The Devil’s Laughter: A Lou Prophet Novel

by Peter Brandvold

  Kiljoy’s eyes darted to each of the townsfolk. As short, broad, and ugly as he was, he looked small and alone and badly outnumbered. The townsfolk shuttled their own hostile glances from Sugar to Kiljoy and then to Louisa and Captain Chacin, both of whom they sort of lumped in with Lazzaro’s bunch, since they’d ridden into town together.

  “Guess what?” Doc Shackleford said, standing tall and dour and cold-eyed beside his table, taking one step from Sugar and raising an over-and-under, pearl-gripped derringer in each of his large, sun-leathered fists.

  “Now, hold on,” Chacin said cautiously, stiffening his wounded back and holding both hands up shoulder high, palms out.

  “What’s that, Doc? Spill it. Ain’t no such thing as a stupid question.” Kiljoy grinned though he sounded tense, holding both his hands over his holstered pistols—one on his thigh, another positioned for the cross draw on his left hip. He had a third one shoved down behind the waistband of his doeskin trousers. Even with both bandaged holes in his face, he looked eager to use the hoglegs.

  “I do believe you and yours done wore out your welcome here in San Gezo—wouldn’t you say, Hawk?” the sawbones said, shuttling his cold blue eyes toward the marshal.

  “Hawk?” Sugar said. “Is that short for Hawkins? Or could it be Hawk Johnson?”

  Oh, shit, Louisa thought. Here we go. . . .

  Another pregnant silence. Then Hawkins or Johnson or whoever in hell he was flared his nostrils and slapped leather, bringing up a long-barreled six-shooter.

  Sugar triggered her carbine in the marshal’s general direction then threw herself over a table to her left, turning the table over, which acted as a shield as the marshal and Doc Shackleford triggered lead into it. Behind her, Chacin cursed loudly in Spanish and tried to make himself small behind a ceiling support post.

  Sugar hit the floor and rolled out of Louisa’s sight as Kiljoy dropped to a knee, filling both his hands with blazing iron.

  Louisa dropped below the window and extended her matched Colts over the bottom ledge into the saloon, seeing the marshal drop to a knee and begin triggering lead toward Sugar, Kiljoy, and Captain Chacin. Ivy pumped and triggered a carbine from behind the bar, her black eyes blazing as bright as her Winchester.

  Louisa saw that Ivy was bearing down on Sugar, and fired two rounds that plunked into the bar top in front of Ivy. The black woman cursed shrilly and pulled her head down behind the bar as both Shackleford and Hawkins began firing at Louisa, who pulled her head down below the window. Bullets screeched through the air above her head and chewed slivers from the window ledge.

  Louisa spied movement on the street to her left and turned to see Dad Conway and George LaBeouf running toward the saloon. They both looked anxious and fearful, holding rifles up high across their chests. Louisa was about to trigger shots to forestall them, but then suddenly Marshal Hawkins shouted, “Hold on! Hold on, now! Beefin’ each other ain’t gonna do any of us a damn bit of good!”

  The shooting inside the saloon dwindled. Louisa remained crouched on the veranda, below the window, holding both her cocked Colts on Dad and LaBeouf, who’d stopped dead in their tracks when they’d seen the blond bounty hunter bearing down on them with her silver-chased six-shooters.

  Inside, one more pistol popped. There was a short silence. Louisa could smell the rotten-egg odor of burned powder.

  Kiljoy said, “Johnson, that you?”

  “It’s me,” said the man formerly known as Bill Hawkins. He chuckled. “I reckon it’s time to stop runnin’ around the church privy. You in?”

  “Hold on!” said Ivy in an indignant voice. “Shouldn’t we talk this over, Hawk?”

  “What’s to talk over, Ivy? We’re outgunned by ’Paches. And I, for one, am damn tired of this town. With the help of Lazzaro’s bunch, we might be able to make a run for Puerto Penasco.”

  “I’m for that,” said a woman’s voice.

  Louisa lifted her eyes above the window, saw Tulsa St. James standing on the stairs at the back of the room. She held two pistols in her chubby fists. “A girl never quite feels clean in such a dirty place. And all these empty buildings give me the creeps! I say we bring ’em in and haul ass!”

