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Sunday,
February 7, 1915
Joe Ashley stood on his porch in the sunrise and thanked a merciful God the cool weather had shut down the God damned mosquitos. Gomez was flush back up against the Everglades to the west. Stuart was to the north and Hobe Sound to the south. Clouds of the little biting critters swarmed from the massive swamp on warm days.
Joe’d had a three-room house on the Gomez Land Grant for several years and had legal claim to a hundred acres. It had just made sense to retreat here, into the remote backwoods, when John escaped from the Palm Beach Jail.
Joe’s grand-nephew Hanford Mobley had built a house just west of his own. Joe and Lugenia’s daughter Daisy stayed with Mobley. They’d grown up together like brother and sister.
Another daughter, Lola, lived in Stuart with her husband, George Meriot, and they wanted nothing to do with the family’s criminal side.
Albert Miller, good friends with Joe for years, had a small grocery and general store not far to the east. Joe, Lugenia, Bob, Frank, and Ed slept in Joe’s house. Clarence “Tom” Middleton, and the wise asses from Chicago, “Shorty” Lynn and a real numbskull who called himself “Kid” Lowe, slept in a big Army surplus tent a good hundred yards east from the house. Given that Lowe resembled a buffalo in a cheap striped suit, Joe thought the name “Kid” was ridiculous.
Roy “Young” Matthews stayed in the tent some nights, but he had a house in Hobe Sound and a girlfriend he liked to stay with too. Joe had told them in no uncertain terms when they set up that he didn’t want them keeping him awake with their carousing till all hours, and to place their camp far enough away to prevent it.
John and his girl, Laura Upthegrove, spent rainy nights at Hanford’s, but most times they slept in a chickee hut John had built back by the swamp. Seminole chickees had no walls, but John had erected barriers, woven from saplings covered with thatch for some privacy. He’d also raised a woven cane floor and kept Indian smudges burning underneath to keep off the regiments of mosquitos at night.
Joe knew most everything there was to know about the Everglades, but the one thing he didn’t know was what the hell weeds and such the Seminoles put in those smudge bundles, but by God they worked, and didn’t stink up the place much. The Indians wouldn’t tell. They had to buy the smudges like any damn tourist. On the other hand, it beat the hell out of being eaten whole by the little bastards like a God damned plate of ribs.
Joe smiled. That thatch didn’t mask the sound of their loud and frequent coupling one bit, and they’d been at it about dawn. As Lugenia came out with his first cup of coffee, it brought him back to their own days in just such a chickee, far out in the endless swamps. He grabbed her bottom when she turned, and she gave him a lustful look over her shoulder. Can’t blame the boy, Joe thought, get it while the gettin’s good. I might just do the same later, Lugenia being so much better these days. She was still a fine-looking woman, too. Hell, he was only forty-five. It wasn’t near time to give up getting’ a little lovin’ now and again.
Joe’s children, the boys and Daisy, would have been amazed to hear their Pa was the Dapper Bandit, but he never told most of them. Lugenia knew about his affair with Geneva, and if she found out about him talking to that rich socialite after all these years, there would be no way to convince her they hadn’t been sleeping together. It would break her heart, even though it wasn’t true.
Next to Rudi Valentino, Julius Warren Ashley, as the notorious Dapper Bandit, was the most talked, gossiped, and lied about subject in all of Florida.
John was wild, insistent they go into robbing banks full time, but he’d read about the Bandit’s exploits in the papers like everybody else. The idea of targeting vehicles led him to another conclusion: they would rob the train.
Joe tried to tell him it was a bad plan. “Trains travel, son. They don’t stop for robbers like in the old days. You have to get on the train, and just being on it means you don’t know where the hell you’ll be getting off!”
John was adamant, so, on that Sunday in February, John, Bob, Shorty and Kid Lowe boarded the train at Stuart. They walked through the passenger cars until they came to the last one before the mail car. Some of the passengers must have recognized John, because a low buzz of consternation followed them.
Joe had said there would be a payroll for a timber company, several thousand dollars. John told the Chicago boys to rob the passengers while he and Bob went for the mail car where the payroll would be.
