by Tabor Evans
Longarm gave Carson the sheet of paper with the message that was to be wired. Frank Carson took a moment to read it and then glanced back at Longarm. He said, "Hell, what are you writing here? This has got to be the longest damned telegram that I've ever seen. You're going to have to give me a few bucks to send this sucker."
Longarm said sarcastically, "I hadn't expected for you to do it for nothing. There'll be a little something in it for you personally, also."
"Oh, go to hell, Mr. Long. But what is all this business in here about a treasurer? You got a company big enough to have a treasurer and an assistant treasurer?"
"Happens we do."
"What the hell is the name of this company?"
Longarm thought swiftly and then put the initials of his name and Billy Vail's name together. He said, "It's the V & L Land and Cattle Company. We don't expect to include the whiskey part."
Carson shook his head, folded the paper, and then stuck it into his shirt pocket. He said, "Well, you've got a strange way of doing business, Mr. Long. You come down here to buy some whiskey and you don't bring no money. Your credit is no good. Boy, you're really some kind of slouch, I have to say."
Longarm was pulling a roll of money out of his pants. He said, "Let me hand you some cash. Heaven knows I don't want you to be out of pocket, Mr. Carson."
Carson gave him a wave. "Forget it, Mr. Long. You can reimburse me when I get back." He smiled slightly. "Assuming I do get back. Twenty-five hundred dollars, you know, is a lot of money. The reason I know that is because you told me. Before that, I thought twenty-five hundred dollars wasn't much, just small change to folks in Tennessee."
Longarm said, "Mark Colton has got the wrong man as the smart aleck. I don't think he's looked you over good or listened to you."
"I've got sense enough to keep my mouth shut around these kind of folks. I've got better sense than to compliment a woman who has probably fried around a half million chickens on frying a chicken. That's about like complimenting her on how she dips snuff."
"Is that what's the matter with everyone's teeth around here?"
Carson smiled. He said, "Hell, yes. What did you think?"
Longarm said, "I'm glad to see that Sally hasn't taken the habit up."
Carson said, "I should have warned you about her mother dying. She just up and was gone all of a sudden. I was here about six months ago, and she had just died. Just went like that."
"It was probably from frying chicken or from dipping snuff, I would guess."
Carson gave Longarm a look. "I wouldn't be making any jokes about that around here, if I were you."
Longarm sat down on his bed. He said, "Frank, I can promise you that until you get back, I am going to be the quietest son of a bitch you've ever seen. In fact, I may not even move out of this cabin. I may not take a step outside this door."
Carson said, "That wouldn't be a bad idea."
The next morning, Carson left right after breakfast. It was a quiet affair with eggs and ham and coffee. As usual, no one talked. Sally was not there, nor were any of the other women except the stringy-haired one, who supervised breakfast but did not sit down to eat. Longarm tried to sit down and talk to Asa Colton but got nothing but a series of silences and grunts. It finally struck him that these were folks who didn't much care to talk at the breakfast table. As near as he could figure, they did not much care to talk at any time.
After the meal and after Frank Carson was gone, Longarm wandered out beyond the outer buildings, walking over the rough ground toward the meadow full of cornstalks. He was just ambling along in the cool morning air, stepping carefully in his high-heeled boots. He was about a half mile from the house when he heard a sound from behind. He turned and was startled to see Sally Colton not far away, standing stock-still and looking at him. She was wearing a tight-fitting blue and white print gown with a square bodice that showed her lightly tanned skin. It contrasted wonderfully with her raven hair, her dark, greenish blue eyes, and the red of her lips.
She was a small girl, he had noticed. Small but with what apparently were fulsome breasts. She was, he thought, his type, but he had no intentions of touching her, no matter what her type. The job came first; his life also came first, and he had the distinct impression that he would be killed quicker for showing an interest in her than if he were to pull out his U.S. deputy marshal's badge. He wasn't, of course, afraid of anyone on the place in anything resembling a fair fight, but he knew well and good that these mountain folks did not fight fair. They were masters of the bushwack, the ambush. Their method of fighting was with a long, accurate rifle from about a quarter mile away. They were back-shooters, a sudden knife in the belly. Vengeful, mean, and dangerous.
