The Devil’s Laughter: A Lou Prophet Novel

by Peter Brandvold

  Prophet was astonished to see the man merely smile, showing all his crooked, yellow teeth, and loose a mad, coyote-like howl. The ear-numbing yell did just what the Indian had intended—it disoriented Prophet long enough for the Indian to arch his back and sort of buck, bouncing his lower body off the ground with wicked force.

  Before Prophet could reorient himself, he found himself flying over the Indian’s left shoulder, turning a somersault and catching a brief glimpse of the brassy sky yawning above stony sawtooth ridges.

  It was like landing in a dinosaur’s mouth of jagged teeth. Prophet groaned and immediately tried to rise but felt as though a wagon were on his chest. He looked down over the toes of his boots and saw the big Indian gaining his own feet heavily just as Louisa, her rifle’s hammer clicking on an empty chamber, was overtaken by two other howling Mojaves.

  Louisa gave a grunt as she tried to swing her rifle like a club, but one of the Mojaves grabbed it out of her hands while the other wrapped his arms around her waist and swung her around, laughing.

  8

  PROPHET REACHED FOR the Colt but grabbed only leather. The pistol had fallen out of the holster when he’d been airborne. It lay about ten feet away, nestled between two black rocks and partly covered with gravel.

  Ah, hell . . .

  The big Indian with the lightning bolt carved across his forehead staggered toward Prophet. He had a skull-sized rock in his hands. He was bringing it up over his head when a spat of rifle fire clattered.

  Slugs spanged off rocks around the Mojave and the two others who had wrestled Louisa to the ground, one trying to straddle her. The Indian standing over her staggered forward suddenly, grabbing the small of his back with both hands. Dust flew up around Louisa and screamed off another rock, and then as the one straddling her swung around, eyes blazing furiously, a dark, round hole appeared in his forehead. The slug chewed out the back of his skull and spit brains, bone, and blood onto the rocks to Louisa’s right, snapping his head back. Louisa gasped and turned her face away from the blood, brushing a hand across her cheek.

  The gunfire continued. The other Mojaves that had been clambering up over the ridge were wheeling and heading off to the north, down the shoulder of the slope. A couple swung around to fling arrows or fire carbines or old-model Colt pistols but otherwise they were running off, eerily silent now, like cowed coyotes. A few dropped as they ran, and rolled, limbs flopping.

  Prophet looked around. The big Indian was nowhere in sight. He rose to a sitting position with a groan and grabbed his Colt. Brushing the gun off quickly, he clicked the hammer back, then gained his knees, wincing as another rock gouged into him, then heaved himself to his feet.

  He brushed dust and sand from his eyes and swung his head right to left and back again, still seeing the Indians dashing off through the rocks—seventy yards away, dwindling fast. Louisa was grunting disdainfully as she kicked the dead Mojave off her. Prophet walked back up toward the crest of the slope and saw five Rurales walking slowly down the ridge on his left. Chacin was surrounded by stocky Sergeant Frieri and three other Rurales, all holding their Winchester or Spencer carbines across their chests as they walked down through the rocks, swinging their heads around warily.

  Prophet stared skeptically at the Rurale captain with the handlebar mustache mantling his heavy mouth, above his narrow, jutting chin. “Never thought I’d be happy to see Chacin,” he muttered to Louisa, who was just now climbing to her feet, her mussed hair in her eyes.

  “Say again, Lou?” Chacin stopped about forty yards away and held a hand to his ear. “I couldn’t quite hear you.”

  “What’s your play, you sneaky bastard?”

  “Play?” Chacin looked grieved. “What do you mean—play? Did my men and I not just save your hides? Your ugly old hide and the chiquita’s magnifico young and voluptuous one?”

  Louisa had stepped up beside Prophet, feeding fresh cartridges into her Winchester’s breech. “He asked you what your play is, you arrogant son of a bitch.”

  Prophet glanced at her, arching one brow, still surprised to hear such barn talk being spewed from the once-prudish girl’s bee-stung lips.

  Chacin laughed. His men were spread out in a ragged semicircle around him. “I like her, Lou. I can see why you ride with her. She is not only beautiful but she has spirit, too. A very rare thing in any country, if you ask me. But to answer your question, senorita . . .”

