The Devil’s Laughter: A Lou Prophet Novel (11 page)

SUGAR HAD HAD
her head turned away, her red hair screening her left cheek but not enough to completely hide the flush caused by the back of Lazzaro's hand. Now she turned to him, her jaws hard, a forked vein standing out in her forehead.

“Goddamn you to hell, lover!” she said, her low voice sounding like a hand run across guitar strings discordantly.

Lazzaro stepped back, a self-satisfied look on his round face with its weak chin and silver teeth showing between his thin lips mantled by a long, pencil-thin mustache.

“Hang on, now,” Red Snake said as he and Kiljoy watched Sugar slide her .36 Remington from the holster on her right hip.

Lazzaro threw a waylaying arm out, staring at Sugar, who was now regaining her feet, the Remy in her hand. “Shut up. Both of you stay out of it!” He grinned at the blind woman, who held both of her hands straight down at her sides and stared unseeingly toward Lazzaro, her hair hanging in tangles about her face, nostrils flaring, and her chest rising and falling sharply behind her leather vest.

“If you're gonna pull that hogleg on me, Sugar,” Lazzaro said, “you best make sure you kill me with it!”

She took one stumbling step straight out away from the bank, staring somewhere just over Lazzaro's right shoulder, and raised the Remington. “Goddamn you to hell, Tony!”

The Remington barked, stabbing smoke and flames.

Lazzaro snickered as he stepped to his right, sort of ducking and weaving his head, smirking. The bullet tore a twig from a mesquite somewhere behind him. The horses nickered and pranced.

“Come on, Sugar,” Lazzaro taunted. “Let's see you put that sixth sense of yours to good use. Come on—you wanna shoot ole Tony, then shoot him!”

Knowing she'd draw a bead on his voice, he stepped back in the opposite direction, throwing his arms out and exaggeratedly stepping on the balls of his boots, trying to make as little sound as possible.

Again, Sugar's Remy popped, blowing up dirt and stones from the arroyo bank five feet behind where Lazzaro had last been standing. The horses continued to nicker while the men held their reins taut, staring in wary amazement at the blind woman extending the pistol straight out in front of her and raking the hammer back once more.

“A blind woman,” Lazzaro said, shaking his head and continuing to sneer at Sugar, “no way she should be carryin' a gun.”

Pop!

The bullet blew up several strands of Lazzaro's long, thin hair. He gave a startled, bemused yelp and jerked back in the other direction, jogging several yards down the arroyo now while Sugar clicked the Remy's hammer back and tracked him, bunching her lips furiously.

“I swear, I'll kill you, Tony!”

Lazzaro stood crouching beside a wagon-sized boulder in the middle of the arroyo, one hand on it, ready to run behind it if it looked like she was going to come even closer with her next shot. “Really? You gonna kill good ole Tony,
who out of the kindness of his heart rescued you from them mean old nuns at the convent?”

“That was then, you son of a bitch! This is now!”

The Remy roared. Lazzaro had just started to lurch behind the boulder when her bullet slammed into the face of the rock, spraying shards. He jerked his head with a start and laughed, then very slowly and quietly stepped around behind the boulder to the other side, turning to the other two men who sat their horses behind Sugar now, and pressed two fingers to his grinning lips.

Then he faced the blind woman, spread his arms, and threw his shoulders and chest back, grinning so broadly that all his full set of upper silver teeth shone beneath the thin line of his mustache. He remained silent as the girl stepped forward, jerking her head and gun around, trying to get a fix on him. A bird chattered in a tree to Lazzaro's left. She swung the gun toward it and fired.

Lazzaro snickered.

She swung the gun toward him and fired again, the slug slamming into the side of another boulder about six feet to his right and behind him.

He lowered his hands and took off running across the arroyo. “One more,
chiquita
!”

Sugar screamed her fury, ran three steps forward, and fired.

Lazzaro dove behind a tree, the slug kicking up rocks about two feet behind him. He hit the ground and rolled and came up with his own long-barreled Smith & Wesson in his fist.

Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam! Bam
-
bam!

His bullets plowed up dirt and gravel in a semicircle about one foot in front of Sugar's copper-tipped black boots. She gave a cry and stumbled backward, tripping over a rock and dropping onto her butt about ten feet in front of Red Snake Corbin and Roy Kiljoy.

