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

down here, Lou, you failed to look up your partner, Chacin, and turn over to the Rurales our fifty percent cut of your dinero. You see, I have many pairs of eyes and ears, and those eyes and ears are always on the lookout for the big man with the crooked nose who rides an ugly, angry lineback dun who
deserves a bullet in his head as much as his rider does
!”
    Prophet leaned forward at the waist, veins bulging in his brick red forehead. “Don’t you dare insult my hoss, you son of a bitch. Backwater!”
    â€œBoys, boys,” Louisa said, dropping down the veranda steps, holding her hands up, palms out. “I sense there’s some bad blood between you, as there often is between even the most honorable businessmen. But I’m sure, since you both are honorable as well as sensible—I mean, no one wants a lead swap here, right?—I’m quite confident we can come to some sort of agreement.”
    â€œThere’s nothin’ to agree on,” Prophet said, snarling at Chacin while his five other men looked edgily on. Those with scanty English looked confused. “The loot’s gone, Jorge. I got here too late. Lazzaro hauled freight. Headed straight south—probably toward the Sierra Madre, just like you said.”
    â€œHuh? What?” Chacin looked incredulous, and then he grinned wolfishly. “You always get your man, Lou. And the loot!”
    â€œNot this time,” Louisa said. “They lit out before Lou got here.”
    Chacin glanced at the short, stocky Rurale wearingsergeant’s chevrons on his sleeves sitting a dirty cream mare behind and to Chacin’s right. The sergeant had thick, curly brown hair puffing down from his sombrero, and a mustache that looked ridiculously large on his small, moon-shaped face. He pursed his lips inside his mustache and shook his head.
    Chacin looked at Prophet, the wolf grin still bright on his face. “You have hornswoggled me one too many times, Lou.” He lifted a finger up close to his face and waggled it. “You will not hornswoggle me again.” He said
hornswoggle
as though he were so fond of the English expression that he tried to work it into conversations whenever he could. He glanced at the sergeant. “Sergeant Frieri, pat them both down. If there is money, surely they will have stuffed their pockets with some of it.”
    Frieri stepped down from his horse, tossed his reins to a young corporal behind him, and grinned lustily at Louisa. “May I start with the
rubia, el Capitan?
” He winked as he strode toward Louisa—a bandy-legged little man with an enormous gut pooching out his uniform tunic.
    â€œSi,”
said the captain, showing his fang-like eyeteeth again.
    Frieri slowed as he approached the blond bounty hunter, grinning and holding his hands up, palms out, inching them toward Louisa’s chest. Louisa stared at the short man blandly and didn’t move a muscle until he was two feet away.
    Then her right boot shot up in blur of sudden action.
    â€œWhaoffff!”
Sergeant Frieri jackknifed forward and crossed his little, thick hands over his balls.
    Louisa lowered the boot she’d just impaled the Rurale’s oysters with and stepped backward, holding her hands over the pearl grips of her matched Colts. To a man, the Rurales raised their rifles while checking their startled horses down with taut hands on the reins. A corporal who must have fancied himself a pistoleer clawed a Russian .44 from the crossdraw holster on his right hip.
    Prophet brought up his own Colt and fired.
    Bam!
    The corporal screamed and dropped the Russian as he was about to cock it and clutched the hole in the yellow stripe running down the outside of his left thigh. His horse reared and lurched sharply to the right.
    The groaning corporal flew off the left side of his saddle and hit the muddy yard with a yowl. His horse wheeled and ran back out the open gate, trampling and rolling