The Devil’s Laughter: A Lou Prophet Novel

by Peter Brandvold

  If the mine had been used recently, it hadn’t been reached via the old road from San Gezo.

  The wind moaned between the canyon’s high walls. It was like a saw working on Prophet’s nerves. He gritted his teeth and slitted his eyes against it, paused to look around carefully between the wind-buffeting witches’ fingers of cholla stalks, then kept walking.

  The mine lay two hundred yards inside the canyon, about a third of the way up the slope on his right. The trail wound up to it along a graded bed. There wasn’t much to see of the mine but a portal that had obviously been caved in at the back of a small shelf carved out of the mountain.

  Below the shelf lay a massive tailings pile and a jumble of iron and gray-weathered wood that was likely all that remained of the stamping mill, tipple, and tramway that had been used to crudely process the ore before it had been loaded onto drays and hauled across the desert to San Diego. Around the rubble were also the bleached white bones doubtlessly belonging to mules that had pulled the drays and that often dropped dead due to exhaustion or poor tending.

  Prophet had been to many mines, and they were hard, merciless places for man and beast. This one, however, hadn’t been worked in at least five years. He didn’t have to climb the slope to see that. Not even a shod hoofprint marked the soft sand anywhere around the base of the tailings slope.

  Hooves thudded behind Prophet. He whipped around. Three Indians on spotted ponies galloped around the bend in the canyon floor.

  Prophet mumbled a curse and looked around for cover. There was nothing near that could conceal him.

  Up the slope about fifteen yards was a wagon-sized boulder that angled out away from the ridge. He scrambled up the slope, breathing hard, hearing the hoof thuds growing louder, the Indians howling. Rifles cracked. Bullets spanged off rocks around Prophet’s feet.

  He threw himself behind the boulder.

  Only, behind the boulder there was nothing but a ragged hole in the ground.

  Prophet fell through it, knowing in the back of his mind he’d just thrown himself down an exploratory mine shaft. The shaft didn’t plunge straight down. He bounced and rolled, losing his rifle and feeling rocks hammering him about the ribs, head, and shoulders. The angle was steep enough that he couldn’t stop his momentum.

  He hit the bottom of the shaft with a loud explosion of air from his hammered lungs.

  He lay on his back, breathing hard, hearing spring robins chirping in his ears. His head spun. Fireworks flared behind his squeezed-shut eyelids.

  When he finally opened his eyes and began to hear the chirping receding but feeling that every rib in his body was poking through his chest, he saw something angling up beside him. A root?

  No.

  Prophet grimaced, silently cursed, when he realized that what he was staring at was a human hand. The fingers formed a hideous, pale claw that was reaching for him.

  24

  “WHAT THE HELL!”

  Prophet got his heels and hands beneath him and scuttled a few feet away from the large, pale hand hovering over him, until the back of his head and his right shoulder smacked the hole’s stone side wall. His right elbow pushed against something yielding, and he turned to see what appeared to be a tan wool vest.

  The stench in the hole was nearly suffocating, and Prophet felt his eyes watering as he realized that the tan vest was worn by a dead man. The vest was blood-matted, and it was swollen over the bloated belly it covered.

  Prophet looked to his left, saw the hand he’d seen before. It had a gold ring set with a square, brown stone. It protruded from a white shirt cuff. It belonged to another dead man who lay sideways against a rock, the arm and the clawlike hand sort of propped against it. The hand was no longer moving, and Prophet realized that he had made the hand move because his legs had been resting across the dead man’s.

  The sickly sweet stench of human decay made him suck a shallow breath and make a face as he rose onto his elbows, wincing against the burning aches in his ribs and hips and the back of his neck. He saw his rifle lying against the wall several feet away, beyond the legs of the body to his right.

  His aching head swirled, unable yet to fully fathom his grim discovery. Dead men . . . here . . . ?

  Had the mine collapsed, trapping miners?

  The thought was snuffed by a sound from above. He looked toward the opening of the hole at the top of the steeply slanted shaft. He couldn’t see the entire opening from his vantage, because of a lip of rock above him. He could make out about half of it, and the silhouette of a head staring down at him from the hole’s lip, long hair hanging around the Indian’s shoulders.

