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.'
