Longarm and the Whiskey Woman (21 page)

When they were gone, Longarm sat down at the table. Frank Carson came over from where he had been standing by the bed and sat down across from where Asa Colton had been sitting. He said, "Looks like you didn't come off too good. You lost a wife, and you damned near lost the whiskey. I do have to say, though, you got a better price on the whiskey. I guess you could look at it as a profit all around."

Longarm watched the old man and his son as they walked back toward the big house. He could see them clearly out the window. He said thoughtfully, "I just wish they weren't such nice folks."

He switched back to Carson. He said, "I don't understand about this railroad business, these boxcars and the whiskey being loaded and all this and that. How is that going to get me back to Arizona with a load of whiskey?"

Carson said, "it ain't hard. There's a siding about fifteen miles southwest of here. You and I will ride over there in the morning. It will be about a two-, two-and-a-half-hour ride. There will be three boxcars loaded on the siding. I'm taking six thousand gallons and it will be loaded into one of the boxcars. Your two thousand gallons will be in another, and as I understand it, they're shipping four thousand gallons down to an old customer in Texas that will be in the third boxcar. That's twelve thousand gallons. Each one of those cars has a waybill on it for its destination. When the train picks us up coming by from North Little Rock, it will run us down to Hot Springs, which is a switching point about eighty or ninety miles away. From there, you can get your boxcar tagged onto a train heading west, I'll head east, and I guess that load for Texas will head south. That's all there is to it."

"Will any of the Coltons be there?"

Carson shook his head. He said, "I doubt it. The wagons will have already arrived and loaded the whiskey on the boxcars and will have damned near gotten back here by the time we get there. Somebody might stick around to see that nobody fools around with the whiskey, but the Coltons don't like to be involved in that part of the business. That way, nobody can really ever connect them with it."

Longarm said, "Sounds smart to me." He reached across and picked up the bottle of whiskey and poured them both a drink. "By the way, Mr. Carson, I've taken note of the fact that while you brought me my money, you didn't bring me those two bottles of Maryland whiskey I had in my room in Little Rock."

Carson smiled. "Well, either somebody stole that whiskey or I drank it or it got broke. Either way, you ain't got it. Best I can tell you about that is that however you lost it, don't make no difference."

Longarm gave him a look. "I bet you drank it."

Frank Carson said, "Now, why would I want to do that when my family makes some of the best sipping whiskey in the South? It wasn't that bad, though, to tell you the truth. I have to admit that."

Longarm gave him a stern look. "Why you low-down son of a bitch. Me sitting here drinking this mouth-searing, rot-gutting, head-busting white lightning, and you're up there drinking my good whiskey. You're a hell of a fellow, Mr. Carson."

"My mother thinks so."

They left a little before seven the next morning, riding Frank Carson's horses. The going was hard at first. It was up steep inclines and then down and then up another steep incline and then down again and again. Carson said, "Now you see why the wagons leave so early?"

After a half hour's riding, they cut the track the wagons had made and followed it for about an hour. After that, it was faster to cut cross-country through places the wagons couldn't go.

Longarm asked, "Where does this train come out of?"

Frank Carson said, "Well, I don't know where it starts, but its last stop before it picks up the cars is North Little Rock. What the hell do you care?"

Longarm said, "I'm just trying to figure how those federal boys are going to get there. Will they come on horseback?"

Carson gave him a look. "You're certainly a curious fellow, ain't you? No, they won't come on horseback. They'll be on that train, at least that's how they've done it before. Of course, I ain't never had no part in that, and I don't really care where they come from. All I want to do is make sure my whiskey's all right and get the hell on home. I'm tired of this damned place."

"What kind of fellows are they, those government men?"

Carson shook his head. "I don't know, Mr. Long. What do you care?"

"I just want to know what to expect. Are they tough?"

"I've done told you, I don't know. I didn't say I didn't know them, Mr. Long, and I didn't say that I did know them. I didn't say anything about it. I didn't say anything at all about them. Take my meaning?"

Longarm said, "Sounds like a nice way of telling me to mind my own business."

"There you go, Mr. Long."

They had to rest their horses from time to time because of the rough terrain. Finally, they topped a rise and broke through a wide stand of trees and then rode out into the opening of a long downslope that led toward the railroad bed. From two miles off, they could see the three boxcars standing, silent and waiting.

Carson looked at his watch. "It's ten minutes after nine. The train should be along about ten. We'll just have time to load my horses up into my boxcar before the train gets here."

Longarm said, "Then let's get to it."

They rode on down the slope and pulled up at the three big, brown boxcars. Longarm could see that the first one was almost half full of cases of whiskey. He expected that was Frank Carson's load. The middle one was only partially loaded, and he expected that was his. He couldn't see into the third boxcar, but he supposed that was the one bound for Texas.

They dismounted and began taking the saddles off the horses. There was a grove of trees to the east some two hundred yards away, and Longarm could see a figure in the foliage among the trees. He said, "Wonder who that is?"

Frank Carson said, "That will probably be John, but he don't want you to act like you see him, so just go on about your business."

They got the horses unsaddled, and then Frank Carson scrambled up into his boxcar and pushed out a wide wooden ramp that tilted down to the ground. Together, they led the horses up one by one and got them established in the empty half of the boxcar. Longarm said, "What about feed and water?"

Frank Carson said, "They'll be all right until we get to Hot Springs, and I'll get the yard crew there to put in a water trough and some hay and feed. It's a pretty good little ride from there on back to Tennessee."

