The Devil’s Laughter: A Lou Prophet Novel (19 page)

He pulled out a chair, set his Winchester on the table near Prophet's own mini-arsenal, and sat in the chair with a grunt. He ran a weary hand through his curly hair poking up all over his head and glowered across the table at Prophet. “I didn't ask this of Chacin or them others, because I knew I'd get run around the well house. I'm askin' you 'cause you seem the only one a man could halfways trust.”

Ivy set a mug of coffee down in front of the marshal. He glanced at her. “Thanks, Ivy.”

“Don't mention it, Bill. And don't let me interrupt.” She smoothed her skirt down against her rump and the backs of her well-turned thighs—at least, Prophet guessed they were well turned in the vague way he'd thought about and appraised her, as men were wont to do—and sat down in her chair.

Prophet shuttled his gaze from the woman to Marshal Hawkins. “I reckon you deserve to get the whole wheelbarrow-full.” He sipped his coffee, tilted the mug, and rolled the bottom edge of it around on the table. “My partner Miss Bonnyventure and me been trailin' Lazzaro's bunch. They hit a bank in Nogales, got away with sixteen thousand dollars in Mexican coin and paper. There's a reward for the money and for the heads of each of Lazzaro's bunch.”

Hawkins said, “The blind woman . . . ?”

“She's part of 'em. And while she may be blind, don't give her your back.”

“Somehow, I knew that.”

“Go on, Mr. Prophet,” Ivy urged, wanting to hear it all.

“Call me Lou.” Prophet gave her a little cockeyed half smile, enjoying the distraction of sort of halfway flirting with the pretty, sexy woman despite the gravity of their situation. She merely pursed her lips and looked down at her coffee before lifting the mug to her mouth.

The marshal glanced incredulously from Prophet to Ivy then back to Prophet. “Please, do go on, bounty man,” he said with a sarcastic edge.

Prophet laid it all out for him and Miss Ivy—the loot, the Rurales, the Mojaves, and his stumbling across Bocangel in the dark desert, then finding the man's son crucified on a cactus earlier that day.

“So take the loot and git,” Hawkins growled.

“I'd love to oblige you.” Prophet sipped his coffee. “But Lazzaro and Miss Delphi hid the loot in the desert. Somehow, we're going to have to get the son of a bitch to tell us or show us where it is.”

“Pistol-whip him till his teeth fall out. That oughta do it. Hell, I'll do it for you if you're squeamish.”

“Wouldn't work on Lazzaro. Besides, in his condition, he'd likely die. Where would that leave us?”

“Hell, he's probably gonna die, anyway. Doc Shackleford says he's back and forth—mostly back. Lost too much blood.” The marshal sat back in his chair. “Maybe Miss Delphi can feel her way back to it. They say them sightless folks have another sense.”

“They say it about Sugar, but her extra sense is mostly reserved for killing, not leading men back to money she's helped steal.” Prophet picked up his rifle and set the butt on his thigh, opening the breech. “Them Injuns been causin' a lot of trouble around here, have they?”

He caught Ivy casting the marshal a furtive glance.

Hawkins wrinkled his brows and said, “Not till you folks led 'em here. I doubt they had any idea San Gezo even had any folks left in it. Most everybody left with the mining company. There's the well out there but the Injuns know of other tanks in these mountains that white men don't.

“There's another well out on the other end of the range, and most of the long-lost desert rats and curly wolves use that one. This town, you see, is cursed. Or so the Mexicans believe. Bad luck is as common here as the wind. We keep our heads kinda low here, so's not to piss-burn the red men and attract attention. Kinda helps, havin' the place cursed, you see.”

“What're you folks doin' here?” Prophet said, sliding his curious gaze from the marshal to Ivy and back again. “Got nowhere else to go, do you? Don't get along well with others?”

“That's about the size of it,” Ivy said. “The world has gone to hell in a handbasket. You can have it.” She lifted her cup and threw the last of her coffee back. “Well, then, I reckon I'll try to catch some shut-eye. There's a little stew and a few biscuits left.” She canted her head toward the bar. “On the warming rack.”

“I'm full, Ivy—thanks,” the marshal said, casting another glance at the woman's enticingly round backside.

