A Dark and Lonely Place (19 page)

The hotelman, an amateur military historian, loved to spin colorful tales and entertain his guests with jokes.

The hotel rate was two dollars a day. Hot breakfasts and lunches cost thirty-five cents each. Supper was fifty cents. Henry Flagler’s Royal Palm Hotel had Miami’s first and only swimming pool, but Price’s guests had privileges.

John and Laura had never seen a swimming pool and were eager to try it out. She hated her woolen bathing dress which came with a matching hat adorned with a big bow in the front, and black stockings.

They’d both heard whispers about Jane Fisher’s scandalous antics at the Royal Palm. She had peeled off her black woolen stockings and plunged bare-legged into the pool one hot, stifling afternoon. Men stared; women gasped and covered their children’s eyes. No local women dared follow her lead, though Laura wished she could. The story gave her new respect for the millionaire’s child bride.

“Don’t even think about it, we plan to live here,” John warned.

Laura understood but still fantasized. “The suits we wore to swim in the Caloosahatchee were so much more comfortable than this getup,” she said demurely at the deep end of the pool, where John had just surfaced after a somersault off the diving board.

He slicked back his wet hair and spit out water. “But we didn’t wear—”

“I
know.
” Embarrassed, she glanced furtively at the other bathers, mostly men.

“Sorry, darlin’, that outfit can’t hold a candle to what you wore, or didn’t, in that river. You were so beautiful that day. But this bathing dress isn’t bad. You look cute.”

“Cute? It’s hideous! It itches in places ladies can’t scratch in public!” She splashed him fiercely.

He fended her off, caught her in his arms, and calmed her down with whispered promises that they’d soon swim sans suits again, this time in the gentle surf off Ocean Beach. “The sand is like silk and we can wade halfway to Cuba at low tide,” he said.

While strolling back to their hotel, they passed the mortician’s horse-drawn death wagon outside a small house nearby.

Mrs. Price, the hotelier’s wife, stood outside with “Aunt Tilly.” An angel of mercy Miamians turned to in times of crisis, Aunt Tilly had raised two orphans, delivered babies, tended to the sick, and laid out the dead.

“It’s a sad day,” Mrs. Price greeted them. The death wagon had come for Sandra Browne, a young mother of four.

“She was a little thing, excitable and high-strung,” Aunt Tilly said. “Sheriff Hardie’s in there now with the undertaker and her two little girls. They saw her die.”

Laura shivered in the sun as she heard the story.

Cooley Browne had moved his family south from Philadelphia. His timid wife, Sandra, would hide in a closet during Miami’s violent thunderstorms. Strangers, snakes, and scorpions terrified her. So did Indians. That day, as she and her girls baked bread, the door swung open and four Seminole Indian braves strolled into her kitchen.

She screamed, dropped her bread pan, and fell, in what appeared to be a dead faint. But her heart had stopped.

Indians came to Miami by canoe or horse and wagon. They bartered chickens for calico, had their horses shod, and thumbed through the Montgomery Ward catalog at the trading post. They didn’t smile and rarely spoke but were not feared, despite their odd customs. For example, when they were hungry, they’d walk into the nearest home without bothering to knock, sit down at the table, and wait to be fed. They always were. Food was abundant in Miami. Everyone kept gardens. No one went hungry and the Indians’ behavior was simply considered part of the local color.

“Here’s the sheriff now,” Mrs. Price said, as Dan Hardie emerged from the house. John and Bobby had seen the lawman on prior visits but never met him. Tall and lean, with clear gray eyes, Hardie had a strong jaw and a firm handshake.

“Sorry to hear the bad news,” John said. “Do you think she was scared to death? I’ve heard that can happen.”

“Maybe so,” the sheriff said. “A sudden scare mighta killed her if she had a weak heart. I intend to talk to her doctor.”

They watched the undertaker and his assistant carry Sandra Browne’s covered body to the horse-drawn hearse on a stretcher.

Hardie said he’d interviewed her daughters, aged nine and eleven, and found no malice on the part of the Indians, who had since departed to dine elsewhere. “They made no threatening moves, had no weapons.” The sheriff shook his head. “The little girls said they weren’t scared until their mother screamed and collapsed.”

“The poor children,” Laura said softly. “How sad to grow up without a mother.” She wiped her eyes. “Is there some way we can help?”