And yet, there she stood, not much more than ten or twelve feet away, her eyes locked on his face, her lips slightly parted. He had been thinking about Frank Carson and his trip into Little Rock, speculating on how long the business would take. He had calculated a day into the city, a day to tend to the business for both of them, a day to wait for the telegram, and then a day back. He did not expect Carson to return for more than four days, and he thoroughly believed it was going to be about as long a four days as he had ever spent.
But now all those thoughts fled from his mind. They were a half mile from the main house, protected and sheltered by the outbuildings. He could not see another soul in sight. Behind him was a large, long cornfield, the stalks five and six feet high. Sally came toward him. He didn't move. She came straight up and stopped right before him and looked up into his face. She said in her soft, warm voice, "You're different."
She said it flatly, as if stating a fact that had just occurred to her.
Longarm said, "Miss Sally, I don't think we ought to be out here like this."
Sally said, "Shut up." Then she reached forward and took his hand in hers and walked around, leading him behind her. He went unwillingly, but he went. She led him straight into the field of corn. As they stepped into its cool greenness, he noticed that it was floored with hay. He imagined that was for a mulch to keep the weeds down and to help the soil retain moisture. She walked straight ahead, pulling him along between one of the middle rows. Once inside the green vastness, Longarm felt a sudden sense of aloneness, of solitude, of being hidden. She slipped easily between the rows while his wide shoulders brushed against the stalks on both sides. She walked twenty yards, then thirty yards, and then a little farther until they were about halfway into the stand of corn.
Sally stopped and turned to him and looked at him. For a moment, she neither moved nor spoke. Then she reached up with both hands and took him by the neck, pulling his face down to hers. Her mouth was already open as she began to kiss him. At first, he didn't know what to do, but almost unwillingly, he put his arms around her. He could feel her clinging to him pressing her front against him. The heat rose in him, and he could feel his jeans getting tight. He could feel his heart and the blood pounding in his ears. It had been a long time since he had had a woman, and Sally was nearly more woman than he had ever had. If she looked half as good without her clothes as she did in them, then she was going to really be a sight.
The kiss ended as abruptly as it began. She stepped back a foot and looked at him gravely. She said, "I reckon I'm going to choose you."
Longarm said, "Sally, I don't know what you mean, but we can't just up and-"
He got no farther. Her hands had come up and she was starting to unbutton the clasps that ran down the bodice of her dress all the way down to her waist. He watched in fascination as each fastener came loose. When she had unbuttoned it all the way down, she pulled the bodice wide and let it fall off her shoulders. Underneath was a slim, white chemise with thin straps over each of her shoulders. With her eyes still on his face, she shrugged off the straps one at a time to reveal breasts as firm and shapely as pale, white melons. They were tipped with large brown nipples.
Longarm felt the breath catch in his throat. Before he could speak, she reached up again and pulled his he
ad down, nursing her nipples into his mouth, one by one. As he caressed them with his mouth and tongue, he could feel her trembling. He would have liked to have stayed there for a lot longer, even though the position was awkward, but she straightened him up. Before he could move, he felt her hands busy with the buttons of his jeans. Fearful that she might touch his gun-belt buckle, he undid it as fast as he could and dropped it to the soft hay floor of the cornfield. Her plump little fingers flew over the middle buttons until his pants were loose. She pulled them down below his hips. His member was already erect and hard.
With both her hands, she pulled it toward her and took it into her mouth. Longarm gave a groan and a sigh and thrust himself forward. For a moment, it was all he could do to hold his emotions in check, to not explode inside her mouth. But then she gently slid her head back, releasing him. As she did, she rolled back off her knees and went flat on the hay between the rows. She opened her legs, raising her skirt. She wasn't wearing anything underneath the skirt and petticoat. The blackness of her thatch against her white skin was a sight that stirred him even more than he thought he could be stirred.
