My gaze fell on Langley’s mount that Ardell had brought around back with us. “Pull that saddle and bridle and turn it loose,” I instructed.

  “What for?” Roy demanded, but Ardell was already tugging at the cinch.

  “Because Dick’s got something more important to do here,” I replied.

  After stripping the tack, Ardell led the horse out a ways, then slapped its hip with the loose ends of the reins. The horse snorted and took off, and although it didn’t go far, I hoped it would be enough to hinder Dick’s efforts to catch it again, should he prove too stubborn to stay behind.

  Roy hadn’t replied to my answer, and I could tell he was having trouble deciphering what it meant. I left him to ponder it alone as I walked back around the front of the house. Emma May was just entering the cabin. Dick came over to meet me, a grin like a 4th of July banner plastered across his face.

  “Emma May’s got a ’possum she ketched last night she was fixing to perloo,” he said. “She’s got a little leftover raccoon she can add to the pot, too. It won’t take long. You boys are in for a treat. Ain’t nobody makes ’possum perloo like my Emma May.” [Ed. Note: Perloo is the Cracker pronunciation of pileau, a rice dish of varying meats.]

  “Sounds like she’s been eating good,” I said.

  “She knows how to take care of herself, for a fact,” Dick replied proudly.

  I could hear the baby fussing inside, above the rattle of cast iron and tin utensils. “I reckon he misses his daddy,” I said gently.

  “Well, his daddy sure as heck missed him.”

  Taking a deep breath, I said: “I want you to stay here, Dick. Me and the boys’ll go on and take care of this business with Jacob Klee. If we can, we’ll stop by on the way home and let you know how it went.”

  Dick was scowling and shaking his head before I’d finished speaking. “Naw, I’m coming along.”

  “No, you’re staying here . . . taking care of your family.”

  “Emma May done just fine while we drove that herd to P
unta Rassa.”

  “That was different. You were making money then, and we didn’t know if we’d have to fight or not. What we’re going to do down on the Miami is pure dangerous, and there’s a fair chance somebody’ll get killed. Do you want to make Emma May a widow before your son is six months old?”

  I could tell my words were having an effect on him, but Dick Langley was loyal to the core. The Flatiron was going after a stolen slave and four pirated horses. Abandoning pursuit now must have felt traitorous to him, yet the more that baby cried, the more determined I became.

  “Boone, one more gun . . .” He let his words trail off. “That’s why you wanted me to leave my shotgun with Josie, ain’t it?”

  “You’ve got a good rifle you left here for Emma May, so you and Josie are both armed now. Stay here, Dick.” I nodded toward the cabin door. “Go on in there and take care of that young one. We’ll see you when we get back.”

  “What . . . what about the others?” He was staring toward the corner of the cabin like a butt-kicked hound.

  “We’ve already talked it out,” I lied. “No one’s going to think you’re a coward. Hell, we all saw how you stood your ground at Chestnut Thumb, and then again when those Yankees jumped us in Punta Rassa.” I hesitated a moment, then thrust a hand toward him. He took it reluctantly, but at least he took it.

  “You boys ride safe, Boone, and if you need me, you shout real loud, and I’ll be there.”

  “I know you will.” My grip tightened unexpectedly, and I turned away before I said something stupid. “Take care of your family,” I added over my shoulder. “And tell Emma May we’ll share a kettle of perloo some other time. Right now we’ve got to ride.”

  Walking back around the corner, I grabbed the bay’s reins and swung a leg over that Texas rig’s tall cantle. “Let’s go,” I said brusquely, and we kicked our horses into a lope, riding north to skirt the lake on drier ground rather than risk that marshy country to the south. No one spoke or asked about Dick. Not even Roy.

  We camped that first night not far from Lake Istokpoga, then got another early start the next morning. It was two more days to the Indian River, a lot of it through some really swampy country, so our progress was slow. My only consolation was that I figured it would be just as difficult for Klee’s men.