Longarm and the Whiskey Woman

by Tabor Evans

  Longarm nodded. He said, "Oh, I take your meaning. But what about getting the whiskey out of here?"

  Salem said, "I imagine Mr. Carson's already told you how we get the whiskey out of here."

  Longarm glanced at Frank Carson. He said; "You'd be surprised how close-mouthed this friend of mine is here. Even though he saved my life and got me out of a tight fix, he still ain't told me a whole hell of a lot about y'all's business."

  Salem laughed. He said, "That's why he's still welcome around these parts."

  Longarm said, "Well, what do you reckon my chances are of getting up to see Asa? I take it his last name is Colton?"

  Salem shrugged and looked sideways at the two men on either side of him. He said, "Well, I say they're pretty good." He smiled. "We kind of think the best of gents that give old Morton a face full of revolver steel. He ain't one of our favorite kinfolk. You might say that any enemy of Morton's is a friend of ours. If his last name wasn't Colton, the son of a bitch would have been dead about five times over, I can tell you that."

  Longarm put his hands on the table. He said, "Well, what's the next move?"

  Salem Colton said, smiling wickedly, "Well, the next thing is for you to finish that glass of pop-skull you've got sitting in front of you, and then we'll all get to bed and sleep on it and in the morning, I'll see. Frank, did you plan on going on up there?"

  Frank Carson looked over at Longarm and then back to Salem. He said, "Well, no, not actually, but I don't have any pressing business back in town, and there are a few things I guess I could talk to Asa about on my order. My time's getting pretty close, I need to be getting on out of here and headed back to Tennessee with some whiskey."

  Salem got up and he said, "My old woman will show you where you can bed down. I'll see you in the morning. Come on, boys." With that, the three men walked across the long room and disappeared into the darkness of the hallway.

  Longarm looked at Carson. "What now?"

  Carson reached for his glass. He said, "Well, right now, I guess we'd a-better not let Salem find these glasses sitting here with this bone-breaking stuff still in them. We'll see in the morning."

  Longarm picked up his glass with a groan. He said, "Lord, this is a hard business. Couldn't we maybe just pour this stuff out on the floor?"

  Frank Carson shook his head. He said, "Naw, it'd burn right through these wood planks. They'd be sure to notice the holes in the morning."

  Longarm nodded. He said, "Yeah, I just hate to think of what I'm doing to my stomach and my gullet."

  "The sooner this is down, the sooner we're down. I'm dog weary and ready for bed."

  That night, Longarm lay on a hard cot, his mind racing, while he listened to Frank Carson snoring lightly across the room. It seemed to him that he was doing exactly the very thing that Billy Vail had warned him not to do. He had taken himself back into a very nest of the moonshiners and was about to get even deeper. On top of that, there was Morton Colton who he felt, sooner or later, would have to be dealt with. It could be that if Colton were to follow him back into the hills and get in among his kinfolks, that blood in the end might turn out to be thicker than their disgust for him if it came to a fight between kin and Longarm. But the worst part, in Longarm's mind, was the very startling information that a couple of Treasury agents gone wrong were involved. He had no idea how he planned to handle them. What he desperately needed to do was to get to a telegraph and wire Billy Vail to have the agents recalled before they ever knew about him or his arrival. He might suddenly find himself in the midst of a whole clan of people with rifles who knew how to use them.

  But then there was the matter of the whiskey. It seemed to him that if he was going to clean up the mess, he would have to buy some whiskey, and it appeared the least they would sell him was 2,000 gallons and that, at the price quoted, was $2,500. He didn't have near that kind of cash. All he had on him was about $600 of his own money. He could get the sum by bank wire, but the only bank he knew of that was big enough to handle a bank wire was in Little Rock. He sure as hell couldn't go back there, not, at least, as a whiskey buyer. He could go back there as a marshal and arrest several people, but that wouldn't be doing the job he had been sent to do. He fretted over all the different angles of the matter until finally his tiredness and the strike of the white lightning overtook him, and he fell into a troubled sleep.

