They rode in silence for about ten minutes, and then Longarm ventured to ask, 'Is it any of my business where you're taking me?'
'Well, if you have to know, I'm taking you tonight to a member of the Colton clan.'
They were walking the horses now and Longarm suddenly pulled back on the reins and stopped. It was a second or two before Carson reacted. He stopped his horse and looked back. He said, 'What the hell is the matter?'
Longarm said, 'In case you didn't notice, that was a man by the name of Morton Colton that was fixing to have two deputies hold me while he beat me to pudding.'
'Yeah, I know.'
'And you're taking me to his family?'
Carson chuckled and waved Longarm forward. 'I expect I better explain something to you. The Colton family, to a man and a woman and a child, despise Morton Colton more than you or me. He is an outcast. The son of a bitch has done every low-down trick on his own family that there is to do, but at the same time, he's still a Colton.'
Longarm said, 'If they despise him so bad, how come he's doing their work in town?'
'That's just what I'm telling you. He's still a Colton, but they don't want him anywhere around the place. They don't want him handling the whiskey, they don't want him around any of his female cousins, nor do they want him around anybody while he's got a gun in his hands. You saw him cheating in that poker game. Well, he's cheated them on every deal he's ever handled, but he's still a Colton. You've got to understand that these mountain folk stick together like glue, so they put him out of the way in town and said, 'Now handle this. This is your last chance. If you screw this up, we're going to hang you.''
Longarm said softly, 'Well, I'll be damned. You mean they would protect me from him?'
Carson laughed softly. He said, 'They would protect the devil from him. You've got to understand these clans that live way back here as they do without much outside intercourse--and I mean that in more ways than one. They don't trust strangers, and even though Morton is a low-down, no-good son of a bitch, he's still a Colton, so they trust him to do this job, which he does very well, by the way. The son of a bitch is just a natural-born greasy cheat. He's a liar, he's a snake, and he's just the kind to handle a payoff to the law.'
Longarm said slowly, 'I see. So now you're taking me to the family? Are you going to tell them that I just had a run-in with Morton?'
'Oh, hell, yes. That will set you up just fine with them. In fact, they might even get nearly hospitable. Well, no, that's going a bit far, but they might get nearly to where they tolerate you.'
Longarm shook his head. He said, 'This is the damnedest place I've ever been in. I thought the Texas-Mexico border was bad, but this is worse.'
Carson looked at him quickly. He asked, 'What were you doing near the Tex-Mex border?'
Longarm said, 'Oh, buying cattle.' He smiled to himself, wondering if Carson thought he could be caught out that easily. Carson said, 'Oh, I forgot you're a cattle rancher.'
'Was a cattle rancher.'
They rode in silence for a few more minutes. Longarm said, 'Tell me one thing. There's something I don't understand. Yesterday, you wouldn't give me the time of day. Today, you're going to a considerable amount of trouble to keep me out of jail. You got a reason for that? Why would you help me?'
Carson said, 'What you don't understand is that I'm not so much helping you as I'm hindering Morton Colton. I can't stand the son of a bitch; I hate him. One of these days, I'm going to let some air through him. If I wasn't such a peaceful good old boy, I'd already have done it.'
'I didn't think you knew him. That day at the poker game, you acted like you didn't know him. You acted like you wanted to beat the hell out of him.'
Carson laughed slightly. 'Oh, I know him. He just doesn't know that I know him. So far as beating the hell out of him, you were standing there with a fistful of a big revolver and I didn't figure you were going to let me or anybody else do anything. By the way, I noticed you used that revolver with a good deal of ease.'
Longarm said, 'I noticed that you wear a cutaway holster, yourself.'
'Comes in handy in this business.'
'Well, you've all but told me that you're in this business, but the other day you claimed to know nothing about it. Now I find out that you not only know Morton Colton, but you know the family, at least you know where they live because that's where we're headed, according to you. What is it exactly that you do?' Longarm said.
Carson gave him a glance. He said, 'You'll find out soon enough, so I might as well tell you. I reckon if I can go to the trouble and the risk of pulling your bacon out of the fire, I can trust you with some information that's pretty nearly common knowledge among those in the know around here. I'm a whiskey buyer. I buy whiskey from these moonshiners here in Arkansas for my family's distillery in Tennessee.'
For a moment, Longarm didn't speak. He didn't know much about the whiskey business except he knew what he liked, but what Carson had just said didn't make much sense to him.
By now, it had come good dark and the first stars of the evening were beginning to get up. They had ridden through the lowlands of the foothills and were now into some occasionally severe little hills and hummocks. As they crested the top of one of the steep hills, Longarm pulled his horse up to give him a blow. Carson did likewise. Longarm turned in his saddle and looked back. He could clearly see the lights of Little Rock from the heights of the little hillock. It was difficult to tell how far away the lights were, but judging from the time that had passed, he estimated they had come a good ten miles. The horse was as good an animal as Carson had claimed it was.
Longarm said, scratching his head, 'Now, you know, there's something here I don't exactly understand. Maybe it's because I don't know anything. I came down here with the idea of buying some cheap whiskey and bringing it back to Arizona to make a profit. Yet, here I find myself in the company of a man whose family owns a distillery in Tennessee, which is the next state over, and he's here buying whiskey from these here folks. Do they make that much better a brand of rotgut?'
Frank Carson got a cigar out of his pocket and after offering it to Longarm and getting a shake of his head, stuck it in his own mouth and lit it with a match. When he had the cigar drawing good, he said, 'No, it ain't better.
