“Indeed, I must not, sweet child, we shall soon have the rest of the gang after us. In fact, I do not know what to do, the horses are completely done and yet it is not safe to put up anywhere. Whatever happens we must not be caught in a town. I believe it would have been safer to have waited and killed them all.”
Aline shuddered. “Oh, how awful.”
Ian tore a piece off his shirt sleeve and stopped the bleeding of his wound as well as he could, and they rode on in silence for a time, till they came to the place where the road divided for Haltwhistle and Brampton. The trees grew thickly by the stream and it was getting dark. “Let us hide here,” Ian said. “They are unlikely to see us and we can then go whichever way they do not. They cannot be here for some time, so the horses can again get a feed and a rest.”
They piled up some dead leaves where two fallen trunks made a sort of shelter, did what they could for Ian’s wound and huddled together and waited.
At last, after about two hours, they dimly saw three horses. There was only one rider, but the fugitives guessed that the others carried the dead and the injured man. Four men walked beside them.
“I can hardly move another step,” they heard one of them say.
“I do not suppose you are as tired as I am,” said a second voice, “besides I bruised myself pretty badly when that devil brought my horse down. I shall be too stiff to move to-morrow.”
“Well,” said a third voice, which both recognised as that of Father Martin,—“This kind of game is not in my line anyway. Ride, ride, it is nothing but ride. I shall be too sore to sit down for a week; when on earth are you going to bring me to a place for a night’s rest? S’death. I almost feel as though I did not care what happened to the villains, I am so worn out. That’s three of my men dead; for I reckon Philip there will never speak again. Fancy that little she-cat killing Gilbert.”
“That’s you, Pussie,” softly whispered Ian in her ear.