A Dark and Lonely Place (31 page)

T
he young woman in white stumbled as she ran, her blond hair pale in the moonlight. She carried a satchel and paused from time to time to catch her breath and regain her bearings. The endless woods looked so different, so forbidding at night. The only light was the quarter moon, and the path, when she could see it, lay in shadow. But, on a mission, she felt no fear.

She slowed and stared uncertainly at faint lights up ahead. Was she lost? If she was on the right path, there should be nothing but dark woods between her and her destination. Why, she wondered with a sigh, must this always happen at night? And what
is
that up ahead? She had thought she was alone in the wilderness. Focused on the mysterious, moving lights, she never saw the man in the mask until he stepped directly out in front of her, brandishing a rifle. The barrel glinted in the night. She’d seen up close what such guns could do.

“Halt!” he ordered, his voice raspy. “Don’t move.”

A bandana concealed the lower half of his face. All she saw were his eyes and the rough hands grasping the weapon. She gasped as he took a long stride toward her. What had she stumbled into?

He had heard her approach, glad that the arriving intruder was not stealthy, but on edge that anyone at all was out there in the dark.

Now, for the first time, she saw the rope stretched across the narrow, rutted, unpaved road ahead.

“Turn around now and don’t come back here,” he said gruffly. “Don’t say nothing to anybody.”

“I won’t say a word, but I’m not turning around either.” Still panting, she firmly stepped forward. “I’m Mrs. Nils Jorgensen, from White City. Ingrid. I’m a nurse. Stand aside, sir, and let me pass.”

“Turn around, ma’am, or I’ll shoot you.”

She did not flinch but stood her ground. “My neighbor who lives up yonder made an urgent request that I hurry to help his wife, who’s in childbirth labor. He’s gone to Fort Pierce by horse and wagon to fetch the doctor. It’s at least a two-hour ride. The woman is alone and needs me. Now.”

“No. You can’t . . .”

Ingrid Jorgensen, her eyes adjusted to the low light, now saw men unloading cases of liquor up ahead. Later, when she had time to think about it, she realized what they were doing. But all she thought of at the time was the young mother and baby who needed her. Chin up, she shook her finger at the man. “I’m on my way to help a mother birth her baby, and you won’t stop me.”

“Watch me . . .” The rifleman’s words trailed off as another man, well built and a head taller, emerged from the darkness without a sound.

“Who is she?” he asked the gunman.

The rifleman shrugged. “She just come up outta nowhere. I told her to go home or get shot.”

“Lower your gun, Sam,” the tall man said, with a sigh. “We don’t point guns at women.”

“Sir”—Ingrid Jorgensen turned to the newcomer and introduced herself—“I am a nurse.”

He nodded. “John Ashley, ma’am.”

“Thank God. I thought it was you, Mr. Ashley. But it’s so dark . . .” She ducked under the rope and rushed to him.

“I need your help,” she said, still breathing hard, her hand over her pounding heart. “It’s Seth Miller’s wife. Their first little one. It’s been a hard . . .”

John’s attitude changed. “We’ll get you up there as fast as we can, ma’am. Here, let me carry that for you.” He took her satchel and scowled at the rifleman.

“Please don’t delay her husband and the doctor when they come!” she said, over her shoulder.

“He won’t,” John said. “I promise you that, ma’am.” He turned to the rifleman. “When he comes with the doctor, take them right to Miller’s door.”

The nurse was breathless as she kept up with John’s long stride. “Do you need any help?” he asked. “My wife, Laura, is here somewhere. She’s at her best in a crisis.” He searched the darkness and the golden pools of lantern light, as men labored to tote heavy cases of moonshine from the still and load it into mule-drawn wagons. “Laura,” he called. “Laura!”

The workers parted and she appeared from their midst carrying a lantern, a .38 caliber revolver strapped to her waist. Her blue eyes widened when she saw the woman, her fine blond hair wild and free in the night breeze. John explained. Laura nodded. “I have clean towels in the wagon,” she told the nurse. “I’ll get them.”

“Take some whiskey too,” John called after her. “If the patient doesn’t need it, I’m sure Seth Miller and the good doctor will before this night is over.”

“I knew you’d help.” Ingrid Jorgensen gratefully clasped his hand. “I’ve heard about all the good things you do. God bless you.”

