The Devil’s Laughter: A Lou Prophet Novel

by Peter Brandvold

  With the gun loaded, he walked out from behind the boulder, rested a shoulder against it as he surveyed the field of battle before him.

  He could see several dead Indians, including the two he’d killed, and two dead desperadoes farther down the draw. The shooting continued, an angry fusillade accompanied by the Indians’ war whoops and the desperadoes’ angry shouts. He squinted his eyes against the brassy sun but could not see Louisa amidst the rocks and cactus and occasional humps of clay-colored earth.

  The Indians were moving away from Prophet, running and leaping as they triggered lead or flung arrows toward the desperadoes. They had the desperadoes on the run now, and Johnson, Knight, and the others were shouting and running away, swinging around now and then to fling lead behind them.

  Prophet dropped to a knee and ran his wrist across his chin. Where was Louisa? She might already be dead. In that case, he was wasting his time. Let the Indians and the desperadoes kill each other. He’d be left with the gold and stolen Nogales bank money to head north with.

  But he had to know of Louisa’s fate. He had to know if she was here of her own free will, or if they’d forced her to come. He had to know if she was dead or alive.

  He rose and ran crouching forward, tracing a circuitous route, pausing occasionally to fire at the Indians.

  It wasn’t long before most of the Mojaves were aware that they’d been flanked. He dispatched three. Surprised, the others scrambled up a long, rocky jog of hills on his left and out of the field of fire. Not many remained. He counted only five or so. His own bullets and those of the desperadoes had dispatched most of El Lightning’s band of devoted warriors.

  Prophet turned left to walk around a boulder and tripped over a dead man. Kiljoy. The outlaw had two Mojave arrows in his chest, about two inches apart and straight through his heart. He stared up at Prophet, and he seemed to be smiling.

  Prophet ran crouching forward, toward where the gunfire was dwindling. The desperadoes had turned on each other now. As he watched, Thelma Knight shouted angrily and triggered a rifle from her shoulder. Her shot blew up dust behind a string of horses galloping about fifty yards beyond her—a pinto, a black, and a pack mule. Louisa stopped her brown-and-white pinto and turned, lifting a carbine to her shoulder.

  Knight fired again. The second rider, Sugar Delphi, jerked sideways and almost fell from her saddle.

  Prophet stopped beside a cactus and stared as Louisa fired her own carbine. The black woman took the bullet as she ran. The shot jerked her to one side, and she dove awkwardly into a patch of cactus on her left and lay unmoving.

  Louisa, leading the beefy pack mule and being followed by the blind redhead, who sagged over her saddle horn, kicked her pinto into a gallop through the rocks and cactus and spindly brown shrubs, dust lifting behind hers and the other mounts. They were heading for the open desert to the south, Louisa glancing back at the wounded Sugar.

  Prophet stared, lower jaw hanging. His mouth was dry. His guts were knotted.

  Movement ahead jerked him out of his trance. A Mojave was running through the brush. He gave a yowl as he leaped a boulder and disappeared behind a large, flat-topped boulder twenty yards ahead of Prophet.

  El Lightning was holding a rifle—Prophet’s own Winchester ’73—in one hand, a bloody war hatchet in the other. Prophet heard the rifle crack. A man screamed. There were two more blasting reports on the heels of El Lightning’s victorious yowls.

  Prophet ran forward, leaped atop the boulder, and stopped, crouching and raising his rifle to his shoulder. El Lightning stood over Hawk Johnson’s bloody body. Johnson was on his back, hands raised to his shoulders, palms out, shaking. His mouth formed a horrific O as he stared up at the big Indian straddling him.

  El Lightning casually lowered the Winchester’s barrel and blew a slug through Johnson’s face. The outlaw’s body relaxed, and his head turned to one side.

  The Indian lifted his head slightly, widening his eyes. He did not look at Prophet, but he smiled.

  “I left you to the buzzards, Lou.”

  “And you left one man alive in San Gezo.”

  El Lightning winced and shook his head at his own folly. “I should have tortured you slow and killed you. It would have given me great pleasure . . . to hear such a big gringo begging for his life.”

  “I’d make you beg for yours,” Prophet said, “but—”

  Just then El Lightning whipped around and turned Prophet’s own rifle on him. Prophet’s Indian carbine roared twice, blowing the Mojave war chief up off his feet and into the rocks beyond, blood spurting from the two holes in his chest.

  “—I don’t have time,” Prophet finished.

  He ejected the last spent cartridge, heard it clatter onto the boulder, and seated a fresh round in the chamber. Guardedly, he leaped off the boulder and retrieved his Winchester, also confiscating the war chief’s two crisscrossed bandoliers, so that he now had three draped over his neck and shoulders.

  El Lightning lay with his body twisted, head turned to one side, the blue and ochre lines across his nose and the savage lightning bolt glistening in the harsh desert sunlight.

  Holding the rifle barrel out from his hip, Prophet looked around. No one else was moving out here. No one except a few buzzards tracing lazy circles about a hundred yards over the charnel ground.

  Prophet walked forward. Strewn amongst the rocks, he found the bloody, dusty, battered bodies of Tulsa St. James and Dad Conway lying ten yards apart. He found Doc Shackleford piled up at the base of an organ pipe cactus, dead, his bloody guts in his hands. A buzzard was perched proudly atop his head, giving Prophet the evil eye.

  Prophet looked south. Louisa and Sugar were just now reaching the base of the mountains and heading off into the desert, their shadows short in the late morning light, copper dust rising. Sugar sagged lower in her saddle.

  Prophet turned and tramped back toward where he’d left his horse behind the scarp. Halfway there, he stopped and frowned down at one of the dead Indians. Stooping, he picked his Colt .45 out of the dust, wiped it clean on his shirt, holstered it, clicked the keeper thong over the hammer, and continued to where Mean and Ugly stood waiting anxiously behind the scarp.

  A half hour later, he was galloping across the desert, following Louisa’s faint sign.

  He rose up and over a low rise and reined up suddenly, curveting his horse. Fifty yards away, Louisa knelt on the ground with Sugar sagging faceup in her arms. The mule hauling the strongbox stood between Louisa’s pinto and Sugar’s black, all three cropping idly at weed tufts.

  Louisa stared down at the blind woman. Sugar was not moving. She didn’t seem to be breathing.

  After a long time, the Vengeance Queen lifted her blond head and stared at Prophet. Her hazel eyes were at first stony beneath her tan hat. Then they acquired a shocked, stricken cast. Her face crumpled, and she lowered her head again, shoulders shaking.

  Prophet heard her sobbing. Or was it the Devil laughing?

  He sat his horse, staring at her. After a long time, he clucked to Mean and rode toward her.