Helldorado Read Free Page A

longhandle top and denim trousers, which he’d rolled up nearly to his knees to give the impression that the robes were all he had on. Jerking the cuffs down to his bare ankles, making it easier to run, he leaped a dying Rurale as he headed past the officer’s headquarters, making for the prison’s main doors.
    With rifles, pistols, machetes, sickles, and any other weapon the peasants had managed to get their hands on, Tio’s men were cutting down the Rurales who’d dodged the Gatling fire. The gunshots were sporadic but furious. Men screamed and cursed and one dying Rurale was down and wailing near horse stables, from which the frightened screams of the horses sounded above the shooting.
    The prison’s main, double doors stood at the top of high stone steps that fairly glowed in the midday sun. At the bottom of the steps, a Rurale guard who’d been shot through the belly was crawling toward his dropped rifle. Prophet drilled a .45 round through the guard’s head from point-blank range then took the steps three at a time, his bare feet slapping the hot stones as he heard once more the shrill scream of the girl inside the mission /prison.
    Hearing several of Big Tio’s men running up the steps behind him, Prophet pulled one of the heavy, brass-handled doors open, throwing it wide so the revolutionario behind him could catch it. He bolted inside, his shotgun dangling from the wide leather lanyard around his neck, holding a cocked Colt pistol in each big, calloused hand.
    A ways inside the door, a girl sat on the floor against a cracked stone pillar. A tray, a broken bottle of clear glass, and two shot glasses lay nearby. The senorita, only fourteen or fifteen, was barefoot, and her shabby gray skirt was pulled up around her dark brown thighs. Silver hoop rings dangled from her ears. She wore no blouse. Her small, tan breasts peeked out from behind her long, mussed hair, which was the color of dark chocolate.
    Her brown eyes flashed in terror when they found Prophet, and her entire body quivered as she crossed her thin arms on her chest and loosed another scream.
    Prophet looked around quickly. Spying no other movement in the broad, dark foyer and atop the flagstone stairs that rose on his right, he lowered his pistols and moved inside, gesturing to the revolutionarios behind him to spread out. They needed no further orders; they all knew that their mission here was to kill every Rurale they ran into and to free the prisoners from the dungeon moldering in the bowels of the hideous place.
    As the men ran off, some up the stairs, their sandals or bare feet slapping the floor, the barks of pistols sounding presently, echoing up and down the halls, Prophet dropped to a knee beside the girl. “You’re all right, senorita. No one’s gonna hurt you. Comprende? ” He switched to his cow-pen Spanish, gesturing with his hands. “We’re here to set you free.”
    The girl stared at him in awe, her brown eyes wide. Relief washed over her round features, and her thin lips shaped a shivering smile. “You are the one called Prophet!”
    She grabbed his arm with both her small hands, digging her fingers in. “You have come like she said you would!”
    “Who?” Prophet asked, unable to control his own excitement. Only one person could have told the girl about him. “Who said I would?”
    “La muchacha rubia!”
    The girl’s voice was nearly drowned by more gunfire inside the building, the shots echoing loudly with the screams and shouts of fighting, dying men. Prophet set his pistols on the floor and grabbed the girl’s shoulders, shaking her gently, unable to contain his own excitement.
    Ever since he’d heard that Louisa had been taken, he’d been sure he’d find her ravaged body along the trail. Or worse, he’d never find her at all and he’d have to finish out his days, wondering what had happened to the beautiful, persnickety, young hazel-eyed blond—beautiful like a stalking panther, some would say, for there