After escaping the chain gang, John kept his promise: to love Laura, make her happy, live for Bobby, and try to repay his parents for all they’d lost.

Still not married, John and Laura could not have cleaved more to one another. She participated wholeheartedly in whatever John did, legal or illegal. Newspapers had dubbed her “Queen of the Everglades,” their base of operation, and true or not, she was widely believed to be a powerful influence on John, his gang members, and their entire enterprise.

Both clung to the dream of exchanging vows at Saint Stephen’s Church in Coconut Grove. Initially, they’d hoped to be the first couple married there, but the simple mission-style chapel with its arched door and bell tower had opened on schedule without them in 1912, when John was a fugitive, wanted for murder. The little church was still their dream. Its early members were the Mathesons, the McFarlands, and the Munroes, all pioneer Miami families, rock-solid citizens John had hoped would be their friends and neighbors.

Honest work was not available for chain gang fugitives pictured on wanted posters, so John operated the Ashley family’s three moonshine stills in Palm Beach County. The business prospered and grew under his management.

Palm Beach sheriff George Baker suffered from health problems and had lost a leg but never stopped his pursuit of John Ashley. A few volunteers had initially stepped forward. The reward had grown. Those eager to claim it assumed that a legendary marksman who’d lost an eye was no longer to be feared. But his would-be captors found, to their dismay, that he was as good a marksman as ever. John, they concluded, had probably always closed his left eye when he aimed. His skill, and his growing popularity, made it difficult to recruit men to hunt him. He possessed all the qualities that pioneers admired. Brave and kind, he excelled as a marksman, hunter, trapper, and fisherman, remained loyal to only one woman, had a contagious sense of humor, and never hesitated to thumb his nose at authority.

As their business prospered, the Ashley family shared with others, as always. Everyone in Palm Beach County had stories about John Ashley and his gang. Sick, poor, unfortunate people found money tucked beneath rocks left on their porches. Elderly widows and young mothers with hungry children found food and supplies on their doorsteps. When the Ashleys stocked up on necessities, they always ordered extra for those in need.

John also took great pains to protect the legitimate businessmen with whom he dealt. He rented mules and wagons to haul heavy loads of whiskey to paved roads where it could be transferred into waiting cars. Each time he rented them Ashley paid the full purchase price and had the owner fill out an undated bill of sale to show the authorities if the gang was ever caught using the wagons and animals in an illegal operation. When they were safely returned, the owner would reimburse the gang for the full amount, less the rent.

Prosperity beyond their wildest dreams was just around the corner. Prohibition, in 1920, forever changed the future of John Ashley and those he loved. With liquor sales banned nationwide, the demand soared.

John expanded the business. He and his brothers Frank and Ed, experienced boaters like so many others in South Florida, took to the sea. The British sold the most popular brands of liquor, and there was a huge demand to fill. The Ashley Gang smuggled liquor from Bahamian warehouses into the Jupiter Inlet and Stuart. They ran liquor to Florida from West End in the Bahamas. No US government ever had or would have
enough federal agents or police to protect the entire Florida coast, with all its inlets, islands, coves, and deserted beaches.

The Ashleys were not alone. Many prominent families engaged in bootlegging and rum-running, which burgeoned into a lucrative business for all. Entire populations of frontier Florida towns were either engaged in transporting and selling contraband liquor or were customers of those who were. Liquor for medicinal purposes was a household staple in nearly all Florida homes. And most of the population saw Prohibition as another example of federal regulation that their parents or grandparents had rejected when they seceded from the Union. Men reaped fortunes. Competition flourished. Lawmen and politicians happily pocketed payoffs to look the other way.

In for a dime, in for a dollar. Break one federal law and it’s easier to ignore others. The Ashleys embraced the premise that it was no crime to rob trains and banks. They were simply reclaiming Confederate wealth stolen by damn Yankees.

So when the weather grew too rough to go to sea, the gang raided banks from Stuart to Fort Meade, Avon Park, and Boynton Beach. His neighbors respected John’s code of ethics. The well-planned robbery of a major South Florida bank was aborted at the last minute when John learned that a childhood playmate was the bank’s president. It wouldn’t be right, he said, to do that to a boyhood pal. So they didn’t.

