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Randall drew alongside Glenn as they sprinted across the main drag. Around them, the mob veered in from all directions as they charged on to the boardwalk, pounded across it and into the hotel.
The man standing at the desk, Quincy Gallagher, winced when Randall slammed the door shut. As Randall trapped one man’s arm in the door, he hurried out from behind the desk. He helped Randall to prize the arm out and then closed the door, but even with their backs pressed to the door, Glenn judged that it’d be mere seconds before the mob combined forces to barge their way in.
Quincy voiced this view, too, and then ordered Glenn to help Randall keep the door shut. Then he picked up a beam that lay on hooks set into the wall and slotted it through heavy hoops on the door behind Randall.
In a coordinated move Randall and Glenn stepped forward and the door burst inward to rattle to a halt against the beam. Glenn judged that it should hold, but with the ready access of the window, and perhaps other doors, he reckoned that if the mob were serious about getting him, this barrier would slow them by only minutes.
“I guess this isn’t the first time this has happened?” he asked, pointing at the beam.
Quincy shrugged. “Nope, but then again, you haven’t been in town for a while.”
Then he hurried off calling out for Niles and Hop to help him. Glenn confirmed to Randall that these men were the Archer brothers as they backed away across the reception room.
The door was still rattling and people were milling on the boardwalk, but from their subdued chatter he judged that at the moment their anger wasn’t great enough for them to burst in. Two men hurried in from a back room and moved on to the window where they engaged in a brief conversation.
Glenn recognized the taller of the men as being Niles, the elder, and, if his attitude of fifteen years ago still held, most responsible brother. Hop, probably because Niles was in line to inherit the family business, had always looked for trouble. Sure enough, it was Niles who turned to him and gave a warm smile.
“Glenn Price, it hasn’t really changed for you in Black Rock, has it?” he said.
“I guess it hasn’t, but I didn’t want to come back here,” Glenn said with a rueful smile.
“Has this got something to do with Myron Cole’s death?”
Glenn nodded and without further comment Niles signified that they should follow him into the back room. Glenn noted that Niles was the first person he’d met since leaving prison who hadn’t instantly accused him.
Something in his placid gaze suggested he bore no malice toward him, and perhaps even thought him innocent. Hop hung back to instruct Quincy to inform them if the situation outside worsened.
As they entered the back room Glenn noted that although the crowd had thickened, the noise-level was remaining constant. A solitary lamp and a fire lit the windowless and oppressively stuffy back room.
In front of the fire sat the huddled husk of a man, whom Glenn didn’t recognize immediately until he accepted that he must be Stewart Archer, the man who, with Adam Price, had founded Black Rock. When he’d last seen him he had been a vital man, who was seemingly invincible and unbowed by the passage of time.
Now he was a wizened shell hiding under a blanket that didn’t disguise his gaunt frame and bony limbs. The drooping and drooling face stayed facing the fire and didn’t even acknowledge them.
“Randall, we’re not getting involved with this Price,” Hop said, joining them. “We run a hotel, nothing more.”
“You’ve done more than enough already,” Randall said as Niles shook his head at Hop. “I’ll just stay here for a while, if you don’t mind, and enjoy your hotel’s hospitality until the crowd calms. Then I’ll leave.”
Niles turned to Stewart. Although the old man didn’t respond in any way that Glenn noticed, Niles nodded and opened his mouth to speak, but Glenn spoke up first.
“You may hate the Prices,” he said. “But know this – I’m not one of them.”
“You’re a Price,” Hop said with an assured shake of his fist and a sneer that spoke of an irrational hatred no amount of reasonable talk would placate. “Before long, we’ll run all the Prices out—”
“Hop, that isn’t the way Pa raised us,” Niles said. “We have a hotel to run and that life suits us just fine. We’ve got no desire to run this town.”
Both men turned to Stewart, but still the old man didn’t respond.
“It suits you just fine,” Hop said.
He turned away, but the gleam in Hop’s eye said their father wouldn’t be alive for long, and then he’d resolve his grievances his way.
“It does.” Niles turned to Glenn and flashed a smile. “We will provide hospitality and a place to sleep, as we would to anyone that needs it, but nothing more.”
Glenn blew out his cheeks as Randall narrowed his eyes, urging him to consider that they had allies here and not to threaten that hospitality by demanding more help than Niles was prepared to give. Glenn reckoned he’d never get out of Black Rock alive unless he got effective help from someone. As these people were the only likely candidates, he paced across the room to stand in front of Stewart and stated his case.
“Your family’s got problems with the Prices,” he said, speaking loudly in case the infirm old man was hard of hearing. “No matter what Hop says, I’m only a Price by name, not blood.”
Hop snorted and walked across the room to stand by the door, continuing to mutter under his breath about his distrust of the Prices. Niles shook his head and joined Glenn. He kneeled before Stewart and then raised his hand and placed it on his own.
