Longarm and the Whiskey Woman (22 page)

He yelled at the two Treasury men, "Freeze and get those damned hands up!"

The agents had not moved. One had his coat half off. He just stood there. The other one put his hands quickly over his head. Longarm glanced toward the woods. The dim figure of John had disappeared. He glanced behind him at Frank Carson lying on his back, blood coming out of a hole in the left side of his chest.

He said, "Dammit, Carson. How come you had to get involved?"

Carson turned his head slightly. He said, "Hell, I couldn't let you have all the fun."

CHAPTER 11

It was a long journey back to Denver. Longarm spent most of it trying to make sense out of the report he was writing. Since he had been given direct orders not to involve himself down in the tangled hollows and cuts and draws of the moonshining country, he had to invent plausible reasons why he was drawn step by step into the lengthy investigation that he was supposed to have had no part of. To tell it as it had actually happened would have given Billy Vail too much glee, so Longarm had added a few touches to make it seem as if his hand was forced at every turn.

He made it apparent that the federal men from the Treasury had been his goal from the beginning. Since that wasn't true, he had to invent a set of circumstances that made it seem so. He also had a little trouble with why he had not arrested any of the moonshiners. That had been a little more delicate. He had gotten around that by suggesting that it was work for honest Treasury agents and he was sure that the Treasury Department would be more than anxious to make up with some good work for the deceit and corruption of Colley and Small.

He had dropped the two agents off in Dallas, Texas, with a federal marshal there who would see to their arrival in Washington, D.C. He supposed that Billy Vail would write up the charges from Longarm's report. He had managed to get out of Colley first and then Small the amount of money they had managed to extort from the bootleggers over the years they had been assigned to the territory. It was a staggering sum. It had made Longarm angry to think of his pay in relation to what the two men had been receiving. No wonder they looked like they spent most of their time at the tailor.

Frank Carson had been a very lucky man. At first, Longarm had thought he was a goner for sure. The bullet hole had been just to the left of center and only about four or five inches above his navel. There was no way the bullet could have passed through him without hitting something vital, and there had been an entrance wound and an exit wound. He had managed to get the man loaded with the help of Small and Colley, and he had cracked the whip at the engineer of the train. He had been amazed that the man had stayed alive until they reached Hot Springs.

There, a doctor had solved the mystery for him. Longarm's bullet had, through sheer luck, gone in at an angle and hit a rib in such a way that it rode along the rib and then exited out the man's back. It was a million-to-one shot. Carson was going to be weak and sore for a good long while, but he wasn't going to die.

Longarm said, "How come you pulled such a foolish stunt as to take a gun on me?"

Carson had smiled wanly. He was still very weak. "Yeah, that was pretty stupid. I had already seen you at work, and I should have had better sense. And since I'd known you were a marshal ever since I went back to town, I shouldn't have been surprised."

It had turned out that Longarm had had a portion of his expense voucher in the bottom of his valise. Frank Carson had come across it while he had been packing Longarm's clothes. He said with as much laugh as he could muster, "If you had been a little neater, I would have never had to go through your valise to get everything arranged. I'd have never seen that piece of paper in the bottom, never seen that you were United States Deputy Marshal Custis Long."

"Why didn't you give me away to the Coltons?"

"Because they would have killed you."

"Well, I've got to say that was mighty square of you, Frank. How come you interfered with my job down there?"

Carson had coughed and cleared his throat. He said, "Because I was afraid you were going to arrest me and take my whiskey."

Longarm shrugged. "There was the dilemma. I didn't know what you were going to do, and you didn't know what I was going to do. I never was going to arrest you and as far as I'm concerned, as soon as you get well, you can ship that whiskey on to Tennessee. It's your whiskey; you paid for it. The only ones I really wanted were those two corrupt Treasury agents. It makes me mad as hell for somebody to give a federal officer a bad name."

Carson said, "I reckon next time I get into a similar situation, I'll think twice. Are all United States deputy marshals as bad as you?"

Longarm smiled. He said, "Just the ones that are alive."

He had left the two thousand gallons of whiskey with the marshal in Dallas. He guessed he could have taken it on back to Denver and given Billy Vail the problem of what to do with it, but since it would be evidence in the trial against the two Treasury agents, Longarm had thought it was best that it go where they went.

The marshal in Dallas had wanted him to leave the twelve hundred dollars also as evidence, but Longarm had looked at him as if the man had lost his mind. He said, "If I get back to Denver without that whole twenty five hundred dollars, Billy Vail will be taking it out of my pay for the next three years. No thank you, sir. I'll give you a receipt to the effect that I'm taking the twelve hundred dollars on to Chief Marshal Billy Vail in Denver, Colorado, but I'm taking the money with me."

He left Sally out of the report. There didn't seem to be any point in mentioning her, even though she would return to his thoughts many, many times. He had a bottle of Colton whiskey in his bag. He had brought it along as a keepsake. Now, as the train rumbled along through the night, leaving New Mexico and heading on into Colorado toward Denver and home, he took a drink of the whiskey in toast to the black-haired beauty that had made the dreary assignment almost tolerable. At least, for a few moments.

But he had taken too big a drink, and he gasped and winced as the raw whiskey burned its way down his gullet and then hit his stomach like a fireball. He was sorry now that he hadn't fetched home a case of the rotgut and forced Billy Vail to drink it, at the point of a gun. Maybe that would break him of sending Longarm off on such assignments. He doubted it, though. If there was anything meaner and harder to get along with than the raw Colton whiskey, it was Billy Vail himself.

That wasn't exactly true, Longarm thought, but it always made him feel better to picture the chief marshal in as mean a fashion as he could when he started piling on the irritating jobs. The best thing that could be said about this one was that it was over. Longarm settled back in his seat and thought about his dressmaker lady friend in Denver. He ought to be there early enough the next day for them to perhaps go stepping out. For the time being, he was content.

The End