She walked halfway across the room, then stopped and cast an inscrutable look over her right shoulder, her eyes quickly meeting Prophet's before flicking away. “I'm in room eighteen, top story . . . anyone needs anything.”

Then she headed on up the stairs.

Hawkins scowled at Prophet and said angrily, “That's funny. I been here as long as you, Ivy, and I never until now knew which room you bedded down in up there.”

Ivy said nothing. She merely turned at the second-story landing and continued on up the stairs. Hawkins snorted without mirth.

Prophet looked again at the rifle sticking up from his thigh, opened and closed his hand around the neck of the stock.

Hawkins gave a wolfish grin and raised his dark brown eyes to the hammered tin ceiling. “You steer clear of Miss Ivy, hear?”

“Maybe you never knew what room she holes up in, because she don't want you to know, Bill.” Prophet glanced sidelong at the riled marshal. “Ever think of that?”

Hawkins jerked his chin down with menace. “Just steer clear, bounty man. Wouldn't wanna catch a stray bullet here in San Gezo—now, would ya?”

Prophet's pale blue eyes sparked with mockery. “That'd be a black eye on your fair city, wouldn't it?”

Hawkins finished his coffee, stood, and plucked his Winchester off the table. “I'm goin' to bed.”

“Don't let the bedbugs bite,” Prophet said as the man climbed the stairs. Everyone in San Gezo had taken a room in the saloon, it appeared. All except for Senor Bocangel.

Prophet kicked back in his chair for a time, pondering the situation. Finally, he thought about Hawkins and Ivy and the others here in San Gezo.

Damn curious they remained here, few as there were. With Bocangel, they numbered less than ten. Prophet could understand folks wanting to keep to themselves. He harbored much the same sentiment. You didn't have to be around other humans long to get tired of their bullshit. And all men . . . and women, for that matter . . . owned a good dose of bullshit. He had enough of his own to make him want to hack his own head off with a rusty saw. Prophet preferred the company of his horse, mean and ugly as he was. . . .

The bounty hunter heaved himself to his weary feet, grumbling at the marshal's admonishment about Miss Ivy, and picked up his guns. He muttered an indignant curse and tramped up the stairs, making no effort to cushion his footsteps. He went on up to the third floor and rapped on the door bearing the tarnished-brass number 18.

“LOU?”

Louisa lifted her head from her pillow, looking around, wondering where she was and where Prophet was. It took nearly half a minute for Chacin, Lazzaro, Sugar, the Indians to come back to her. When they did, she turned to see that the side of the double bed in Miss Ivy's saloon that she'd reserved for Prophet hadn't been slept in. The covers hadn't been pulled back.

The oil lamp on the room's dresser sputtered in drafts scurrying in around the closed wooden shutters over the sole window. The room was small, its wooden walls papered in red with phony gold palm leaves that had long since faded to pink and peeled off in strips. The air was foul with mouse droppings. A chair with scrolled arms and back upholstered in green brocade sat in a corner. It had once been elegant, but now its seat was nearly worn through, and a chunk was missing from one of the arms. The back was stained with what appeared blood.

A remnant from San Gezo's last heyday.

A washstand stood in front of the window. Awake now and feeling restless and wondering what time it was and
what was going on outside—where the hell was Prophet?—Louisa threw the covers back and moved naked to the stand. She used the sliver of soap there and the sponge to give herself a quick sponge bath, then dried herself with a scrap of towel, picked her clothes up off the chair beside the bed, and dressed.

She pulled her tarnished timepiece out of the pocket of her calico shirt and clicked open the lid in which rested a wedding picture of her mother and father. When the picture had been taken, they'd been younger than Louisa was now, her father boyishly handsome with his slicked-back hair parted in the middle, her mother too severe-looking for the happiness she must have been feeling. Married to the man she loved. About to buy a farm, start a family.

She wore her thick blond hair elegantly back and parted and gathered in a fist-sized bun at the crown of her head. The thickness of her hair accented the fine, smooth Nordic planes of her face.

Dead. Louisa's parents and her brother and sisters. All dead.

Louisa caressed the slightly water-stained photo with her thumb, and not allowing the remembered screams to enter her head as they did so often and with such persistence that she thought she'd surely go mad, she read the time.

