He racked a fresh shell into his Winchester’s breech and looked east between two rocks lining the bank. Seven or eight Mojaves were galloping toward him hell-for-leather, hair flying in the wind. One straight out before him loosed an arrow. It shot toward him, dropped in a perfect arc, and banged off a rock to his right, spraying shards.
13
PROPHET DREW A bead on the Indian’s chest, fired, and watched with satisfaction as the redskin rolled off his lunging pinto’s left hip just as the horse started turning to Prophet’s right. The Indian landed on his head and shoulders and rolled wildly toward the ravine before piling up in a great puff of flying rocks and dirt.
Prophet ejected the spent shell, fired again but watched his slug merely blow up dust on the heels of another Indian diving for cover. Before he could get another cartridge racked, the Indian rose up behind his covering rock and sent an arrow flying toward Prophet, the missile whistling as it careened toward him, the gray flint point growing larger and larger, and bit a hunk out of the top of his shoulder before clattering onto the floor of the wash behind him.
He gritted his teeth and fired at the Indian who’d shot the arrow, but the Mojave had dropped down out of sight, reappearing a second later, running forward, then diving behind another rock about six feet nearer the ravine and loosing another arrow before Prophet could get a bead on him.
“Mierda!” one of the Rurales yelled from where the young Mexican had been firing his Springfield carbine to Prophet’s right.
Prophet didn’t take the time to see how badly the Rurale was wounded. It appeared that all the Indians who’d been chasing his party were all down behind cover and scrambling toward the ravine, shooting their rifles and flinging arrows at him and Louisa and the others returning fire over the arroyo bank.
He cursed as he pumped and fired, pumped and fired, watching most of his precious slugs merely hammering rocks, though one managed to drill one of the fleet Mojaves through an ankle. He intended to finish the wounded Mojave, but his hammer pinged on an empty chamber. As the Mojave lurched onto his knees, howling, he jerked back suddenly, hair falling down over his face as he grabbed his belly.
To Prophet’s left, Louisa racked another shell into her Winchester’s breech, and said, “Remind me to take you out target-shooting sometime, Lou. You missed an easy shot.”
“I’ve forgot more about shootin’ than you’ll ever learn if you live to a hundred,” Prophet said, thumbing fresh shells into his Winchester and yelling above the din of clattering rifles and ricocheting bullets as well as the dying cries of the young Rurale.
Louisa pressed her cheek against her Winchester’s stock and hammered out three quick shots until her own weapon clicked. She spat out an unladylike curse and pulled her head down beneath the bank just as two arrows struck tip down in the clay dirt and sand with near-simultaneous snicks.
“What you’ve told me about Mojaves is true, at least,” she said, quickly reloading and wincing as a bullet clipped a branch of a mesquite angling over her head. “They don’t die easily!”
“And they run like the devil!” Prophet said, racking a shell into the Winchester’s chamber. “And they’re movin’ up on us fast!”
He was about to straighten to trigger more lead toward the east when two bullets hammered the side of the bank to his right. “Shit!”
He turned, flushed and frowning, getting good and scared now as he only did when the fat was in the fire. Both bullets had come from the south. He ran to the wash’s lower southern bank and saw three Indians scrambling around the rocks and saguaros about fifty yards beyond, angling toward him from the west. They’d been swapping lead with whomever they had pinned down on the wash’s west end.
Prophet ran over to where Chacin was shooting at the southern Mojaves and triggered two quick shots. Two Indians leaped out from behind a low knoll and ran toward the ravine about twenty yards to Prophet and Chacin’s right. They might have been trying to get around him.
“I’m gonna fix their wagons!” the bounty hunter yelled, then, racking another round, ran down the wash toward the west.
He rounded a slight bottleneck bend and stopped suddenly. A long-haired Mexican in a long, brown duster and gray sombrero was down on one knee, firing over the bank’s southern lip. He had his lips stretched back from silver teeth, and he was hunched as though in great pain.