She said, huskily, "Come on, I choose you. Right now."
Longarm dropped to his knees and with trembling fingers guided himself into her. She was already warm and wet and welcoming. The instant he was inside her, she began moving with him, writhing in a kind of ecstasy. She had locked her legs around his hips and her arms were strong around his neck. She sought his mouth with her tongue, probing, sucking, and kissing. The difficulty for Longarm was to prolong the lovemaking. He was so on fire that it required every bit of discipline on his part to hold it and to hold it and to hold it.
Finally, he heard her whimper, a familiar sound, and he knew what it meant. He rode himself higher so that his penis would drive more downward, hitting her clitoris more cleanly. He did not know how experienced she was. He would have expected she was a virgin. She seemed now so much younger than what Frank Carson had said. He didn't think she was in her mid-twenties. He doubted that she was twenty-one. He had to think thoughts like that to hold himself back as she began to pant harder and harder in his ear. He kissed her face and her neck, driving into her again and again and again, pistoning, thrusting. He felt her tremble, shaking as if taken with a great fever. He felt the scream starting in her even before it got to her throat. He clamped his open mouth over hers and let her yell into him as she thrust her buttocks up into him again and again, harder and harder, her whole body convulsing.
In that instant as she was climaxing, he turned himself loose, and the explosion happened almost immediately. He would not have been surprised to have seen the cornstalks blown down, so mighty and magnificent was the feeling.
But then it was over and they came tumbling down a long grassy slope, rolling and rolling, as the passion spent itself.
Longarm sighed and gently lifted his weight off of her. He didn't guess she weighed over a hundred pounds, and he didn't know how she could bear his one hundred and ninety-five. He had tried to treat her as gently as he could, but she had wanted it rough and hard. She was an amazing woman.
As gently as he could, he pulled out of her and then sat up on his knees. He looked down at her. Her dress was still up, and he could see the wetness of her vagina and the flush on her thighs and the flush on her face. She was still panting. She looked up at him. He expected a smile, but there was nothing but a grave, long look.
He said, "Sally, honey, we hadn't ought to have done that."
She pulled her dress down and then hiked herself up to a sitting position. She said, "I told you, I done chose you. You're different."
He didn't know what that meant, but he didn't much like the sound of it. He said, "Honey, I'm different than you because you've probably been back in this hollow too long. I'm different because I'm not like the people you've known all your life."
She shook her head. She said, "No, you're different. I'm going to have you."
Longarm said with some alarm, "Sally, honey, we can't do this again. If they catch me, they'll kill me. Your brothers, your father, an aunt, an uncle, a cousin--there's ten or fifteen men around here that would have shot me in the back if they had seen us together. We can't do this again. You are a wonderful, beautiful girl. Probably the most beautiful girl I've ever seen."
Sally said, "That's good that you be thinkin' that, because if I choose you, I'd like it if you'd choose me, too. But it don't make no never-mind. I've done made up my mind."
He said, "Sally, you're inexperienced. You don't know anything, and you haven't seen that much of the world. Was that your first time?"
She gave him a look. "I ain't a-tellin' that and no gentleman would ask that." Then, before he knew it, she was on her feet and walking down the row of corn in the opposite direction. He said, "Sally, Sally."
She looked back. "What?"
He said, "Where are you going?"
Sally said, "In the house. I've got some sewing to do."
Longarm said, "The hell you say. Now you're going to do some sewing?"
"Yeah, you better go out that other end and act like you're looking the place over."
She turned and cut across the rows, out of sight, leaving Longarm dumbfounded and uncertain what to do next.
