“It’s not a bad dump,” Dinah told me as her little Marmon carried us toward it. “Polly De Voto is a good scout and anything she sells you is good, except maybe the Bourbon. That always tastes a little bit like it had 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.