The man’s identity had no sooner registered on Prophet, who hadn’t had the time to really think about whom he was sharing the wash with, than Antonio Lazzaro jerked his rangy face toward him. The Mexican’s eyes flashed in recognition. He’d started to swing his rifle around but stopped when an arrow cut through the air between him and Prophet. A half second later a stocky man behind Lazzaro, shooting toward the south, suddenly lurched back from the bank, stumbling and dropping his rifle to grab his lower face with both hands.
“Goddamn!” the stocky man shouted hollowly through his hands and bloody mouth. As he crouched down beneath the bank, another bullet blew his broad-brimmed, low-crowned Mexican sombrero off his head.
“Roy!” yelled the lanky man to his right. It wasn’t hard to recognize the lanky gent with the tattooed forearms as Red Snake Corbin. Most of Lazzaro’s men, including Lazzaro himself, graced wanted circulars from San Diego to New Orleans.
Prophet squeezed his Winchester in his hands, aiming the barrel at Lazzaro’s belly. Lazzaro stared back at him, brown eyes wide and anxious. Sweat streaked the desperado’s bristled cheeks and his upper lip capped with a long, thin mustache barely discernible with the rest of his beard growing in around it.
“Finish it here?” Prophet said.
Lazzaro curled one side of his upper lip, showing several silver teeth, and canted his head toward the south. “You sayin’ we should fight together before we start killin’ each other?”
“I reckon that’s what I’m sayin’.”
“How do I know you won’t shoot me in the back?”
“You don’t,” Prophet said, curling his own mouth. “But I don’t think we have time to gas over it—do you, Tony?”
Lazzaro raised his Winchester and fired toward the south. Prophet ran to the bank to Lazzaro’s left and started flinging his own lead. He glanced down at Roy Kiljoy, who smiled at him despite the hole that had been drilled through both his cheeks and half of a bloody tooth clinging to his goat-bearded chin. Then the squat, blond-mustached, impossibly ugly brigand rose and began firing at the Indians closing on the arroyo’s southern side.
Despite the holes in his face and the Mojave dentistry, he seemed to be having the time of his life.
“Hi, Roy!” Prophet yelled as he drilled a Mojave through the red sash around the Mojave’s lean waist, crumpling the man.
“Hi, Lou! How ya doin’?”
“Fair to middlin’!”
Kiljoy spat a wad of blood to one side, winced at an arrow dug into the bank’s lip about one foot in front of his ugly face, and triggered a shot, his Winchester roaring and leaping in his gloved hands. “That’s kinda how it goes in Mojave country!”
Prophet felt chicken flesh spreading across his back as he tried to concentrate on his red-skinned enemies while trying to relegate the fact that he was sharing the arroyo with a passel of equally deadly white men to the back of his mind. It wasn’t easy, but he managed to kill two Mojaves making a break for the arroyo and wounded another in the wrist. He pumped and fired, pumped and fired, aware that every shot he was taking meant one less shell he’d have for his return trip across the desert.
And he didn’t seem to be making much of a dent in the population of Mojave attackers. They seemed to slither right up out of the ground as though from an endless source, hurling bullets at the arroyo.
After a time, he heard a skirmish behind him and wheeled to see Chacin down on one knee, his rifle at his feet. Lazzaro had an arm twisted around the Rurale captain’s neck, jerking the captain’s chin up while holding a bowie knife to the man’s sunburned throat.
“Lou, you wanna e
xplain to this Mescin our agreement?” Lazzaro said, showing his silver teeth.
Chacin rolled his anxious gaze toward Prophet, frowning.
“We decided to buddy up, Captain.” Prophet ducked as an arrow careened over him and embedded itself in the side of the opposite bank. “At least till we can get shed of these ’Paches!”
“Si, si!” said Chacin, lowering his desperate eyes to the glistening steel blade caressing his neck.
“We got an understanding, then, Cap?” asked Lazzaro, jerking Chacin’s neck up harder, causing the Rurale’s face to flush the red of a Sonora sunset.
“Le dije que entiendo, usted cerdo asqueros!” Chacin yelled, spittle flecking his lips. I told you I understand, you filthy pig!
Lazzaro released the man, laughing. Then he made a face and groaned as he clutched his side and dropped to one knee. “Lou, I will make a deal with you,” he shouted above the din. “If you cover me and my men while we make a break for that canyon, my men and I will cover you and yours!”
