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Tynan frowned. “Have you got something to tie around this to stop the bleeding? It’ll take us a good four hours to get where we can rest.”
“Yes, of course I can, but, Ty, you need a doctor.”
“About three of Dysan’s men need an undertaker. Why did you come back? Why didn’t you get out of here while you could?”
“We came back to save your ungrateful hide,” she said as she tore off a long strip of her petticoat and began to bind his leg.
She’d barely finished tying his wound when Asher brought them to a halt that nearly sent Chris and Ty flying out the back door. Within seconds, Ash was at the back door.
“I have horses waiting. Pilar said there was an old man you knew who had a camp near here and you could lead us to him.”
“How is she?” Ty asked.
Asher climbed to the top of the wagon and after a long, long moment of suspense, yelled down that she had been shot.
Ty, his wounded leg stiff in front of him, maneuvered himself out of the wagon. “How bad?” he asked quietly as he stood on the ground.
“She’s alive but she’s bleeding a great deal.”
Chris was already climbing the little ladder that was attached to the side of the wagon and making her way up to Pilar. She gasped when she saw the woman. Pilar looked to be laying in a pool of blood, and her face was completely white.
“Ty,” Chris called down, “she’s wounded in her shoulder and she’s unconscious. Her heartbeat is strong but she’s weak. Can you help us get her down?”
“Yes,” he said impatiently.
Chris worked as quickly as she could, wadding cloth against the wound and trying to tie it, but the location made a tourniquet impossible. The thud Chris heard on the roof must have been Pilar falling after she’d been shot. The guards had taken aim at the easiest target: the woman on the top of the wagon.
“We’ll get her down to Ty,” Chris said to Asher when she had Pilar taken care of as best she could. “Help him all you can as he’s wounded too,” she whispered.
Ty caught Pilar and held her then began walking with her to the waiting horses, the blood seeping from his leg, his forehead covered with sweat.
“Give her to me,” Asher said, taking Pilar in his arms. “You lead.”
Tynan merely nodded as he handed Pilar’s inert body to Asher and started toward the horses. “There’s some rough terrain ahead of us, but I don’t think they’ll be able to follow us. I don’t want any heroics, you understand, Chris? If I tell you to go on ahead, I expect you to do it, you understand?”
“I can follow sensible orders. Shall we ride before Dysan’s men find us standing here?”
Asher mounted, then Ty put Pilar in the saddle before him, so that he was holding her in place. “You think you can hold her?” Ty asked and there was a sadness in his voice that Chris was sure came from not being able to take care of her himself.
Within seconds, both she and Ty were mounted and they started to ride.
He was right when he’d said that it would be a difficult trip. They went straight up for a while, then across a boggy area that sucked at the horses’ feet, then across several of Washington’s cold, swift streams. For about a mile, they walked the horses through the water, hiding their trail from their pursuers.
Chris kept looking back at Pilar, whose eyes were still closed as Asher held onto her. She looked even paler.
“Watch where you’re going,” Tynan said in a tight-lipped way that told how much he was worried.
Once, they heard the dogs on a ridge above them and they moved their horses into the shelter of trees near a sharp rapids in the water. Chris’s horse slipped but Tynan caught the reins and pulled her back to safety.
When the men and dogs were gone, they rode down the stream into the forest, going the opposite direction of their hunters.
It was nearly dark when Tynan stopped his horse and stiffly dismounted. “Wait here for me. He won’t want any visitors.”
“Who won’t?” Chris asked but Tynan had already slipped into the trees and didn’t answer her.
“The old man.” It was a ragged whisper from Pilar. “Could I have some water?”
Quickly, Chris dismounted and removed her canteen from the back of the horse. Asher held it to Pilar’s lips while Chris examined Pilar’s wound. The bleeding had stopped, but she didn’t look as if she had much strength left.