Lowe’s face went dark red, his eyes bulging. “You ain’t cuttin’ us outta the big money!” He was a porky, bulldog-faced Chicago mug in his grey suit and a white fedora, and John didn’t like him one damned bit. Shorty Lynn, a goofy little prick in a baggy striped suit, looked ready to pull his pistol until Bob stared him down.
John turned to the back of the car they were in, just in time to see the porter in the mail car behind staring at him in horror through the windows between them. The porter frantically pulled the inner door closed with a slam and John could hear the locking bar thump into place even over the roar and rattle of the train. He turned back to Kid Lowe. “You stupid son of a bitch.” He then punched Lowe to the floor and began kicking him in the ribs. It took Bob and Shorty both to get him off, and by the time they did Lowe was gasping and bleeding like a stuck pig.
By this time the passengers in the car were frantic, trying to go forward to the next car, and Bob yelled for them to stop, waving his Colt Super .38, and they all hit the floor. “You just cut us all out of the big money, God damn it!” John shouted. “I ought’a shoot your ass right now!” His hand was on his own pistol, a powerful .357 revolver, but Bob held his arm.
“C’mon John, we need to hit the passengers and get the hell off this train.” They proceeded to collect wallets, watches and jewelry from the hapless riders, the men loudly complaining while the women wailed and cried. One man went to pull a .32 pocket pistol, but Bob snatched it from him and whipped him across the face while the man’s wife screamed.
By the time they got to the front passenger car the caterwauling was driving John around the bend. They were still only a few minutes out of the Stuart station, and the train was rolling about twenty miles an hour.
One older woman, terrified and weeping uncontrollably, reminded John of his mother, Lugenia, and he took pity. “Leave her alone. Let’s git while the gittin’s good.”
The woman took his hand and thanked him, which shocked them all.
“It’s all right, ma’am, no one’s going to hurt you.”
With that they filed onto the connector platform, burlap bags they’d brought with them bulging with loot, and jumped from the train, disappearing into the swamp.
Back in Gomez, they determined their take was less than two thousand dollars in cash and maybe a thousand in jewelry. There’d been no private cars full of rich nabobs, and average train passengers weren’t nearly so flush as the wealthy northerners.
Joe was livid. “What the hell happened to the payroll? That was the real haul!”
A sullen Kid Lowe, his face cut and bruised, suffered a browbeating from Joe in silence.
John could tell he didn’t like it at all. Gonna have to keep an eye on that knucklehead, he thought.
Joe Ashley stood on his porch in the sunrise and thanked a merciful God the cool weather had shut down the God damned mosquitos. Gomez was flush back up against the Everglades to the west. Stuart was to the north and Hobe Sound to the south. Clouds of the little biting critters swarmed from the massive swamp on warm days.
Joe’d had a three-room house on the Gomez Land Grant for several years and had legal claim to a hundred acres. It had just made sense to retreat here, into the remote backwoods, when John escaped from the Palm Beach Jail.
Joe’s grand-nephew Hanford Mobley had built a house just west of his own. Joe and Lugenia’s daughter Daisy stayed with Mobley. They’d grown up together like brother and sister.
Another daughter, Lola, lived in Stuart with her husband, George Meriot, and they wanted nothing to do with the family’s criminal side.
Albert Miller, good friends with Joe for years, had a small grocery and general store not far to the east. Joe, Lugenia, Bob, Frank, and Ed slept in Joe’s house. Clarence “Tom” Middleton, and the wise asses from Chicago, “Shorty” Lynn and a real numbskull who called himself “Kid” Lowe, slept in a big Army surplus tent a good hundred yards east from the house. Given that Lowe resembled a buffalo in a cheap striped suit, Joe thought the name “Kid” was ridiculous.
Joe didn’t want them keeping him awake |
John and his girl, Laura Upthegrove, spent rainy nights at Hanford’s, but most times they slept in a chickee hut John had built back by the swamp. Seminole chickees had no walls, but John had erected barriers, woven from saplings covered with thatch for some privacy. He’d also raised a woven cane floor and kept Indian smudges burning underneath to keep off the regiments of mosquitos at night.
