He turned back to Chris. “How fast can you run?”
“I…I don’t know. If someone’s chasing me, I guess I can run rather quickly.”
“I’m going to create a diversion and I want you to climb out the window and run to the wagon and get in the back. Think you can do that?”
“But what about you? I can’t go off and leave you.”
“After the way you were kissing Dysan, what do you care about me?”
“Dysan?” she asked, bewildered. “I was trying to get a knife from the box. I had to divert him. Tynan, are you jealous?”
“Definitely not. Now, are you going to get out there or are you going to waste time and maybe get us all killed?”
She nodded at him, but she didn’t like it. She hoped he wasn’t going to do something that would get him caught again. She didn’t think Dysan would be so ea
sy to overpower the second time.
“Good girl,” he said and started to turn away, but then abruptly turned back and pulled her into his arms. His kiss was hard and quick, so quick, in fact, he only undid three buttons, but it was a kiss filled with feeling. He released her as abruptly as he’d taken her. “I’ll be all right,” he said over his shoulder. “You just get yourself out of here when you hear the gunshots.”
It seemed to Chris that it was the longest few minutes of her life while she waited for Tynan to begin firing. She crouched below the window and peeped out to see the tall, gaudily painted peddler’s wagon surrounded by men with rifles over their shoulders. On top of the wagon was Pilar, dressed in odd, voluminous trousers of pale blue silk and a tiny top of matching silk. It was apparent that the costume hadn’t been made for someone of Pilar’s dimensions because the fabric strained everywhere, threatening to split apart at any moment. Chris guessed that that was half of the men’s fascination with her—the hope that the garment would give way while they were watching.
While Chris was watching Pilar undulate, there suddenly came the sound of gunfire from the back of the house and the guards’ reaction was instantaneous. They all took off running toward the sound.
Chris lost no time climbing out the window and running across the lawn to open the back of the wagon and climb inside. She heard Pilar yell down to Asher, on the wagon’s seat, “She’s in,” then the wagon started off at a breakneck speed.
Chris grabbed the side of the wagon and tried to hold her balance. The wagon was full of merchandise, from bolts of cloth to pots and pans to farm tools, nearly all of it fastened down so it couldn’t fly about when the wagon moved.
The back door of the wagon flew open just as Chris regained her balance. As she reached forward to close it, she saw that they were traveling away from Dysan’s big house.
“No!” she gasped, but there was no one in the back of the wagon to hear her.
If she was to get Asher to turn around, she had to do something and do it fast. Fighting the rocking of the wagon, she began to climb over the boxes that were stacked toward the front, grabbing a small handled axe off the wall as she moved.
It took three swings before the axe went through the front partition and came out uncomfortably close to Asher’s right ear.
He turned to look at her in disbelief as she used her feet to kick the rest of the way through the thin wood. “You have to go back,” she yelled at Asher. “You can’t leave Tynan back there.”
Pilar hung down from the top. “She’s right,” she shouted over the sound of the horses. “We have to get Tynan out.”
“Then I’ll go back but you two women stay here,” Asher said even as he was halting the horses.
“No!” the women screamed at him in unison.
Asher didn’t say another word as he flicked the whip over the horses and headed back toward Dysan’s house.
Chapter Twenty-one
Chris held on for her life while Asher drove the wagon back over the ground they’d just covered. Their only hope of rescuing Tynan was that Dysan hadn’t been discovered yet and his men didn’t know that the peddler’s wagon was involved in the escape.
Above her head, she could hear Pilar singing and making noise to attract attention.
“Cover this hole,” Asher yelled as he whipped the horses harder.
With unsteady feet, falling several times, Chris managed to hang a piece of cloth over the hole she’d made in the front of the wagon. Just as she’d caught the edges of the cloth on a piece of splintered wood, Asher called, “I see him and he’s running toward us. Oh Lord. Get down! Both of you women get down,” he yelled as the first shots rang out.
Chris, with her heart pounding, flattened herself on the floor of the wagon—or as close to the floor as she could get with all the merchandise scattered about. Overhead, she heard Pilar hit the roof very hard, almost as if she’d fallen. Immediately the gunfire increased to a torrent.
Inching forward on her belly, she pushed one of the wagon doors open. Tynan was running down the road with men and dogs on his heels, the men firing their rifles as they ran. The bullets were hitting the back of the wagon at a regular rate, some of them whizzing inches over Chris’s head.