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

and belched. The Mojave galloping behind and to the left of the leader jerked as though he’d been punched in the chest. Slowly, releasing his rope reins, he turned slowly in the saddle as his horse kept striding. Just as slowly he sagged down the blanket saddle, hit the ground between him and the Mojave to his left, and rolled wildly.
    The rear rider’s horse stumbled over the wounded Mojave, whinnied shrilly just before it buried its head in the trail, and turned a complete somersault, its dark brown tail waving like a flag, its rider disappearing somewhere beneath the Appaloosa’s massive, crumpling body.
    Kiljoy bellowed as he lowered the carbine, took the reins from his teeth, and hauled back on them, slowing his own Appy. “Now, that’s a boss shot if I ever seen one!”
    â€œAh, quit blowin’!” Red Snake said, leaping off his horse in the middle of the station yard, noting guns crackling around him. One man was shooting at the Indians frombehind a water barrel on the low-slung station house’s front porch while another gent was triggering a rifle from behind an open barn door on the yard’s opposite side.
    All four outlaws were on the ground now, sliding their rifles from their saddle boots and spanking their horses away. Even Sugar grabbed her carbine out of its sheath, racked a shell, dropped to a knee, and began firing at the Mojaves. The Indians were just now slowing and curveting their mounts while triggering lead toward the outlaws and the two men shooting from the barn and station house porch.
    Kiljoy blew one of the savages off his horse and, ejecting the spent brass from his Winchester’s breech, glanced at Sugar. She was triggering her own rifle as fast as she could, keeping her pale right cheek pressed taut against the stock.
    â€œFor Christ’s sakes, woman!” Kiljoy snarled. “Get on inside the station before them redskins perforate your purty hide!”
    All of her shots flew wild. Red Snake was half relieved to see that. A half-blind woman who could shoot a man off a galloping horse would be enough to cause him to lie awake nights. Two bullets blew up the still-damp dust in front of her, and she lowered the rifle, casting those eerie blue eyes at the short, ugly brigand.
    â€œA rare piece of good advice from you, Roy,” she said. “I believe I’ll take it!”
    With that, staying low and holding her carbine in her right hand, she ran up onto the porch, tripped the cabin’s latch, and pushed inside, slamming the stout, halved-log, Z-frame door behind her.
    Inside, Sugar dropped to her butt and pressed her back to the door. “Hello?” she called, hearing someone triggering a pistol from ahead of her and right. “I’m friendly if you are!” she yelled.
    The agent of the Colorado Gulch Relay Station turned his thick-bearded face from the eastern window he wastriggering a Colt Army out of. “I’m as friendly as an unweaned pup, miss. To anyone that ain’t tryin’ to lift my hair, that is.”
    â€œI don’t believe Mojaves normally take scalps, mister . . .”
    â€œHannady!” the station agent shouted above the roar of the Colt he triggered. “Fletcher Hannady. You can call me Fletch. All my friends do. And . . .” He paused to trigger another shot out the window. “What you say about the Mojaves ain’t always true. Since scalp hunters been ridin’ free and easy around here, they’ve sort of adopted the habit. Been more than one Mojave around with white men’s scalps dangling from his sash!”
    Hannady pulled his smoking pistol out of the window and dropped his fat bulk clad in a plaid wool shirt, suspenders, and duck trousers down against the wall. His bib beard scraped against his bulging belly.
    â€œI’m Sugar!” the blind outlaw woman called from the door, keeping her voice raised against the din of gunfire