"They tied my hands and they rode me over to Fort Smith, Arkansas, and Jim Starr signed a murder warrant in the federal court. Some of my neighbors gave depositions, mentioned the quarrel, said I lived pretty close by the scene of the killing. But I had a good reputation with the merchants, quiet church-going man who paid his bills, and so the local papers took my side.
"Here's the lesson I learned, Henry, and I learned it well, and it's stood me in good stead all my life: No decent American is going to believe that a man who pays his bills is a common criminal, no matter what!" Mister Watson's laugh come right up from his boots, as if the whole world weren't nothing but plain foolishness, and him right with it. I laughed along with him, never knew why, I heard my own laugh clatter in my ears.
Mister Watson fetched out a cigar box, showed me a yeller clipping from the Fort Smith Elevator. Had to read me it, of course; never had no school back then in Chokoloskee. The reporter told all about how Mister Watson had stood up to that pesky Injun and denied the charge, how the defendant Watson "was the very opposite of a man who would be supposed to commit such a crime."
Reading this out, Mister Watson stopped grinning and watched my face. "By God, Henry, you never let me down! That's the one thing in my life that I can count on-Henry Thompson won't die laughing! I'll have to do the laughing for us both!"
Mister Watson sighed, took his first drink. He was feeling good again.
"The commissioner gave Jim Starr two weeks to come up with some witnesses, some sort of evidence, but he never produced a goddamned thing that would stand up in court. The case was dismissed-I never went to trial."
By that time, the newspapers had taken up Belle Starr, made her famous all over the country. Mister Watson fished out a old book with a lady on the cover packing two pistols: "Bella Starr," he read in a disgusted voice, "The Bandit Queen, or The Female Jesse James. This book of lies was cooked up in New York in 1889, not six months after she died, and they'll be making up lies about her from now on, to go with the whoppers she told about herself. Remember that time you told me, boy, to take Old Man Johnny Gomez with a grain of salt? You'd need a keg of it for Maybelle Shirley!"
Mister Watson left the Indian Territory in early March of 1889, right after the murder hearing in federal court. He wanted to head farther west but needed money, so he joined the land rush in the Oklahoma Territory, April 1889, when most of the Creek and Seminole land was throwed wide open to the whites under the homestead laws. Unlike most of 'em he knew that country. He rode out on a borrowed horse on the dead run, made a fine claim on some good bottom land he'd had his eye on. Said it almost broke his heart to let it go, cause he could have made a good crop there that very season, but his wife said the claim weren't far enough from Tom Starr's country.
Lots of settlers left behind in that first land rush was willing to pay out ready money, and he sold his claim, went back to Arkansas, leased a good farm. Next thing he knew he was jailed as a horse thief-framed by Belle Starr's horse-thief friends, the way he figured it. He escaped from jail, swum across a river with bullets kicking up the water right around his ears. Got two good horses and a grubstake, headed for Oregon. Leased a farm in the Willamette Valley and done pretty good for a year or two until one night someone who had took a disliking to him fired a shotgun through the window, giving him no choice but to fire back. Didn't wait till daybreak to head east again, for Edgefield County, South Carolina, where he come from.
"I'd been gone from home a good number of years, and I reckoned my father would be dead, and all my boyhood trouble died away. But that old man was living still, and he was unwilling to forget, let alone forgive. I headed for Columbia County, Florida, to see my mother and my sister, see if I could fit my life there back together, but they warned me the warrant was still out, so I kept on moving.
"There was nothing to do but start my life all over. Some Columbia County folks had sent back word they were doing fine down around the Everglades, and people were saying that south Florida was the last place left where a man could farm in peace and quiet, and no questions asked.
"Only thing was, I stopped off in Arcadia, and a bad actor named Quinn Bass came after me with a knife in a saloon, so I had to stop him." Mister Watson shrugged, then cocked his head as if to see how I was taking it. "Had to pay good money to get out of that one. But some of that Bass clan was dissatisfied by the transaction, and someone will come after me, sooner or later."
He nodded his head, like revenge was a philosophy he could approve of. "I'll know him when he comes, and he'll find me ready," Mister Watson said. He was always ready, come to think of it, cause any stranger might turn out to be the man he waited for.
