Red Grass River

TWENTY-SEVEN

November 1, 1924

BY THE TIME ELMER PADGETT, SLEEPLESS AND HAGGARD, HAD tracked down his brother and the other two deputies and they all came together in Stuart it was almost noon. It was past two o’clock when St. Lucie County Sheriff J. R Merritt and two deputies he introduced as Wiggins and Jones met with them at the Bluebird Café on Orange Avenue in fort Piece.

As Elmer Padgett explained the situation the St. Lucie cops listened intently. J. R. Merritt had a reputation as a tough sheriff. There were rumors of rumrunners who had driven their loads into St. Lucie County and never been seen again. He’d been appointed sheriff by the governor two years ago and was facing his first election to the office in just three days. He was known to have political ambitions, and the public recognition to be had from busting up the Ashley Gang could be invaluable to his future. Listening to Elmer repeat what Ban Tracey had told Bob Baker, Merritt could not restrain a smile. He told the Palm Beach officers he was deeply grateful to Sheriff Baker for the opportunity to bring to justice such a bad bunch as John Ashley’s. “The question is,” he said, “was this Tracey fella telling Sheriff Bob the truth.”

He turned to a deputy and said, “Jonesy, why dont you go see if this bad-ass really is at Lillis’s place. We’ll be waitin for you at Rhonda’s.” Deputy Jones nodded and went.

Wiggins led the way in the St. Lucie police car and Sheriff Merritt rode with the Palm Beach deputies. He sat in the backseat with Elmer Padgett to one side of him and Henry Stubbs on the other, each one holding one side of a fluttering regional map he’d opened up. He tapped his finger on Vero where it lay about fifteen miles north of Fort Pierce. He knew Wayne Lillis and knew the marina where he lived in a piling house and docked his charter boat. he said it was not a good place to try to take a tough bunch. The house and boat were both at the far end of the marina and anybody approaching along the piers would be spotted in plenty of time to allow for a getaway. With his finger on the map he showed Padgett and Stubbs how the bandits could flee downriver to the Fort Pierce Inlet or upriver into the serpentine channels of the mangrove narrows—or go straight across to the barrier island and run north or south under cover of the high brush and then cross back to the mainland at some safer point.

“What about if we get us a boat?” Elmer said. “Come up on em by way of the river?”

“You can do that if you want,” Merritt said. “I aint about to go out there in the river and make myself a wide-open target.”

“All right then, what?” Henry Stubbs said.

Sheriff J.R. Merritt studied the map for a moment and said. “Oh, I maybe got an idea.” He looked up and grinned from one to the other of them. “But it aint worth spit if they already gone, is it? Let’s wait and see are they still around.”

Rhonda’s was a small cafe off the Dixie Highway a half-mile north of Vero. They sat at a large corner table and ordered coffee and two buckets of fried oysters. They ate without conversation until Merritt said. “You know, boys, grateful as I am to Sheriff Baker for the chance to nab this bunch myself, I cant help but wonder how come he didnt come along with you all. I always heard he had a special dislike for that whole Ashley family and for John in particular. I mean, you’d think he’d make special sure to be in one this.”

The Palm Beach deputies looked sidelong at each other as if each would have one of the other answer the question. Though they had not spoken of it among themselves they had all wondered the same thing. Then Elmer Padgett said, “He had to go see about his family. Tracey said Ashley was goin out to his house. He had to go see if they all right. It’s only natural.”

“Well you right about that,” Merritt said. He scratched his ear contemplatively. “I guess if he sees his wife and kids are all right, he’ll be along, wont he? I mean, he aint about to miss out on takin down about the worst bandit we ever had in this part of the state, is he? Especially one that sends him a bullet and says he’s got another one with his name on it.”

The Palm Beach deputies looked at him.

“Oh yeah, I heard that story,” Merritt said. He blew on his coffee and took a sip. “You know, it’s somethin else I’ve long heard. I aint never believed it for a minute, you understand, but still, I always heard Bobby Baker’s always been just a little, well…scared of John Ashley. They say it’s been that way since they was pups. Now boys, just between us, why you figure anybody’d say such a thing about Sheriff Bob?”

“Well, sheriff, all I can tell you for certain sure is Bob Baker aint afraid of any man alive,” Henry Stubbs said. “I can tell you that sure as I’m sittin here.” The other Palm Beach deputies nodded.

“Some people seem to just naturally prefer a lie to the truth of a thing,” Elmer Padgett said. “Who can say why? Lie’s just more excitin for em, I guess.”