Prophet was sitting on the ground with his back to the bank of the wash, his rifle resting across his thighs while he punched fresh shells through the loading gate. “Took the thought right out of my head,” he said, tossing the wounded desperado a wry look. “But only if some of my men ride with you, one or two of yours ride with me.”
He looked around, just now seeing that one of Lazzaro’s “men” was in fact Sugar Delphi, crouched down at the base of the bank on the other side of Red Snake Corbin. She was staring straight off across the arroyo, a smoking rifle across her lap. He gave a silent chuff.
What in the hell was a blind woman doing out here? That rifle looked as though it had been fired. Sugar had a bullet burn across her left cheek—a very thin red line from which two red beads dribbled down toward her straight jawline.
“Yeah, I get your drift,” Lazzaro said, nodding his weary head. “That way we can keep each other honest. All right. Okay. Red Snake will ride with your gang. Chacin will ride with me.”
“Good enough!” Prophet said, standing and snapping off another shot, seeing that the Indians seemed to be staying hunkered down about forty yards away. He glanced over his shoulder at Chacin, who was hunkered down behind a boulder, looking vaguely suspicious and troubled while reloading his Spencer repeater. “If any of ’em start bearing down on us, Captain, blow ’em to hell!”
Chacin, scowling at Lazzaro, merely shook his head in disgust.
The outlaws gathered their horses and rode off while Prophet’s group covered them from a southern lip of the arroyo.
“Nice snake pit we fell into!” Louisa shouted above the din of her own Winchester and Prophet’s and those of the other Rurales.
All except Chacin and the young corporal who’d taken the arrow, that was. The corporal had died where he lay after considerable thrashing. One of the others had been wounded in the arm, and Frieri’s left earlobe had been blown off. Bocangel sat huddled into himself against the wash’s eastern bank, knees raised to his chest. Otherwise, the group was intact and relatively healthy.
“Should have known Lazzaro’s bunch’d be the only others fool enough to get caught out here with Mojaves on the jump.” Prophet turned to see Chacin, Lazzaro, the blind woman, and Roy Kiljoy galloping at an angle from the mouth of the wash toward the canyon a quarter mile beyond. The canyon stood like a stockade fort with its gates thrown wide.
Sergeant Frieri had gathered the mounts and stood holding their reins well back from the wash’s lip, in the bottleneck where he and the horses were relatively sheltered from the flying lead and arrows.
“If this keeps up,” Prophet said, “I’m gonna be . . .”
He let his voice trail off as he stared out across the desert, at a lone rider sitting a black-and-white pinto pony just out of rifle range. He couldn’t make out much of the Mojave except the proud way he sat his saddle, the horse turned sideways, the man’s head facing the arroyo. Like a general watching a battle play out.
Prophet couldn’t see the green eyes or the lightning tattoo, but he knew he was staring at El Lightning, just the same. There was a haunting, menacing, commanding quality in that dusky figure in red calico sitting so erect atop the rangy mustang. The choker of porcupine quills was a white line across his throat. Something told Prophet he’d be seeing the man again from a lot closer up.
“What’s that, Lou?”
Prophet drew his gaze back from El Lightning. “I was sayin’ I’m low on ammo. I got a feelin’ the Rurales are, too.” He glanced at Frieri standing behind him, the man’s shoulder red from blood that had dripped down from his ragged ear. Only about a quarter of the loops on the sergeant’s two bandoliers crossed on his chest were filled with brass.
Louisa’s Winchester roared. South of the wash, an Indian gave a keening cry as he fell back from his covering rock, clamping both his hands over his blown-out right eye.
“That there is my last forty-four round,” Louisa said, crouching behind the bank with her smoking rifle. “It’s just my forty-fives”—she patted her left pistol holstered for the cross draw on her lean waist—“till our next visit to a gun shop.”
When Lazzaro’s bunch had galloped on into the canyon and took up positions around the mouth, throwing lead at the Indians beyond the draw, Prophet’s bunch mounted up and wasted no time galloping their wild-eyed horses out of the draw toward the canyon.
