Without leaving the wheel, sideburns reached out and pressed the button. There was a pause and then a metallic voice said “Yes?”
“Frasso and McGonigle,” said the driver, loudly.
“Okay,” said the voice. There was a sharp click. The high wire gate slowly opened. They drove through and over an iron strip in the narrow dirt road beyond. Bond looked back over his shoulder and saw the gate close behind them. He also noticed with pleasure that the face of, presumably, McGonigle, was plastered with dust and the blood of dead flies.
The dirt road continued for about a mile across the brutal, stony surface of the desert in which an occasional clump of gesticulating cactus was the only vegetation. Then there was a glow ahead and they rounded a spur of mountain and went down a hill and into a brightly lit straggling assembly of about twenty buildings. Beyond, the moon glinted on a single railway track which lanced off, straight as a die, towards the distant horizon.
They drew up among the grey clapboard houses and shops marked DRUGS, BARBER, FARMERS BANK and WELLS FARGO, under a hissing gaslight outside a two-storey building which said in faded gold, PINK. GARTER SALOON, and underneath, Beers and Wines.
From behind the traditional sawn-off swing-doors, yellow light streamed out on to the street and on to the sleek black and silver of a 1920 Stutz Bearcat roadster at the kerb. There was the sweet nasal twang of a honkey-tonk piano playing I Wonder Who’s Kissing Her Now, slightly flat. The music reminded Bond of sawdust floors, nursed drinks and girls’ legs in the widest mesh stockings. The whole scene was like something out of an exceptionally well-mounted ‘Western’.
“Out, Limey,” said the driver. The three men climbed stiffly out of the car and on to the raised wooden sidewalk. Bond bent to massage a leg that had gone to sleep, watching the feet of the two men.
“Come on, sissy,” said McGonigle, giving him a nudge with his loosely held gun. Bond slowly straightened himself, measuring inches. He limped heavily as he followed the man to the door of the saloon. He paused as the swing doors flapped back into his face. He felt the prod of Frasso’s gun from behind.
Now! Bond straightened himself and leapt through the still-swinging door. McGonigle’s back was just in front of him and, beyond, there was a brightly lit empty bar-room in which an automatic piano was playing to itself.
Bond’s hands shot out and caught the man above the elbows. He lifted him off his feet and swung him round and into the swing doors and into Frasso, who was half-way through them.
The whole clapboard house trembled as the two bodies met and Frasso fell back through the doors and crashed on to the sidewalk.
McGonigle catapulted back and twisted to face Bond. There was a rising gun in his hand. Bond’s left caught him on the shoulder. At the same time his open right hand slapped down hard on the gun. McGonigle went back on his heels against the door jamb. The gun clattered to the floor.
. The snout or Frassp’s revolver appeared through the swing doors. It weaved quickly round towards Bond, like an aiming snake. As its blue-and-yellow tongue licked out, Bond, his blood singing with the battle, dived for the ground and for the gun at McGonigle’s feet. He got his hand on it and fired two quick shots upwards from the floor before McGonigle stamped on his firing hand and landed on top of him. As Bond went down, he caught a glimpse of Frasso’s gun arced up between the swing doors, pumping bullets into the ceiling. And this time the crash of the body on the planking outside sounded final.
Then McGonigle’s hands were at him and Bond was kneeling on the ground with his head down, trying to protect his eyes. The gun was still on the floor within reach of the first free hand.
For seconds they fought silently, like animals, and then Bond got to one knee and gave a great heave of his shoulders and lashed upwards at the glimpse of a face and the weight came off him and he rose to a crouch. As he did so, McGonigle’s knee came up like a piston under Bond’s chin and knocked him to his feet with a snap of the teeth that shook his skull.