“Aunt Tilly has it under control,” Hardie said. “She’ll stay until the father arrives. He and his sons are on their way back from Knight’s Key now. Mrs. Price will bring their supper.”

Aunt Tilly returned to the girls, while John and Laura walked toward their hotel with Sheriff Hardie and Mrs. Price.

They turned the corner and moments later heard shouts; running footsteps pounded behind them. “Sheriff! Sheriff!” The mortician’s pale young assistant sprinted around the corner and nearly collided with them.

“Hearse thief! Hearse thief!” he panted.

More angry shouts came from behind him.

“Horse thief?” Hardie frowned.

“No!” The young man gasped. “Hearse thief!” He bent over at the waist, hands on his knees, to catch his breath. “Robbers!” he croaked. “They stole the death wagon with Miz Browne inside!”

Two robbers had hit the hardware store. When employees began to shout, the driver of their getaway car panicked and sped away. The abandoned holdup men fled on foot with store employees in hot pursuit. The fleeing men spotted the unattended death wagon and scrambled aboard. One snatched the reins, cracked the whip, and off they raced, east toward the bay.

“They took that poor dead woman!” Aunt Tilly shouted, breathless as she rushed up to the sheriff. “What will I tell her husband and children?”

“We can stop ’em.” John darted into the hotel for his Winchester, in a locked gun box in the lobby. He emerged in less than a minute and caught up to Hardie. The sheriff saw John’s rifle and reacted.

“You are officially deputized!”

John liked the way that sounded and nodded. The mortician was far down the dusty street, chasing the death wagon on foot.

Hardie flagged down, then commandeered a passing Ford. He and John piled into the car, as the ousted driver begged Hardie not to wreck his new automobile.

John watched the sheriff shift gears, hit the gas pedal, and felt the Ford leap forward. He knew then he had to have a car of his own. Soon.

They raced after the death wagon. “They’re headed for the natural bridge at Arch Creek,” Hardie said, as they passed the huffing and puffing mortician, who gladly gave up the chase.

Arch Creek, over time, had created a natural stone bridge twenty feet wide. During the Seminole wars, it was used by the military. Everyone who arrived in Miami by wagon or automobile crossed the natural bridge.

“We can stop ’em now,” John said, as the death wagon careened across the bridge ahead of them.

“How?” Hardie asked.

“I wouldn’t shoot a horse, but I can bust the wagon’s axle. That’ll stop ’em. If they jump off and run, they can’t get far.”

“It’s too long a shot.” Hardie winced as the car bounced along the rutted, unpaved road. “Nobody could hit that axle from here.”

“I can.”

“Want me to stop so you can take aim?”

“Nope.” John lifted his rifle, leaned out, stared down the barrel, held his breath and slowly squeezed the trigger. The rifle cracked with a puff of acrid smoke.

The death wagon continued racing ahead at breakneck speed.

“Told you . . . ,” Hardie began, when the axle began to smoke, then snapped. The wagon veered sharply, jerked upright, tilted to the left, and tipped over. The two skinny robbers leaped off as Sandra Browne’s shrouded corpse slid out the back.

“Damn,” Hardie whispered. “Who taught you to shoot, son?”

“My dad,” John said. “He’s the best. My brothers are good too. So is Laura. I taught her.”

The sheriff’s eyes widened.

The robbers surrendered to an impromptu posse of Miamians who’d trailed the chase and swiftly surrounded them. The loot from the hardware store was recovered, as were the death wagon and the dead woman, a bit dusty, her shroud askew but no other harm done.

The robbers quickly identified the getaway driver who’d left them behind. In fact, they insisted, he was the ringleader who had organized the entire scheme. John was impressed by the number of local citizens who had joined the chase.

“That’s the Miami way,” Hardie said. “Folks here look out for each other, from Aunt Tilly to the businessmen and passersby on the street. Did you say you plan to settle here?”

John said he did and Hardie asked if he’d be available when needed for a posse. “They all volunteer,” he said, “but none can shoot like you.”

John agreed. “You know, my younger brother, Bobby,” he said, “took a real interest in the Miami Rifles.” The fifty-two young members of the military marching band and color guard performed in dedications, parades, and other events. Under the sheriff’s command, they were affiliated with the National Guard. “We saw ’em at the opening of the new bank building,” John said. “Bobby liked that marching music and those uniforms.”

Hardie chuckled. “They all love those red jackets with the gold braid.”

“He’s a good boy, an excellent rifle shot.”