She lowered her empty gun to her side and stared down at the toes of her boots. Her eyes were wide and glassy,
her cheeks flushed behind her hair. She lowered her head farther and her shoulders jerked as she sobbed. Her head dropped still lower until her chin was nearly scraping her vest. Her head and shoulders jerked as she cried.

Red Snake and Kiljoy glanced at each other, at the sobbing woman, and then at Lazzaro, who heaved himself to his feet now, his smoking Smith & Wesson in his right hand. Slowly, he walked toward Sugar, who raised her knees, set her elbows against them, and pressed her hands to her temples as she cried.

“There, there, Sugar.” Lazzaro stopped before her and looked down at her with the hard eyes of a parent who'd been forced against his will to punish an unruly child. “No need to cry. I was just tryin' to take you down a badly needed notch, that's all.”

Sugar sniffed and nodded, keeping her chin down. “I know.” She sniffed again. “I know you were, Tony.”

Kiljoy looked at Lazzaro. “That wasn't good—all that shootin'. Every Mojave in ten miles prob'ly heard it.”

Lazzaro said, “Go check. Both of you. Leave mine and Sugar's horses here.”

Red Snake dropped the reins of both mounts. Then he and Kiljoy split up, each riding up an opposite bank and out onto the sunburned desert. Lazzaro slipped his Smith & Wesson into the holster on his right hip, near the second holster angled for the cross draw and containing a short-barreled Russian. He dropped to a knee beside the sobbing woman, ran his hand through his long, stringy hair with restrained affection.

“I know you like to be independent. Just like a she-coyote. The thing is, girl, you can't be. Not totally. Even with that special gift you have, you're still blind. You need ole Tony.”

Sugar nodded. “I do. I do need you, Tony.”

“Sometimes you forget that.”

“I reckon I do.”

“And what's more, Sugar girl, you need to remember who's the head honcho here. Because sometimes I think you forget.”

“I do forget it.”

“Just like you musta forgot when I told you—after you told me you suspected that Leona girl wasn't who she said she was.”

For the first time, Sugar lifted her head, showing her tear-streaked cheeks and swollen, red-rimmed eyes. “I know, Tony, but you see I didn't know who she was, and I thought I could—”

“No, no, no,” Lazzaro said, wagging his finger at her. “That's where you went wrong. You took matters into your own hands. You left her alive after I told you you had to kill her or leave it to me to kill her.”

Guiltily, Sugar lowered her head again and sniffed, running the back of her hand across her nose.

“You felt somethin' for her, did you?”

“I reckon I sorta did,” Sugar said.

“Well, now, let that be a lesson for you. You don't need to go feelin' nothin' for nobody except ole Tony.” Lazzaro placed two gloved fingers under her chin and lifted her face toward his. “Ain't I the one who sprung you from that monastery your witch of a ma sent you to? Ain't I the one that took you back home and helped you do away with all them that wronged you. Especially your pa and brother who thought that just cause you was blind they could do what they wanted to you anytime they felt like it?”

Tears welled in her eyes and dribbled down her cheeks as she remembered. Her face crumpled, and she began sobbing again in earnest. “Oh, Tony,” she cried, throwing her arms around his neck. “I'm so sorry!”

“You'll never cross me again, will you, Sugar?”

“Never!”

“'Cause you need ole Tony.”

“I need you, Tony!”

Lazzaro smiled and patted her back. “There, there. No need to cry about it. Hell, it's all spilled milk, anyway, and I already done forgot all about it!”

She pulled away from him, wiped her wet face with both hands. “Thank you, Tony.”

“Let's get movin'. We got a long, hot desert to cross.”

Lazzaro rose to his feet. Sugar grabbed his hand. “Wait, Tony. Don't you think we oughta camp here in the shade today, travel at night?”

“Ah, shit.” Lazzaro looked through the mesquites and across the desert toward where the Montanas Muertas humped, stark and gray, in the western distance. “I wanna get across this damn desert, then head south to the Gulf. I don't got time to sit here and twiddle my thumbs and wait for the sun to go down. Besides, it's a whole lot easier for you to ride in the dark than it is for me an' Red Snake and Roy.”

“But . . . the Mojaves. . . .”

Lazzaro glared at her. “Now, Sugar. What'd we just get done talkin' about?”

