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

dodging and weaving between boulders. Beyond them, several more were skipping down a ridge that was just out of rifle range. Most appeared nearly naked except for muslin loincloths, pointed toed moccasins and red flannel bandannas or hats made of hawk feathers. They all appeared to be wearing war paint—three vermillion and blue stripes across their noses, with three shorter slanted stripes on their foreheads.
    One just now running up the slope toward Prophet and Louisa wore a white lightning bolt across his forehead, above the painted stripes and just below a green flannel headband. His eyes were spruce green, and they glinted brightly in that cherry-dark face. A half-breed. He yowled now as he dove behind a small boulder, Prophet’s and Louisa’s lead blowing up rocks and gravel behind his fleet heels.
    Several bullets and arrows winged in from behind the Mojave with the lightning blaze, barking into the rocks around Prophet and Louisa, driving them back behind their respective boulders. Prophet could hear several more now running up slope—the rasp of breaths, the clatter of rocks under moccasin-clad feet.
    A shadow moved on the ground to his left. He saw it out of the corner of his left eye as he hunkered behind his boulder on that hip. He had to roll nearly completely around to face the Mojave who’d just now bolted up past Prophet’s boulder, paused a moment, sweat streaking his dark face.
    Prophet raised his rifle.
    The Indian grinned. For a weapon he appeared to have only a war hatchet that he gripped in his big, left fist. He wore a tight necklace of porcupine quills.
    Prophet had just gotten his Winchester’s barrel leveledwhen the Indian took one quick stride forward, then lifted his right leg—a knife slash of a kick that ripped the rifle out of the bounty hunter’s hands and sent it tumbling through the air behind him.
    â€œLou!” Louisa cried.
    â€œHoly shit,” Prophet said.
    The Mojave’s green eyes flashed. His face was incredibly broad. His mouth was wide and thick, his dark skin scaly as a snake’s and pocked with white as though the skin had peeled from sunburn. Likely, some disease or a condition the savage had been born with.
    And he was a savage, for only a savage could yowl like he yowled, causing Prophet’s ears to ache, a half second before he lunged again toward the bounty hunter, jerking the feathered war hatchet out and up and then swinging with all his might toward Prophet’s head. His eyes popped so wide, showing the jaundice-yellow whites around the green, that for a moment Prophet though that both the demented-looking orbs would pop out of his head.
    Louisa yelled again as Prophet ducked under the blow, pistoning off his heels and ramming his head and left shoulder into the Mojave’s naked, sweat-slick belly above which an awful-smelling medicine pouch swung from a rawhide sack. The Mojave wrapped the arm that had swung the hatchet around Prophet’s neck, snarling like a grizzly as he held Prophet’s head against his belly with that arm while hammering the bounty hunter’s face with his other fist.
    Meanwhile, Prophet kept his feet moving, driving the big man—he must have been as tall and heavy as Prophet himself—straight backward and up off his feet. The ground came up furiously, and the Mojave grunted loudly, the air hammered from his lungs, as his back slammed hard. For a fraction of a second, he lay slightly limp beneath Prophet.
    â€œGet out of the way, Lou!” Louisa cried. He saw from the periphery of his vision his blond partner trying to draw a bead on the big Mojave.
    Prophet had started to roll away but then he saw anotherMojave rising up out of the rocks and bearing down on Louisa, an arrow nocked to his bow. The girl saw the Indian and wheeled, her hair flying as she triggered her carbine into the man’s belly button from two feet away.
    Prophet had the sickening feeling—one