That same evening after dark, Henry slipped away to Lost Man’s River. Before he left, he told my dad he might be gone awhile from Chokoloskee. Far as I ever heard about, he never come back. Never said nothin about Mr. Watson, but Dad knew. He said, “Them men ain’t goin to bother you none, Henry. Hell, they like you!” And Henry nodded, give a little kind of smile. Then he said, “Spect so, Mist’ Bill. They liked Mist’ Watson, too.”
THE WATSON POSSE
Daniel David House
Bill, Dan Junior, and Lloyd House (the oldest boys)
Harry McGill (married Eva Storter, whose dad, R. B. “Bembery,” was best friends with Papa. Harry told Eva’s brother Hoad that he had fired, but he said he was not proud of it and hoped he’d missed.)
Hiram McGill (always tagging after Harry; probably missed, too)
McDuff Johnson
Charley Johnson, his son
Isaac Yeomans
Saint Demere (his daughter Estelle D. Brown says he took part)
Jim Demere
Henry Smith (visiting that day from Marco)
Gene Gandees
Young Gene Gandees (later let on to his wife, Doris, that the so-called posse was planning to do away with Watson “no matter what”; he was not alone in this opinion.)
Crockett Daniels (over from Marco that day with Henry Smith. “Speck” was only twelve or so, but some say he fired; others say he was also with those boys who came up later and shot into the body.)
Walter Alderman (worked for Papa in Columbia County; probably in the line of men due to social pressure, but would later claim he never pulled the trigger.)
Horace Alderman (his brother, visiting from Marco; joined in “for the heck of it,” Walter said. Hanged in Fort Lauderdale in 1925 as “the Gulf Stream Pirate.”)
Andrew Wiggins (his parents, Will and Lydia, were good friends of Papa, but Andrew apparently took part. He was renting the Atwell place on Rodgers River but had come back north after the storm.)
Leland and Frank Rice (three transient fishermen took part, including the Rice boys, according to reports. Both now dead.)
Note: According to rumor, the third fisherman was that John Tucker who showed up a few years later with the Rice-Alderman gang and drowned while trying to swim across the Bay.
All agree that “about 20 men” were in “the posse.”
SUSPECTS
There are stories that the following took part—in one case, his participation was confessed by the elderly suspect himself! But it seems more likely that these men were not involved, or if they were, that they did not pull the trigger.
C. T. Boggess (Most people agree that Charlie was across the island with a swollen ankle sprained in the hurricane and couldn’t have limped that far in time. Asked about it, he always harrumphed, wouldn’t say a word. He never objected when, years later, a story started up that he was in on it.)
Judge George Storter (Liked to display “the gun I used that day,” but nobody recalls him being there. In 1910 he was Justice of the Peace in Everglade, but on the date in question, he is listed in the Sheriff’s records as a juror in Fort Myers.)
Claude Storter (Now deceased. Most people say Claude was away on Fakahatchee.)
Old Man Gregorio Lopez (C. G. McKinney’s column of Chokoloskee news in the American Eagle puts him in British Honduras at the time.)
Joe, Fonso, Greggy Lopez (in Brit. Honduras with their father)
Note: Apparently the Lopez clan was sorry to miss out on the shooting, and Joe and Fonso were among those who would imply in later years that they had been present.
Jim Howell (As father-in-law to Bill House and Andrew Wiggins, Jim might have gone along, but he once worked for Papa on the Bend and stayed good friends with him, and nobody believes Jim pulled the trigger.)
Henry Short (He accompanied the House men to the landing, and all agree that he was armed, but whether or not he fired is another question. In view of the Jim Crow climate of the time, and Henry’s famous prudence, it scarcely seems credible that he aimed his rifle at a man such as E. J. Watson. Short has assured L. H. Watson and the Hardens that he did not fire, and has never wavered in that story.)
Frank B. Tippins (For the record, a reliable source reports the following: “When I was a teenager, Frank Tippins stood on our back porch and told my folks and me how he and three other men killed Mr. Watson, how they put four men in the mangroves, two on each side. Mister Watson came in, standing in his boat, his double-barrel shotgun laying beside him. He heard something, reached for his gun, and then Frank shot him—they all four shot, Frank said, but he shot first.” However, it is very well-established that Sheriff Tippins, who wished to take Watson into custody, did not arrive at Chokoloskee until the following day. Like so many others—among them Justice Storter, Old Man Lopez, Nelson Noble, perhaps Charlie Boggess—he appears to have been afflicted in his later years by a need to have participated in the Watson myth, at least among Fort Myers people unacquainted with the facts.)