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

toward its zenith.
    A minute later, the three men were back on the trail, galloping twenty yards behind Sugar, who rode with the sun streaking her blowing, copper red hair, her black sombrero dangling by a rawhide thong down her back, over her black-and-red leather jacket stitched with small, silver horses.
    As he rode crouched in his own saddle, Red Snake glanced to the right, then shouted at Lazzaro riding half a length ahead and a little right of him, then tossed his head to indicate the white smoke puffs rising from one of the highest northern ridges. Lazzaro turned his head toward the smoke puffs, then jerked his head toward the left.
    Red Snake followed his gaze past Kiljoy to see another series of charcoal-colored puffs rising from a lower ridge half a mile south of the trail they were following.
    Kiljoy turned his big, unshaven, fair-featured but sunburnedface toward Red Snake, his blond mustache blowing in the wind. It was a dark look. Kiljoy shook his head. “I really hate ’Paches, Snake. I hate ’em worse than tooth pullers an’ sky pilots.”
    â€œYou can discuss that with them shortly,” said Sugar, whipping her head around to stare back at the men behind her.
    She lifted her chin. Kiljoy, Red Snake, and Lazzaro glanced over their shoulders. Six or seven dusky-skinned, black-haired riders galloped toward them, angling onto the trail from the north and south, leaning far forward and batting their moccasined heels against the flanks of their lunging mustang ponies painted for war.
    â€œAh, shit!” grouched Lazzaro.
    Red Snake expressed the same sentiment.
    Kiljoy whipped his rein ends against his Appy’s right hip and yelled, “Hold on to your topknots and ride like hell, boys!”
    Lazzaro’s mount lunged hard, until it was long-striding beside Sugar’s horse and gradually overtaking her. He did not wonder how the blind woman had known the Mojaves were behind them. He’d stopped wondering long ago how she sensed the things she did and now merely accepted the fact without question. It didn’t even seem all that strange to him anymore. In many ways her inexplicable gift was a blessing, as it had saved his life countless times.
    Hearing the Mojaves howling and yowling behind him, Lazzaro and the others climbed a low rise, and Lazzaro felt the slightest loosening of the knot in his belly. The Colorado Gulch Relay Station opened below him—a sprawl of weather-silvered wooden buildings and holding corrals in a broad horseshoe gouge in the large, black rock escarpment rising like a mess of giant dominos just north of it. To the south and west was nothing but more of the same stark terrain that Lazzaro and the others had just crossed.
    Gunfire crackled amidst the Indians’ eerie howls.
    Lazzaro glanced behind, past the galloping horses of Red Snake and Kiljoy, and showed nearly his entire set ofsilver upper teeth below his ragged black mustache. The Indians were chewing up the trail and gaining on him.
    Kiljoy had hipped around in his saddle, taking his reins in his teeth, and was just now racking a cartridge into his old-model Winchester rifle’s breech. The gun lapped smoke and flames from its barrel, the smoke instantly torn by the wind, the report sounding like a branch broken over a knee.
    The Mojaves kept coming, none of the six so much as flinching.
    â€œSave your lead, Roy, you crazy son of a bitch!” Lazzaro yelled. “You ain’t gonna hit nothin’ from the hurricane deck!”
    The four outlaws were galloping into the stage station yard now.
    â€œOh, yeah?” Kiljoy said, glowering at Lazzaro as, reins in his teeth, he racked another shell into his rifle’s breech.
    He hipped around and raised the Winchester to his shoulder. The Mojaves weren’t slowing up a bit as they kept coming from seventy yards away, one rider leading, four riding abreast, another lone rider bringing up the rear.
    Kiljoy’s rifle leaped