Longarm and the Whiskey Woman (10 page)

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?"

Carson shrugged. "I don't know. Ten days to two weeks, I think. Then they fill her up with mash and sugar and keep it working. They don't ever actually empty one, it's a continuous process. Well, I'll tell you what better not become a continuous process, and that's the looks that you and Miss Sally were exchanging. Custis, if you want to get yourself killed, go to fooling with that young lady. I know for a fact that one of her cousins when she was a little younger got caught with her in the barn. They shot the man within the hour. I wouldn't want to influence you, but you might want to take a lesson from that."

Their cabin was made out of timber and was comfortable enough. It had a small fireplace and a woodstove and two bunks. There were plenty of chairs and a small table. They went in and sat down, armed with two glasses and a quart bottle of what old man Colton had referred to as the "aged goods." They sat down and had a drink. Both men winced a little as they swallowed the strong liquor.

Longarm gasped and said, "If that's aged, then I must be about three years old."

Carson said, "It ain't made for drinking, Mr. Long."

"Then why in hell are we drinking it?"

"Because it's all we've got."

They sipped in silence for a few moments. Longarm got out a cigarillo and lit it. Carson did the same with a cigar. For a moment longer, they smoked in silence and sipped delicately at the green whiskey. Finally, Carson cast his eyes over at Longarm. He said, "Now, you know, they ain't going to sell you any whiskey on a promissory note, don't you?"

Longarm nodded. "I kind of figured that out, Mr. Carson. There's not a whole hell of a lot I can do about it. The only way I can get a bank draft in here is by telegraph from my bank in Denver to a bank in Little Rock. I don't figure any of these little towns sprinkled around here are going to have a bank of a size that could receive a bank wire."

Carson nodded. "That be true."

"So here I sit with a few hundred bucks, not near enough to buy the amount of whiskey I need to get, and I can't get back into Little Rock. I don't know what I'm going to do."

Carson knocked the stub off his cigar. He said, "I've got a little bit of business to wind up in Little Rock before I come back here to take delivery of my whiskey. Could be I could handle the matter for you."

Longarm cocked his head at him. He said, "You'd do that?"

"Yeah, I'd be willing to go to the trouble. I don't know how we'd work it. I take it that I'm supposed to send a wire to your partner in Denver and he'll wire twenty-five hundred dollars back to you in Little Rock."

"Yeah, that's the way it's going to work."

"But that bank draft is going to be for you. I ain't you, and I can tell you right now that Asa Colton ain't going to take no bank draft. The man don't deal in anything except cash on the barrelhead."

Longarm said, "Well, cash the damned thing before you come back."

Frank Carson gave him a look. "Now, I'm supposed to cash a bank draft that's in your name, Custis Long, and my name is Frank Carson. How do you reckon that's going to work?"

Longarm frowned. He said, "Hmmm, I don't reckon that will work. You got any ideas?"

Carson nodded. "You could have your partner wire the draft in my name and then I could cash it and bring the money on back here to you when I come back to settle up on my whiskey."

Longarm gave him a sideways look. "Let me get this straight. You want me to have twenty-five hundred dollars of my money wired to you in your name and then you put the cash in your pocket. I'm supposed to trust you like that?"