  The next morning before breakfast, Carson told Longarm that he would be willing to accompany him on to Asa Colton's place. He said, "But I want to make it real clear to you, Mr. Long, that I am not standing good for you. I ain't lending you any of the prestige it took me a good number of years to work up with these folks. They trust me. You get your trust on your own. I'll tell Asa Colton just exactly that. We square on the matter?"

  Longarm shrugged. "Hell, Frank. I ain't asking you to go my bond. All I want to do is buy some whiskey. If they are willing to sell it to me, I'll buy it, though I don't much like the price. It appears to me that they're charging me a sizable amount more than they are you."

  "Let me give you some advice on that matter. If they sell you some whiskey, you'd better buy it at the price they name. They don't Presbyterian around the amount, if you take my meaning. You ain't going to barter or beat them down. Now, if you buy that first load and they take a liking to you, then the price will come down by itself, you won't have to ask. But if they think you're trying to get at them, they won't sell you a thimbleful. The first thing you'll see is a man with a rifle telling you to get off the place. The problem is that all the way back to Little Rock, you're on somebody named Colton's place."

  "That sounds just dandy," Longarm said. "Hell, buying whiskey is just about as much fun as getting caught in a stampede. When I set out to come down here, I thought a man just walked up, announced his order, paid for it, and left. This is getting more complicated than the first time I tried to get on top of a young girl on her porch swing and us both fully dressed."

  Carson barely smiled. He said, "You'll think fucking in a swing is a piece of cake next to this business. Let's get some breakfast and get on the road."

  "You mean there's a road?"

  "You know what I mean."

  They arrived at Asa Colton's place about mid-morning. It had not been far, but the meandering around through the cuts and draws and around the craggy little hills and avoiding places that Frank Carson advised were best to avoid had all taken time. It had taken them better than two hours to cover the six or seven miles. They rode into the big clearing to the tune of the baying of a pack of hounds located somewhere beyond the clump of buildings that was the settlement of the head of the Colton clan. Since the hounds didn't materialize, Longarm figured they were penned. He figured they were probably coon dogs, taken out at night to run coon or fox or maybe even bear. As they came into the clearing and stopped, Longarm heard a man yelling "Hush!" at them and they quieted immediately.

  Asa Colton's place was much like Salem's except it was a great deal bigger. The house was more log than it was rock and was more rock than it was lumber. It looked to Longarm that, at one time, it had been a big log cabin that had just grown from there. There were quite a number of outbuildings, barns, and sheds, and the like. From over the roof of the house, the air was thick with steam and smoke from what he reckoned to be fifteen or twenty stills all going at once.

  As they sat their horses, waiting about fifty yards from the house, a man carrying a rifle came around the corner. He stopped and shaded his eyes, apparently recognizing Frank Carson. He made a motion, waving them in. Carson started his horse in, and Longarm followed. They rode up to the porch and dismounted. Carson introduced the man as John Colton, one of Asa's sons. He was a big, burly man that Longarm took to be in his late thirties. On the ride down, Carson had told him that Asa was a man in his mid-fifties and widowed. He had two sons, Mark and John, and one daughter, Sally, in her mid-twenties. He gave Longarm a look. He said, "Now, the first thing you're going to want to do is get a-hold of Miss Sally. My advice is n
ot to try that. Asa's almighty proud of that girl, and he's discouraged any number of suitors. It's going to take somebody that Asa thinks is highfalutin and proper enough to win Miss Sally's hand."

  Carson had said there were a number of cousins and nephews also around the place, as well as some distant relations that were treated pretty much like hired hands. He said, "All told, I'd reckon there's twelve or fifteen able-bodied men, not counting Asa. There's a clutch of womenfolk, and in the number of years I've been coming here, I've never quite figured out who belongs to who. The best thing to do about the womenfolk is to keep your hands in your pockets."

  Longarm could see for himself a number of children running back and forth, skylarking and playing. He said, "The old man just had the one daughter, Sally?"

  Carson shook his head. He said, "No, he's got two others, but they're married and moved off the Place. He's also got two other sons, but that Sally, she's going as a prize."