Merritt chuckled in the manner of one responding politely to a awkwardly told joke. “I guess,” he said.

And then Deputy Jones was coming through the front door and spied them and came over and took a chair at the table. He looked at their expectant faces each in turn and without expression said, “They aint at Lillis’s.”

The Palm Beach cops muttered curses and sagged in their chairs. Jones grinned to see their disappointment and then said, “They aint at Lillis’s but they still in town. They’re at Mel’s shootin pool.”

The Palm Beach deputies sat up and exchanged excited looks.

“You boys described them pretty good,” Jones said. “But I tell you what—they dont look the least bit worried somebody might be on their tail.”

Elmer looked at Merritt. “Can we take them there?”

Merritt shook his head. “Not unless I wanna risk shootin bystanders—and I dont.” He pulled out his map and spread it open on the table. “Here,” he said, pointing. “If they’re going north they have to cross here.”

The others leaned forward to see his finger at the mouth of the Sebastian River—where they all knew there was a bridge.

“Let’s get out there before they do,” Merritt said as he stood up.

Except for Hanford Mobley who was still a little sulky because John Ashley had prevented him from burning down Bob Baker’s house, they were in high spirits. John Ashley felt like a fresh new life was opening up to him.

They had gone out on Wayne’s boat early that morning and taken several dolphin just outside the Fort Pierce Inlet and then reeled in some trout on light tackle as they chugged back up the lagoon to the marina under a bright noon sun. They fileted the fish and took them to Lucy’s Kitchen up the street and lingered over a leisurely meal of fried filets and scrambled eggs, fried potatoes, grits and gravy, biscuits and coffee. They had then taken haircuts at Shorty O’Malley’s shop across the street and passed some time chatting with a few of the oldtimers in the local Liars Club who came together there every day to argue politics and tell stories of the old days and shake their heads over the abject state of the modern world. One of them made bold to ask John Ashley how he had managed to break out of state prison twice in one lifetime and John Ashley told him and they all listened raptly to his story. In days to come most of them would at first retell the tale almost exactly the way he told it, but after a time each man of them would begin to embroider it in his own fashion.

The gang had then repaired to Mel’s for a few games of pool and bottles of beer. The first games sparked such a fierce competition for the title of King of the Table that they set up an elaborate six-man playoff system. BY the time Marie Lillis banked the cue ball off the side rail to sink the eight in an opposite corner pocket and beat Ray Lynn for the championship, the windows of the hall had been dark for hours and they were all a little buzzed on beer. Marie beamed with delight as the men happily chided each other for having lost to a woman.

They took their leave of Wayne and Marie on the street in front of Mel’s and got into the Ford. Hanford Mobley, his spirits improved, tooted the klaxon and they drove off up the highway.

Twelve miles north of Vero was the hamlet of Sebastian and three miles farther on was the Saint Sebastian River and the flat wooden bridge that traversed it. The region was isolated and smelled of tidal marshes and rarely sounded of other than wind hissing in the cattails and seabirds squalling at their feed. The sound end of the bridge rested on the tip of a long and narrow spit of land where the highway was flanked to either side by high shrubs and clusters of pines.

The sun was still well about the horizon when the two police cars arrived at the bridge and cross over it and turned around and parked on either side of the road to face any traffic coming off the bridge from the south. For the rest of the afternoon they waited with guns out of sight but at the ready. A few cars came over the bridge but none conveyed the Ashley Gang. After a time Sheriff Merritt wondered aloud if John Ashley was simply taking his time about getting underway for Jacksonville or if he had decided to turn back south for some reason.

At sundown the sheriff told Elmer to move the Palm Beach car onto the bridge and he then positioned his own car across the foot of the bridge to block all passage at this end of it. He removed a heavy length of chain and two large flashlights from his car and handed them to Henry Stubbs and L. B. Thomas in the other vehicle and told Deputy Jones to stay with the St. Lucie car and tell any motorists who approached from the north that they would have to wait until morning to cross or they could press on by some inland route. He then got in the Palm Beach car with the others and they returned to the south end of the bridge and all got out except Elmer Padgett who was driving. They removed the chain and flashlights from the car and Merritt told Elmer to drive back to Vero and borrow a red lantern from the train depot. “Another few minutes it’ll be dark enough so nobody’ll see it’s a cop car unless their lights shine on you,” the sheriff said. “Could be our boy’s gone back, but keep an eye open for him anyhow.”

