Lost Man's River(217)

“As I recall him, Henry Thompson was a tall thin kind of a feller, kind of a far-off person, you might say. Sandy hair bleached whitish by the sun, but his hide would bake brown as a bun, where mine boils up hot red, like a boiled crawfish. I don’t guess him and his Gert Hamilton never bothered nobody, but they didn’t much approve nobody, neither. Not even God!”

Lucius grinned. “Well, that atheist streak Old Henry had came straight from his old boss! When pretty ladies were around, my dad might get religion, but he never found much use for God at other times.”

“Henry Thompson never talked too much when he weren’t talking about Watson,” Andy said. “I guess he was the authority on Watson, but toward the end he got tired of what he knew. Drank quite a lot, kept his own company, got skinnier and skinnier like an old white leghorn. When he did speak, he had a way of trailin off, shruggin his shoulders, like havin any opinion about life plain wore him out.

“Henry Thompson always claimed that Ed Watson had been good to him, he had nothin against the man whatever. Said he never had no reason to be scared of him, and neither did his half-uncle Tant Jenkins, cause Ol’ Ed never hurt a fly that didn’t hurt him first. Only thing was, in later life, Henry needed a little drinkin money, so he give an interview to some magazine writer about all of his close shaves with Bloody Watson. Got paid cash money for his firsthand knowledge of the cold cold heart of that terrible desperado, might of threw in some gory details he made up, to keep things lively.”

Intent upon the silent house, the others were content to listen as Andy rambled on. “What d’you reckon happened to your daddy’s schooner?” Andy said after a while, as if to make sure the others were still there. “I been puzzling about that since you mentioned her. She was tied up here at the Bend during the hurricane, then disappeared. People talked about Cox sellin her, and they talked about how Watson’s boy might of helped him get away—”

Lucius shook his head. “I never took Cox anywhere. That was another rumor, like the hanging rope. And Cox never took the schooner, either. That summer of 1910 was his first time off the farm in Columbia County. He couldn’t swim, much less handle a schooner. He was afraid of the water and plain terrified of crocs and gators, and back then we had both. As for the launch, my dad brought her to Chokoloskee on the day he died, so the last I heard, she was right there at Smallwood’s. Local people must know what happened to her, but by the time I came back—that was nine years later—nobody seemed to recall. Strange, don’t you think? Folks can remember all the lies, like the hanging rope and the gold watch, but nobody recalls what happened to those boats.”

“Weren’t no Watson sons around to keep an eye on ’em,” Andy reminded him, and Lucius changed the subject.

“I guess that after they calmed down a little, most folks decided that my father must have killed Cox after all,” Lucius suggested.

“Is that a fact? Us Hardens never thought so. A few years after your daddy died, the Rice boys claimed they seen Cox on the east coast near Lemon City. They said Cox recognized Leland Rice, slipped away quick. Hardens decided that sonofagun was still holed up someplace back in the rivers, because one day that old cabin we built for Chevelier just disappeared off Possum Key. No fire or nothin, she was just tore down and took away, probably hammered back together someplace else.

“Course some claimed it was Henry Short done that. Claimed he moved that cabin board by board way back up inside of Gopher Key, where he was kind of hidin out from some of them younger fellers around Chokoloskee. Spent his days diggin for Calusa treasure, which the Frenchman always did believe was there. But some concluded it was Cox who took that cabin. For a little while in the late twenties, when Roark and our cousin Wilson come up missin, there was rumors that Cox had done away with ’em some way. Course Hardens never took that serious, cause we knew who done it.”

Sally said, “Probably those Carrs spread that rumor about Cox, trying to cover their tracks!”

Whidden shrugged, still studying the house through his binoculars. “I recollect one time Fonso Lopez was tellin how Desperado Cox was put to death by Mr. Watson. And Mama said, ‘Why, Fonso, you know better than that! That man is living along somewhere just as mean as ever!’ ”

“Anyway, if Cox cleaned all the stuff out of that house, folks would have heard about it,” Sally declared. “Sadie Harden told us that Mr. Watson had some good silver and crystal, and she always declared it was the Carrs who cleaned him out. Probably claimed that good old E. J. left it all to them!”