It was nearly nightfall when she became aware that there was another rider beside them. She didn’t know when he’d joined them but, when at last the horse she was on came to a stop, she heard the man who’d taken her speak.
“She give you any trouble?”
“No. Yours?”
“Not in the least. Untie her. They’ll not last long like this.”
The man pulled Chris from the horse and put her on the ground. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see another bundle, completely immobile like she was, being removed from another horse. The other man put the semi-corpse next to her but Chris couldn’t turn her head to see who it was. It was only when the man began to unwind her and he freed her head so that she could see, that she looked—and gasped.
Pilar lay beside her and looked as surprised to see Chris.
The man removed her gag. “What are you doing here?” she managed to gasp. “What is this?”
“Cut the noise,” the big man said. The other captor was tall and thin. “We don’t want to hear you. You want some water or not?”
Greedily, Chris’s shaky hands took the dirty tin mug the man offered.
“Who are you?” she asked the man. “What do you want?”
“You want the ropes on you again?”
Chris started to reply but she felt Pilar’s hand on her arm. Looking at the dark woman, she saw Pilar shake her head slightly. Chris turned away but she said nothing more. Minutes later, the big man hauled Chris to her feet and tossed her into the saddle.
“I don’t like talkative women,” he said into her ear. “You keep your mouth shut and we’ll get along fine. You open it and I’ll have to shut it. You understand?”
She saw him throw the hood on the ground but she didn’t twist around to look at him; she was too busy trying to keep her seat on the horse and to avoid the man’s hands that were beginning to creep over her body.
“Chris and I are leaving in less than an hour,” Tynan said to Asher, his mouth in a straight line, his eyes angry.
“Wait a minute, I want to talk to you.”
“I don’t have time,” Tynan said, starting to walk away. “You can come with us or not, your choice.”
Asher caught his arm. “I want to know what happened last night. Where were you two all night? And what do you mean by shooting so close to my head? I ought to—”
“What, Prescott? You ought to what?”
Asher took a step backward. “Look, I’m in this as much as you are. Mathison hired you to take me to Chris, and you were to help me win her for my wife. So far all you’ve done is keep her to yourself. And now you spend the night with her doing only God knows what.”
“That’s right, only God knows because I’m sure as hell not going to tell you. Now I’ll tell you again: Chris and I are leaving in one hour and you can go or stay, it’s up to you.”
“I’ll be there,” Asher said, “don’t you worry about that.”
With anger on his face, Asher made his way back up the stairs to the room he shared with Chris. Damn! but that man could be highhanded. He was a good man to have on a trail but there were times when he overstepped himself.
He tried to regain his composure before he went to Chris. He’d hated locking her inside, but he knew it was the only way he could keep her from doing something stupid.
Very quietly, he unlocked the door to the bedroom. She’d damn well better marry him after all she’d put him through—and all he’d done in an attempt to please her. Right away, he saw that she wasn’t there. His first thought was that she’d climbed out the window, but one glance out there, at the impossibly small ledge, showed him that she couldn’t have gone out that way.
He didn’t even think about his argument or his anger with Tynan, but he ran down the stairs, out through the garden and to the little cottage where Tynan was staying. The dark man was removing tools from a shed at the back of the cottage.
“She’s gone. I was afraid she’d do something stupid so I locked her in the room, but she got out. She was really worried about that kid.”
Even as Asher was talking, Tynan was pushing past him and heading for the house, stopping only long enough to strap on his gun. He took the stairs two at a time.
“I wish she wouldn’t do things like this,” Asher was saying. “It’s bad enough that she spends the entire night with a—” He broke off as he realized what he was saying. Tynan was now examining the window ledge. “Do you see anything? How could she have gone out there?”
“Believe me, she could have. There’s been a ladder here recently, the paint’s scraped.” He walked back toward the bed, looking at the covers thoughtfully. The sheets were torn off the bed, the spread was on the floor. “Where’s Hamilton?”