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The deep red rays of the rising sun stabbed into Glenn Price’s eyes and the early morning chill wrapped him in its icy embrace. As he enjoyed his first taste of freedom in fifteen years, he welcomed the brightness with his eyes wide open and drew the cold air deep into his chest.
Despite the cuffs that clamped his hands and the chain that linked his wrists to the metal collar around his neck, Glenn smiled as he raised his head, enjoying the sight of clouds without the frame of his barred cell window.
Behind him, the heavy double doors of Melrose prison clattered shut, but Glenn still hadn’t obtained the solitude he craved. Two guards had followed him out to remove his chains.
One guard shoved Glenn forward, but the heavy metal ball he dragged along behind him stopped him stumbling more than a pace. He shuffled around on the spot and held out his clamped hands to the guards. Arrogant gleams lit these men’s eyes as they prolonged the moment before they had to give him his freedom.
“Come on,” Glenn said. “Release me.”
“Be quiet,” one guard said. “You go when we say so, not you.”
Glenn bit his bottom lip, accepting they were looking for another excuse to delay his release. He was already a week late in leaving, but now that he was on the outside, they had no good reason for delaying again.
The guards exchanged a sly wink. Then one man drew a key from his pocket. Instead of setting it to Glenn’s locks, he dangled it between outstretched fingers, tantalizingly close to Glenn’s nose.
Then he threw it to the other guard, who circled around Glenn. They hurled taunts at him, but they had no impact on a man who was now free and knew the indignities they could inflict on him had to end soon.
Sure enough, with Glenn not rising to their baiting, the guards’ taunts petered out and the tallest man signified that he should face him. Glenn moved, but the other guard paced behind him and slammed both fists down on his shoulders, knocking him to his knees.
In a coordinated move, the other guard kicked out. His boot crunched into Glenn’s chin and sent him reeling. Then the blows and kicks came fast and hard as the guards availed themselves of their last opportunity to beat their prisoner.
At first Glenn fought back, even returning a glancing blow with a bunched coil of chains across one of the guards’ chest, but that only fueled them on to batter him with even more grim determination. Glenn rolled away from their flailing limbs, gaining his freedom and finding that a man was walking down the trail toward them.
This man was leading two horses. He was rangy and Glenn was sure he recognized him, but the memory wouldn’t form. Then the guards surrounded him again and he could do nothing but curl into a ball.
He lay with his eyes clamped shut, but the blows didn’t restart. The newcomer’s steady footfalls closed on him and he guessed this man’s arrival had saved him from a lengthier beating.
Inside, the guards were used to there being no witnesses to their actions, but now they were outside the prison walls, perhaps they didn’t want to risk being seen. In confirmation of Glenn’s belief, they rolled him over, jabbed the key into the locks and then dragged the chains from his wrists, ankles and neck.
Then they hurried away and slammed the prison doors shut behind them. Glenn cracked open an eye. The small inset hatch in the door creaked open, but then that hatch rattled shut and Glenn could at last enjoy his freedom.
He lay back, flexing his muscles and finding that his resilience, which had pulled him through fifteen years of hell, had again saved him from suffering too much damage from his final beating. Then he remembered the approaching man and swung his head to the side.
The man stomped to a halt and faced him, the early-morning sun that silhouetted his form masking his features. Again, that flash of an old memory battered at Glenn’s thoughts. He narrowed his eyes, slowly resolving the man’s features and, in a pained moment, that memory exploded across his mind as he recognized the man as being Randall Nash, but by then Randall was lunging down and grabbing his collar.
“Glenn Milton Price, welcome to the outside world,” Randall said as he hoisted him up. “Your suffering is about to start.”
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“You’ve got no reason to hold me,” Glenn said, shaking the ropes that tied his hands. “I’m a free man now and I have rights.”
Randall pushed Glenn to the ground and sat down beside the campfire.
“Yeah, yeah, and maybe soon, I’ll let you enjoy those rights,” he said.
Glenn snorted his breath through his nostrils and then picked up the bowl of broth from beside the fire. His first day of freedom had not lived up to his expectations. Randall Nash, the bounty hunter who had captured him fifteen years ago, was the man who had accosted him outside the prison.
Randall had tied him up, ignoring his complaints, slung him over a horse and ridden him off down the trail. Only now, with sundown approaching, had he halted his relentless journey west and let him sit and eat, but he still hadn’t removed his bonds.
“What do you want with me this time?” Glenn waited, but when Randall didn’t respond, he wolfed down his meal in five ravenous gulps and then threw his tin bowl to the ground where it rattled to a halt. “Damn it, Randall. You have to tell me why you’ve captured me.”
Under his lowered hat, Randall’s craggy features were as resolute as Glenn had remembered them.
“You’ve been a prisoner. You know how it works. You earn your rights. You spent the day roped up and with your head down, but if you don’t try to escape tonight, I’ll let you ride upright tomorrow. If you try anything, you won’t.”
“I might not try to escape if you tell me why you seized me the moment I came out of prison. I haven’t exactly had much opportunity to commit no crimes recently.”
Randall collected the bowl and placed it beside his own.
“Then I’ll tell you. You’ve got a two-hundred-and-fifty-dollar bounty on your head. It isn’t much, but I intend to collect.”
“What’s the crime?”
Randall stoked the fire with a branch and then hurled it into the flames.
“Last week, Myron Cole was murdered.”
Glenn blinked, hard. “I was in prison. I’ve got the best alibi a man could want to prove I didn’t kill him.”
“You have, but even men like you have friends, and you can sure hire men to kill the people you hate.”
“I can’t.” Glenn shook a fist at Randall. “Nobody can prove I did.”
“Proof isn’t my problem. I just bring them in for the bounty.” Randall raised his eyebrows as he leaned forward. “But you know the way I work. If I get a better offer, I might let you go. I reckon the name of the man who killed Myron Cole will be worth more than your hide.”
“I don’t know nothing about who killed him.”
“Then consider the man who’s investigating his murder and the man who I’ll be handing you over to.” Randall leaned back. “It’s Sheriff Emerson Price of Black Rock, your cousin and the nephew of the man you killed.”
Glenn couldn’t help but gulp. “I’m not going back to Black Rock. The whole town tried to lynch me last time.”
“They did.” Randall smiled. “So you have three days to start talking, or this time they might finish what they started.”