Forty minutes later Elmer had the lantern and he followed the depot agent’s directions to Mel’s and as he went chugging by on the darkened street he saw them still in there shooting pool and drinking beer and laughing. He wheeled around and headed back for the river and then thought Sheriff Bob must be wondering what they were up to and so stopped at Rhonda’s Cafe and asked the use of the telephone to call his headquarters in Palm Beach County. When the desk clerk said the sheriff was at home, Elmer gave him a message to relay to him, couching it in sufficiently cryptic terms to keep the cafe eavesdroppers from knowing what was going on. Then he went back to rejoin the others at the bridge.

As they drove past the few scattered buildings that composed Sebastian, Clarence Middleton was telling about a duck who went into a speakeasy and asked the bartender if he had any fudge. “Barkeep says, ‘No, I aint got no fudge. Cant you see this is a barroom? Get the hell outa here!’ Duck leaves, comes back the next day. ‘Got any fudge?’ Barkeep says, ‘I tole you yesterday I aint got no fudge. Now get the hell outa here!’ Duck leaves, comes back the next day. ‘Got any fudge?’ Barkeep said, ‘You little feathery son of a bitch! You come in here one more time and ask me that I’m gonna nail your goddamn beak to the bar.’ Duck leaves, comes back next day, says to the bartender, ‘Got any nails?’ Barkeep says, ‘What? No, I aint got no nails!’ Duck says, ‘Got any fudge?’”

A Dodge sedan turned onto the highway directly in front of them from an intersecting dirt road and Hanford Mobley applied the brakes hard and the Ford stalled. Beside him John Ashley bumped his head hard on the windshield and behind him Clarence Middleton and Ray Lynn were thrown against the front seats.

“Bastard!” Hanford Mobley shouted and the only two people on the street looked at him. The Dodge sped away without even slowing. “Let’s catch him and whip his ass!” The Dodge went out of sight around a bend in the road ahead.

Clarence rummaged under the seats till he found the crank and then got out with it. He had to twirl the balky motor three times before it fired up.

“Hurry up, dammit!” Hanford said as Clarence held his hand to a headlamp light and examined a callus he’d ripped open with the crank.

Clarence got in and Hanford Mobley gunned the Model T ahead, smoothly and swiftly working leaves and pedals. The motor rapped sweetly and the car swayed as it picked up speed.

John Ashley laughed. “Whooo! Lookit this boy go! I hope you catch em, Hannie, but I hope they’re little fellas, cause you’re the one’s gonna brace em, you being the one who’s so hot to whip their ass and all.”

Hanford gave him a look. “I aint scared of em and I dont need you all’s help. I’ll brace their asses, you watch.”

“I got a dollar says old Hannie dont catch em before we hit the bridge,” Clarence Middleton said.

There were no takers and Hanford muttered, “You bastards, I’ll take the bet,” and the others laughed.

The road wound through the darkness and a heavy stand of pine and they had gone more than two miles before they caught sight of the single red taillight of the car ahead.

“There the sumbitches are!” Hanford said, and leaned forward on the steering wheel as if to lend more speed to the Ford.

“Damn if they aint movie right smartly their ownselfs,” Ray Lynn said. “They probably know Hardtime Hannie here’s after their ass.”

And now they saw a red light shining up ahead on the spit of land where the bridge began. The Dodge slowed as it went out onto the spit and its lights closed in to illuminate a red lantern fixed to a chain hang across the foot of the bridge. The car rolled up to within a few feet of the lantern and stopped.

Hanford Mobley was laughing as they reached the spit and he slowed the Ford. “You mulletheads sure missed the chance of a easy dollar,” he said. “Pay up, Ray!” He brought the car to a halt a few feet behind the Dodge. A pale of faces looked back at them though the car’s rear window.

“Whoever the hell closed off the bridge,” Ray Lynn said as he handed a dollar over the front seat to Hanford Mobley, “you oughta give em half this for the help.”

“Well now you caught em, let’s see you whip their ass,” John Ashley said. “They just sittin there waitin on you.”

The driver of the Dodge was a young man named Ted Miller and the friend with him was S.O. Davis, whom some called So-So despite his hatred of the nickname. They had been to a dance in Fort Pierce earlier that Saturday evening but were disappointed by the paucity of pretty girls and so decided to drive around and sip from their shine jug and see what adventures the night might bring. After an hour of aimless driving and talking about girls, they headed for home in Sebastian. They were almost to Davis’s house when So-So said maybe they ought pay Angie Cambone a visit. Angie Cambone lived in a shack across the river and was reputed to do the trick for a dollar. Neither of them had ever even seen her but they’d heard of her since early adolescence—and long heard the old joke that she was so ugly she had a sneak up on a glass to get drink of water. Miller gave Davis a thin look and said a man had to be hornier than a billygoat to go to Angie Cambone. Davis said he didnt know about Miller but he himself was about as horny as a damn herd of billygoat. They looked at each other and laughed and Miller admitted that he was so horny he didnt care if Angie did look like her momma’d sat on her face at birth, he was going to need a wheelbarrow to get his hard-on from the car to Angie’s door. He goosed the Dodge down the dirt road and made a tight turn onto the Dixie Highway and neither of them even took notice of the Ford that had to brake sharply to avoid hitting them.