  The Rurale captain continued strolling toward Prophet while his men remained where they’d been, looking around for more Mojaves. “. . . I know that you know where Lazzaro is heading. That much is obvious. You know the expression you can’t fool an old coyote? I am that old coyote. And I also know that there is a chance I might be able to draw the information out of you, given time and the implementation of my considerable skills practiced on dozens of screaming Yaquis.”

  Chacin shrugged exaggeratedly and curled one end of his upswept mustache between the thumb and index finger of his gloved left hand. “But why should I waste so much time and ruin such a beautiful young body when it is so unnecessary? Why not merely join forces with you and this big, ugly bounty hunter here, when of course seven guns riding after such devils as Antonio Lazzaro and Sugar Delphi are so much better than five . . . especially when Relampago and his zealous bronco Mojaves are running off their leash?”

  Prophet and Louisa followed the captain’s glance toward the north, where, in the far distance, beyond a low ridge, a column of smoke rose, gently unspooling in the sunny sky.

  “There is a herd of them, Lou,” Chacin said darkly. “Running in about five different packs.”

  Louisa glanced at Prophet. “Relampago?”

  “El Lightning,” Prophet said, keeping his eyes on Chacin.

  “I know as much Spanish as you do, Lou,” Louisa said dryly. “I’m just wondering who in hell the hombre is.”

  “A very bad Injun down here, chiquita,” Chacin said, feigning an American accent. “I chased him for nearly ten years. He alone accounted for the killing of nearly thirty Rurales. No telling how many peons he tortured and killed in his ill-founded quest to secure northwestern Sonora for his own. For over ten years, he has made everything north of the Mar de Cortes to San Diego a very dangerous place for all white men.”

  “He’s a big, tough son of a rabid jackal,” Prophet said, squeezing his throbbing jaw. “Damn near as big and tough as me.”

  “Si, si,” Chacin said. “And he will be back, so perhaps it is best if we all get moving, eh?”

  He smiled lopsidedly and arched a cunning brow, switching his gaze between the two bounty hunters. Prophet and Louisa looked at each other. A lot was agreed upon with that fleeting look, the most important being that it appeared they were stuck with Chacin whether they liked it or not.

  Prophet turned around, set his rifle on his shoulder and began walking off in the direction he’d sent his horse. “Here, Mean! Come on, boy! Don’t let El Lightnin’ get you!”

  “All right, where we headed?” Prophet asked as he and Louisa rode along a twisting trail down the shoulder of a low ridge, the sun angling down in front of them and throwing rock and cactus shadows back toward them.

  “How do I know?”

  Prophet glanced back at the Rurales riding behind him and Louisa. “Chacin sure sounded convincing.”

  “I don’t know anything about where Lazzaro and Sugar are headed. If I did, I probably would have had my throat cut instead of slipping by with a mere drugging.”

  Prophet glanced around. He saw no smoke in the north, but in the south a pale column rose between two distant ridges. He stared straight ahead across as vast an expanse of eroded, washed-out, and sun-blasted badlands as he’d seen since he’d last been down here, about a hundred miles northwest of the little fishing village of Puerto Penasco, at the northern tip of the Sea of Cortez. Nothing seemed to grow out here but rocks and sky, though occasionally he spied a patch of Mormon tea or an organ pipe cactus, the rare mesquite or creosote clump. Sinc
e he and Louisa and the Rurales had left the spot of El Lightning’s attack, he’d seen more Mojave green rattlers than plants, and once he’d watched a Gila monster pull its striped tail into a hole beneath a boulder.

  “Well, it’s purty obvious to me,” he said now, fingering his aching jaw once more. El Lightning had one hell of a right haymaker. “They gotta be headed for the Dead Mountains.”

  “That them yonder?”

  “Straight out across that flat stretch of badlands,” Prophet said, narrowing his gaze against the bright sun. “These mountains we’re in are the Santa Rosas. Those are the Dead Plains straight ahead—about forty miles of the hottest, driest country south of Death Valley. No water whatsoever. I know ’cause I almost died there twice, chasin’ tough nuts like Lazzaro and Sugar Delphi. Never wanted to be caught down here again, but here I am, sure enough.” He slapped his thigh, gave a fateful sigh, and glanced behind him. “That fifteen thousand in Mexican dinero they’re haulin’ looks a mite light to me now.”

