The Devil’s Laughter: A Lou Prophet Novel (4 page)

“You picked up a blue tongue, too.” Prophet clucked in reproof and stared at her, genuinely surprised by her transformation.

Normally, she didn't cuss—only a muttered “shucks” or “shoot” or, at the most, a “gosh dang” or two. She'd been raised by God-fearin' folks up Nebraska way—before they were all slaughtered by the Handsome Dave Duvall gang, that was. “I'm gonna have to get you out of here before you try to cut in on my deal with the Devil.”

She sat back in her chair and arched a brow with her own brand of cool admonishment. “I'd never go that far, Lou.”

“Looks like you're halfway there.” Prophet threw back the entire shot of brandy in two short swallows, enjoying the warm flush throughout his soaked, chilled, bullet-burned,
and head-bruised body, and refilled the glass. “You mean to tell me that Foran and the others weren't onto 'em?”

“Nope. Surprised even me. They were a tight bunch, or so I figured. They headed out early afternoon, siesta time. The days don't really start around here until after nine o'clock at night. Then . . .” Louisa lifted her glass to her lips once more and tossed back the rest of the brandy. “The Devil takes the hindmost.”

Prophet cursed and reached inside his rain slicker, pulled a soggy chamois sack from his shirt pocket. He tossed the pouch onto the desk with another curse. “I need some dry tobacco.”

Louisa opened and closed a few desk drawers before tossing three long cigars onto the desk in front of Prophet. “There you go—have a cigar on Foran.”

“Don't mind if I do.” Prophet bit the end off one of the cigars and touched the end to the mantle of the lamp on the desk, puffing smoke as he rolled the cylinder between his lips. “Which way they head?”

“I scouted around a little before the rain came, saw four sets of shod hoofprints heading southwest.”

“How'd they get past the scouts? I had a helluva time!”

“Scouts don't get posted until dark. You must've done a good job of trackin' us out from Nogales, Lou. Lazzaro and Red Snake had no idea you were behind us.”

The bounty hunter only grunted at this to mask his chagrin.

She lifted her chin at him. “You're bleeding.”

Prophet swiped his hand to his shoulder, felt the blood running down from the bullet burn across the back of his neck. “A little tattoo to commemorate the day. Don't recollect we ever took down this many all at once before.”

“The Becker twins up in Dakota—remember? Two years ago.” Louisa heaved herself out of her chair, leaned down to remove the silk neckerchief sticking up out of the breast pocket of Foran's short jacket, and walked around behind Prophet. “There were thirty of them.”

“Ah, yeah,” Prophet said, sipping the brandy. “But we
used dynamite we stole from those drunken soldiers—remember?”

“We made a nice haul. I think you must have stomped with your tail up for two months after we collected those bounties.” Louisa dampened the silk hanky from the brandy bottle, lifted Prophet's neckerchief so she could get at the burn, then lightly ran the brandy-soaked cloth along the length of the graze.

Prophet winced as the brandy hit the open cut, but let a devilish smile lift his mouth corners and narrow his pale blue eyes. “That's what I'm here for. Easy money and fast women. Yes, Ole Scratch lived up to his end of the bargain up there in Dakota.”

“I'd just as soon not hear about it,” Louisa said, rubbing the handkerchief a little too hard across the cut.

Prophet sucked a sharp breath, chuckled, reached behind him to grab her arm, and pulled her onto his lap. “I ain't had the pleasure of your blankets for a while.” She felt warm and supple in his lap. “You oughta write more often.” He stared down at her smooth, tan cleavage showing behind her vest and above her low-buttoned calico blouse.

She laughed and wrapped her arms around his neck.

“How'd you know to find me in El Paso?” he asked her, holding her tight against him.

“Harry Morgan out of Tulsa told me you'd cleaned up a gang on the panhandle and said you were heading that way. Knowing how hard you like to work when you don't have to, I figured you'd be there for the winter.”

“Woulda been.” He kissed her, and she returned the kiss for a time, her lips as silky smooth and as tasty as he remembered them, her tongue darting playfully against his.

Then she pulled away. “I don't know about you,” she said, squirming up off his lap. “But all this shootin' and killin' makes a girl hungry. Come on—I'll rustle us up something in the kitchen.”

