Shadow Country by Peter Matthiessen Page B

Winkler’s yard and told him he would have to dance or have his toes shot off. This old man must have been close to eighty, white-haired, crippled up, bent over. He cried out, “No, suh, Boss, ah jes’ cain’t dance, ah is too old!” And they said, “Well, old man, you better dance,” then started shooting at the earth around his shoes.
    Doc Winkler came running with a rifle. “Now you boys clear out of here,” he hollered, “let that old man be!” He ordered the nigra to go behind the house but the cowhands shot into the ground right at his heels. Doc Winkler fired over their heads just as a horse reared and Doc’s bullet drilled a cowboy through the head.
    At Cole’s request, Sheriff T. O. Langford called the episode an accident. Walt Langford and his friends were not arrested and there was no inquest; Doc Winkler was left alone with his remorse. But the flying bullets and the senseless death brought new resentment of the cattlemen as well as a new temperance campaign to make Lee County dry. Because Cole was making another fortune on the Cuban rum he smuggled in as a return cargo on his cattle schooner, he led the fight against liquor prohibition, knowing the “drys” had only won thanks to that shooting death in Doc Winkler’s yard.
    The Langfords took Jim Cole’s advice to marry off young Walter, get him simmered down. Of the town’s eligible young women, the only one Walt really liked was a pretty Miss Hendry whose parents forbade her to associate with “that young hellion.” This caused the stiff feelings in both families that led to the bust-up of the Langford & Hendry store which was the biggest business in our town.
    Because she lived under his own roof, Walt couldn’t help but notice Watson’s daughter. Her mother was a lady by Fort Myers standards, but the husband of the refined and delicate Mrs. Jane Watson was the man identified in a book passed around town as the slayer of the outlaw queen, Belle Starr. The lucky few who had met Mr. Watson had been thrilled to find that this “dangerous” man was handsome and presentable, a devout churchgoer when in Fort Myers, and a prospering planter whose credit was excellent among the merchants. In regard to Carrie, it was said he had met privately with Cole in the hotel salon at Hendry House, though what those two discussed was only rumor.
    Knowing Walt Langford, I feared the marriage was inevitable. Her father’s dark past made Carrie Watson all the more attractive to rambunctious Walt. When her engagement was suddenly announced, a rumor spread that “the desperado’s daughter” was in a family way. Hearing loose talk about a shotgun wedding, I spoke up, furious, although I’d hardly met her, defending her chastity so passionately that folks began to look at me in a queer way.
    Walt and Carrie were married in July. At the wedding, stricken by her big deer eyes, I mourned for my lost bride, this creature so different from the horse-haired women of the backcountry. When the minister asked if anybody present knew why Carrie and Walter should not be united in holy matrimony, my heart cried,
Yes! Because she is too young!
But what I meant was,
Yes! Because I love her!
    Love, love, love. Who knows a thing about it? Not me, not me. I never got over Carrie Watson skipping rope at age thirteen, that’s all I know. I only put myself through the ordeal of her wedding for the chance to see what her father might look like, but the notorious Mr. E. J. Watson never appeared.

RICHARD HARDEN

    What took the fight out of the Frenchman was the news that come from Marco Key in the spring of ’95. Bill Collier was digging swamp muck for his tomato vines when his spade hit what turned out to be Calusa war clubs, cordage, and a conch-shell dipper, also some kind of wood carving. Cap’n Bill just had the luck to stumble on what Old Jean had searched for all his