Speck listened for the helicopter, raising a hand every little while to still their voices. “I finally figured out what Dyer wants with Chatham Bend. Look at your charts! These forty acres we are standin on right here are the only good piece of high ground in the sixty miles of wild coast country between Chokoloskee and Cape Sable. All cleared off since Injun times for villages and fields. It ain’t some swamp-and-overflowed that has to be drained and filled or even leveled. What’s more, it ain’t but a few miles crost the sloughs from the southwest corner of the old Chevelier Road. Pave that dirt road, build a couple of causeways crost them little shaller bays like they done at Chokoloskee, and there you are—the one place and the only place where a company could start right out with a land base for development that ain’t goin to be wiped out by a hurricane. All they got to do is get the Park back! They do that, and right here where we are standin on could be the heart of the biggest damn development in Florida history. Regular West Coast Miami! Dig out the river mouths for harbors, dredge and fill—see what I’m gettin at? Today the Bend belongs to Parks and Watson Dyer can’t do nothin with it, but tomorrow might be very, very different. That’s what he’s countin on. That is his big gamble. And his gamble is the best damn kind, cause it don’t cost him nothin. His partners might not realize it yet, but the man who controls the Watson Place stands to make a fortune, and if it helps to be named Watson, he’s nailed that down, too.”
They thought this over and they could not fault it.
“What if the Watsons contest him? I mean, real Watsons?”
“You think this Dyer ain’t ‘real Watson,’ Colonel? That was borned here on the Bend, and you not even born in the state of Florida? Think them slick lawyers over to Miami won’t cook up some bullshit argument out of that? Anyway, he’s got the judges in his pocket. He don’t need no ‘real Watsons’ no more! You ain’t goin to have one thing to say about this property!
“If I was you, I would walk away from it, drop the whole business. Just forget about it. You try involvin Watson Dyer in the death of that old man layin in them embers, know what he’ll do? He’ll put that killin on our Daniels bunch, get us charged with kidnappin and murder, maybe drag you into it for harborin known criminals—any ol’ lie it takes to do the job. And they got the Sheriff and they got the judges and they will make it stick, cause with all the big money that’s behind ’em, they ain’t goin to tolerate no piss-ants such as us gettin in the way.
“Nosir, you ain’t goin to stop a man like that. Have to shoot him if you aim to stop him.” Daniels licked his teeth. “If we was to take and shoot one of them big boys once in a while, when they push down too hard—that’s about all fellers like us know how to do to make us feel better. They’s plenty of good men out in the backcountry that holds to my way of thinkin, and we got us a few weapons put away. Get some fightin spirit goin in this country, we might get back the real America, y’know.”
But he lost heart in this. Asked why his men had not come back, Speck glanced upriver toward the east. “Cause they ain’t as stupid as they look,” he snapped. “Least Junior ain’t. Likely ducked into some hidey-hole in some li’l brushy creek until he’s sure that fuckin helio-copter has gone for good. Only thing, the way that thing is circlin, it sounds to me like they got somethin pinned down. And they ain’t but the one thing out there to pin down, and that’s the airboat.”
He turned to Whidden. “You think that thing might of decoyed ’em out of hidin? Pretend to head home to the east coast, then circle wide and come in low behind ’em? Cause the noise of that chopper comin in could get drowned out by their own racket till it swooped down on top of ’em from behind.”
Harden nodded. “I been thinkin the same thing.”
“Lord,” Speck prayed, “don’t let them morons get excited and start shootin.”
Circling restlessly, Daniels picked up a charred gator flat from the black earth and stood there slapping the hard scrap against his leg. “Damn stupid waste,” he said, tossing the scrap into the embers. Whidden said coldly, “Shootin so many when there weren’t no market—that the waste you mean?”
His head slightly askance, Speck Daniels squinted at him. “You wasn’t with us, boy? I could of swore you was in on all that gator huntin, right alongside of us.”
“I got regrets about it—that’s the difference.”
“That’s one difference.” Speck gazed at all of them, contemptuous. “I ain’t ashamed of huntin in this Park and never will be. I’d shoot the whole damn mess of ’em again tomorrow if it weren’t such a damn waste of ammunition.”