Joe knew most everything there was to know about the Everglades, but the one thing he didn’t know was what the hell weeds and such the Seminoles put in those smudge bundles, but by God they worked, and didn’t stink up the place much. The Indians wouldn’t tell. They had to buy the smudges like any damn tourist. On the other hand, it beat the hell out of being eaten whole by the little bastards like a God damned plate of ribs.
Joe smiled. That thatch didn’t mask the sound of their loud and frequent coupling one bit, and they’d been at it about dawn. As Lugenia came out with his first cup of coffee, it brought him back to their own days in just such a chickee, far out in the endless swamps. He grabbed her bottom when she turned, and she gave him a lustful look over her shoulder. Can’t blame the boy, Joe thought, get it while the gettin’s good. I might just do the same later, Lugenia being so much better these days. She was still a fine-looking woman, too. Hell, he was only forty-five. It wasn’t near time to give up getting’ a little lovin’ now and again.
Joe’s children, the boys and Daisy, would have been amazed to hear their Pa was the Dapper Bandit, but he never told most of them. Lugenia knew about his affair with Geneva, and if she found out about him talking to that rich socialite after all these years, there would be no way to convince her they hadn’t been sleeping together. It would break her heart, even though it wasn’t true.
Next to Rudi Valentino, Julius Warren Ashley, as the notorious Dapper Bandit, was the most talked, gossiped, and lied about subject in all of Florida.
John was wild, insistent they go into robbing banks full time, but he’d read about the Bandit’s exploits in the papers like everybody else. The idea of targeting vehicles led him to another conclusion: they would rob the train.
Joe tried to tell John it was a bad plan |
John was adamant, so, on that Sunday in February, John, Bob, Shorty and Kid Lowe boarded the train at Stuart. They walked through the passenger cars until they came to the last one before the mail car. Some of the passengers must have recognized John, because a low buzz of consternation followed them.
Joe had said there would be a payroll for a timber company, several thousand dollars. John told the Chicago boys to rob the passengers while he and Bob went for the mail car where the payroll would be.
Lowe’s face went dark red, his eyes bulging. “You ain’t cuttin’ us outta the big money!” He was a porky, bulldog-faced Chicago mug in his grey suit and a white fedora, and John didn’t like him one damned bit. Shorty Lynn, a goofy little prick in a baggy striped suit, looked ready to pull his pistol until Bob stared him down.
John turned to the back of the car they were in, just in time to see the porter in the mail car behind staring at him in horror through the windows between them. The porter frantically pulled the inner door closed with a slam and John could hear the locking bar thump into place even over the roar and rattle of the train. He turned back to Kid Lowe. “You stupid son of a bitch.” He then punched Lowe to the floor and began kicking him in the ribs. It took Bob and Shorty both to get him off, and by the time they did Lowe was gasping and bleeding like a stuck pig.
“I ought’a shoot your ass right now!” |
“C’mon John, we need to hit the passengers and get the hell off this train.” They proceeded to collect wallets, watches and jewelry from the hapless riders, the men loudly complaining while the women wailed and cried. One man went to pull a .32 pocket pistol, but Bob snatched it from him and whipped him across the face while the man’s wife screamed.
By the time they got to the front passenger car the caterwauling was driving John around the bend. They were still only a few minutes out of the Stuart station, and the train was rolling about twenty miles an hour.
One older woman, terrified and weeping uncontrollably, reminded John of his mother, Lugenia, and he took pity. “Leave her alone. Let’s git while the gittin’s good.”
The woman took his hand and thanked him, which shocked them all.
“It’s all right, ma’am, no one’s going to hurt you.”
With that they filed onto the connector platform, burlap bags they’d brought with them bulging with loot, and jumped from the train, disappearing into the swamp.
Back in Gomez, they determined their take was less than two thousand dollars in cash and maybe a thousand in jewelry. There’d been no private cars full of rich nabobs, and average train passengers weren’t nearly so flush as the wealthy northerners.
Joe was livid. “What the hell happened to the payroll? That was the real haul!”
A sullen Kid Lowe, his face cut and bruised, suffered a browbeating from Joe in silence.
John could tell he didn’t like it at all. Gonna have to keep an eye on that knucklehead, he thought.
| Copyright © 2022 by Roger Owens |
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