Laura enjoyed her role. At a time when women were slowly achieving a few basic rights, she participated fully in John’s business. She drove getaway cars faster than any man. She flounced into banks, posed as a customer, and cased them for robberies. She smiled, waved, and drove carloads of bootleg whiskey past Prohibition agents who waved back.

Even John’s nephew Hanford Mobley, son of the businessman of the same name, joined the gang in his early teens. Popular and athletic, full of fun and pranks, he reminded everyone of the uncle he idolized. Hanford often drove his family’s Model T Ford to school and was often seen with eight or nine school pals piled into the car cruising on their lunch break.

Inevitably, Prohibition’s huge profits attracted money-hungry mobsters from New York and Chicago. They showed up in South Florida, sweating in woolen suits, slogging through swamps in shiny shoes, attempting
to muscle in and take over the action. But they didn’t know the coastline, the currents, the Gulf Stream, or the swampy countryside. Even more important, they didn’t know the depth of pioneer Floridians’ dislike for intruders, particularly Yankees. The final shot of the Civil War, an ancient echo, had been fired fifty-five years earlier, but the war still raged on in the hearts and minds of South Floridians.

Sheriff Baker was still obsessed. When a tip came that John was out hunting alone, on foot, he sent his seven best deputies to lie in wait and shoot him. They tried, several times, but missed. They demanded he surrender. He laughed, climbed a tree, and pinned them down with rifle fire from somewhere inside the dense foliage. He shouted that he had them covered and they froze. He called out their names to prove he could see them all, and swore to kill the first one to move. Then he quietly climbed down and left.

The deputies lay facedown on the ground in the scorching midday sun, afraid to move a muscle. Hours later a local homesteader rode by on horseback. When he stopped to ask what the hell they were doing, they frantically warned him to dismount and hit the dirt. John Ashley, they said, was high above them with a rifle and had them all pinned down.

“He’ll kill you!” one cried. “Get down, for God’s sake, man!”

“No, he won’t. I have no quarrel with John.” The man squinted up into the trees but saw no one. “He’s a good neighbor; he’d give anybody the shirt off his back.” Then he rode on. Nearly an hour later, the man spotted John Ashley up ahead on foot and caught up with him. “John,” he asked, “do you know deputies are still hugging the ground back there, sure you’ll shoot ’em if they move?” They shared a good laugh and sips from John’s silver flask, a gift from Laura.

Baker would not have been as upset if the homesteader hadn’t repeated the story until it reached the ears of a reporter, who interviewed him and put it in the newspaper.

Embarrassed again, unable to recruit a posse, Sheriff Baker sent out a hit man to kill John Ashley.

One afternoon, camped near one of the stills, Shine, John’s favorite dog and constant companion, began to bark furiously. He caught a young black man, his rifle aimed, about to kill the animal.

“Don’t you shoot that dog!” he shouted, and lifted his own rifle. “If
you do, I’ll kill you!” John took the man’s gun away and examined it. “Where’d you get this weapon?” he asked.

“Sheriff Baker give it to me,” the would-be killer whined. “It’s from the National Guard armory. I got to give it back. Sheriff Baker,” he said, “sent me here to kill you.” John became so angry that the terrified man fell to his knees, began to cry and beg for his life.

Baker, the man said, offered to drop charges against him if he’d kill John; if he didn’t he’d go to a chain gang for life.

John felt sorry for him. “Here.” The man flinched as John gave him a bullet. “Tell Baker this one’s for him. If he wants me dead, tell him to come out here like a man and do it himself.” He told the would-be hit man to run, but instead he continued to quake, cry, and beg for his life. John sighed, took out his billfold, handed the man five dollars, and told him to leave. Before he did, the man asked John to give back the rifle.

“Nope,” John said. “Tell Baker I’m not giving it back until he comes out here and asks me himself.” John thought it was funny.

Baker was livid.

John and Laura were at his parents’ for dinner when the second-biggest story of the year broke. Frank and his little red-headed wife drove up in their yellow Ford with the news. “Wait till you hear this, Johnny! Sheriff George Baker is dead,” he announced. “Natural causes—a heart attack.”

“I can’t believe he’s gone!” John said. “You sure, Frankie?”

“Funeral’s set for Thursday.”

“I don’t wish nobody ill,” Leugenia said, “and I’ll pray for his family. But nobody will miss that man. Ain’t no lawmen like him with the Lord.”