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gave me great pleasure to pull in at the Desert Inn and park in front of the entrance, trade the cap for my bag, and get out of the car. Fatty was sputtering as I got out of the car and he said, "What. . . what. . . " and the kid was almost hysterical with happiness.
    I slammed the door and Fatty pushed out his lips, his jelly cheeks quivering, and he wiggled a pudgy finger at me. "You. . . you. . . I'll have you discharged. I demand that you drive me to the Flamingo!" His voice went up and up right along with his blood pressure.
    I glanced at the kid and he was grinning, and I looked back at Fatty and said, "Mister, I just quit. And you can bloody well walk."
    The car was still there and he was still in the back when I went into the Desert Inn. Possibly he'd had a stroke.

Chapter Five

    THE second set of inch-thick glass doors swung shut behind me and I took three steps inside and stopped. This was for me. This was wonderful. I remembered bits I'd read in the Kefauver Report, and in the Volstead Act, and it was still wonderful.
    I was looking right out through the huge picture windows in the lobby's far wall at the Olympic-size figure-eight swimming pool being used by more women than you could shake at. On my left was the desk, and beyond it the hallway to the downstairs rooms and the stairway up to the second floor front, and straight ahead was the Cactus Room, and humming and buzzing on my right beyond the stairs to the Sky Room Cocktail Lounge was the twenty-four-hour-a-day casino. The whole inside of the hotel and the area around the pool was boiling with people.
    Here in this mass of men and women there wasn't too much trouble that could come my way, but no matter if eighteen torpedoes were after me, the noise and life and gaiety looked so good to me that from here on out the Shell Scott motto was "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead."
    And now, for the first time, I could really look at a little part of Las Vegas again. I was in the land of sunshine and desert and quickie divorces and gambling fever and nine thousand beautiful women and more. Now I could look at it and smell it and hear it. And now I could really tell it was Helldorado. Maybe I'd been too preoccupied up till this moment to notice, but here inside the doors of the most beautiful luxury hotel in Las Vegas—and one of the most beautiful anywhere, for my money—I couldn't miss it.
    Helldorado: when a whole town goes pleasantly berserk for four days and uncounted thousands of people crowd into Las Vegas and jam together in the side-by-side gambling halls downtown or rub shoulders out here in the luxury hotels and casinos on the Strip; when a whole town stands on its head and does a Western can-can complete with brass bands and parades, beauty contests and world-championship rodeos, cowboys and real Indians, and beards and babes and bottles. It's a robust pioneer town, model 1951, with all the yahoo and yippee and red-eyed hallelujah of resurrected Tombstone and the Comstock and Custer's Last Stand, and thousands of crazy people live for four days with their boots on.
    It's what they call the "Mardi Gras with pistols," a wild and wonderful town with, all day long and all night long, guns going off. . . Guns going off? Guns going off!
    I wished I were back in Los Angeles.
    But I was here, so I went on in. I pushed through the crowd in the lobby, about two out of ten of the people in some kind of Western costume, and right in front of me a cute little gal in a black-and-white cowgirl outfit of calfskin jacket and skirt stamped a little white boot and put another nickel in a slot machine. She looked up and smiled brightly at me, apparently for no other reason than that she felt good. I smiled back at her for no reason at all. I squeezed past her and into the lush casino. Till now all I'd heard was voices and the whir of slot machines, but in the big gaming room I could hear the dealers at roulette and dice tables calling the points and the numbers. On