He walked out of the cornfield and then stood for a moment, looking around. Sally had disappeared, and there were no signs of any spies or onlookers. As near as he could tell, they had not been seen. Still, Longarm went through the motions of walking around the big property, looking over the livestock and the buildings, some of which held hundred-pound sacks of sugar. There were bins of shelled corn in others. If he had ever seen an operation set up for making corn whiskey, he felt like he was looking at one. The thought that there were maybe twenty or thirty other such distilleries, probably not as big as this, scattered out among the hills but pouring their produce back into this one locale, almost staggered him. This was no small operation. This was whiskey-making on a grand scale. Hell, he thought to himself, they could probably supply the city of Denver with every drop they needed. Denver, hell, probably Chicago.
After a time, he wandered back to his cabin and went inside. He sat down and poured himself some whiskey, the green clear whiskey, weakened it with some water out of a pitcher, and then sat there sipping and thinking. The entrance of Sally into the picture changed nothing as far as he was concerned. She was a wonderful, lovely, beautiful woman. She was as desirable as any woman that came to his mind, but that was, of course, very often the way. The one he was with at the time was the best, but he did not believe that he had ever seen such a startlingly black thatch of pubic hair against such lovely, creamy skin. The bush had been thick and luxuriant. It was delicate and fine, silken almost. It made his throat feel thick just thinking about it.
All that was beside the point. The job still remained. The least he would settle for would be the purchase of some whiskey from Asa Colton. Once that money changed hands, a federal law had been broken, and he was going to arrest the lot of them. They might not want to be arrested, but he would do it if he had to put a gun to the old man's head and tell the rest of them to lie facedown on the ground and tie each other up. He expected the transaction to take place at the train. If that was the case, he was going to load them, the whiskey, and anything else he thought he might need onto the train and then somehow route that car to Denver, Colorado, where he intended to deliver the entire conglomeration right into the hands of Billy Vail. After that, good old Uncle Billy could sort matters out.
Then the flickering fear about the telegram rode through his mind again. If Frank Carson somehow got word through the bank wire that he was a deputy marshal, Longarm was going to have one hell of a fight on his hands. He planned, the minute he saw Frank Carson coming, to get his back up against the wall and stay there until he could see how matters were going to play out. But as far as that went, the old man had not yet agreed to sell him any whiskey. That had yet to be resolved.
That night, at suppe
r, he sat on Asa Colton's right. Sally was not there. A girl cousin or sister or wife or someone else was in her place. She was a nondescript woman of thirty who looked a great deal like the stringy-haired woman who was in charge of the kitchen. She never spoke to Longarm, but he caught her darting glances his way.
He made an attempt during supper to speak to Asa Colton, but all he got in return was a shake of the dried-up little man's head. It was clear that the Coltons considered table business to be reserved exclusively for eating. Any talking that had to be done mainly consisted of "Pass the salt," or "Pass the biscuits," or "Pass the butter." There was no social talk and obviously, no business talk.
They had roast beef and mashed potatoes with gravy and canned beans. As near as Longarm could figure out, they had mashed potatoes and canned beans for every meal. He was halfway expecting them the next day for breakfast. Finally, after what seemed an eternity, the meal broke up, and people left the table without a word. It was only Longarm and the old man left. One of the colored women serving the table brought over a gallon jug of the clear, powerful whiskey. She sat a glass in front of Asa Colton. The old man glanced at Longarm. Longarm nodded and then she brought him a glass.
After they had a drink, with Longarm trying not to wince and trying not to let the killer liquid go to his brain, he said, "Asa, Mr. Colton, I sent for money, but you never had said that you'd sell me whiskey. Can you give me an answer now? If you ain't going to sell me some, there ain't a hell of a lot of use in me sitting around here wasting my time."
Asa Colton drank down half the big glass, then set it back down on the table without so much as the blink of an eye. He said, "I'm a-thinkin' on it. Don't be a-rushin' me."
Longarm said, "You got any idea when you'll make up your mind?"
"Nope."
Longarm said, "What have you got against selling me whiskey? I'm a pretty good old boy. I'm paying your highest price, I already know that, but I don't mind. I think I can take it back to Arizona and by the time I get through taking the rattlesnake out of it, I think I can make a profit."