  A short silence. Louisa saw that Red Snake had entered via the room’s back door and was hunkered on his haunches against the back wall, holding his Henry rifle’s butt against his thigh. He’d entered the game late, and he looked confused but also wound up. Johnson lifted his head over a chair back, raking the room with his twitching eyes. Then he looked at Kiljoy. “Got any thoughts, Roy?”

  “What you got, Johnson?”

  “Gold,” said Ivy Miller over the bar top. “Enough to set us all up high for the rest of our lives.”

  Kiljoy glanced at Chacin still hunkered behind the ceiling support post. “What about the Rurale?”

  Chacin turned to Kiljoy and then to Johnson. He smiled with half of his mouth again. “For the right price, amigos, I am a Rurale in uniform only.” His grin grew wider, eyes brightening. “How much gold are we talking about, Senor Johnson?”

  “You heard Ivy.”

  “All right,” Kiljoy said. “What about Leona and Prophet?”

  All eyes turned to Louisa, who knelt in the window, extending both cocked Colts into the saloon. She said nothing. No one did for a time. Then Sugar picked herself up off the floor and brushed broken glass and dust from her leather pants. “Don’t worry about Leona.” She turned her blind eyes toward Louisa. “She’s one of us.”

  “And Prophet?” Louisa said, arching a dubious brow as she stared into the room over her cocked Colts.

  “He could be a problem,” Red Snake said from the shadows at the back of the room. “And you know what I’ve always said about problems.”

  Kiljoy said, “Refresh my memory, amigo.”

  “Shoot ’em down deader’n egg-stealin’ Mescin muchachos.” Red Snake gave a lopsided grin.

  “Damn,” Ivy said, rising from behind the bar. “I was just startin’ to like the big man.”

  “No accountin’ for taste,” Red Snake said.

  They all laughed.

  At the bottom of the pit, the big man groaned.

  He lifted his head, winced as a sharp stiletto of tooth-gnashing pain stabbed him from ear to ear. He opened his eyes and looked around, remembering where he was when the rancid smell of the dead men bit him.

  He couldn’t see much. Night had fallen. Staring up at the ragged circle of sky at the top of the hole, he saw stars. The night was silent, the wind having apparently died.

  He took another breath, and the horrific stench was like a cold slap of water. Gaining his knees, he ran a hand across the back of his head, felt a tender goose egg at the crown. He felt a wetness there, as well. Blood. Most of it had dried, however. He’d had a good braining, and it was hard to remember all that had gone on for the past several days, but he felt the shadows of the troubling memories sliding around in his noggin.

  He’d live. He wasn’t sure he wanted it to all come back to him, but it would. He knew one thing, though—if he got out of the pit alive, he’d ride well around the next cursed town in his trail.

  He grumbled to himself, felt around until he’d found his hat, rifle, and the gut shredder, then heaved himself to his feet. The bottom of the pit turned this way and that beneath his boots. Leaning forward, he steadied himself against a shelflike chunk of rock protruding from the side of the shaft.

  “In Dixie Land where I was born, early on one frosty mornin’,” he sang through gritted teeth, reaching up for a chunk of rock glistening in the starlight, beginning to climb.

  He took it slower this time. Not so much because he wanted to but because every tug of his hand and push of his boots caused an invisible, angry giant to slam a sledgehammer against the crown of his skull. Sometimes not so hard but at other times so hard that he had to pause to keep from passing out.

  “Look away!” he sang, his voice quavering with exertion, grabbing a rock above his head with his left
hand, grinding his right boot into a slight cleft in the wall below him. He pulled, grinding his jaws, straining, singing, “Look away! Look away!”

  He rose along the wall, raking his cheek against it. “Look away! Dixie Land!”

  His voice stopped echoing as he lifted his head from the hole and hauled his torso over the edge of the pit and rested against the cool, rocky ground, his legs hanging over the side. He drew refreshing draughts of air untainted by the horrific reek below though he could smell the death stench on his clothes.

  Finally, he hoisted his legs out of the pit and rolled to the side, coming to rest on his back and staring up at the stars. The heavens blinked out for a time. When he regained consciousness, he could see a few stars but others appeared to be blocked by something between him and the sky.

  He twitched his nose. Above the stench of death rising off his own body, he smelled sweat and bear grease. He heard a slight squawk, like that which hemp makes when it’s stretched.

