tired of this damned place.'
'What kind of fellows are they, those government men?'
Carson shook his head. 'I don't know, Mr. Long. What do you care?'
'I just want to know what to expect. Are they tough?'
'I've done told you, I don't know. I didn't say I didn't know them, Mr. Long, and I didn't say that I did know them. I didn't say anything about it. I didn't say anything at all about them. Take my meaning?'
Longarm said, 'Sounds like a nice way of telling me to mind my own business.'
'There you go, Mr. Long.'
They had to rest their horses from time to time because of the rough terrain. Finally, they topped a rise and broke through a wide stand of trees and then rode out into the opening of a long downslope that led toward the railroad bed. From two miles off, they could see the three boxcars standing, silent and waiting.
Carson looked at his watch. 'It's ten minutes after nine. The train should be along about ten. We'll just have time to load my horses up into my boxcar before the train gets here.'
Longarm said, 'Then let's get to it.'
They rode on down the slope and pulled up at the three big, brown boxcars. Longarm could see that the first one was almost half full of cases of whiskey. He expected that was Frank Carson's load. The middle one was only partially loaded, and he expected that was his. He couldn't see into the third boxcar, but he supposed that was the one bound for Texas.
They dismounted and began taking the saddles off the horses. There was a grove of trees to the east some two hundred yards away, and Longarm could see a figure in the foliage among the trees. He said, 'Wonder who that is?'
Frank Carson said, 'That will probably be John, but he don't want you to act like you see him, so just go on about your business.'
They got the horses unsaddled, and then Frank Carson scrambled up into his boxcar and pushed out a wide wooden ramp that tilted down to the ground. Together, they led the horses up one by one and got them established in the empty half of the boxcar. Longarm said, 'What about feed and water?'
Frank Carson said, 'They'll be all right until we get to Hot Springs, and I'll get the yard crew there to put in a water trough and some hay and feed. It's a pretty good little ride from there on back to Tennessee.'
They brought the saddles up, threw them in, and then jumped down and pushed the ramp back into the boxcar. After that, they walked down and looked into Longarm's car. Carson said, 'Yeah, that's about two thousand gallons. Reckon you'll make a pretty good profit off that back in Arizona, Mr. Long?'
Longarm said, 'Hell, I hope so. It appears that I've gone through enough trouble over this here whiskey. I've lost a wife, been shot at, had to kill two men.'
Carson said, 'Three.'
'Oh, yeah. That deputy back in Little Rock.'
'I'd make it a good long time before I went back to that town if I's you.'
'Sounds like good advice.'
After that, they squatted in the grass and smoked and took nips out of a bottle of whiskey while they waited. Finally, they heard the sound of a train in the distance. They stood up and watched it come chugging around the side of a hill a couple of miles away. It was a freight train with a yellow caboose at the end. 'Must be a local,' Longarm said.
'How so?'
'Ain't many cars,' Longarm said.
'Freight trains can't pull many cars in these mountains. Ain't like out in the flat land where you'll see one pulling fifty or sixty cars.'
Longarm looked thoughtfully at Carson. For some time now it had been on his mind as to what he was going to do with this man. Carson had done him several favors. He had also backed him to a degree in a gunfight. Longarm did not plan to arrest him. In fact, he was going to let Carson leave with his whiskey. He didn't, however, want him getting in the way as a hinderance or as an innocent bystander who might get hit with random gunfire if it came to that. But he could not tell Carson that he was a United States deputy marshal, not before he arrested those two Treasury agents. He just had to hope that Carson would have sense enough to stay out of it.
Longarm glanced back to the little copse of woods. The figure was still there, but John had ridden deeper into the timber so as to further remove himself from the transaction when it took place. They watched as the train went slowly past them on the track. It went on until it was beyond the siding switch. A conductor came down and unhooked the caboose, leaving it short of the siding switch. Then he reset the switch so that the train could back onto the siding and connect to the three boxcars.
Just as the train started groaning its way backward, Longarm saw two figures come out of the caboose and step to the ground. The men came walking toward him, stepping over the tracks. As they neared, he could see that they were both dressed in four-button suits with high collars and foulard ties. They were sporting derby hats.
'That them?' Longarm said.
'Yeah.'
'Quite the dandies, ain't they?'
'Well, they can afford it. You better have your money ready.'
Longarm reached into his pocket for the envelope containing the $1,200. The men stepped over the last rail and started down the line of boxcars. Longarm took several steps forward. He noticed one of the men was wearing muttonchop sideburns. It was difficult for him to keep a straight face. They were small and insignificant men made even smaller by their underhanded and backdoor dishonesty. He held out the envelope. 'You Small and