“Okay.” Sugar forced a meek smile and rose. “Okay, Tony—you're right. There I go again, second-guessing you. I'm sorry.”

Lazzaro's group followed the wash for another mile. When it angled west, they climbed out of it and headed south along a jog of low mountains, some of which looked like giant mushrooms of hardened lava. The sun was high, blasting its heat onto the desert floor with a molten hammer and a molten chisel.

Lazzaro knew there was a well at the eastern edge of the Dead Mountains, in an old Mexican village that had been taken over by miners working for an American gold company, but he didn't want to ride that far west. He wanted to plow straight south toward the sea. He'd heard that San Gezo was cursed, and having holed up there once himself, he believed it. It was hot and dusty and far from anywhere. There was a well between here and Puerto Penasco. A far stretch south of his gang's current location, but they'd likely reach it in six, seven hours or so.

The horses slowed, hung their heads.

Lazzaro led the way toward the uninterrupted southern horizon. To the west and east, the mountains beckoned. He
ignored them. South was his direction. South, damnit, to a free life in Central America.

“I don't know, Boss,” said Roy Kiljoy, loosening his neckerchief that was mottled white with the salt of his sweat. “Might be a good idea to ride at night. Cooler, you know.”

“I like to see where I'm goin'.”

“Yeah, but this way it's awful hot,” said Red Snake, looking around at the white-hot desert mounded with rocks and stippled with occasional cacti. “And the Mojaves can keep better track of us. Hell, I think I can feel their eyes on us.”

Lazzaro glanced at Sugar riding off his horse's right hip. “You three been cahootin' against me?”

Sugar said nothing, just stared straight ahead, letting her black clomp along, occasionally kicking a rock.

Lazzaro opened his mouth to speak but only said,
“Gnahh!”
as he flew out of his saddle and hit the ground in a heap. A rifle report flatted out across the desert.

“Hellfire!” Kiljoy said, sawing back on his horse's reins and staring toward a low, long mound of sand and rocks to the east.
“Injuns!”

“Tony?” Sugar said, hearing the gang leader groaning on the ground somewhere to her left. “Tony? Are you all right, Tony?”

Her query was answered by several more rifle cracks and the whine of several ricochets. One of the horses whinnied shrilly.

“Goddamnit!” Lazzaro barked as Red Snake and Kiljoy raised their rifles. “Goddamnit—
shoot
those goddamn savages!”

Red Snake swung down from his saddle and, holding his bridle reins, raised his Winchester and pumped three shots into the low mound of sand and rocks rising about fifty yards to the east where he'd seen rifle barrels bristling and smoke puffing. Kiljoy fired once from his saddle, then dismounted and dropped to a knee about ten yards to Red Snake's right.

He raised the rifle to his shoulder as Red Snake snapped
off his fourth shot, levered another round into his Henry's breech, then held fire, staring down the barrel toward the mound.

“Where are they?” Kiljoy said as Lazzaro groaned behind him. Sugar was down on both knees beside the gang leader, who lay propped on an elbow, clutching his hand to his lower right side, just above his cartridge belt.

“I don't see nothin',” Red Snake said, his pulse throbbing in his ears.

“Kill 'em!” Lazzaro shouted. “Kill every last one of them dry-gulchin' catamounts!”

Kiljoy started walking forward, swinging his rifle back and forth in front of him. Red Snake followed him up the low hill, both men stopping suddenly when they saw three Mojaves dashing down the other side of the rise toward three horses being held by a fourth warrior. Kiljoy triggered a shot, but all three running Mojaves were out of accurate rifle range, and the slug merely puffed dust well behind them.

He and Red Snake looked around, both men breathing hard from anxiety. “You know, Roy,” Red Snake said, squeezing his rifle in his hands so that the snakes tattooed on his thin arms seemed to be trying to wrap themselves around the brass-framed Henry, “I don't mind tanglin' with Injuns up on the plains. But down here in the desert, where it's just so damn hot . . . it just ties my innards in big, tight knots. You don't think I'm yaller for sayin' so, do you?”

Kiljoy stared after the Indians, all four of whom were now mounted and galloping off through the rocks and scrub, heading east. A couple glanced back over their shoulders as their war ponies tore up the desert and loosed demonic, taunting yowls.