  He jerked his head up, heart leaping in his chest.

  It wasn’t a straining rope he’d heard. It was the animal gut of the bows drawn taut before him by three braves standing over him, aiming the flint-tipped arrows at his face.

  The brave standing farthest to his right showed his teeth as he shoved his dark face closer to Prophet’s rasping, “Gold! Where . . . gold . . . is . . . or . . . you”—he raised his bow and lifted the arrow higher, drawing the missile back tighter against the gut string—“die!”

  Prophet pulled his head back, staring at the pointed flint tips glaring at him with stony menace. He felt a muscle in his cheek twitch. He was about to open his mouth to speak when gravel crunched down the slope behind the three braves bearing down on him, and a man said in relatively clear English, “Hold it, brothers. Hold on, now. What you got there?”

  He said something in the guttural grunts of the Mojave tongue, and the braves lowered their bows and stepped back, two parting to reveal the big Indian coming up behind them. Prophet didn’t need to see the lightning bolt scar on his forehead to know he was looking at the tough nut himself, El Lightning. The man squatted in front of Prophet and grinned, showing his surprisingly white teeth in the darkness.

  “Ah, amigo! You live!” El Lightning chuckled, his long, coarse black hair dancing around his shoulders. “I’ll be damned. I thought you died down there. Whew!” He waved a hand in front of his head. “I don’t mean to insult you, brother, but—ay-heee—you smell bad!”

  Prophet studied the big Mojave dubiously, trying to reconcile the man’s savage appearance with his near-perfect albeit Spanish-accented English. The war chief held a Henry repeater in his hands; it hung by a braided strip of burlap from his neck and shoulder. The bounty hunter glanced at the three braves flanking El Lightning, then returned his gaze to the big man himself. “Wouldn’t have a bar of soap on you, would you?”

  “It is no laughing matter, brother. That stink. You need a bath.” El Lightning glanced into the hole behind Prophet. “What’s down there, anyway? Dead bobcat or something?”

  “Three dead federals.”

  The chief drew his head back, ridging his heavy brows skeptically.

  “Deputy United States marshals.”

  “Ahhhh!” El Lightning smiled. “I wondered what happened to them. We saw them from a distance two, three weeks ago, but I was more interested in your amigos.”

  “They’re not my amigos.”

  One of the braves flanking El Lightning spat the hard consonants and clipped vowels of the Mojave tongue while glaring at Prophet over his leader’s shoulder. El Lightning grinned, his broad cheeks dimpling. “My brother, Sikasaw, is growing impatient. He says if you don’t tell us where the gold is buried, he is going to scalp you and use your hair to clean his ass.”

  26

  “THAT’S A MIGHT personal, ain’t it?” Prophet dryly quipped, meeting the gaze of the hatchet-faced brave who wanted to take his topknot. “I mean, since we just met, an’ all.”

  “I think you’re right. And after all you’ve been through, down there with those dead lawmen—whew, you stink, brother!—I think you could use a pull from my tiswin flask.”

  “Tiswin?” Prophet said, widening his eyes. If anything could clear the hammer out of his head and ease the misery of his battered bones and strained tendons, it was the extremely intoxicating Mojave tanglefoot brewed from sprouted corn.

  “My Jicarilla squaw prepared me a batch special for this trip,” El Lightning said. “Come. I am a most gracious host, brother.”

  The war chief straightened, said something to the braves in their mother tongue, then turned and strode down the gravelly hill. Two of the braves lunged toward Prophet, relieving him of his weapons, one giving special interest to the double-bore Greener, caressing the barrels fondly. The third kicked Prophet’s ribs and grunted orders.

  Cursing, Prophet hauled himself to his feet, taking his head in his hands when the giant resumed work with the massive sledgehammer. He wasn’t allowed to linger and soothe his aches and pains, however. The three Mojaves kicked and prodded him down the hill where four horses stood. El Lightning galloped off atop his big skewbald steed, swinging up canyon beyond the mine, in the opposite direction of the town.

  Prophet was ordered to climb onto one of the other three mustangs. Two of the braves rode double, leading Prophet’s mount, and he lowered his head and pressed his fingers into his temples as the pony’s fast, choppy gait kicked up the misery in his skull and a squealing in his ears.