They were arguing about which of them would go first with Angie when they saw the red light ahead. “What the hell’s this?” Miller said. He slowed the Dodge and as they drew closer they saw it was a red lantern hooked to a chain hung across the entrance to the bridge.

Davis groaned. “Of all the damn times to close the bridge.”

Miller braked the car a few feet from the chain. The headlamps cast their yellow beams onto the empty bridge planks beyond. “Shoot, I dont see nothin wrong with it, do you?” Miller said. “How come they closed it I wonder.”

Headlights fell over them from the rear and only now did they become aware of the car closing up behind them. “I want you to look here at this sumbuck who’s gonna have to back around before we can,” Miller said.

Davis looked back at the car coming to a stop directly behind them and said, “Might could be some ole boy even hornier’n us on his way to see Angie. Boy, is he gonna be chafed to find out he cant get across.”

The driver’s door of the car behind them swung open and a small vaguely silhouetted man stepped out.

Flashlight beams suddenly blazed from the shrubbery on both sides of the road and lit up the interior of the car behind them and Miller and Davis saw three men yet in the car and the small man outside—he looked hardly more than a boy—was wide-eyed and starkly illuminated and immobile as a jacklit deer.

“STAND FAST YOU SONOFABITCH OR WE’LL BLOW YOUR DAMN HEAD OFF!”

“Oh Jesus, what?” Davis said.

“PUT YOUR HANDS UP NOW! NOW!—OR WE’LL BLAST YOU TO HELL!”

The man outside the car raised his hands up high, his eyes still fixed hugely into the bright flashlight beam.

“OUT OF THE CAR—ALL YOU—OUT—NOW! HANDS OUT WHERE WE CAN SEE THEM. MOVE, GODDAMNIT!”

“It’s a damn holdup,” Miller said, his voice high and tight. He quickly stripped off his watch and put it under the car seat, then dug into his pocket for the few dollars he had and tucked them under the seat too. Davis immediately did likewise, saying, “Oh sweet Jesus, oh lord.”

Behind them the other three men in the car all got out on the driver’s side and put their hands up. Men emerged from the dark foliage on both sides of the road and two of them held a flashlight in one hand and a pistol in the other and the rest were armed with rifles and they formed a loose semicircle around the surrendered men who stood squinting into the blinding glare of the flashlights.

“STAND FAST!”

Two of the armed men hastened into the blaze of light and quickly relieved the surrendered men of their pistols and then backed out of the lights again. And now another moved in with a fistful of handcuffs and began to manacle the prisoners’ hands behind them.

Miller opened his door and stepped out into the glare of headlights and raised his hands. One of the armed men came toward him and in the peripheral cast of the Ford’s headlights he saw that it was the St. Lucie high sheriff.

“Is your name Miller?” Merritt said. “Dont I know your daddy?”

Miller nodded jerkily. “Yessir, it’s—you do—I mean, thats my name, and Daddy fixed your boat—your outboard—a coupla months ago.”

The sheriff smiled. “Why your hands up, boy? Is it somethin I ought arrest you for?”

Miller dropped his hands. “No sir, no. I—we—didnt know what’s happenin. We thought we was bein held up.”

The sheriff laughed. “We just nabbed the goddamn Ashley Gang is what we done.” He pulled a .45 automatic out of his waistband and looked on it as though it were a special gift. “this here’s John Ashley’s gun.” He looked back at the men holding their hands up and laughed again. “That’s him on the right. See how the light shines on that glass eye?”

With his good eye narrowed against the flashlight beam John Ashley appeared to be holding a wink. He looked to Miller to be irritated but not at all afraid. So did the others.

“My car’s at the other end of the bridge,” Merritt said. “How bout a ride over?”

Davis hurried around to the backseat of the Dodge so the sheriff could sit up front and then Miller drove over the river. His headlights camp up on a St. Lucie County police car blocking the end of the bridge. Leaning on a front fender was a St. Lucie deputy.