Prophet hauled Senor Bocangel up behind him, and the old man sat there, silently atop the bounty hunter’s saddlebags, still in shock over his dead son. The canyon’s mouth gaped, peppered with powder smoke from the outlaws’ and Chacin’s blasting rifles.
Again that cold chicken flesh rose across Prophet’s sweating back. It was entirely likely that Lazzaro would blow Chacin’s guts out and then order his men to turn their pistols on Prophet’s bunch. Out here in the open, they’d have little chance.
Prophet sucked a sharp breath as the Indians’ bullets and arrows made weird gasping sounds in the air around him and glanced off rocks with eerie wails. The pops and cracks ahead of him grew louder and louder above the thumps of Mean’s and the other horses’ thudding hooves.
Prophet looked at Lazzaro shooting from one knee on the canyon mouth’s left side. The wounded outlaw leader looked pale and yellow, as though he were suffering from jaundice. His cheeks were shrunken inward against his jaws. He was firing toward the Indians, but now Prophet palmed his Colt and clicked the hammer back as Mean drew to within twenty yards of the canyon mouth, and aimed the pistol straight out in front of him.
Red Snake and Kiljoy were firing from the canyon’s right side, Red Snake high, Kiljoy low. The squat ugly outlaw’s lower face was a mask of dried blood but he grinned at Prophet as he shouted, “Damn, you make a big target, Lou.”
He aimed his rifle at Prophet and yelled down the barrel, “One bullet, and a whole lotta outlaws’d be buyin’ me drinks!”
As Mean lunged through the canyon’s gaping jaws, Prophet slid the cocked .45 across his belly, holding it on Kiljoy still grinning down his rifle barrel. Just then a bullet smashed into the rocks near the ugly outlaw’s bloody face, and he jerked his head and rifle down, cursing.
It was Prophet’s turn to smile as he and the others swept into the canyon. “That’s what you get for waggin’ that rifle around like your pecker, you plug-ugly bastard!”
14
“I WAS RIGHT about you, after all,” Sugar said as she rode along beside Louisa, in the middle of the pack of Rurales, outlaws, and bounty hunters making its way up the canyon. “I should have killed you instead of drugged you. Cut your throat while you slept.”
“Why didn’t you?”
Sugar stared straight ahead but now, as before, when Louisa had infiltrated the gang and ridden as one of them for nearly two weeks, she felt as though the woman were staring straight into her soul. Sugar lifted her hat and ran a hand through her thick red hair, jostling the several beaded braids. “Not quite sure. I guess I was sentimental, thought maybe I saw som
ething of myself in you. Felt as though we were sisters, or something crazy like that.”
“We’re probably more alike than I’d like to believe,” Louisa said, hearing Lazzaro groan atop his horse that Sugar was trailing by its bridle reins. The outlaw leader was hunkered low and swilling whiskey with one hand while keeping a hand over the wound that had opened up during the Indian attack and was bleeding down over his double cartridge belts, thigh, and stirrup fender. “But you’re the one with a price on her head. And I’m gonna collect on it.”
Sugar turned toward her and gazed at Louisa’s forehead, arching a thin, red brow. “You think so?”
“Yep.”
“It’s not too late, you know.”
“What’s not too late?”
Sugar lifted her chin slightly as though listening, gauging how close the others were riding around her. Prophet and Chacin rode point, with Senor Bocangel riding double with Prophet, because the old Mexican was in no condition to ride alone. Then there was Kiljoy and Red Snake riding about ten yards behind them. The three Rurales, including Frieri with his bloody ear, walked their horses about fifteen yards ahead of Louisa and Sugar, while Lazzaro brought up the rear, grunting and groaning and taking occasional, loud pulls from his tequila bottle.
As though deeming her and Louisa’s conversation private and keeping her voice down, Sugar quirked the corners of her wide, bold but feminine mouth. “You, me, Tony . . . a nice vacation along the shore of the Sea of Cortez before taking a boat down to South America. You ever been there?” Sugar shook her head. “Tony tells me it’s Heaven.”
Louisa chuffed. “How would he know anything about Heaven?” She glanced again at Lazzaro then frowned at Sugar. “Where’s the loot?”
The Devil’s Laughter: A Lou Prophet Novel Page 11
