He got out of his truck and waited as she picked her way over the rocky ground to join him. He extended his arms from his sides. “Well? Satisfied?”

She looked beyond him at the glow of the fire. “You camp out here?”

“Damn, girl. Wha’d’ya think? I’m making whiskey.”

Twenty-One

Muttering imprecations, Irv turned and led her toward the contraption being attended by a man she’d never seen before. As Irv and she approached, he stayed where he was, but stopped what he’d been doing and gaped at the two of them, slack-jawed.

He was holding onto a long stick that extended out of a pear-shaped metal vat, the rounded bottom of which was nestled in the center of a manmade stone pit. An opening had been left in the pit’s base in order to stoke and fuel the fire smoldering inside it. The fire’s smoke drifted out of a flue on the back side of the pit and curled up the face of a limestone outcropping, which formed a natural backdrop for the still, which seemed to Laurel to have been haphazardly engineered.

“Meet Mr. Earnest Sawyer,” Irv said. “Ernie, this is my nosy daughter-in-law, Laurel.”

The other man let go of the stick and doffed the brim of his newsboy’s cap. “Ma’am. I’ve heard a lot about you.”

“Me and Ernie worked together on the railroad,” Irv said. “Known and trusted each other for years. He’s from Kentucky. Knows everything there is to know about making corn liquor. So, when I retired, Ernie said to hell with the railroad and quit, too. We partnered up—”

“This is why you’ve been sneaking out at night?”

“You thought I was seeing a woman, didn’t you?”

“You’re making moonshine?”

“Good moonshine.”

“It’s illegal!” Her voice echoed off the surrounding hills, making both men cringe.

“Pipe down,” Irv said. “Sound carries out here. And, yes, it’s illegal, but it’s a living. A damn good one. How do you think I’m affording that rent house?”

She was presently too flabbergasted to cite the past due bills. She took in her immediate surroundings, which, by all indications, was a permanent encampment. In addition to the components of the whiskey-making apparatus, a tent had been erected at the edge of the clearing. It was dark in color and camouflaged by cedar boughs.

She took a closer look at Ernie Sawyer. He was as thin as a string bean; his overalls hung straight from the shoulder straps, seeming to touch him nowhere else. He wasn’t nearly as young as she, but not nearly as old as Irv. He was watching her with misgiving.

“You stay out here in the tent, Mr. Sawyer?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“All the time?”

“Mostly, yes, ma’am. Always when we’re doing runs.”

Laurel looked to Irv for clarification.

“A run is the process that starts with cooking the mash and ends with a jug of distilled whiskey. Ernie oversees the making of, I distribute. We split the revenue fifty-fifty.”

The pride with which he spoke left Laurel at a loss for words. Resuming her survey of the area, she noticed a number of metal barrels lined up. “What’s in those?”

“Mash. Fermenting till it’s ready to cook.”

“And all that?” She indicated a pile of what appeared to be building supplies.

“Materials to make our second still,” Irv said. “We’re duplicating this one, based on Ernie’s great-granddaddy’s design. It would already be assembled and doubling our production, but I had a list.”

She let that shot pass without comment. “What about your fix-it business?”

“A front. Don’t get me wrong. I fix plenty, I’m good at it and in demand. But driving around hither and yon, going from job to job, allows me to—”

“Distribute your product.”

“Secret-like. There’s a false floor in the bed of the truck. You can’t hear the jars clinking together with all my tools rattling around. Plus, I’m old and have a crippled hip.”

“He plays that up,” remarked Ernie.

Irv shot him a dirty look, then said to Laurel, “I’ve got the perfect cover.”

Still disbelieving, she rubbed her forehead, wet her lips. “It’s not only against the law, it’s dangerous. A local moonshiner was murdered recently. At his still. I read about it in the newspaper.”

“Wally Johnson,” Irv said with a snort of disdain. “The world’s better off, believe me.”

“They’s all sorry, them Johnsons,” Ernie said. “Sorry and mean. We’re smart enough not to cross ’em.”

Earnest was befittingly named. He spoke with perfect conviction. However, Laurel questioned his smarts. “Why didn’t you set up shop in Kentucky?” she asked him. “Isn’t it known for moonshining?”

Irv spoke up ahead of his partner. “So’s this area. Texas’s best held secret. There’s stills all over these parts.” He made a broad sweep with his hand. “Lot of hills to hide them in. Unlimited cedar and oak for the fires. Cedar gets it to going good, oak keeps it burning low and even.

“Hear that gurgle?” He angled his head toward the wall of limestone. “A natural spring flows out of that. Unlimited supply of cold, clean water, filtered by Mother Nature herself. You gotta have good water to make good ’shine.”

He pointed toward a wooden barrel with a spout close to the bottom which emptied into a glass jug with a funnel acting as a stopper. “Ernie’s great-granddaddy preached filtering and testing. First, filtering makes the whiskey smell and taste better. Testing prevents accidents.”

Ernie chimed in. “No Sawyer in my branch of the family tree has ever poisoned or blinded nobody. We don’t turn out popskull, neither.”

“Popskull is—”

“I don’t care what it is, Irv,” Laurel snapped, cutting him off. Then she took a deep, calming breath. Her father-in-law and his crony had obviously lost their marbles, to say nothing of their morality. She must make them see reason. “The consequences of what you’re doing could be dire.”

“Dire?”

“Dire. Who owns this land? Tell me it’s not government property.”

“No, me and Ernie own it. He chose this spot, saying it was as ideal a place for a still as he’d ever seen. The previous owner, a cotton farmer who’d lost three crops in three years straight to the boll weevil, was happy to get rid of some of his land that wasn’t fit to grow nothing. Ernie and me pooled our savings and relieved him of ten acres.