Longarm realized he had gone too far. He said, 'I don't really give a damn what their names are. I just wanted to make sure I give the money to the right people.'
Asa chuckled. He said, 'You'll be able to tell which ones they are. They'll be the ones with their hands out. There might be some confusion about Morton not being there, but you just tell them that you are taking his place, that he met with some kind of accident.'
Longarm said, 'I reckon I can handle that.'
Asa Colton got up. 'There's one more thing, Mr. Long. I'm going to ask you to stay in this cabin for the balance of this day and tonight. I know it seems unfair, but there's some hard feelings over at the big house, and I wouldn't want you to run into any more trouble. I'll have you some supper sent over. You and Mr. Carson will be leaving early in the morning. The wagons will be pulling out right after dark.'
'I don't understand all that I know about this train business. Can you explain this to me?'
John said, 'There ain't really nothing that you need to know, Mr. Long. You ride along with Mr. Carson. He's done this a half dozen times before, and he knows the way.'
Longarm said, 'How come the wagons are leaving here tonight?'
'Because it's a hard pull up and down some of these hills for the horses and oxen. That whiskey weighs considerable more than you think it does. Twelve thousand gallons is a pretty good load of whiskey.'
'All right,' Longarm said. The two men were moving toward the door. 'I'm sorry it turned out this way, Mr. Colton. I wish we could have gone on doing business in the future.'
The old man stopped and shuffled his feet for a second. He said, 'You never can tell. Time has a way of healing old wounds. I hope you don't feel too bad about Sally.'
Longarm said, 'Naturally I feel mighty bad about Sally. I hope she finds a good man who won't cause her trouble with her own folks. I wish it could have been me.'
John said, 'Well, we'll bid you a good-bye now, Mr. Long. Y'all have a good rest this evening.'
When they were gone, Longarm sat down at the table. Frank Carson came over from where he had been standing by the bed and sat down across from where Asa Colton had been sitting. He said, 'Looks like you didn't come off too good. You lost a wife, and you damned near lost the whiskey. I do have to say, though, you got a better price on the whiskey. I guess you could look at it as a profit all around.'
Longarm watched the old man and his son as they walked back toward the big house. He could see them clearly out the window. He said thoughtfully, 'I just wish they weren't such nice folks.'
He switched back to Carson. He said, 'I don't understand about this railroad business, these boxcars and the whiskey being loaded and all this and that. How is that going to get me back to Arizona with a load of whiskey?'
Carson said, 'it ain't hard. There's a siding about fifteen miles southwest of here. You and I will ride over there in the morning. It will be about a two-, two-and-a-half-hour ride. There will be three boxcars loaded on the siding. I'm taking six thousand gallons and it will be loaded into one of the boxcars. Your two thousand gallons will be in another, and as I understand it, they're shipping four thousand gallons down to an old customer in Texas that will be in the third boxcar. That's twelve thousand gallons. Each one of those cars has a waybill on it for its destination. When the train picks us up coming by from North Little Rock, it will run us down to Hot Springs, which is a switching point about eighty or ninety miles away. From there, you can get your boxcar tagged onto a train heading west, I'll head east, and I guess that load for Texas will head south. That's all there is to it.'
'Will any of the Coltons be there?'
Carson shook his head. He said, 'I doubt it. The wagons will have already arrived and loaded the whiskey on the boxcars and will have damned near gotten back here by the time we get there. Somebody might stick around to see that nobody fools around with the whiskey, but the Coltons don't like to be involved in that part of the business. That way, nobody can really ever connect them with it.'
Longarm said, 'Sounds smart to me.' He reached across and picked up the bottle of whiskey and poured them both a drink. 'By the way, Mr. Carson, I've taken note of the fact that while you brought me my money, you didn't bring me those two bottles of Maryland whiskey I had in my room in Little Rock.'
Carson smiled. 'Well, either somebody stole that whiskey or I drank it or it got broke. Either way, you ain't got it. Best I can tell you about that is that however you lost it, don't make no difference.'
Longarm gave him a look. 'I bet you drank it.'
Frank Carson said, 'Now, why would I want to do that when my family makes some of the best sipping whiskey in the South? It wasn't that bad, though, to tell you the truth. I have to admit that.'
Longarm gave him a stern look. 'Why you low-down son of a bitch. Me sitting here drinking this mouth-searing, rot-gutting, head-busting white lightning, and you're up there drinking my good whiskey. You're a hell of a fellow, Mr. Carson.'
'My mother thinks so.'
They left a little before seven the next morning, riding Frank Carson's horses. The going was hard at first. It was up steep inclines and then down and then up another steep incline and then down again and again. Carson said, 'Now you see why the wagons leave so early?'
After a half hour's riding, they cut the track the wagons had made and followed it for about an hour. After that, it was faster to cut cross-country through places the wagons couldn't go.
Longarm asked, 'Where does this train come out of?'
Frank Carson said, 'Well, I don't know where it starts, but its last stop before it picks up the cars is North Little Rock. What the hell do you care?'
Longarm said, 'I'm just trying to figure how those federal boys are going to get there. Will they come on horseback?'
Carson gave him a look. 'You're certainly a curious fellow, ain't you? No, they won't come on horseback. They'll be on that train, at least that's how they've done it before. Of course, I ain't never had no part in that, and I don't really care where they come from. All I want to do is make sure my whiskey's all right and get the hell on home. I'm