  Just then, John came up. Carson shook his hand and introduced him to Longarm. The man eyed Longarm suspiciously, but Longarm had the impression that was the way he looked at everybody.

  John Colton said, "Y'all better come on in the house. Daddy's sitting in the kitchen. We'll go in and get us a drink or maybe y'all would like some coffee?"

  Longarm said quickly, "I could really use a cup of good coffee."

  "Well, it's this way," Colton said.

  They opened the front door and went in. The house inside was much like Salem's. John Colton led them through the big living room and through a door and then into a kitchen that was bigger than most houses. A couple of black women were working at a stove. A woman in her thirties with stringy hair turned around, gave them a glance, and then went on back to her work. Longarm guessed her to be the wife of one of the brothers or one of the cousins or perhaps one of the nephews.

  At the big, long table, a man who looked much older than his mid-fifties sat saucering and blowing a cup of coffee. He had a cud of tobacco in his mouth. Without giving them much more than a bare glance, he nodded at the chairs sitting around the table. He said, "Sit."

  Longarm took a chair that put his back to the front wall of the kitchen. Carson and John Colton sat across from him. Longarm was on Asa Colton's right. The old man raised his eyes and looked at him for a long moment. He said, "Who be you?"

  Frank Carson spoke up. He said, "Asa, this is a man I've known only a few days. I want you to understand that. He's no old friend of mine, and I can't give him no bona fides." He went on to tell how Longarm had gotten mixed up with Morton Colton and how he, Frank Carson, had helped to get Longarm out of town. He said, "Morton was going to use the law to get him. I didn't much like the odds in the fight, so I stepped in. Turns out, he's from Arizona. Used to be in the cattle business and the land business and the timber business but claims that has played out. Says he'd like to buy some raw whiskey and carry it back to Arizona and sell it for a profit. Lord knows, that place is dry enough. I was there once, and it was plenty dry."

  The old man had been studying Longarm's face while Carson was talking. He said, "So you comed all the way over here in hopes we'd sell you some whiskey. Mister, we don't sell whiskey to just anybody, in case you didn't have that information."

  Longarm said, "I was getting that impression in town, and I guess I would have gone on back to Arizona if your kinfolk, Morton Colton, hadn't interfered with my life. As it was, I didn't have but one way to run and that was with Frank, headed up here. Now that I'm here, I was wondering if there ain't some way you and I could do some business."

  The old man sat there staring. He had coal black eyes and he kept them fixed on Longarm. The deputy marshal avoided looking him in the eye and instead let his own wander around the kitchen. The two Negro cooks looked clean but fat. The white woman who was supervising them had stringy hair, a gaunt face, and bony limbs. While the two sons appeared well-fed and chunky, the old man didn't look like he had enough fat on him to grease a skillet. Apparently, it was the kind of country that was hell on women and old folks. Finally, Asa Colton said, "You got money to buy whiskey?"

  "I was told the least you would sell is two thousand gallons. Is that right?"

  "Yep."

  Longarm said, "I ain't got that kind of money on me. The price I was quoted, that comes to twenty-five hundred dollars. Now, if we were in Little Rock, I could get a bank in Colorado to wire the money in here to one of the banks there. But I ain't in Little Rock, and I can't go back there because your kinfolk, Morton Colton, has got the whole damned sheriff's department looking for me. How can it be done?"

  The old man leaned sideways and spat tobacco juice on the floor. "Ain't my worry. I ain't decided to sell you the whiskey, but if I do decide to sell it, it's going to be cash on the barrelhead."

  Longarm said, "Well, I don't know how to work it. If I can slip back into Little Rock, I could get a message off to the bank where I do business."

  One of the sons spoke. Longarm couldn't tell them apart. They looked so much alike, he didn't know which was Mark and which was John. The brother said, "Thought you said you's from Arizona."

  Longarm gave him a look. "You spend much time in Arizona?"

  "No."

  Longarm said, "You'd be surprised how scarce banks are there. No, I've got a little cattle company headquartered there in Colorado. I keep my money in Denver. I've got a partner, a man by the name of Vail. If I can get word to him, I can get some money down here."

