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

trail that the Lazzaro gang took when they came storming down from the border.” The captain grinned, showing fang-like yellow eyeteeth. “You enjoyed a couple of the senoritas, I hear.”
    Louisa drawled, “So worried about me that you had to distract yourself, eh, Lou?”
    Prophet shrugged.
    Chacin looked at the two dead men on the porch. “Did you kill them all, Lou? You and the gringa?” Chacin’s eyes burned a little when they found Louisa standing in the broad, open doorway, in front of the two dead banditos.
    â€œNo, but a goodly portion. How nice you rode in just in time to offer assistance.”
    â€œI was certain that you and the Vengeance Queen—
si
, I know you by reputation,
chiquita
, and I am delighted to see that you are every bit as lovely as your legend claims—I was certain that you,
mi
amigo Prophet, could handle yourselves even against twenty of the vilest desperadoes to haunt northern Mexico for the past five years, somehow managing to stay one step ahead of me.”
    â€œTwo steps, more like,” Louisa said. Her reputation had stretched far and wide, and so had Prophet’s. Even Ned Buntline had written about her and the ex-Confederate man hunter who, after all the horrors he’d witnessed from theWilderness to Chickamauga, had sold his soul to the Devil in return for all the hoof-stomping, hog-killing good times he could wring from the years he had left, funded by the bounties on the heads of badmen.
    Ignoring Louisa’s comment, Chacin sat back in his saddle and studied the hacienda. “Damned impressive hideout. I figured they were holed up in the mountains farther south. Maybe the Sierra Madre.” He sighed fatefully, making a dramatic show of it, inflating then deflating his chest and rounding his broad shoulders. “Oh, well . . . gone but not forgotten. Now, if you will just hand over the loot they stole from the Nogales bank, my men and I will be on our way.”
    â€œHow do you know this Sonoran lizard, Lou?” Louisa asked, strolling out onto the veranda and pulling up on his left, spreading her boots a little more than shoulder-width apart.
    â€œNow, now,” Prophet said, grinning at Chacin scowling at Louisa. “Me and Jorge go way back . . . to about five, six years ago now. Run into each other from time to time, when business calls me down here south of the border.”
    Chacin said through a nostril-flared sneer, “This lizard, as you so rudely call me, senorita, once had a deal with Senor Prophet. We would split any bounty money he acquires down here in my beloved Mejico fifty-fifty. Half for me, half for him.”
    â€œNow, you know that wasn’t the agreement, Jorge.”
    â€œBut it was the agreement, Lou.”
    Prophet shook his head. “The agreement was eighty-twenty in my favor if I run ’em down and you don’t get your hands dirty. That’s the toll charge for crossin’ back over the border with my bounty in the form of the entire person or just his head, you see.”
    He glanced at Louisa, sneering now himself, his own nostrils flaring and the cords standing out in his stout, sun-leathered neck. “Only the lizard here, as you so aptly called
mi
amigo Captain Chacin of the illustrious Rurales, reneged on the deal. Tried to whipsaw me between two contingents of these gray-bellied bastards and force me to take onlytwenty percent . . . though his hands were as clean as the day the bastard was born, and I’d damn near popped all my caps!”
    â€œThat was a long time ago, Lou.” Chacin waved a gauntlet-gloved hand in front of his nose as though brushing away a fly. “I forget the details.”
    â€œQuit beatin’ the Devil around the stump and admit you’re a double-crossin’ son of a bitch.”
    Chacin dipped his chin and blinked his cold, gray brown eyes once. “The last few times you have been