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With his pursuers stomping closer to the corner of the corridor, Glenn grabbed the only piece of furniture along the hallway, a large cabinet. He tried to topple it, but it was too heavy and he wasted valuable seconds as he failed to knock it over.
By the time he relented, men were hurrying around the corridor after him. He broke into a run, the pursuers just feet behind him. He ran past one door, two, and then had no choice but to throw open the final door on the left.
He faced a room that was similar to the one he’d hidden in before – with a bed, a sideboard, a window. He swirled around to slam the door shut, but two men pushed into it and knocked him backward.
He righted himself and threw a punch at the first man. That man ducked it and returned a short uppercut to the chin, which wheeled Glenn back on to the bed. He put out a hand to stop himself falling and righted himself, but already another three men had bustled into the room.
Glenn turned around. Their hands scraped his back but failed to grab hold of him. He vaulted the bed and ran for the window. He threw it open, finding that there was a balcony and beneath that the main drag where the crowd was milling.
A hand grabbed his waist, but he kicked out, freed himself and tumbled himself out onto the balcony. He slammed the window shut behind him, forcing the nearest pursuer to snatch his hands back to avoid having them crushed.
Then he turned to discover whether he stood any chance of finding freedom outside. Below him, heads craned up from the fifty or so gathered people and a forest of arms pointed at him. Then everyone bayed into the hotel with a cacophony of righteous anger that he was here.
Randall’s horse was still outside the sheriff’s office, but with the people around the hotel being at least five deep, it might as well have been 1,000 miles away. The false-fronted hotel was two stories high and if he could climb around fifteen feet he could slip over that front and gain the roof.
He stood back, searching for a potential route for him to climb, but there were no handholds in the smooth wood. Then the window creaked open. He turned to the only possible way of prolonging his temporary freedom – the balcony to the room on the other side of the corridor.
It was around ten feet away and identical to the balcony on which he stood. He leaped on to the balustrade, wheeling his arms as he righted himself, and then hurled himself across the gap.
His chest hammered into the wooden rail as he folded over it. He hung on, his feet searching for purchase, and then tried to loop an elbow on to the top rail, but he missed and slipped. His legs dropped until he dangled at full stretch.
Below him, his swaying feet were out of everyone’s reach, but people jumped up and tried to grab them. Glenn whirled his legs, trying to catch hold of the bottom of the balcony with his knee and drag himself up, as cries went up for someone to climb on top of another man’s shoulders and grab him.
Then a man jumped from the adjoining balcony and slammed into the railings beside him. That man clung on as Glenn did, but he didn’t have as firm a grip as Glenn had and he slipped.
He tumbled toward the waiting arms of the crowd below but, with a trailing hand, he lunged for and grabbed Glenn’s right leg. With this man’s weight dragging on him, Glenn felt as if he was tearing his arms from their sockets.
His hands slipped as the man’s weight pulled him taut. He kicked out, but the man still held on. He raised his left leg and stamped down on the man’s face and this time the man tumbled on to the backs of the waiting crowd.
The man knocked a circle of people over and Glenn thought about jumping down, using their confusion to run for the horse, but everyone quickly gained their feet. Then several men drew guns.
In manic desperation, Glenn looped an arm over the balustrade and tugged himself up. A gunshot sounded; the slug tore splinters from the railing, inches from Glenn’s left hand. Glenn redoubled his scrambling efforts as he hurled himself over the balustrade and on to the balcony.
As this was the last room on this side of the hotel there were projections on the side of the false front up which he could climb to reach the roof. He crawled to the side of the balcony and reached for the nearest, but a volley of gunfire ripped into the wall before his outstretched hand.
He darted back, deciding that attempting the exposed climb would just get him a bullet in the back. With no chance of freedom from heading down to the main drag or up on to the roof, Glenn threw open the window and rolled through.
Outside, a chorus of shouting went up from the crowd to the people at the next window, telling what he’d done. Those messages were relayed into the room and then to the corridor. By the time Glenn reached the door, scrambling footfalls pounded in the corridor as a burst of people hurried toward it.
He grabbed the cabinet beside the door and dragged it across the doorway. The door hurled open and slammed into the back of the cabinet, rocking it forward, so Glenn continued dragging until it fully blocked the doorway.
It was heavy enough to delay anyone trying to open the door just by pounding on it and already the people in the corridor were shouting to others to get at him through the window. Glenn hurried to the window, all the time searching for something with which to barricade himself in and win himself a few more minutes of relative freedom and perhaps a hope that another method of escape might occur to him.
Only the bed was large enough, so he took hold of it, hoisted it on to its side and dragged it to the window. As he closed off the view from outside, one man was already leaping on to the balcony.
He turned around. The door was open to its utmost that could be managed, which was only a foot, but somebody had wedged a plank into the gap and was now widening that gap. With the light level having dropped, he noticed a small, open window on the side wall.
Glenn hurried over to it, his heart leaping with renewed hope. Down below was the alleyway between the hotel and the courthouse and along its short length nobody was loitering. The drop was around twenty feet, high enough to twist an ankle if he didn’t land properly, so Glenn dashed back to the bed.
He dragged off a blanket and looped it around the table beside the window. Then he swirled the blanket around into a makeshift rope and hurled an end through the window. As the blanket rolled down to stop fifteen feet from the ground, he jumped on to the window ledge.
Then he took hold of the blanket and braced his feet against the wall. In the room the cabinet shook as the mob slowly prized open the door. The bed was teetering and was almost ready to be toppled.
