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| Saint Sebastian River Bridge [Click image to call up all published instalments] |
Thursday,
January 10, 1924,
concluded
The dog finally stopped whimpering, the shouting went on, and Red saw something. The army tent had a short wall of interwoven branches about four feet high, and above it he spied a head of black hair, thinning on top. A man sitting up with his back to Red, like from a bunk, who then shouted at someone else to get down.
The front of the tent was getting the majority of the fire from the raiding party, bullets throwing up puffs of dust and splinters from the branch wall, raising sand from the ground, and yanking the canvas roof back and to. Off to the right, Red drew down on that head, hoping it was John Ashley, saw it duck down, thought, the crazy bastard is tying his boots. He’s being shot at, and he’s worried about his God damn boots.
Ok, thought Red, let’s have your God damn ass. The head came up again, but not high enough to be sure, and the wall of branches and reeds was substantial enough to at least deflect a bullet, so he waited. Ok, second boot, then he gets up…which he did, or started to.
The Gewehr spoke, not so loud as the other guns and no smoke, but Red was grimly satisfied to see that head explode in a cloud of blood, and instantly worked the bolt to load another shell.
The screaming from the tent was instant, a woman, and who could it be, Red thought, but Laura Upthegrove? Something about Papa, then he clearly heard the name “Joe.”
Had he shot Joe Ashley? |
A jolt of excitement flashed through Red like a bolt of lightning. He saw red, bared his teeth, all he could think was, Kill that evil bastard! He let off two more shots but seemed to hit nothing.
Chief Deputy Fred Baker, George Baker’s nephew and Bobby’s cousin, had allowed the previous unsuccessful raids by their own department and that of Saint Lucie County to ease his caution a bit, and it was to cost him his life this very minute. Red saw him peering through palmetto leaves at eye level, heard one of the veterans nearer him yell out, “Fred! Get down!”
Fred Baker looked to his right, where the man had called from, and his head caved in as a bullet from John Ashley’s rifle took him in the left temple, and came out over his right ear, along with a spray of blood and the better part of his brains.
Right then Red heard a sound that made his skin get right up and crawl. Along with the woman’s screaming, he heard the distinct chock-chock of a Browning Automatic Rifle being cocked, like he’d heard back at the raid on the Frankenfield’s homestead.
Before he could throw himself down, the rifle began firing, chewing up trees and palmettos—in the opposite direction from Red. Seemed like the woman had mistaken which way the shot that killed Joe Ashley had come from, which meant, Red thought derisively, that she must be dumber than sand.
He had no idea that the man he had just killed had agreed with him completely.
Laura Upthegrove was firing to the southwest, not only nowhere near any of the raiding party but cutting John’s line of fire from what looked, now Red could see it, like nothing more than a tarpaulin hung over a small depression in the dirt.
As he had thought, it was right next to the still, and that still was a monster. It had to be five times the size of Guy’s best and appeared to be percolating three batches at once. The tarp was for someone to sleep there and keep the fire just right, and no wonder. A lot of money depended on that fire.
The shooting from the raiding party only increased, smoke drifting through the trees with the bitter stench of cordite. Had Laura Upthegrove only turned her weapon in the right direction, she’d have easily killed most of them, and sent the rest running, but she didn’t. That was why they’d been able to stroll up unchallenged, catching them asleep at the switch, Red thought. They’d expected the machine guns to protect them from anyone and anything.
When she stopped to reload, the Deputies moved in with shotguns that seemed to have enough power to penetrate the branch wall. They let loose from behind Laura’s position, and she caught a full package of 12-gauge, double-ought buckshot pellets in the ass, all nine, and every one only slightly smaller than a .38. In the end, that big ass saved her. That and her screaming.
Even the deputies stopped firing at the sound of a woman screaming. Cautiously they approached the house and, after peeking in, entered and dragged the still-screaming Laura Upthegrove out into the bare dirt yard.