  “It’s not the money I’m after.”

  “Yeah, me, too.” Prophet’s voice was dubious. His main mission in life was to have enough money to enjoy his remaining postwar years in the form of tanglefoot and parlor girls. But somehow he nearly always found himself hip deep in Louisa’s vendetta to rid the world of evil.

  An impossible task, but there it was. And here he was, heading across one of the most forbidding badlands in North America toward the nearly equally formidable Montanas Muertas. The Dead Mountains.

  Shadowing killers, trailed by Rurales, and surrounded by blood-hungry Mojaves.

  Damn, things just couldn’t get much worse.

  He and Louisa and the dogged Rurales rode on. Captain Chacin and his four coyote-eyed lackeys followed from about twenty yards back, rolling their shoulders with the slow gaits of their horses.

  Sergeant Frieri was still snarling angrily at Louisa and sitting light in his saddle, sort of hipped to one side, due to the battering the blond had given his balls. As one ragged, dusty group, they dropped down out of the rugged Santa Rosas and trailed out into the relatively flat badlands that weren’t nearly as flat as they’d appeared from above.

  There were low, rocky ridges and deep, narrow washes pocked with ancient, sun-bleached bones. Scrub lined the arroyos—brittle tufts of cholla, beavertail cactus, and prickly pear—and along one of these the group rode in double file. The washes offered a modicum of cover from the prying eyes of the Mojaves whom Prophet could sense, no doubt knowing exactly where his group was despite the cover of the dry water course.

  Dry it was. So was the air. If the recent deluge had visited this parched land, there was no sign of it. From his few previous trips to these forbidden environs, Prophet knew of one water source, but it was likely dry now in late August, and well out of the way. If it wasn’t dry, the Mojaves had probably poisoned it.

  One good thing had happened when they’d entered the wash. Louisa, too, had noted the tracks of the four shod hooves leading off away from them, along the same arroyo they themselves were following. If Chacin had noticed the sign, he hadn’t let on. The few times Prophet had glanced behind, the captain had been riding with his chin low, as though he were sleeping. His sombrero covered his eyes.

  Sergeant Frieri rode beside his superior, looking grim, one nostril flared.

  The sun turned a vibrant copper late in the afternoon. It sank fast, shedding fiery bayonets. Prophet’s party stopped in a broad horseshoe of the wash where mesquites grew thick along the banks and there were plenty of boulders to offer cover if the Mojaves came calling.

  That wasn’t likely, because as a general rule Mojaves didn’t like to fight at night, believing that if they were killed in the dark their souls would be trapped forever in darkness. But that was a rule that had been broken more than once, and Prophet’s group organized a night watch—two men or one man and Louisa awake at all hours and positioned strategically around the camp.

  The horses were tended, bedrolls arranged. They built no fire and ate a meager supper of jerky or whatever else they could find in their saddlebags. They drank their water sparingly, knowing they probably wouldn’t find water again until the day after tomorrow, when they’d reach the Dead Mountains. There was a well at the eastern edge of the mountains—or at least a well had been there a few years ago, in a mining village called San Gezo, populated mostly by Americans though the village had originally been Mexican. If the well was dry, Prophet’s group would be in a hard spot, which was always the risk when traveling in this godforsaken country.

  The Rurales passed around a couple of bottles, though the tanglefoot wasn’t offered to Prophet and Louisa until they’d made the Rurale rounds enough times to liberate the Mexicans’ charity. The pulque burned off a good three layers of Prophet’s throat before popping in his belly like an entire string of Mexican firecrackers.

  He squeezed his eyes shut and wagged his head. When the initial burn had passed, he grinned and offered the bottle to Louisa.

  “There you go, Calamity Jane. Have you a swig of that. You’ll likely swear off firewater forever after, maybe even decide to quit cursin’ a blue streak.”

  The blond bounty hunter took a swig of the Mexican national tanglefoot, as potent as any twice-distilled corn mash Prophet had ever sampled but tasting more like grapefruit juice seasoned with diamondback venom. She tried her best to pretend it didn’t faze her, but Prophet could tell by the way her eyes glazed that she was struggling to keep her panties from catching fire.

