been drained off a corpse. You’ll like her. You can get away with anything out here so long as you don’t get noisy. She won’t stand for noise. There it is. See the red and blue lights through the trees?”
We rode out of the woods into full view of the roadhouse, a very electric-lighted imitation castle set close to the road.
“What do you mean she won’t stand for noise?” I asked, listening to the chorus of pistols singing Bang-bang-bang .
“Something up,” the girl muttered, stopping the car.
Two men dragging a woman between them ran out of the roadhouse’s front door, ran away into the darkness. A man sprinted out a side door, away. The guns sang on. I didn’t see any flashes.
Another man broke out and vanished around the back.
A man leaned far out a front second-story window, a black gun in his hand.
Dinah blew her breath out sharply.
From a hedge by the road, a flash of orange pointed briefly up at the man in the window. His gun flashed downward. He leaned farther out. No second flash came from the hedge.
The man in the window put a leg over the sill, bent, hung by his hands, dropped.
Our car jerked forward. Dinah’s lower lip was between her teeth.
The man who had dropped from the window was gathering himself up on hands and knees.
Dinah put her face in front of mine and screamed: