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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.
She moved closer to the door and stretched her hand out toward Tynan. “Come on,” she yelled. “Come on.”
Ty yelled something back to her but the blood was pounding so hard in her ears that she didn’t understand what he was saying.
“You’ll never get out of jail,” she screamed at him.
It was then that one of the bullets hit Ty in the leg. He faltered and she thought he was going to fall but he kept on coming.
Chris made a dive through the merchandise, one box that was sliding across the space hit her hard in the side, but she continued until she reached the front and stuck her head out to Asher and bellowed for him to slow down, that Tynan had been shot and couldn’t run.
Then she went back to the rear of the wagon to put her hand out to Ty. Asher couldn’t slow down much or Dysan’s men would catch them.
Tynan reached the wagon and Chris’s hand just as the dogs reached Ty’s heels. She helped to pull him into the wagon as Ty yelled to Asher to get the hell out of there. Ty had to shake one dog off his ankle even as the wagon bounded forward, leaving Dysan’s men standing where they were.
Immediately, Chris started examining the gunshot wound on Ty’s right thigh.
“Do you know if Prescott has horses ready?” he shouted to her over the noise of the wagon.
“I don’t know anything. Ty, you’re bleeding a lot.”
“There’s a place we can go. How is Pilar? Is she still on top?”
“Yes and I haven’t heard a sound from her since the first shot.”