“Have him look me up. Anytime,” Hardie said, and shook John’s hand. “We meet at the county jail and drill in front of the Twelfth Street firehouse, after dark, when it’s cooler.”

John and Laura cruised up the Miami River to the Musa Isle lookout tower aboard the tour boat
Sallie
the next day. A shop at the base sold postcards, guava jelly, and coconuts. At the top, they had a bird’s-eye view of the “mysterious Everglades, endless watery flats where,” a tour guide ominously intoned, “only Seminole Indians dare go.”

John could barely contain his laughter. Laura looked amused.

At the suggestion of hotel owner Henry Price, they also took an excursion to Cape Florida’s historic lighthouse, built in 1825. Rampaging Indians attacked in 1835, wounded the lighthouse keeper, and killed his assistant. The Indians torched the foot of the circular staircase in an attempt
to smoke out the wounded man. Cornered in the lonely lighthouse tower, bleeding, outnumbered, choking on smoke, and certain he was about to die, the embattled lighthouse keeper made a brave last stand.

He flung a keg of gunpowder down the narrow stairs into the fire. He expected the blast to kill him but hoped to take out a few Indians with him. To his surprise, he survived. The force of the explosion was generated out, instead of up, and blew the fire out with it. The Indians fled screaming, several of them in flames.

The crew of a passing ship heard the explosion, and the lighthouse keeper was rescued.

John and Laura stood in the shadow of the lighthouse listening to the story. Laura looked so grave that John winked. “Ancient history,” he said, with a reassuring smile. “Miami’s civilized now.” The tour guide grinned and agreed.

That night, when the other guests had all retired, John and Henry Price discussed the massacre that had started the Second Seminole War and triggered the lighthouse attack. Laura listened, curled up in a comfortable chair, as the men smoked cigars, talked, and drank.

An unexpected cold front had swept swiftly across South Florida that afternoon. After sunset, the temperature plummeted by thirty degrees. The winter night felt bitter. The only warmth and most of the light came from a roaring fire in the big stone fireplace. Its flickering flames threw eerie shadows across the walls and their solemn faces.

“I don’t know why in hell they named this big county after Major Francis Langhorne Dade,” Price grumbled. “His only claim to fame was getting hisself and his men slaughtered and scalped. Had Dade survived that fight, he woulda been court-martialed. Fool led his troops right into a massacre. It’s embarrassin’, as though this county is cursed. They coulda called it Biscayne, Miami, or Ocean County like some wanted, but no.”

John and Laura had heard the story as schoolchildren, but Price knew details that never made the history books.

Dade, a Virginian, had served with Andrew “Old Hickory” Jackson in Pensacola in 1821, when Spain ceded Florida to the United States. Seminole Indians were scattered all across the peninsula then.

“Jackson forced the Seminoles onto a reservation up in central Florida,” Price said. “His old buddy, Francis Dade, was an infantry commander in Key West by the time he was elected president. Jackson, a veteran Indian fighter, ignored the past promises and ordered all Florida’s Indians to move to Arkansas. When they refused to go, Old Hickory set a deadline. On January 1, 1836, US soldiers were to round up all the Seminoles at bayonet point.” Price lit a cigar, then continued.

“The Indians believed in their treaties and trusted Washington to relent. But Jackson refused to change his plans. So a young chief named Osceola took leadership and the Indians made plans of their own.” Price’s eyes grew sly in the shadows.

“General Wiley Thompson commanded a small garrison at Fort King up near Ocala. As the deadline neared, reinforcements were sent to back up Thompson and his handful of men.

“It was this happy time of year, the Christmas season.” Price nodded solemnly. “Seventy-five years ago this month—an anniversary no one celebrates.” He laughed without humor, puffed his cigar, and poured himself another drink.

“Major Dade never was supposed to lead those hundred soldiers on that march. But fate stepped in. Fate,” he said quietly, “has a way of doing that.” He sighed, then paused for a long moment. “The captain who was assigned to lead them dearly loved his young wife who had fallen gravely ill. The doctors said she was dying. So Major Dade volunteered to lead the march instead, so the captain could remain at her bedside.”

“You have to give the major credit for that,” John said.

“Don’t be fooled, John,” Price said sharply. He shook his head fiercely, the firelight reflected in his eyes. “Dade had other motives. He’d bragged that he could march a hundred men through the entire Indian nation without a scratch. This was his chance to prove it.”