She was bleeding like a stuck pig |
He’d seen Tom Middleton disappear into the mangroves like a giant rat, Red cocking and firing the old Colt to, he’d thought, no effect. He was never to know, even the night Middleton was killed, that he’d shot him in the ass that night at Frankenfield’s homestead. It would have given him almost as much pleasure having killed Joe Ashley was giving him right now.
He saw the two veterans crouching over Fred Baker, and two other Palm Beach deputies were keeping the rest of the crew away from the body of their colleague. For some reason the deputies ignored his approach and he knelt down with the war veterans, silently sharing the devastation of the dead man’s head, his face.
The older one, who seemed to be in his mid-twenties, looked like a fisherman. His youthful face was burned to an early age by the merciless southern sun, and his hair and beard were bleached to a raw gold color. Rum runner, Red thought, battling the Ashleys for territory, and he narrowed his eyes suspiciously. He wasn’t here to settle someone else’s scores.
The man saw it but stood and offered his hand anyway.
Red took it and gripped hard, with a stiff shake. “Red Dedge.”
The man met his hand with a similarly stony grasp and held it long enough for a touch of respect to grow between them. “Wilson Sims.”
The younger man might have been twenty, Red thought, and seemed distracted, looking off into the swamp.
“He gets this way,” Sims said, “whenever there’s gunfire.” He turned. “Bennet?”
The young man focused instantly, his eyes staring, his stance straight. “This is mister Red Dedge.”
Bennet’s hand snapped out like a striking snake, but when Red grasped it, the boy was immobile. The hand was like stone. Hard and cold. “Bennet Dillon.”
Red tried to shake the stone hand, but no amount of force he could bring to bear would make it move. The clatter of the men around them, the screaming of the woman with the big bleeding ass, all sounds seemed to cease. For one second Red looked into Bennet Dillon’s eyes, but he didn’t like what he saw. He was just glad they weren’t really looking at him.
He released the hand, normal sound resumed, and Bennet turned away. Red shook his head.
“It’s just the way he is” |
Red looked down at the dead deputy. “Amen to that, brother,” he said softly. He looked around. “What do we do to get him out of here?”
Wilson Sims eyed him for a second. “We’ve done this before. It used to be them Hun bastards. Now it’s the Ashleys.”
Red thought of their war experience and cringed.
Bennet Dillon came out of the house with the remains of a cot that was covered with blood, mostly on one end. It had to be the cot Joe Ashley was on when Red had shot him. He wrapped the body of Chief Deputy Fred Baker in it as easy as a momma diapered a baby, then just as easily hoisted it, body and all, onto his shoulder and stepped smartly down the path to the road.
Sims looked at Red for another long second. “See what I mean?” Then he followed his partner along the sandy trail.
Red walked over into the clearing where the Queen of the Everglades had a gag in her mouth and was sitting in the dirt in handcuffs, still trying to scream and bucking like a nutted bull. In the past few months, Red had seen his share of bulls having their nutsack cut off, and he wasn’t sure which sight was more disturbing.
Then she stopped. She froze, staring at him. Her round, furious eyes gave him the shivers, like she was looking right through him, and wanted to step on whatever she saw.
As he came closer, he saw she wasn’t staring at him, but the rifle. He looked at the Gewehr in his hands, and she looked at him. She looked behind him, from where he’d come out of the woods; she looked back at the house. At the rifle. Her eyes narrowed.
Laura Upthegrove was staring at the rifle |
Tom Middleton had bitched about Red Dedge at Harlan’s, and him having a sharpshooter. She’d never seen Dedge, but here was a man with red hair, or some red hair, as young as he looked, ’cause he was a’losin’ what little he had.
But nobody else here had a rifle like that. Nobody she knew had a rifle like that. He was the sharpshooter, and he’d killed Papa Joe Ashley.
| Copyright © 2022 by Roger Owens |
Gory! Maybe I shouldn’t be reading this while I eat my breakfast. Red is very observant.
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