Mister Watson seemed pretty honest in his story, and I felt honored he had told me, it was just I could not get the details straight. I couldn't make out from the way he told it if he did or did not kill his brother-in-law, if he did or did not kill Belle Starr. He growled low every time I looked like I might pester him with questions, but them blue eyes seemed to dare me all the same. After a while, when I just kept whittling, his hand shot over quick and nabbed my wrist, and his eyes fixed me. He don't say a word but those eyes want something.
I say, kind of conversational, "I was just pondering if this Quinn Bass feller died."
"That's what the coroner claimed," Mister Watson said.
He kind of tossed my wrist away, like he couldn't understand such a stupid question. It was pretty stupid, I guess. I'd seen him shoot many's the time, and when Ed Watson shot something, it stayed shot.
That evening Mister Watson never talked no more. The man just sat there for a long, long while, hands on his legs, like he aimed to jump up quick and leave but couldn't remember where he had to go. And of course there weren't no place to go, not in the Islands. At night there was only cold, cold stars, so high beyond us, and the awful tangle of black limbs, owl hoot and heron squawk, the slap of a mullet faraway down that lonesome river.
Later days, when he was drinking, Mister Watson would brag around Key West how he took care of Belle Starr and her foreman when they come gunning for him in a narrow neck of woods. Hinted as how he'd took care of a few in his wild and woolly days out West, but claimed he'd never killed nobody less they meant him harm.
Bill House had already advised me that Mister Watson weren't the law-abiding citizen I took him for, him being wanted in three states for murder. Give me something to think about all that long evening when I and Mister Watson were setting there alone by lamplight, yeller shadows flickering, with that old black river licking through them empty mangroves, pouring away into the Gulf of Mexico.
That night I went outside, feeling small and lost. It was like I had woke in some night country on the dark side of the earth that all of us have to go to all alone. First thing I seen, the schooner was gone, just drifted away, like Henry Thompson had forgot to tie her up. My heart begun to race too hard, I was so scared I wanted to cry out and run, but there was nowhere but them blackened fields that I could run to. The earth was ringing in a silver light, the stars gone wild. It was like the whole continent of America, with all us white people and Injuns and niggers, me included, lay sprawled like poor Miss Maybelle Shirley, with her end nearing, blacking out the stars. That poor soul had stared at Heaven like I was staring now, the whole universe grieving, and these night rivers bleeding her to death.
What happened was, Rob left where he was hid and run off with the schooner, just slipped her lines and let her drift with the current. Took her as far as Key West by himself, that's how desperate he was to get away. When word come back, Mister Watson went and got her, but pretty quick he left for other parts, leaving word for Tant and me to keep an eye on his plantation.
When Tant heard how Tucker died at Lost Man's Key, he swore he would never work again for Mister Watson. I never knew Tant any way except lighthearted, I never knew he had such upset in him. Over and over I told Tant, "It ain't proved it was Mister Watson," but he never listened.
After Tant
left, I stayed on awhile, waiting for Mister Watson. When he never come, I padlocked our white house and went back to Caxambas. That was 1901, when Gertrude Hamilton from Lost Man's River was lodging at Roe's Boarding House along with us. That's James Hamiltons, not Richard-them people was another bunch entirely. Gert didn't last long in Caxambas School on account I married her and took her back to Lost Man's River.
I was borned in Key West back in '79 and lived on Chokoloskee in my later life, but I guess you could say them rivers was my home.
Lately I have come across another pioneer memoir that makes special reference to Mr. Watson. The author, Marie Martin St. John, was a child of Jim Martin, former sheriff of Manatee County, who in the fall of 1899 moved his family from Palmetto, Florida (on Tampa Bay), to the old shack used by Jean Chevelier on Gopher Key, "to give them a taste" of the Florida wilderness in which he had grown up. Martin subsequently erected a new dwelling on Possum Key. The author was only five when she went to the Islands, and though her memoir is alive with savored reminiscence, it may be shaded by events and rumor of a later period.