  Later, when he and Chacin had drunk nearly half the second bottle themselves and were sitting around by the light of the quarter moon, playing two-handed poker over a flat rock, Chacin said, “Dishonesty seems to be a gringo trait, does it not?”

  Prophet had sensed the man’s mood darkening with each swig he’d taken from the clear bottle. Prophet himself was in no mood for any of the bean eater’s bullshit.

  “You wanna chew that up a little finer, there, Captain?”

  The two Rurales who’d been sleeping nearby lifted their heads from their saddles and stared warily through the moonlit darkness at the two men glaring across the rock at each other, like two bulls in the same corral. Louisa lay against her own saddle somewhere behind Prophet.

  “You know what I am talking about, Lou. I am talking about our past business arrangements, all of which you reneged on.”

  “That so?”

  “Si. That is so.” Chacin raised his voice dangerously and dipped his chin, the moonlight flashing like silver daggers in his eyes. “And when were you going to tell me that we had cut the trail of the men and the blind chiquita we have been following?”

  “When I was goddamn good and ready!”

  Silence.

  Far off, a coyote gave a mournful howl.

  Both men reached for their sidearms at the same time, extending the Colts toward the other’s chest and clicking the hammers back in thundering unison.

  9

  PROPHET STARED AT Chacin across the flat rock in the moonlit darkness. All he could see of his eyes were two tiny, stiletto-like glints beneath the man’s heavy brow. The moonlight silvered the left curl of the man’s handlebar mustache and lay in a thin line atop the barrel of the Colt in the man’s right hand, aimed at Prophet’s heart.

  Prophet slowly took up the slack in his trigger finger as raw fury throbbed in his ears. He thought he could hear Chacin increasing the tension on his own six-shooter, and the throbbing in the bounty hunter’s ears grew louder.

  “Boys, boys,” Louisa said, “if you can’t hold your booze you oughta stick to sarsaparilla.”

  Prophet held the Rurale captain’s glowering stare for another five seconds. But the girl’s calmly cajoling voice had thrust a lance through the tension that had fallen like a hot, wet blanket over the little camp in the rocky arroyo, relieving it. Chacin’s lips spread, lifting the curled ends of his mustache and showing his fang-like, yellow eyeteeth. The silver stilettos in his eyes grew faintly smaller. P
rophet put some slack in his trigger finger, felt the thudding in his ears slow.

  He and Chacin chuckled softly at the same time and raised their pistol barrels. “Perhaps we are indeed acting a little foolish—eh, Lou?”

  “Perhaps. Not that I like you any better than I did five minutes ago.”

  “Nor that I feel any love for you, amigo,” Chacin said, twirling his Colt on his finger and returning it to the covered, black holster strapped for the cross draw on his left hip. “But perhaps there is another, less resolute way we can resolve our differences.”

  “Perhaps there is,” Prophet said, shoving his own Colt into the holster on his right thigh, with a faint snicking of iron on leather. “You wanna fight with knives? First one to get a hand cut off has to keep his mouth shut about their differences for the rest of this blessed trek?”

  “How ’bout if you leg or arm wrestle?” Louisa said wearily, still resting her head back against her saddle. “A one-handed man isn’t much good out here.”

  Prophet glanced at her, then arched a brow at Chacin. “I reckon she’s got a point.”

  “As sensible as she is lovely.”

  Louisa sighed.

  Chacin said, “I like the arm-wrestling suggestion. It’s the manly solution.” He smiled.

  “Rules what I laid out? Loser goes mute for as long as we’re doomed to suffer each other’s company?”

  “That sounds fair,” Chacin said, unbuttoning the cuff of his right shirtsleeve. The two Rurales who’d been sleeping were stirring with interest. “The first one to mention our, uh . . . differences again has the right to shoot the other without retribution from the other’s men.” Chacin gave an oily smile. “Or women.”

  “Fine as frog hair,” Prophet said, rolling up the right sleeve of his own buckskin shirt.

  “Shall we up the stakes just a little?” Chacin said, staring down at his arm as he rolled the sleeve up tight against his bulging bicep.