Free The Devil’s Laughter: A Lou Prophet Novel by Peter Brandvold

she said sweetly, “your two new friends are U.S. marshals.”
    Lazzaro said nothing. She could smell the sweat, horse, and powder smoke odor of him as he stood on the other side of the door. Other men were talking in the yard behind him. Friendly tones.
    Boots thudded as Lazzaro strode back across the veranda. The other men stopped talking.
    Then one man said, “Wait! Hold on!”
    Lazzaro’s pistol barked four times in quick succession. After a few seconds, a groaning curse was followed by one more pistol shot.
    Sugar recognized Red Snake’s devilish laugh.

7
    PROPHET WHEELED FROM the waterhole, closing his hand around his Colt’s worn walnut grips and sliding the gun out of it holster and up in a fluid motion of practiced, high-speed action.
    Bam! Bam
-
bam!
    The arrow that the Mojave had loosed from his bow at the same time Prophet’s first bullet had torn through his throat ricocheted off a rock to Prophet’s left and dropped into the natural stone water tank with a plop. The Mojave himself—a stocky warrior with many small, white scars on his cherry face, stretched his lips back from his teeth and sucked a sharp breath. He cupped both hands over his bloody throat and stared wide-eyed at Prophet and Louisa, moving his jaws as though he were trying to say something.
    Prophet looked around at the stone ridges crowding close in nearly a complete circle, all resembling giant cracked teeth in a leering devil’s grin. He and Louisa stood crouched, Colts extended. They were on the side of an escarpment about forty yards up from the base.
    They both held the reins of their nickering, prancing horses whom they’d led up here to drink from the rock tank.The tank was so full after the recent deluge that the water was spilling down over its lip and running down into a natural trough before seeping into the sand around which some sparse grass and rain-beaten wildflowers grew.
    Prophet had spied the Indian a few seconds before, while he’d crouched to fill his canteen. His canteen lay at his feet now, the cork hanging from the lip by a rawhide thong.
    Neither he nor Louisa said anything as they tensely perused the ridges. It was midday, the sun nearly straight up, and the sun was a brassy ball, making it hard to see.
    â€œThere!” Louisa wheeled in the opposite direction from the first Mojave and triggered her Colt three times.
    The slugs hammered a square boulder on a shelf of rock about fifty yards away. Prophet had glimpsed a brown face drawing back behind the boulder a half second before Louisa’s first bullet had plowed into it, spraying rock dust.
    Prophet saw another figure stepping between two formations at the top of the ridge to his right. He holstered his Colt and slid his Winchester from his saddle boot, dropping to a knee and raising the rifle stock to his shoulder but holding fire. That Indian—a Mojave, judging by the area and the war paint—had taken cover, too.
    The tension hung like a dark cloud. The sun hammered down on them. The water lapping over the stone tank made barely audible jangling sounds.
    â€œI thought you scouted the tank, Lou.” Louisa sounded quietly edgy.
    â€œI did scout the tank, Miss Bonnyventure. And I seen neither hide nor hair of any Mojave.” Prophet spat to one side. “But then, them bein’ Mojave, I like as not wouldn’t.”
    â€œMojaves, you think?”
    Prophet nodded. “I thought I saw smoke talk a ways back. But when I looked again it was gone, and I thought I was just gettin’ nervy, it bein’ Mojaveria and all. I hadn’t heard of any broncos jumping their rez of late.”
    â€œWell, it’s been a while since either of us has seen a newspaper.”
    â€œPoint taken.” Prophet looked around, saw a narrow path meandering up through the rocks on the other side of the tank. “Cover me.”
    Holding Mean’s reins, he leaned his rifle against the side of