  The old man spat again. He said, "We'll see. I ain't a-rushin' into nothin'. Frank, how much whiskey are you plannin' on takin'?"

  Carson said, "I'd like to take about four thousand gallons, if that's all right with you. I've got a draft to cover the amount."

  The old man nodded. He said, "We'll be ready to ship in five, maybe six days. That suit you?"

  "Don't see why not," Carson said.

  Old man Colton made a motion with his hand toward the back of the house. He said, "Meanwhile, y'all can bunk in that first little cabin out there. You can take your meals in here with the family. Ain't no call for customers to be eating with the working folks."

  Carson said, "I'm much obliged for that, Asa. I would like to say that I'm getting along toward the need to get on home with this whiskey. We'd like to get it in barrels and start aging as quick as we can. Be coming on to summer before you know it. Whiskey ages better in the hot weather."

  Asa gave him a hard eye. He said, "Any damned fool knows that." He paused for a moment. "I might even let y'all have some of my aged whiskey to drink here on the premises."

  Longarm said innocently enough, "Aged whiskey? You've got aged whiskey?"

  The old man laughed. He said, "Yeah, some of it's near two weeks old. We sell it about as fast as we can make it."

  Longarm, not sure if he was on safe ground, said, "Excuse me, Mr. Colton, I'm curious about something. I see steam and smoke from all over this valley and down into the foothills. Does everybody around here make whiskey?"

  The old man gave him that beady look again. He said, "Naw, most of them farm. This is wonderful country for farming, or haven't you noticed? Why, I would imagine that a man could make a good crop of corn on top of one of those mountains."

  "But I saw an awful lot of meadows full of corn as we were coming in. You've got a pretty good valley of it here."

  Asa said, "Yeah, but that's my corn. That's how I make my whiskey. Corn and sugar."

  Longarm gave him an innocent look, thinking of the trainload of stolen sugar. "You grow your own sugar, do ya?"

  The two brothers smiled, but the old man cackled. He said, "Well, mister--I forgot your name--whatever it is, there's more than one way to grow sugar, in case you ain't noticed."

  "When are you going to tell me if you're going to sell me some whiskey?"

  "When I get good and ready. Now, what's wrong with our women here? We ought to have some coffee in front of our guests and set a bottle of that good whiskey in the middle of the table. Damn, Rebecca, I don't know what the
hell's the matter with you. I ought not to have let my son marry you." The woman turned around and gave him a look that said plainly, I wish you hadn't.

  There were eight at the table for lunch. The two sons and their wives, one of whom was Rebecca, the other Ruth. Then there was Longarm, Frank Carson, the old man, and Sally. She had no more than entered the room when Longarm's eyes had been instantly attracted to her dark beauty. She had clear, lightly tanned skin, black hair, greenish blue eyes, and a red, Kewpie-doll mouth. Her breasts strained against the thin material of her frock. She had a narrow waist and hips that curved deliciously. The look of her almost made Longarm catch his breath. He didn't know if she was really so beautiful or if he had just been looking at ugly women for so long a time.

  All through the meal, she studied Longarm openly and without coyness. There was no flirtation about her, she was simply straightforward. So much so that it made Longarm's blood pound and that copper taste come into his mouth. Just looking at her, he could feel his jeans becoming too small. But, following Frank Carson's advice, he kept his eyes carefully averted from meeting hers. He made small talk as best as he could with the brothers and almost none at all with the old man, who figured the business of being at the table was to eat.

  After lunch, Carson took Longarm on a tour of the distillery. There were twenty big copper barrels. He reckoned them to be at least 100 gallons each. Slow-burning fires were beneath each one, and out of the tops came coils of copper tubing that dripped into tin buckets. A little dribbled out of a tube at the top of the still and into a small pan. Longarm guessed that was for the lap dog that Salem had talked about, although he didn't believe the story.

  He said to Carson, "Looks to me they can make a power of whiskey right here. How long does it take to turn out a batch of this stuff?"