Free Longarm and the Whiskey Woman by Tabor Evans Page B

"Well, for the simple reason that the timber business has about played out."
    Salem Colton narrowed his eyes. "Timber? Ain't no timber in Arizona from what I've heard. It's mostly desert."
    Longarm began cutting his ham. He said, "Yeah, it's desert now, but it didn't use to be before I started into the timber business."
    That brought a pretty good laugh and seemed to settle the mood in the room. Even the two young men had stopped giving him hard looks.
    The three men were rough but cleanly dressed. Only the man in the middle, the older one, was bearded. The other two supported drooping mustaches. They didn't look especially mean, or inbred, or especially suspicious. Longarm reckoned that they led a lonely, hard life making whiskey and selling it. He doubted that they or their womenfolk got into town much. Even though the three men, whom Longarm guessed ranged in age from mid-twenties to late forties, didn't appear all that rough or tough, he expected that neither they nor any of their clan would be people to get careless with. When they had finished their meal, he and Carson, almost together, pushed their plates away. In an instant, Bathsheba appeared from nowhere to collect their knives and forks and plates. She headed for the kitchen, leaving the table and the conversation to the men.
    Salem Colton hunched forward a little, putting his big hands and forearms on the table. He said to Longarm, "Now, what's this about you wanting to buy whiskey? How much whiskey are you wanting to buy?"
    "Neighbor, I ain't been in this part of the country more than two or three days, and I'm just kind of getting my feet wet right now. I figure if you're willing to sell it and I can get it to a railroad someplace without either drowning or falling off one of these damned mountains here, that I'd maybe like to take about two thousand gallons, depending on the price."
    Salem gave him a long look and then turned his head to spit tobacco. He said, turning back to Longarm, "Well, that's about the least we'll sell. Gonna cost you about a dollar and a quarter a gallon, but the selling of it ain't up to me."
    Longarm glanced around at Frank Carson. The price that Salem Colton had just quoted was almost double the amount Carson had said he had been paying. Longarm made no sign. He had no intentions of buying any whiskey, but he felt to be taken seriously, he ought to put up a show of bargaining. He shook his head and said, "That sounds mighty dear to me. That sounds like about twenty-five hundred dollars' worth of green whiskey to me. I'll have to do all sorts of doctoring up and getting it in bottles before I could ever make a profit. Gonna be quite a few costs to a middleman on this project."
    Salem shook his head. "Well, to begin with, we've got plenty of buyers for our whiskey, and then secondly, it ain't up to me. It's up to Asa. He might not be willing to sell you a drop, much less two thousand gallons."
    Longarm said, "Who's Asa?"
    Salem shrugged. "Well, I reckon you might have to call him the boss. He's my uncle, but since Joshua died, who was my daddy and several other boys' daddy, Asa kind of runs the show. He's the main man, you might say."
    Longarm said, "And where is he?"
    Salem nodded his head at Frank Carson. He said, "He knows. If he wants to see you buying any whiskey, he'll take you there or he'll point you there. I wouldn't recommend, however, you go by yourself. There's some pretty ticklish country between here and there, and I don't mean that you might fall off into a valley somewhere."
    Longarm gave him a thin smile. "You mean I might fall off with a bullet through my chest?"
    "That's about the size of it."
    "Well, how far is it?"
    Salem stretched. He said, "Oh, it ain't all that far in miles--maybe six or seven. I ain't never taken a count of it. But there's some real unfriendly folks you don't want to be passing without some word going on ahead that you're all right. See, what we're doing ain't exactly approved by some folks, the