She grabbed the brandy decanter off the desk and strode out of the room, the whang strings on her coat sleeves and deerskin breeches jostling and adding to the shadows tossed
to and fro by the torches and the lamp. Prophet frowned at her.

She seemed different, somehow. And it wasn't just her change of clothes or her barn talk, either. Usually, when they'd been apart for a while she couldn't keep her hands off of him. He chuckled, remembering.

Oh, well. Mexico had a strange pull on folks. She'd likely be back sipping sarsaparilla just as soon as they were north of the border again. He heaved his wet, weary body out of the chair, gathered up his guns, and followed her out of the room and down the hall.

He'd just passed the stairs angling down from the second story when someone groaned. Boots thumped on the stairs, spurs ringing.

Prophet wheeled, pumping and raising his rifle. A man was moving down the stone steps—slowly, heavily, boot heels catching on the steps. Prophet saw his lime green slacks above the black boots. Curlicues of white stitching ran up the sides of the slacks.

As he kept descending the stairs, Prophet saw the twin red-leather holsters strapped to his thighs, below a billowy blouse the same green as the slacks. Both the man's hands were clamped over his bulging belly as he kept stumbling down the stairs. He was hatless, and he wore a thin beard. His dark eyes were pain-racked as, halfway down the stairs, he stopped, stared at Prophet for a moment, then lifted his chin and wailed,
“Estoy viniendo ensamblarle en cielo, mi hermano!”

Prophet chuckled. “If you got a brother in Heaven,
mi
amigo, you sure as hell ain't seein' him anytime soon!”

Prophet lowered the barn blaster, raised his Colt, and put the green-clad hombre out of his misery. He'd turned away and continued on down the hall before the man had piled up at the bottom of the stairs.

“You leave anymore alive up there?” he asked Louisa, who had turned sideways toward him at the entrance to the kitchen.

“If I did, they're in no better condition than he is.”

Prophet looked out the open door. The rain hung like a gray curtain beyond the veranda, water sluicing in straight streams from the edge of the roof and splashing in the growing puddles in the yard. He hoped he hadn't left any scouts alive out there. Likely not or they'd have made their presence known by now. Despite the thunder, the gunfire had likely carried a good distance.

He turned to Louisa, who was setting a couple of plates on the cluttered table on which she'd also set the brandy decanter, which glittered brightly in the light of the several lanterns placed here and there about the cavernous but crudely furnished room.

“I'm gonna fetch my horse, girl.”

“The barn's in the back.”

Prophet steeled himself against the onslaught, closed his slicker, pulled his hat brim low over his forehead, and jogged out in to the rainy night, boots splashing. It took him nearly a half hour to find Mean and Ugly where he'd left him. The horse was as mad as an old wet hen at having been left alone in the storm. When he saw Prophet he reared, whinnied angrily, shook his head, and when Prophet reached for his reins, he moved up and tried to take a nip out of the bounty hunter's shoulder.

Prophet had had too many shoulder seams ripped out of his shirts to give his back to the horse for long. Sensing the nip coming, he whipped around and slammed his elbow against the ugly beast's head. Mean lurched back, snorting and stretching his leathery lips back from his thick, yellow teeth.

“Goddamnit, Mean—I'm trying to get you to a warm barn, you mean, ugly bastard!”

The horse pitched his head and flicked his ears notched by numerous fights with other horses in livery barns and corrals throughout the frontier. Prophet poked his rifle down into its sheath, swung the sawed-off shotgun down his back, and stepped wearily into the leather.

He put the horse across the flooded arroyo and up the other side, and swung around behind the massive hacienda
to a barn that sat hunched amongst several corrals and other outbuildings in the overgrown foliage.

The Lazzaro gang took good care of their horses; he'd give them that. Despite the storm, the fifteen or so mounts stood relatively calmly in their stables, with plenty of oats, water, and hay. Prophet took his time unrigging Mean and Ugly, rubbing down the crotchety beast, then stabling him with a nice surrounding of oats and fresh green hay that smelled like the springtime in Georgia. He put Mean between two mares so he couldn't fight with the other geldings and two nickering stallions, then went out and closed the heavy wooden doors behind him.