Merritt asked where they were headed and Miller said they’d just been taking a ride and would go on back home now. Merritt and the other office got in the police car, Merritt behind the wheel, and the sheriff backed out of the way so Miller could pass him by and turn his car around, and then Merritt led the way back across the bridge. Miller and Davis kept looking at each other and grinning. “The Ashley Gang!” Davis said. “Hot damn!”

The bandits’ car yet stood in the road and Merritt called for one of the deputies to move it out of the way. He parked his car on the grassy shoulder opposite the side of the road where the bandits were bunched with their hands cuffed behind them. A line of four deputies held them at gunpoint in full glare of the flashlights. As the Ford was backed off the road, Merritt waved Miller on by and Davis said, “Go, man!” and Miller gunned the Dodge and they went.

They sped back toward Sebastian in high excitement, both of them jabbering at once and eager to tell everyone about their witness to the capture of the Ashley Gang. So enrapt were they with their adventure that neither paid the least notice to the green runabout that hurtled past them in the opposite direction.

The instant the flashlights hit them from both sides of the car they knew they had no chance to make a fight of it. They were in a car and in bright light and could not see the men who had them under the gun. Ever the BAR on the floor was of no help under such conditions. Clarence cursed and Ray Lynn sighed and John Ashley’s first thought was that it was going to be godawful hard to break out of prison this time without Daddy’s help. But he had Laura out there. He’d find a way.

As he got out of the car and put up his hands and squinted his eye against the glaring lights he decided the first thing he would ask of her was to find Ben Tracey and kill him. The bastard ratted. That was how this trap got set.

And now they stood cuffed and under gunpoint in the blaze of the flashlights and the Dodge was heading off back toward Sebastian and the leader of this bunch came across the road and said, “Mister Ashley, I’m pleased to meet you. My name’s Merritt.”

John Ashley knew him by reputation. “Pleasure’s mine, Sheriff,” John Ashley said. “This was a nice piece of work.”

Beside him Hanford Mobley snorted and spat.

Merritt grinned. “Thank you, I believe it was. Now what I’d like for you to do is to step on over to my car and—” They heard the high raspy flutter of a Model T motor working hard and both of them looked up the road and saw a pair of headlamps closing in.

The runabout slowed and its brakes screeched and the car halted and then lurched against the sudden application of its hand break. Bob Baker stepped down from the car without cutting off the motor. He held a Winchester carbine in one hand.

J. R. Merritt said, “Well hey now, Bob, I’m damn glad you made it. Your boys here were—”

Bob Baker stepped past him without a glance, his eyes on John Ashley. He looked like a man in a bad waking dream. He stood before John Ashley and held a hand up in front of him and said, “Remember this?”

John Ashley saw that he was holding a rifle cartridge. He grinned. “Got my message, hey? But damn, Bobby, I sent that thing—when?—a year ago? I like to died of old age waitin for you to come out to the Glades for the other one.”

Without taking his eyes off him Bob Baker slipped the round into the Winchester and levered it home and held the carbine pointed at him from the hip.

The deputies backed away from John Ashley and glanced at J. R. Merritt, who looked on and said nothing. In the sideglow of headlamps and flashlights Bob Baker’s face looked as hard and bloodless as barked pine. His eyes seemed fixed on something more than John Ashley, something no man else could see but which John Ashley believed he could smell. A faint odor of rage undercut by fear. It was the smell of one more victory over this man who could never beat him.

He grinned. “You gonna shoot me, Bobby? In front of all these witnesses and with my hands locked behind my back? I dont reckon. But tell you what: you just wait for me. I’ll break out soon enough and come see you. You know I will. Maybe by then you’ll find you a pair of balls. Your wife told me she’ll be glad of it when you do.” He laughed in Bob Baker’s face.

And got the surprise of his life when Bob Baker shot him in the heart.

As John Ashley went sprawling back Hanford Mobley screamed and kicked at Baker and Deputy Wiggins shot him in the throat and blood jumped off Hanford’s neck as Clarence and Ray Lynn stood agape and then the darkness detonated into speaking blasts of gunfire and every prisoner went down in the fusillade and the shooters stepped up to the fallen men and shot them repeatedly and then ceased.

They stood for a time in deep silence and the rising haze of gunsmoke. Then Bob Baker went to John Ashley and squatted beside him and none saw what he did but every man of them knew. Then he stood and his hand went to his pocket and he looked around at them all and they looked back at him mutely.

He went to his car and got in and turned it around and drove away into the darkness.

And behind him seven policemen drew together and even though no living soul could overhear they conversed in whispers.