  If he’d been in better condition, he might have been able to leap off the mustang and escape into the brush. As it was, he couldn’t have waved a fly from his face, much less tried to outrun Mojave arrows.

  He was glad that he didn’t have to endure the ride for long before a fire appeared at a confluence of two dry washes well concealed by thick brush, rocks, and organ pipe cactus. His horse was led into the wash. Around the fire were ten or so Mojaves hunkered on their butts, gear including saddle blankets and guns and bows and arrow quivers spread out around them.

  The camp smelled wildly sweet, like a bobcat lair.

  El Lightning stood a little to one side of the fire, his horse being led away by a short, humpbacked brave with a limp. As Prophet was ordered off his horse, he saw another brave rise from his position near the fire and walk over to El Lightning. Prophet blinked as the brave snaked a hand around the war chief’s waist. But then he saw that El Lightning’s companion was not a young man but a young woman, firelight glistening off her brown, well-turned legs.

  She wore a strip of deerskin across her breasts and around her hips, with several strings of beads around her neck. Beaded rings dangled from her ears, partially concealed by her long, coarse black hair that hung nearly to her waist. Her breasts were large and firm and barely concealed by the deer hide. Even in Prophet’s raggedy-heeled condition, he felt a manly reaction to the Mojave princess.

  “Come and sit, senor.” El Lightning beckoned to Prophet, then lowered his head to speak to the princess, who turned and trotted off in the direction of the horses. Turning back to Prophet, he said, “I would use your proper name if I knew what it was.”

  Prophet introduced himself as he looked warily around at the hard-faced braves all staring at him with open menace. They not only smelled like bobcats, they looked like them—cunning and savage. Some were cleaning rifles or greasing arrow shafts while others devoured small rabbits they’d cooked over the fire, grunting and groaning and breaking the small bones to suck out the marrow, scrubbing their hands on their arms and thighs.

  They all kept firing quick, hungry, eager looks at Prophet, grinning at each other, as though at some private joke amongst them.

  Prophet felt like a rabbit at a rattlesnake convention. He glanced at the three braves who’d slapped their horses away toward where the Indians’ cavvy was gathered farther up the wash. They seemed to have divvied up his arsenal—one taking his Colt, one his Winchester, the last his shotgun. That brave was now show
ing it to another, older brave who was lounging back on his elbows and hiking a shoulder and pooching his lips with disinterest.

  El Lightning barked orders and waved his arms in annoyance, and three braves who had been sitting around the fire scrambled to their feet, grabbed bows and arrow quivers or Spencer carbines, and scrambled off toward the horses. They’d been ordered to keep watch on San Gezo, Prophet thought. Maybe relieving other pickets. They were obviously keeping a close eye on the town. Watching for some indication of where the gold had been hidden.

  El Lightning gestured for Prophet to sit down in the space opened up by the three dismissed braves. Then he sat down himself, pressing his moccasins together and resting his elbows on his raised knees. Two long-barreled Colt Army revolvers jutted from the red sash around his waist, and his brass-cased Henry dangled down his back.

  The comely Mojave princess came out of the trees on the other side of the wash. She had an intoxicating walk—one which Prophet could have more fully appreciated in less threatening circumstances. She had a sheep’s bladder flask dangling from her neck by a leather cord. The flask jostled atop her breasts that were also jostling behind their scanty deerskin covering.

  As she approached the fire, the reflection caressing her smooth, cherry-dark skin, El Lightning said something to her in their tongue. She continued past the war chief and knelt down so close to Prophet he could smell the girl’s not unpleasantly gamey aroma.

  She looked down at him, her eyes cold, one nostril flaring slightly. Her breasts rose and fell behind the flask. The fire shunted dark shadows across her round, pretty face. She sat so close to Prophet that he could see a couple of widely spaced freckles on her neck and along her jaw.

  El Lightning chuckled, then lifted a hand to indicate the flask. “Por favor, amigo. Drink. Sno-So-Wey doesn’t bite, though she looks like she could, huh?” He laughed.

  Prophet saw that the girl wasn’t going to extend the flask to him but instead sat there within two feet, silently taunting him. So he reached out and lifted the flask from her breasts. A .45 shell casing was shoved into the lip of the flask. Prophet removed it and, leaning close to the girl because the cord wasn’t very long, took a tentative pull of the tiswin.