“Roark sat up at the noise and turned to face them. Seeing his gun was out of reach, and seeing poor dying Wilson there beside him, he was very frightened. According to Alden, he put his hands up, begging them to spare his life. The panicked Carrs yelled and argued right in front of him, waving their guns around. ‘We don’t kill him, he’ll run home and tell, and them Hardens will come gunnin for us!’ Can you believe it? While poor Roark huddled in the light beam, awaiting their decision? Can you imagine anything more terrifying for that poor boy?
“While they were yelling, Roark bolted, scrambling away into the dark. They had that lantern and they chased him down and started shooting, but being scared, not wanting to get close, they just kept firing and wounding him as he crawled away under the stilt roots of the mangroves, until finally he lay down from loss of blood and finally died. They dragged those two boys into their skiff and towed that skiff all the way upriver to the saw grass, then way on up some little creek. They were thinking to bury the bodies, set the skiff on fire, but they were so frightened that they made a mess of the whole business and never finished it. First they heard owls and then a panther screamed, and they just cut and ran!”
Lucius said quietly, “Well, that was Alden’s story, all right.” He gazed across the firelight at Sally. “That’s what he told me, too. Panther scream and all.”
“I don’t believe that Alden fired. It was Owen and Turner!”
Andy House grunted unhappily, sorting his own memories and ruminations. He cleared his throat. “Sally, I ain’t excusin what they done. But when Turner grew up, he married into our House family, and we never found nothin the matter with him. You are tellin this story only from the Hardens’ side, which is all right, but like I say, somebody should speak up for your family if you won’t do it.”
“The Hardens are my family,” Sally cried, as if he were being dense. Upset, she rose and walked off down the beach, and after waiting a little to give her dignity some room, Whidden rose and followed her toward the point.
“Well, Colonel, you was here at Lost Man’s then. You know the story.” When Lucius urged him to tell how he perceived it, Andy cleared his throat, frowning in his determination to speak responsibly and to avoid contradicting Sally’s story more than he had to.
ANDY HOUSE
In the first part of the Depression, young Roark Harden and his cousin Wilson come up missing. Because they was known to be coon hunting around Shark River, their daddies suspected the young Carrs, who was camped nearby. Only trouble was, they had no evidence. Up to here, Sally and me don’t have no problem.
That year I was seventeen years old, so I can recall about it pretty good. Our family was truck-farming up near the Trail, so all we had was hearsays, but we knowed Walker Carr’s boys was suspected, knowed all hell broke loose anytime a Carr tried to net mullet south of Turkey Key. And we heard how them Carr boys was claiming that five hundred dollars’ worth of coon hides had been stole out of their camp—a lot of money in Depression times, for folks like us.
Maybe you was too close to ’em to notice, Colonel, but a lot of men said those Harden boys was not only hotheads, they was troublemakers. There was angry talk how somethin had to be done to put a stop to ’em, because them two cousins was the ones most likely to wing a bullet past the ear of any fisherman who came anywhere within two miles of Lost Man’s Beach. After so many years of bad talk and harassment, Hardens was bitter, you can’t blame ’em, and they aimed to scare Bay fishermen off that territory, because Lost Man’s River was the last wild heart of the last wild country left in southwest Florida.
On their side, the men resented Hardens for puttin signs up, tryin to keep others off so much good fishin ground. All the Bay families had it in for ’em, not only Carrs. The fishermen would tear their signs down, cuss ’em out, yell filth across the water at their cabins, hollerin how these Island waters was free territory and how no damn half-breeds weren’t goin to get away with hoggin the whole coast for theirselves.
Us Houses knowed somethin was up pretty soon after it happened. Walker Carr rowed up Turner River to where we was farmin near the Trail. Showed up one night, never said what he was after—might of muttered about hard times and prospectin for gator holes or somethin. At first light, he walked off toward the east. He was a strong little feller but not young no more, so my dad was worried and he follered him a ways before he give up and let him go.
Back then there weren’t much traffic across Florida, and the few trucks and autos never picked up drifters, not in the Depression, not way out there in the middle of the Glades. Anyways, he must of walked a good ways east over the Trail, cause he never come back through till near a fortnight later. Might of spent that second night at Monroe Station, then headed off on some Injun path south and east across the Cypress and out across that long pine ridge on the old Chevelier Road and on down into the Shark River Slough. That’s hard goin, bogs and saw grass and limestone solution holes that slash your boots, never mind the varmints, and no dry place to sleep after the summer rains.