Winchester 1887 (22 page)

They had taken his converted Colt, and the Winchester rifle remained sheathed in the scabbard on his saddle, which lay in a lean-to next to the corral. So far, none of the outlaws had even noticed that the rifle was a One of One Thousand, but the handful of cartridges Millard had managed to shove into his pants pocket wouldn't do much good without that rifle. He knew he had to be patient, wait for the right time. To rush his move would mean his death. That didn't worry Millard. What worried him was the knowledge that it would also lead to the murders of Robin Gillett and his oldest son.

So he brewed whiskey.

He had grown up in East Texas, where he had known quite a few peddlers of whiskey. Stills had been common, and a drunk could find good corn liquor, or bad corn liquor, whiskey distilled from potatoes, or anything from the champagne cider he had talked about back along the Red River to the worst rotgut whiskey that would eat off the taste buds on a man's tongue.

He kept the dugout a furnace, which kept most of the outlaws outside, and brewed whiskey. When he figured he had the alcohol hot enough, he got Robin and James to help him and carefully poured the scalding liquid into one of the kegs, in which he had evenly distributed the plugs of tobacco. Pretty soon, he had three of the six kegs filled. Then all six.

He decided to burn the sugar, which he then dumped into the kegs.

“Bodeen, when do you add the poison?” McCoy had dropped in again to hurry up the whiskey man, to make sure Millard remembered the deadline.

“Last. I done told you that. Then we seal up the kegs, so the strychnine will settle. Load it up and haul it off to”—he smiled—“Fort Washita.”

That turned McCoy's cold eyes icy in the hellhole. “Who told you about Fort Washita?”

Millard smiled as he noisily scraped the burned sugar from a cast iron skillet into one of the kegs. It had been a guess. “Closest place. And I've heard a lot of whiskey peddlers make stops there. What's happening? Some sort of whiskey runner convention?”

“Just brew the stuff, Bodeen.” Gripping his wicked-looking Winchester '87 ten-gauge, McCoy hurried out of the swelter box.

When he had left, Millard pulled another skillet filled with smelly burned sugar from the fireplace and stepped to the next keg. In the corner, Robin sat dividing the red pepper evenly into tin cups.

“When
do
you add the poison?” James asked.

“I don't.” Millard rested the heavy skillet on the rim of the keg of steaming raw ethyl alcohol. “I'm not killing anyone. Not even by accident.”

He had already taken care of that during the first night at the dugout. As soon as the kids were asleep, and most of McCoy's and Maxwell's gunmen drunk in the yard, Millard had opened all of the poison bottles, which took a good length of time, with those boxes full of eighth-ounce bottles. He'd dug a hole, dumped the poison into it, covered the hole, and used the leftover sand to fill the bottles of poison. The whiskey he brewed might have some sediment in the bottom, but it wouldn't kill anyone. He had even washed the severed rattlesnake heads before adding those to the barrels.

“This whiskey might make some people sick, but it won't kill them.” He laughed. “By Jacks, it might even taste halfway decent.”

The smiles on the teenagers' faces pleased him.

His mother had always told him that as long as you laughed or smiled, life would turn out all right. “I'm holding you to that, Ma,” he said thoughtfully.

“What?” James asked.

Millard shook his head. “Nothing.” Then he thought better of that. “No, it is something. Something my mother, your grandma, told me and Borden and Jimmy. Smile and laugh. Smile and laugh. Keep that up, and life will turn out just fine and dandy. Don't forget it.”

All right,
Millard thought,
I've taught my son everything he needs to know. I can die now.
His smile faded.
Because pretty soon, I'll likely be killed.