We made port at Marco, a landing pier and little else… then sailed south for Everglades City [sic] and Chucoluskee [sic], one a landing pier, the other a mud bank. Finally we came to Edgar Watson's place, a sugar plantation on the Chatham River.
Watson was an infamous outlaw. Every lawman in south Florida was acquainted with his treachery and cunning… From time to time he was halfheartedly sought for trial, though few crimes seemed to lead directly to his door. The legend persisted, however. The native whites feared him as you would a rattlesnake, but the Indians and black people were susceptible to his manipulations. Frequently hungry, they would go to work for him, cutting cane. He rarely paid the money agreed upon, and if a worker rebelled, Watson was said to execute him on the spot. I heard that countless human skeletons were left bare in his bayou when a hurricane blew the water out. The bayou filled the next day, and it was business as usual.
This merciless man had an invalid wife whom he adored. He kept fifty cats for her to pet. Of course I was intrigued with him the day we docked at the sugar plantation. I remember Mr. Watson taking me on his knee and telling me to pick one out for my own. He seemed the kindest of men.
Not without trepidation, Papa made arrangements with Watson to bring lumber, roofing, and other materials needed from Fort Myers to build our house, which we would do with our own hands and the help of friends. Like other people in this lost place, we were dependent on Watson's big boat, which made regular runs to and fro. We felt this dependency even more after we settled and commenced to farm. There was no other way to get our produce to market on a steady basis. The stranglehold Watson had over this section of Florida was not dissimilar to the unscrupulous activities of certain lawmen, other legal crooks, and even governors that our state was to suffer through its history.
It was sundown when we arrived at Gopher Key, where we would stay until the big house was built on a neighboring island. There was the little shack, not the most gracious of living quarters, and there was a murderer for our nearest and only neighbor, about thirty miles [sic] away. [Perhaps this was the year the Hamiltons spent near John Weeks at Flamingo.]
Our new two-story house [on Possum Key] was finished that spring. Papa had built it on an old homesite known as the Chevalier Place. The Frenchman… had planted guava and avocado pears, and they were now huge trees… What with Papa's fields of tomatoes, we soon had produce to send to market. We shipped, as contracted, with Edgar Watson. Immediately trouble arose. A messenger came from the sugar plantation bringing Papa a ridiculously small sum of money. For his part Papa told this man to go back and tell Watson how much was still owed, and that he, Papa, would be coming for it. The poor messenger was terrified and begged Papa to let the matter drop. "He'll just shoot you, Mr. Martin. That's the way he settles an account. No one argues with Edgar Watson and lives to talk about it."
The next day Papa went to see Watson. Hal and Bubba accompanied him. When they drew up to the dock in their boat, Papa told the boys to sit tight while he went in the house. Watson's whole living room could be seen through a wide screen. It was an armory: the walls were lined with guns. Papa did not carry a gun.
In the argument that followed the boys could see everything. Perhaps they thought of the skeletons under their boat as Watson became more and more strident. Then came a moment when Watson started backing toward his wall of guns. Papa was unrelenting; he demanded his money, and Watson's arm rose toward a pistol. At the height of this tense moment, a smile broke on Watson's face. From where he stood he could see the two boys in the boat fifty feet away, each with a rifle held in small, capable hands and a bead drawn on the man who threatened their father.
"Look," Watson told Papa, but Papa thought it was a trick to make him turn around. Watson understood and moved away from the guns and pointed to the boat. Papa grinned at his sons and even smiled at Edgar Watson.
"Do you suppose they thought I'd shoot you, Jim?" Watson asked.
"Do you suppose you'd have had the chance?" Papa sent back.
This man who never paid his debts paid my father and walked with him to the landing to get a closer look. All he saw were two nonchalant little boys sitting with their guns beside them, slapping mosquitoes.
Despite its clear affinity with later myth-making, including the heightened drama inherent in an oft-told narrative of family courage, the many well-remembered details elsewhere in the account suggest that there is something to her story, including the growing atmosphere of terror that by the turn of the century was beginning to gather around E.J. Watson. While "the man who never paid his debts" seems at odds with Watson's reputation for impeccable dealings with Ted Smallwood and others, it may also be true that he dodged small debts with creditors who could be bullied.
