The Devil’s Laughter: A Lou Prophet Novel

PREPARE TO SHAKE HANDS

WITH THE DEVIL, SENOR PROPHET!

He was about to rise and bolt through the gap when he saw the silhouette of a man sitting against the inside of the wall, on the gap's right side. The guard was hunkered beneath his sombrero, facing the casa. He was sitting on the inside of the wall because the rain was slashing from the opposite side. Obviously, the gang hadn't suspected they'd been followed down from the border. They'd grown fat, lazy, and careless.

Prophet grinned beneath his dripping hat brim.

He tensed when the guard swung his head toward him. He started to raise the rifle but checked the move. The guard's lips were moving and Prophet heard him speaking in Spanish. To a man on the other side of the gap and whose back was likely just on the other side of the wall from Prophet.

Again, the bounty hunter grinned. He raised his rifle but before he could click the hammer back, something carved a hot line across the back of his neck before hammering the wall in front of him. Bizarre laughter cackled as though from down a long tunnel, muffled by the rain and thunder.

“Preparese para bailar con El Diablo, Senor Prophet!”

Berkley titles by Peter Brandvold

The Bounty Hunter Lou Prophet Series

THE DEVIL'S LAUGHTER

THE DEVIL'S WINCHESTER

HELLDORADO

THE GRAVES AT SEVEN DEVILS

THE DEVIL'S LAIR

STARING DOWN THE DEVIL

THE DEVIL GETS HIS DUE

RIDING WITH THE DEVIL'S MISTRESS

DEALT THE DEVIL'S HAND

THE DEVIL AND LOU PROPHET

The .45-Caliber Series

.45-CALIBER CROSS FIRE

.45-CALIBER DESPERADO

.45-CALIBER FIREBRAND

.45-CALIBER WIDOW MAKER

.45-CALIBER DEATHTRAP

.45-CALIBER MANHUNT

.45-CALIBER FURY

The Rogue Lawman Series

GALLOWS EXPRESS

BORDER SNAKES

BULLETS OVER BEDLAM

COLD CORPSE, HOT TRAIL

DEADLY PREY

ROGUE LAWMAN

The Sheriff Ben Stillman Series

HELL ON WHEELS

ONCE LATE WITH A .38

ONCE UPON A DEAD MAN

ONCE A RENEGADE

ONCE HELL FREEZES OVER

ONCE A LAWMAN

ONCE MORE WITH A .44

ONCE A MARSHAL

Other titles

BLOOD MOUNTAIN

— A LOU PROPHET NOVEL —

ALWAYS LEARNING

PEARSON

For all the other wanderers
of the American wastelands
.

Adelante?

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

THE MEXICAN GODS
had their necks in a hump.

Rain slashed nearly straight down from the night-black sky. Flooded arroyos surged. Thunder boomed like giant boulders crashing down the highest mountains in Sonora.

The wind knocked branches off the nut trees and mesquites in this broad, ridge-sheathed canyon and sent them careening toward the soaked, sandy earth. A couple bounced off the big bounty hunter's shoulders, nearly knocking off his hat, as if the gods of Mexico didn't want him here. As if they didn't want anybody here but wanted only to scour the Earth, once and for all, of all humanity.

The big dun, aptly named Mean and Ugly, didn't like the weather a bit and didn't hesitate to let his rider know he'd rather be in a warm barn with plenty of oats and a mare or two to brush noses with.

“Me, too, feller,” Lou Prophet said as he and the ugly dun moved through the storm-tossed night, the collar of his yellow rain slicker raised to his unshaven jaws. “Me, too. . . .”

Lightning flashed, lighting up the heavens from one horizon to the other. Prophet put Mean and Ugly up a low hill
amongst thrashing, dripping walnut trees, the rain sluicing off his funnel-brimmed Stetson. Lightning flashed again. It was like someone raising and lowering a lamp wick quickly in Heaven. Prophet jerked back on the horse's reins with one hand and lowered his Winchester with the other.