Three o'clock.

The large building sounded eerily quiet in the wake of the wind. There was a freshness in the air that told her it must be raining.

She returned the piece to her pocket. She adjusted her cartridge belt and pistols on her hips, made sure each gun was fully loaded, rolled each cylinder across her forearm, comforted by the smooth, certain sound of the clicks, and left the room.

As she walked along the second-story hall, she heard snores from behind several scarred doors. Descending the stairs, she saw two Rurales filing through the saloon's open front door, muttering to each other wearily as they headed for the bar. The room was lit with three or four lamps bracketed
to posts or hanging from the ceiling, and in the flickering, buttery light she recognized Sergeant Frieri and one of the Rurale corporals whose name she'd never learned and had no interest in learning.

“Senorita, what a pleasure,” Frieri said, standing at the bar while the corporal stood behind it, filling two tin cups with coffee from the large, blue pot that had been warming on the range.

“The pleasure's all mine, Sergeant,” Louisa responded, in no mood for the man. “What's happening out there?”

The sergeant leaned an elbow atop the bar. He was just barely tall enough to do so. He smiled at Louisa, showing the gap where his front teeth had been, and several crooked teeth in his lower jaw rimed with crusted coffee and tobacco. “It's raining very softly. Perhaps we could take a walk together. The air is fresh.”

“You need your balls busted again?”

The sergeant closed his mouth, his long, reptilian eyes darkening. The corporal chuckled but stopped when Frieri fired a glance at him.

“Pour me one of those,” she ordered the corporal.

A little nervously, the man did as she'd ordered, and then, silently, he and Frieri took their coffee and filed on out to the veranda, where Louisa could hear them muttering as they sat in wicker chairs. They'd left one of the two doors open, and she could hear the welcome, soft patter of the cool rain that smelled like fresh chili peppers and almond extract. Somehow, the sound took the edge off the night though she knew that the Mojaves wouldn't be waylaid by a little rain. Their superstitions might keep them from attacking until daylight, but rain wouldn't stop them.

Louisa carried her mug over to the table that she and Prophet had been sitting at earlier. Where was he? There were three empty stone mugs on the table. The one on the left side, nearest the sidewall, was turned to the left. Prophet always drank with his left hand, leaving the right one free for his gun.

No telling whose the other two were. One might possibly
have been Miss Ivy's. Louisa had a keen sense about the attractions between men and women—especially between Prophet and other women. And she'd seen right off—she couldn't have said how exactly—that there had been an attraction between Prophet and the pretty, cocoa-skinned saloon owner.

“Getting you a tussle, eh, Lou?”

Louisa sat down in his chair, curling one leg beneath her. She looked up when she heard someone descending the stairs. Sugar's red braids and thick red locks bounced around her shoulders. She came down slowly, running her left hand lightly along the rail.

She stopped at the bottom, stood there for a time, her head forward. “Louisa?”

Louisa sipped her coffee. “How'd you know?”

“Your own particular smell,” the blind woman said. “And the smell of coffee. No better pairing in this world.”

“You want me to pour you a cup?”

“That'd be nice.” The blind woman came forward slowly, tentatively. “Any chairs in my way?”

Louisa got up and walked around to fetch the coffee. “Not if you stay close to the bar.”

Sugar walked along the bar, brushing an arm along it before pulled out a chair from the table at which Louisa had been sitting and slacked into it. Louisa set the fresh cup of coffee down before Sugar, then sat in her own chair, leaning forward with her elbows on the table and lifting her own mug with both hands.

“Good and hot,” Sugar said, sipping her mug of the brew. “Got chilly with the rain.”

“Couldn't sleep?”

Sugar shook her head. “You?”

“Nerves are a little jangled, I reckon.”

“I didn't think your nerves were ever jangled, Leona. Or . . . it's Louisa, I guess, isn't it?”

Sugar sat back in her chair. She met Louisa's gaze and it was like she was seeing her. There was a slight tightness in
her features, a pensive cast to her sightless eyes that wasn't normally there.

“Lazzaro kick off?”

Sugar smiled. “You'd best be grateful he hasn't.”