A snort sounded off to his right. He turned sharply, cocking and leveling his rifle straight out from his right hip but eased the pressure on the trigger when he saw the coyote staring at him from around the barn's far front corner.

The lightning wasn't as bright as before, as the storm seemed to be winding down. But the intermittent blue flashes shone in the animal's anxious eyes and on the wet tip of its hanging tongue. The animal was no threat to the horses, so Prophet depressed the Winchester's hammer and lowered the weapon.

“Nice night, eh, feller?”

He glanced at the gray black sky and began tramping back to the casa, casting several frustrated glances toward the southwest, where fifteen thousand dollars' worth of Mexican coins and greenbacks and four notorious killers, including some blind woman named Sugar, were heading.

And where he'd be heading soon with a partner not herself.

“HOW WAS IT?”
Prophet asked, as he hungrily ate the dead outlaws' supper—beans and carne seca with a small pile of corn tortillas. Whoever had done the cooking hadn't been half bad; the grub was padding out the bounty hunter's belly right well. “I mean,” he said, “any problems aside from losing the loot?”

He gave a wry grunt.

“Twenty against one is long odds even for me.”

“Don't get your panties in a twist. I was worried when I rode into Nogales and learned you was ridin' with Lazzaro's bunch. Or figured you was, anyways. I remember, in case you don't, what happened last time we were down in Mexico.”

“Another time,” she said, shrugging her shoulder as she took a bite of beans and followed it up with a sip of brandy from a dented tin cup. “And I was another person. I'm tougher now.”

Prophet looked at her over his steaming forkful of food. “Don't get too tough.”

Louisa said after a pensive moment, “Sugar . . .” Her train of thought appeared to get cloudy. Just then, more
thunder rumbled and lightning flashed, throwing a blue white light through the recessed windows behind her. She shook her head and continued, frowning down at her brandy cup. “She's a strange woman, Lou. Don't know quite what to make of her.”

“She's a killer,” Prophet said, shrugging, as if that said it all.

“A blind killer who started riding with Lazzaro about five years ago, and she's been in on most of the jobs they've pulled. Even blind, she somehow manages to pile up her share of the bodies. Don't ask me how.”

Louisa paused as she ate for a while, then continued:

“Her family sent her to a convent. That's where she met Lazzaro. He was holed up there wounded for a time, on the run from Rurales. The nuns gave him sanctuary, tended his wounds. When he left, he took Sugar with him. First thing she did was to ride back to her family's ranch in Texas and kill her parents—both her ma as well as her pa and an uncle. With Lazzaro's help, though I see now how she likely didn't need it.”

“You sayin' she might not be as blind as she lets on?”

Louisa shook her head. “No, she can't see with her eyes. I know that. But I think she can see with some other . . . sense. That's why she drugged me. She had a bad sense about me, though I played it pretty damn close to the vest and gave her no reason to suspect anything under the table.”

Prophet stopped chewing the load of food in his mouth to scowl across the table at his blond partner. “Why didn't she kill you, you think?”

Louisa glanced sidelong at him, sharply, as though annoyed. “How do I know? I don't know how she thinks.”

“All right, all right.” Prophet forked more food into his mouth. “Maybe we'll find that out when we catch up to her.”

Louisa sighed and splashed more brandy into each of their cups. “Sorry, Lou. Not just for being snappy but . . . because I let 'em get away. Had the wool pulled over my eyes by a blind woman.”

Broodingly, Prophet listened to another stretch of belching
thunder as the storm drifted off to the east. “Should have been me, wrigglin' my way on in here.”

“Don't be stupid, bucko. Half the gang knows you.”

“Yeah?” Prophet grinned at her, trying to lighten the mood despite the frustration of four of the main gang members absconding with the loot and the weather that had soaked and chilled him bone deep. “I reckon I couldn't wear that deerskin half as good as you, neither.”

“Don't get fresh.”

Prophet sighed and finished his meal. He polished off the last of the brandy, then slid his chair back from the table, digging in his shirt pocket for one of Foran's cigars.

“You need to get out of those duds, Lou,” she said. “Hang 'em by the fire.”