The St. John account ends on Possum Key at the turn of the century, not long before the notorious Tucker episode took place. Perhaps it was the fear that swept the region in the wake of the Tucker deaths which persuaded Jim Martin to abandon his new house and uproot his wife and four small children. Apparently he remained in the Everglades region, since he appears in the local census of 1910.
SARAH HAMILTON
After our marriage, times was hard, and in early years, the man that helped to pull us through was Mister Watson. Coming north and south on his way to Key West, he liked to stop over and eat with us, and he always spared us extra grub, extra supplies just when we needed it. He done the same for the whole Hamilton clan, Gene and Becca, too, and they took his help, even though Gene would bad-mouth Mister Watson before his boat was over the horizon.
Leon never asked for help, not even once. Mister Watson could guess what us poor squatters needed and would bring old clothes from his own children, some spare food, maybe give us the lend of his good tools and equipment. We tried as best we could to pay him back, brought him fish sometimes, turtle and manatee for stew, palm bud, guava syrup. We did this and that, and I guess he knew we was ready to help out any way we could.
Course Gene told Leon that Mister Watson was just paying in advance for having the Hamiltons and their guns to back him if it come to trouble. I hated Gene for saying that but couldn't be so sure it wasn't true. Leon told me I was too suspicious, same way Gene was, but Gene's idea begun to eat at my poor man, and finally Leon give the order we was not to take no more from Mister Watson. We was getting more beholden to another man than he could live with.
Mister Watson was a generous man, and a real gentleman, I never knew him not to tip that broad black hat. Many's the time he ate at our table, and we was always glad to see him, he was lots of fun. Leon says that Mister Watson loved his children. But after his family moved up to Fort Myers, and them Daniels females came and went at Chatham Bend, Mister Watson went back to his hard drinking, he got mean and he got heavy, and didn't waste no time at all getting in trouble.
Not that Mister Watson killed as many as folks say he did. He never killed nobody in his who
le life, he told us, except when saving his own skin, though of course it was him-this was his joke-who got to decide when his own skin needed saving. He allowed as how he always lived on one American frontier after another, and that to survive on the frontier you had to show yourself ready to defend your honor. If you backed down even once, showed the whites of your eyes, you would have to slink off with your tail between your legs, you would have to start all over someplace else. After that story got out about Belle Starr, every violent death in southwest Florida got blamed on Mister Watson. One time he was eating at Daddy Richard's table, Mormon Key, when a man was killed down to Key West. Next thing you know, there was a sheriff's deputy up this way hunting E.J. Watson, figured he'd claim the reward all by himself. This was the man Mister Watson got the drop on and put to work out in his field, that's how fired up he was about injustice. Sent word back to Key West with that deputy that the next one might not be so lucky, and I guess they remembered that message at Key West, because them ones that come hunting him after the Tuckers died were not so cocky.
It weren't Tucker and his nephew, the way Chokoloskee people say, it was Walter Tucker and his young wife, little Bet. She and her husband come back from Key West with Mister Watson, they was fine young people, and she called him Wally. Wanted to get some experience farming and fishing, put a grubstake together with their wages, try it on their own, so they took work on the Watson Place at Chatham Bend. Being kindhearted, Mister Watson built these newlyweds that little shack down the bank a ways from the main house, far side of the boat shed and the workshop. Like all young people, they just thought the world of him.
When their time was up, Mister Watson was still in need of help to finish up his harvest, which went from autumn right into the winter. So he told 'em they had never give him notice, said they was ungrateful after all he taught 'em, said he wouldn't pay 'em off till after harvest-that's the story he told us when he come back to the Islands a few years later. But he admitted he had been in a bad drinking spell, and he got so hot he run the Tuckers off the Bend without no pay. They headed for Lost Man's, stopping over to see us at Wood Key about a gill net and some grub and seed to get them started. This was the year of 1901, same year the Hamilton boys got started on Wood Key and was shipping sixteen-twenty barrels of salt fish a week to Key West and Cuba.
Killing Mister Watson Page 17