Below him the alleyway was still deserted and if he gained it before anyone in the main drag noticed him, he would buy himself enough time to run. He didn’t know the current layout of the town and he didn’t know where he could run to or where he could hide.
His freedom would last for at best another few minutes. Then a wild idea came to him. The cabinet by the door was identical to the kind his father had once made and he guessed that maybe the Archer family had bought it from him.
When Glenn had been a child, he had often hidden in cabinets such as this one in games with his sister. Perhaps he could do that again. He swung himself back on to the window ledge and into the room.
He checked that the blanket was still dangling as if it were a rope and then hurried across the room to the cabinet. He’d grown since he’d last tried to squeeze into such a confined space, but when he threw open the door, only spare blankets were inside.
As he crammed his body into the space and closed the door, the bed toppled over and a line of men clambered in through the window. They all turned to the open window at the side of the room. Then the cabinet shook as the people in the corridor levered open the door wide enough for more men to surge into the room.
“He’s gotten away,” someone shouted.
“He’s headed into the alleyway,” another shouted down through the main window. “Cut him off!”
Then they spilled out of the room, shouting out to the people in the corridor as to where he’d gone, that cry echoing on until it reached the people outside the hotel. Glenn crunched down in his confined space, feeling the first twinges of cramp attack him but still being relieved and amazed that his ruse appeared to have worked.
Most of the people filed out of the room, although two men stayed at the window to shout encouragement to the people below as they hurried down the alleyway. Glenn smiled when someone shouted back that he’d seen their quarry heading around the back of the courthouse.
Presently the men at the window gave up on shouting advice and hurried off to join in the more enjoyable activity of the manhunt. Then he was alone. He was still trapped in a town where everyone but a few people wanted to lynch him, but he had earned himself a respite.
And he’d earned himself time to think and perhaps even to work out how he could prove himself innocent of the crimes this town was determined to heap upon him. By degrees, silence returned to the hotel, although outside the excited cries sounded of a town embarking on a manhunt where everyone knew their quarry had to be close.
Later, chatter restarted in the hotel between Randall, Niles and Hop as they headed down the corridor, righting furniture. Although Glenn couldn’t hear everything they said, he judged that Randall was offering consoling comments about Niles’s attempts to stop what had happened, although Hop mainly complained about the damage the Prices had done to the hotel. When they reached the end of the corridor and Niles headed into the room opposite to Glenn’s, Randall spoke up.
“Where do you reckon he’s gone?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” Niles said. “There are plenty of places to hide even in our small town, but I can’t think of anywhere where he can hide forever.”
“Glenn is a resourceful man. It took me some effort to find him the last time.”
“So where would you look?”
“I’ve got no interest. I’m just a man who brings them in for the bounty and nobody’s paying for my services here.”
That was all the encouragement Glenn needed that these people were still supporting him, or at least were not against him, and he coughed.
“What was that?” Niles asked.
“That was me,” Glenn said.
He pushed open the cabinet door and tumbled himself on to the floor. He stretched his cramped limbs and then rolled to his feet to stand in the doorway. Niles emitted a snorting laugh and even Randall smiled.
“That was sure taking a risk,” Randall said.
“Like Niles said, there aren’t many safe hiding-places in town.” Glenn patted Niles on the back. “This place is one of the few.”
“It is, but not for long,” Niles said. “Soon, somebody will work out that you must be hiding in here. We have to get you somewhere safe, and quickly.”
“But where? I haven’t exactly got many friends in this town.”
Niles offered some consoling but not particularly helpful platitudes and then went into the room in which Glenn had just hidden and started righting furniture. As Hop hurried back down the corridor to get the horse he’d promised earlier, Randall gave Glenn a quick pat on the back.
“While you wait for that horse, I’ll bid you goodbye and wish you luck,” he said and then followed Hop.
“You’re not leaving without me, surely?” Glenn shouted at his receding back.
Randall stopped and rubbed his chin. He turned, a rare amused twinkle in his eye suggesting he wasn’t seriously considering the request.
“Glenn, it’s time you accepted something. I’m not siding with you, I’m not letting anyone think I’ve sided with you and I sure as hell won’t risk joining you on the end of a rope.”
“I can’t believe you’d walk away from all of this.”
“I don’t care what you believe.” Randall tipped his hat. “I’m getting away while they’re searching for you.”
Randall turned, but Glenn hurried on, catching up with him at the corner. He grabbed Randall’s arm and spun him around.
“I don’t reckon you mean that. You helped me back in Emerson’s office when you didn’t have to and then again back on the stairs. You claim you just bring them in for the bounty, but you care about my fate more than you’ll admit.”
Randall snorted. “That’s a nice theory, but I haven’t got the time to debate it. I’m leaving, and you’ll move that hand before I snap it off.”
Glenn raised his hand and let Randall walk away, but when he reached the top of the stairs, he coughed.
“I don’t reckon you’re leaving. You’re going after Arnold Jameson.”
Randall took a pace down the stairs. Then he stopped and turned.
“Why would I do that?”
“Because you have a personal score to settle with him after he got away from you.”
Randall shrugged. “When there’s no bounty, I have no interest.”
“Except he’s on the trail of the golden spike and that sure has to interest you.”
Randall grinned. “Like I said – no bounty, no interest.”
“Then listen to this – you’ll go after him because he has a score to settle with you and you’re not the kind of man who sits around waiting for someone to find him.”
Randall waved in a dismissive manner at Glenn and headed off down the stairs.
“If I choose to go after Arnold, that’s my concern and it’s got nothing to do with you,” he called over his shoulder.
“It has.” Glenn waited until Randall was moving out of his view and then made his offer. “Because I know where Arnold is hiding out.”