  “Hey, white man!” a deep voice shouted. “Hey, you down there—you thieving bastard! You dead?”

  The voice was so unlike what Prophet had expected from a Mojave that for a half a second he thought that someone other than the Indian staring down at him must have spoken. It was the voice of a white man with a slight Spanish accent.

  Prophet stared skeptically up at the hole. He didn’t think the Indian could see him down here in the darkness where little light probed. His eyes continuing to water, he held himself still, taking shallow breaths through his mouth.

  “Where’s the gold, gringo? Huh? Where’d you boys hide it?”

  Still, Prophet said nothing as he frowned up at the ragged-edged hole and the head of the Indian—El Lightning?—staring down at him.

  Gold?

  Finally, the Indian gave a disgusted chuff. His head rose as he straightened. He angled a rifle down toward Prophet, and the bounty hunter jerked his head and knees back, rolling up against the wall behind him as orange flames lapped from the Indian’s rifle.

  Bam! Bam! Bam!

  The reports echoed flatly, the slugs screeching off the rocks about six feet in front of Prophet. About ten seconds after the last echoing crash, he heard a fateful grunt. A stone and some gravel dropped into the pit, thudding and clattering on the rocks—as though it had been accidentally kicked there. Prophet looked up at the ragged mouth of the shaft he was in. The Indian was gone.

  The wind moaned hollowly across the opening.

  Prophet took a deep breath, shook his head at the fumes of putrefaction, and rose painfully to his hands and knees. He took quick stock of his condition, deciding that while he was badly battered, no bones were broken. Maybe a cracked rib or two, but he’d live.

  Looking around at the two dead men, he lifted his bandanna across his nose and mouth, then crawled over to the man on his right—the one wearing a tan vest under a dark brown suit jacket. The body was badly bloated, including the face that had a yellow, gray-flecked mustached mantling its mouth. The man’s pale blue eyes were open.

  Prophet saw that he’d taken two bullets to the chest. He frowned at something poking out from beneath the man’s left coat lapel, then reached down and with his gloved hand flipped the lapel back to reveal the sun-and-moon copper badge of a deputy United States marshal.

  Prophet turned his startled gaze on the man with the upraised, clawlike hand, then saw that there was yet a third man lying beyond Clawhand. Prophet crawled the few feet over and saw, after he’d rolled the second body over, that Clawhand had an eye blown out. There was another bullet in his cheek, a third in his right hip over which a cheap, gold-washed timepiece dangled.

  This man was older, grayer, his eyes a liquid gray blue, and he had a thick, dragoon-style mustache that hung down over the sides of his mouth. His lips were gray and wrinkled and stretched back from his long yellow teeth—a death snarl.

  He, too, wore the copper badge of a deputy U.S. marshal.

  As did the third man, Prophet saw a few seconds later. The third man—short and stocky, with thick, curly muttonchop whiskers—wore a long tan duster. One of the duster’s torn pockets was bulging. What appeared to be papers peaked out of the top of the pocket.

  Prophet reached down and pulled out the rolled sheaf of paper, removed a string and unrolled the papers. He felt his eyes bulge as he rocked back on h
is heels, sucking the bandanna in and out of his mouth as he breathed.

  The face on the wanted circular staring up at him was that of Marshal Bill Hawkins, an evil leer on his lips; each etched eye seemed to be staring off in different directions. The name on the circular, just below the one thousand dollars being offered for bounty, was Hawk Johnson. He was wanted for “wanton thievery, cold-blooded murder, and the general harassment of law-abiding citizens” along the West Coast of the United States.

  Prophet’s heart thudded as he tossed the circular aside and stared down at the next one in the stack. His heart beat faster.

  The face staring up at him now was none other than that of Ivy Miller, whom the lurid writing on the dodger called the “Negro murderess and common bank robber Thelma Knight.” She also had one thousand dollars on her pretty head.

