Bone Mizell: Cracker Cowboy of the Palmetto Prairies

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Since it was Bone who’d buried the youth and knew the grave’s location, it seemed only logical the cunning old grifter be hired to retrieve the youth’s body. Bone confessed later he took the money and promptly went on a bender. After sobering up, he guiltily rode out to the grave sites with two helpers. He said his intention was to disinter the young feller’s body.

‘I was a’gonna bring him in,’ said Bone. ‘I really was.’

Along the way, however, Bone pondered long and hard on the situation. On the one hand, Bone claimed, his young friend had made it clear he was ‘tired of travelin’–never wanted to see another train.’ On the other hand, John Underhill had told Bone many times how he sure ‘hankered to take a train trip afore he died. He jist never had the money for it.’

‘Well, sir,’ said Bone later, ‘it jist didn’t seem right. After a few snorts to sorta fortify us for the diggin’ job, it seemed even less right. Here was a free train ride jist for the takin’–with a damn fine funeral at the end–probably with four white horses a-pullin’ the hearse.’ So it came to pass that the body of a tired young dilettante remained in a lonely Florida grave, while the body of an old cracker cowboy took a belated train ride to New Orleans–and a rich man’s burial under an ornate headstone.

There’s been a lot of retelling of this story over the years. None were ever more whimsical than an epic poem penned by a lovely, doe-eyed Florida lady named Ruby Leach Carson. The eight lachrymose stanzas of Ruby’s ‘Ballad of Bone Mizell’ were later set to music by Jim Bob Tinsley and his wife, Dottie. What Ruby didn’t know–couldn’t know–was that Bone’s personal ballad had one more strange stanza to go.

For over 30 years, Bone’s grave went unmarked. Then a few of his friends decided it was time to correct this horrendous oversight before they, too, went to their just rewards. They quietly went about having a small tombstone simply inscribed. But, as fate would have it–and probably with Bone’s spiritual connivance–the marker was placed on the wrong grave.

Not long after, on a quiet, moonlit night, with the wind whispering through the palmettos, two midnight marauders crept into the Joshua Creek Cemetery and moved the marker to the right grave. They were Bone’s kinsmen, Smoot and Mayo Johnson. Everyone agrees that had Bone been around, he’d gladly have stood his intrepid kin to several rounds of drinks at Arcadia’s old Bar and Grill Saloon.

Today, there are those who stand before Bone’s grave claiming to hear faint chuckles coming from below. Perhaps. But, Bone being Bone, more’n likely it’s a hearty guffaw they hear coming from the grave of Florida’s original Cracker cowboy.

This article was written by Jim Bennett and originally appeared in the October 1999 issue of Wild West.

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Tags: Historical Figures, People, The Wild West, Wild West