“What do you reckon, Pa?” he asked, his voice soft and encouraging.
Long moments passed in which Glenn became aware of a clock ticking somewhere and of the low hubbub from the crowd outside. Sweat pooled on his skin in the hot room, but before him the old man was shaking, perhaps shivering. Then a rattling wheeze filled the room.
“It has started again,” an aged voice croaked, and for a moment, Glenn couldn’t believe that this weak voice had come from Stewart. Then the old man raised his head, his neck’s lizard-like skin glistening and sallow in the flickering firelight. When he spoke again, his voice was still faint and croaking but this time contained an authoritative hint of the man he had once been. “The Prices will do anything, double-cross anyone, kill anyone, to find the golden spike.”
Stewart waved a bony hand and Niles stood up. With no discernible effort on his part, he moved Stewart’s chair closer to the fire. Glenn shuffled out of the way and joined Niles in kneeling beside the fire.
“What’s that?” Randall asked.
“When the railroad came,” Stewart said, his eyes glazing as he recalled past events, “Adam and I had a spike struck for the mayor’s office as an emblem of why this town was prospering.”
“Did someone steal it?” Randall said, walking across the room to stand on the other side of Stewart’s chair to Glenn.
Stewart creaked his head around to Randall. “They did. We never found out who. Adam reckoned it was his no-good drunken brother.” Stewart turned to Glenn. “Your father.”
Glenn’s mouth fell open and a minute passed before he could control his raging thoughts sufficiently to talk.
“I remember when the spike went missing – the whole town searched for it and had a fair old time, too, tearing the place apart. I heard rumors, but I never heard that anyone thought my father stole it.”
“Not everything that gets talked about behind closed doors comes out into the open.”
Glenn gulped. He stood up and loomed over the old man. Hop hurried across the room to stand in his way in case he attacked him, but Glenn turned on his heel and walked away from the fire, slapping his fist into his palm.
“My father was poor but he was proud and he’d never steal. When he died I was trying to squeeze out an extra few dollars from the cabinet he’d made. If he’d stolen gold, he wouldn’t. . . .” Glenn turned to Stewart as the full implications of what he’d been told hit him. “Are you saying somebody reckoned my father stole the spike and killed him while searching for it? And that people in Black Rock knew that, but didn’t speak up for me and let me rot in prison?”
From under the blanket, Stewart levered out and then waved a bony and admonishing finger at him.
“Suspicions aren’t fact.”
“What is fact, Glenn,” Randall said, “is that Adam did speak up for you and his intervention got you a sentence instead of the rope.”
“We both know that his intervention came from his conscience speaking,” Glenn said. “He knew I didn’t kill him. He knew whoever did it was searching for the spike, but to say that would admit he suspected his brother stole it in the first place.”
The room remained silent until Stewart spoke. “That is the way of the Prices. Their pride triumphed over sense, as it always has.”
Glenn was in no mood for being placated and he grunted out his accusation.
“You could have spoken up.”
Both Hop and Niles drew in their breaths sharply and Hop moved a pace toward him, but Stewart didn’t react.
“And accuse a man who was then my friend and with whom I founded this town?” Stewart uttered a fluid and rattling snort. “Then again, you’re right and if it helps, I’m sorry I said nothing. At the time it didn’t appear important, but now. . . .”
“But now I’ve wasted fifteen years of my life festering away in a stinking—”
“But now you can’t worry about the past,” Randall said, interrupting Glenn, presumably before he could say something that would lose them their only allies and their sanctuary in Black Rock. “Today, it sounds as if someone is again looking for that spike, and killing to get it.”
“They are,” Stewart said. He fiddled with his blanket, but it slipped and he signed that Niles should pull it up to his chest. “I’ll make it simpler for you – find Arnold Jameson.”
“Why?” Randall snapped.
“Fifteen years ago Adam hired him to find the spike. He only hired him for a month and he failed, but Arnold had an obsessed look in his eyes that said he’d tear apart the world until he found it.” Stewart shooed Niles away as he continued to fuss with the blanket. “If Arnold is still sniffing around, he’s close, and Myron won’t be the only person he’ll kill to get it.”
“We don’t know for sure that Arnold did kill. . . .” Randall said before a flash of pain contorted Stewart’s face and his head slumped down on to his chest.
Stewart waved feebly toward Niles, who patted his arm and moved away, mouthing that this discussion had ended and that they should follow him out.
“Who do you suspect stole the spike?” Glenn asked, ignoring the request.
Niles waggled a finger that said he wouldn’t accept him asking his father any more questions. Despite the distress in the old man’s eyes and the pain that again contorted his features, Glenn needed a solid clue as to who had killed his father, and this man was perhaps the only man who could provide it, but Stewart gestured feebly toward the door, his mouth opening and closing.
Randall and Hop both sneered at him, the contempt in their eyes encouraging him to desist. So he relented and followed Niles out.