  Prophet tossed Ivy’s dodger aside and perused the rest of them one by one, reading off the names aloud to himself. Most of the others, maybe less well known than Johnson and Knight, were still using their actual names—Casey Blackwell, H. A. “Doc” Shackleford (who, indeed, had a doctor of medicine degree from King’s College but who was also wanted for murder, bank robbery, “and other sundry barbarisms”), George Wentz (who called himself LaBeouf here in San Gezo), and Bernard “Dad” Conway, who had once ridden with Bloody Bill Anderson during the Civil War and who “had not lost the taste for savage violence in the years since Appomattox.”

  Prophet chuckled to himself when he saw the face on the last dodger—Tulsa St. James, who had a string of other aliases all listed on the circular offering seven hundred dollars “dead or alive.” According to the dodger, she was a “dove du pave” and “throat-cutting murderess in cahoots with the notorious Negro murderess Thelma Knight.”

  Somewhere, for some reason, the various brigands from both sexes had thrown in together. Prophet remembered El Lightning asking about gold, obviously believing that Prophet was “in cahoots” with Johnson, Knight, Dad, Doc, and the others.

  So, they’d stolen gold and, like he and his own ragtag bunch, were holed up here with it. Maybe the Indians had waylaid them or maybe they were waiting for their trail to grow cold before heading south, deeper into Mexico or maybe even to South America. These three dead lawmen had come after them and got themselves shot up and thrown in a hole.

  Somehow, El Lightning and his bronco ilk had learned of the gold and wanted their share. Maybe all of it. Tulsa St. James had cut Frieri’s and the corporal’s throats to possibly further befuddle and frighten the others, maybe convincing them to ride on out of San Gezo. Thelma Knight had likely put the kill-crazy whore up to it, because it was easier, less risky than trying to kill the gang outright.

  And Tulsa was so good at what she did. And a damn good actress, too, Prophet thought, remembering how frightened she’d looked when she’d seen Frieri lying dead beside her. She’d been about to drill Lazzaro with his own pistol, but who would have blamed her for that, after how nastily the wounded outlaw had treated her?

  Eventually, the big redhead might have ridded the town of all the newcomers, one by one.

  Prophet chuckled.

  Realization was like a cool, fresh breeze clearing the soot and coal dust from his battered, befuddled brain. On the heels of the realization, however, came a wintery chill prickling the hairs along his spine.

  Johnson, Knight, and the others were holed up in the saloon with Louisa, who had no idea who in hell they were. Or what they were capable of. Prophet didn’t much care about the others. But the idea that Louisa was in that Devil’s den sent Prophet reaching for his rifle, donning his battered hat, and starting up the steep wall of the shaft.

  Holding his rifle with one hand, he climbed, hoisting himself with his free hand and his feet. He grunted and cursed his way up the side of the shaft. He was about fifteen feet from the dead men at the bottom when he grabbed a rock and started to pull.

  The rock came out of the wall with a jerk.

  “Ahhh, shi . . . !”

  Prophet flew back off the wall, dropping his rifle.

  He hit the bottom of the shaft, smacking his head on a rock. He lay on his back, belly rising and falling sharply as he breathed. He lifted his head, tried to put some weight on his elbows to push himself up, but his arms turned to water.

  His eyes crossed. The hole became a watery blur.

  He fell back against the ground, and his eyes closed. But in his brain he continued to spiral down, down into even deeper darkness.

  Louisa cranked the Gatling gun’s lever.

  Bam-bam-bam-bam-bam!

  The Indian that had just run out from the far side of the barbershop dove behind the well as Louisa’s slug blew up dust at his moccasined heels. He poked the top of his head up above the edge of the well.

  Bam-bam-bam-bam-bam!

  His head jerked back as several of the Gatling’s slugs tore through the bandanna, making a splash of color against his dark red face. The corner of the building behind him turned red as the bullets threw him back against it. He slumped to one side, jerked a foot, and lay still.

  “Damn, you’re good with that thing, Leona!” cried Kiljoy, who’d been relieved from his back-door guard duties by Red Snake.

  Louisa stared out over the Gatling’s smoking maws, perusing the street. “It’s Louisa. And . . . thank you.”

