The Devil’s Laughter: A Lou Prophet Novel (14 page)

“I can't leave Joaquin,” said Senor Bocangel, staring in horror at his son's stripped, bloody body.

“We'll come back for him later. Now grab my hand or I'm gonna leave you here!”

Louisa triggered a couple of shots toward the oncoming riders as Bocangel reluctantly gave Prophet his hand and allowed himself to be swung up behind the cantle. The bounty hunter and Louisa gave their mounts the spurs, and they lunged off toward the rising dust of the Rurales, slugs ripping up rocks and sand a few feet behind them.

At the same time that Prophet began to hear guns popping angrily straight ahead, he saw that Chacin and the other four Rurales had checked their mounts down and were milling and looking confused, shuttling anxious glances between the Indians galloping toward them from the east, and the shooting in the west.

Prophet checked Mean down and stared toward the west. Ahead lay a ravine from which smoke puffed toward the Indians hunkered down in the rocks about fifty yards to the south. The ravine angled in from the north before swinging west. The men in the ravine appeared to occupy the far west end of it, not far from where the mountains rose up from the desert.

Prophet glanced behind him, hearing several slugs screaming over and around him while others blasted dirt and rocks near Mean's prancing hooves. He had no idea who the men under attack in the ravine were, but the ravine was the only near cover. Spurring Mean again, he galloped straight through the confused Rurales, shouting, “We ain't gonna stay alive long out here!”

Louisa and the others galloped behind him. Prophet slowed Mean and Ugly just a little as the brush and rocks lining the ravine grew before him. He saw a gap in the rocks and steered Mean toward it as a slug fired from behind tore a mesquite branch ahead of him.

Mean and Ugly gave an indignant whinny as the horse put its head down and plunged like a maverick Texas steer
through the brush. Another mesquite branch ripped Prophet's hat off his head as the horse plunged down the side of the bank, then hit the floor of the arroyo with a bone-jarring crash.

“Ay, sheee-it!”
lamented Senor Bocangel, flopping helpless against Prophet's back.

As the others came through the brush and rocks behind him, Prophet stared down the wash that appeared to narrow farther west and become obscured by jumbled boulders. He could see the thrashing tails of a couple of horses but no men though he could hear them shouting and triggering rifles.

Prophet swung his right boot over the saddle horn, then reached up to help Bocangel down with one hand, his other hand wrapped around his Winchester's neck. “You all right, senor?”

Bocangel looked shocked and disoriented from both the Indians and the sight of his dead son. He sort of sagged back against Mean's hindquarters. Hearing the yowls and hoof thuds of the Mojaves growing louder in the east, Prophet ran past Louisa and between two Rurale mounts and shouldered up to the wash's eastern bank. The dust that he and the others in his party had lifted was still sifting.

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.

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.

“God
damn!
” 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 explain 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.