For a wink of time during that last flash, he'd seen a silhouetted figure standing amongst the walnuts and mesquites just ahead and to his right. A big man in a low-crowned sombrero and an ankle-length coat buffeted by the wind.

A small orange flame licked at Prophet from the rainy darkness. Something nudged his hat. As the gun's belch reached his ears, he drew his Winchester's hammer back with his gloved thumb and fired. He cocked the gun quickly, keeping the stock clamped against his right thigh over which the tail of his yellow rain slicker hung, and fired three more times.

During another brief lightning flash he glimpsed his assailant falling backward, tossing his own rifle away. He did not see the man hit the ground before silver-stitched darkness closed down again. There might have been a scream, but the wailing storm drowned it the same way it seemed intent on drowning everything else on this harsh night way too far south of the Mexican border.

Holding Mean and Ugly's reins taut in one hand, racking a fresh cartridge in his rifle with the other, Prophet looked around, slitting his eyes against the rain reaching under his hat to pepper his eyes. When no more bullets screeched toward him, he stepped down from Mean's back and looped the reins over a low branch of a bending pecan tree. He grabbed his sawed-off, double-barrel ten-gauge off his saddle horn and slung the leather lanyard over his neck and shoulder, letting the handy gut shredder, invaluable for close-up work, hang down his back.

“In Dixie Land where I was born in,” he sang softly to ease his nerves drawn taut as coiled snakes between his broad shoulders, tramping over the wet ground to where the dead man lay—a black mound in the darkness. “Early on one frosty mornin'—Look away! Look away!”

He looked around carefully, then returned his slitted gaze to the dead man. Lightning flashed. It glittered along the dead man's black leather coat and breeches and shone in his white teeth revealed by stretched-back, mustache-mantled lips. His hat had tumbled down his back when he'd fallen. The top of his head was bald as a baby's ass, but long black hair curled down both sides of it to dangle in wet tangles in the mud around his shoulders.

“Look away! Dixie Land!” Prophet sang, lifting his head to peer into the rain-slashed darkness before him, through the jostling trees.

Weaving amongst the trees, he strode forward, thumbing fresh cartridges from his shell belt and sliding them through his Winchester's loading gate. He continued forward until he came to an arroyo through which muddy water eddied, running from his right to his left.

Looking around for a way across the arroyo, he spied movement in the corner of his right eye and turned to see a man and horse lunge up out of the wash. Lightning flashed, showing the water glistening off the man's duster and dripping off the brim of his low-crowned straw sombrero.

As the horse set its feet atop the bank and set itself to shake off the muddy water, the man swung his head toward Prophet. He was merely a silhouette now, ambient light winking off his horse's bit and his saddle trimmings as well as the rifle in his hands. Prophet crouched, raised the Winchester, and drew the off-cocked hammer back until it clicked.

Lightning flashed.

Thunder clapped, causing the Earth to leap.

At the same time, Prophet triggered his rifle and saw the flash of the rider's own carbine. The reports of both guns were drowned by the thunderclap, but Prophet heard the thud of the other man's bullet striking a tree behind him. In the darkness following the lightning flash, he saw the dark shadow of the man's big steeldust lunge toward him and then veer away, its saddle empty, stirrups flapping against its sides.

Something moved in the flooded arroyo. Prophet stepped closer to see a large oblong object, which another lightning flash revealed to be the man he'd just shot floating on his back, arms and legs akimbo. Bobbing and turning, he was carried past Prophet and out of sight downstream.

Prophet dropped to one knee and looked around, quietly singing, “Old Missus married Will the Weaver; Will was a gay deceiver, Look away . . . !” Deciding no other threats were near, he rose and walked along the edge of the arroyo, finding a freshly downed tree sprawled across it. “Look away! Look away! Dixie Land!” he sang, tightroping the tree and throwing his arms out for balance so he wouldn't fall in the flashing stream.