  “Yeah, that’s right,” Kiljoy said, glowering as he remembered that she’d double-crossed him and the rest of his gang. “Louisa, not Leona. Gotta remember that.”

  Louisa swung a look at the man standing over her right shoulder, staring into the street from between the strips of bandage wrapped around his head and knotted beneath his chin, giving him the bizarre look of an ugly, overgrown toddler in a sun cap.

  “Sit down, Kiljoy,” she told the brigand. “You’re making me nervous.”

  Kiljoy looked at her. “You oughta be nervous. ’Cause once we’re finished with these Injuns—”

  “Sit down, Roy!” This from Sugar, who’d resumed her quiet game of solitaire after she’d gone up to Lazzaro’s room and rewrapped his wound.

  Doc Shackleford sat at the table with the blind woman, reading an old, yellowed newspaper on the table before him, round-rimmed glasses perched on his hawk-like nose. His carbine lay atop the table beside the paper. The doctor chuckled and shook his head, making no other comment.

  Captain Chacin sat back against the wall opposite the bar, an arm hooked over the back of his chair, one black boot hiked on a knee. He leaned back against a pillow cushioning the arrow wound. He was looking around the room amusedly, taking it all in. His lone surviving Rurale cohort was out on patrol somewhere in the town.

  When Kiljoy had retaken his own seat on the other side of the room from Louisa, the Vengeance Queen continued to swing the Gatling from left to right, appraising the street. Frowning thoughtfully, she looked at the Indian she’d just shot and the several others who lay where they’d fallen earlier and had been relieved of their ammunition.

  “Persistent, aren’t they?” She turned to Marshal Hawkins, who sat at a table near the bar with Ivy Miller, both of whom were nursing whiskies and keeping quiet counsel. The other townsmen—LaBeouf, Dad, and Blackwell—were stationed at various points around San Gezo, taking potshots at any Mojaves they ran across.

  Tulsa St. James was in her room, still in a snit over Lazzaro’s rough handling.

  Hawkins returned Louisa’s look. “Are they? I reckon I don’t know a Mojave that ain’t, when it comes to killin’ white men.”

  “Besides,” Ivy said, setting her shot glass on the table before her and regarding Louisa coolly. “You’re the ones who brought them here, aren’t you?”

  “Are we?” Louisa said. “Or maybe they were already gathering out on the desert, planning a strike on San Gezo, and we just stumbled into their powwow.”

  “Now, that’s a thought!” intoned Chacin.

  The wind had covered the approach of someone behind Louisa on the other side of the blown-out window.
She didn’t hear a board squawk under a stealthy boot until it was too late.

  Two arms wrapped around her, pinning her arms to her sides, lifting her out of the chair and out the window.

  She kicked and grunted through gritted teeth, losing her hat in the fray.

  “Whoa, now, darlin’!” said the blond-haired townsman, Blackwell, with a laugh as he nuzzled Louisa’s neck. “You’re just too purty a little she-cat to be ignored any longer!” He laughed and gripped Louisa’s writhing body tighter. “Hawk, you need me, we’ll be upstairs!”

  A gun thundered from inside the saloon.

  Instantly, Blackwell’s arms slackened.

  Louisa heard the man gurgle in her ear. She glanced over her shoulder to see his eyes rolling back into his head as if to look at the quarter-sized hole in his right temple, just below his hairline.

  He tried to clutch at Louisa, then fell to the veranda floor. Louisa stumbled forward and peered into the saloon, where Sugar Delphi stood behind her table, holding the stock of a smoking Winchester carbine against her shoulder.

  25

  SAVE FOR THE moaning wind and the squawking of rusty shingle chains up and down the dusty street, a heavy, nervous silence hung over the Oasis.

  Louisa stared at Sugar, who just now lowered her carbine slightly, staring in Louisa’s general direction, and ejected the spent shell from the Winchester’s chamber. As she seated a fresh one, Louisa looked around the room—every man in the place as well as Ivy Miller staring at Sugar in shock and extreme dismay. All the men except Chacin, that was. The Rurale captain smiled with one side of his mouth, twisting an upswept curl of his mustache between his thumb and index finger and showing a yellow fang beneath it.