They brought the saddles up, threw them in, and then jumped down and pushed the ramp back into the boxcar. After that, they walked down and looked into Longarm's car. Carson said, "Yeah, that's about two thousand gallons. Reckon you'll make a pretty good profit off that back in Arizona, Mr. Long?"

Longarm said, "Hell, I hope so. It appears that I've gone through enough trouble over this here whiskey. I've lost a wife, been shot at, had to kill two men."

Carson said, "Three."

"Oh, yeah. That deputy back in Little Rock."

"I'd make it a good long time before I went back to that town if I's you."

"Sounds like good advice."

After that, they squatted in the grass and smoked and took nips out of a bottle of whiskey while they waited. Finally, they heard the sound of a train in the distance. They stood up and watched it come chugging around the side of a hill a couple of miles away. It was a freight train with a yellow caboose at the end. "Must be a local," Longarm said.

"How so?"

"Ain't many cars," Longarm said.

"Freight trains can't pull many cars in these mountains. Ain't like out in the flat land where you'll see one pulling fifty or sixty cars."

Longarm looked thoughtfully at Carson. For some time now it had been on his mind as to what he was going to do with this man. Carson had done him several favors. He had also backed him to a degree in a gunfight. Longarm did not plan to arrest him. In fact, he was going to let Carson leave with his whiskey. He didn't, however, want him getting in the way as a hinderance or as an innocent bystander who might get hit with random gunfire if it came to that. But he could not tell Carson that he was a United States deputy marshal, not before he arrested those two Treasury agents. He just had to hope that Carson would have sense enough to stay out of it.

Longarm glanced back to the little copse of woods. The figure was still there, but John had ridden deeper into the timber so as to further remove himself from the transaction when it took place. They watched as the train went slowly past them on the track. It went on until it was beyond the siding switch. A conductor came down and unhooked the caboose, leaving it short of the siding switch. Then he reset the switch so that the train could back onto the siding and connect to the three boxcars.

Just as the train started groaning its way backward, Longarm saw two figures come out of the caboose and step to the ground. The men came walking toward him, stepping over the tracks. As they neared, he could see that they were both dressed in four-button suits with high collars and foulard ties. They were sporting derby hats.

"That them?" Longarm said.

"Yeah."

"Quite the dandies, ain't they?"

"Well, they can afford it. You better have your money ready."

Longarm reached into his pocket for the envelope containing the $1,200. The men stepped over the last rail and started down the line of boxcars. Longarm took several steps forward. He noticed one of the men was wearing muttonchop sideburns. It was difficult for him to keep a straight face. They were small and insignificant men made even smaller by their underhanded and backdoor dishonesty. He held out the envelope. "You Small and Colley?"

One of them, a man about thirty with light brown hair showing out from under his derby said, "Who's asking?"

"The man who's filling in for Morton Colton."

"Where's Morton?"

"He took sick. There's twelve hundred dollars in this envelope. You want it?"

For a second, the man just stared at Longarm and then put out his hand and took the money. The other one said, "We had better check and make sure how much whiskey is in these boxcars. We wouldn't want old man Colton shorting us."

"Oh, I think you can depend on Mr. Colton being fair with you," Longarm said.

"We'll see ourselves," the blond one said. They started up the line, looking in the boxcars.

The deal was done as far as Longarm was concerned. He turned his back on Frank Carson and took a step or two after the men. As he walked, he took his badge out and pinned it in plain sight on his shirt. The two government agents had finished inspecting the last car and had started walking back toward him; he waited until the distance had closed to about fifteen feet. Then he said, without drawing his revolver, "Hold it! My name is Custis Long, and I'm a United States deputy marshal and you two sons of bitches are under arrest."

In response, the two men stopped and stared at him, dumbfounded. One of them finally strangled out a weak "What?"

Longarm said, "You heard me, you're under arrest. If you're carrying weapons, I'm telling you now to get them on the ground and get your hands over your head. I don't want no trouble with you. I won't kill you unless you make me."

One of the men said in a quiet voice, "We ain't armed."

"Shuck them coats and them vests, and let me see what you've got on underneath there."

A quiet voice from behind him said, "Mr. Long, or Marshal Long, I should say, I'm armed, and I've got a high-caliber revolver pointed right at your back."

Longarm said, not taking his eyes off the two Treasury agents, "Mr. Carson, stay out of this. You don't want no part of this. This is serious business."

"It is serious, Marshal Long. You're about to interfere with my livelihood and I don't care to get arrested. Now, you unbuckle your gun belt and let it fall to the ground. Don't reach for that revolver. I don't want to have to shoot you," Carson said.

"Mr. Carson, I have no intentions of arresting you or interfering with your shipment of whiskey. It's these two men I want."

"Marshal Long, I ain't going to tell you again. Unbuckle that gun belt and let it fall to the ground."

Longarm was silent, watching the two Treasury agents.

Longarm carefully put his left hand to the buckle and slipped it just underneath until he could get hold of the.38caliber derringer that was held there by the steel springs. He said, "Frank, you don't want to be doing this. I can't drop this gun belt. That revolver of mine has a hair trigger, and it'll go off if I drop it. Why don't you ease on up here and lift it on up out of my holster?"

"Just make sure you hold yourself right still while I do, Marshal Long."

Longarm heard Carson's footsteps behind him. The instant he felt a touch on the butt of his revolver, he whirled to his left, pulling out the derringer as he did. As he came face-to-face with Frank Carson, he fired. He saw the .38caliber slug knock a surprised look onto the man's face. But Longarm had no time to hesitate. With his right hand, he jerked the revolver that Carson was holding out of his hand. He let his momentum carry him on around until he was on one knee in the grass, thrusting Carson's revolver out in front of him.