Midnight Never Comes - Jack Higgins [22]
'Aye, a bonny lass with hair of corn and a face to thank God for. A Miss Svennson. Her step-father's yon fella Donner that bought Glenmore last year. She's away over the mountain. You're to put down her baggage at Lochailort.'
'I hope it keeps fine for her.' The guard took out his watch. 'The long short cut she'll find it if the weather breaks.'
Chavasse reached for his raincoat, opened the door and got out. 'Did I hear you say there was a short cut over the mountain?'
'Well now, sir, and that would depend on where you want to be.'
'Ardmurchan Lodge.'
The guard nodded. 'Over the top of Ben Breac and a twelve mile walk on the other side. You'll be staying with Colonel Craig, the new tenant?'
'My uncle. He'll be waiting for me at Lochailort. Perhaps you'd be good enough to tell him where I am?'
The five shillings he slipped into the guard's hand was pocketed without inspection. 'Leave it to me, sir.'
He blew his whistle and boarded the train. As it moved away from the platform, Chavasse turned to the ticket collector. 'And where do I go from here?'
'Through the village and over the bridge, sir. You'll find a path through the birches on your left. It's hard going, but you can't miss the cairns that mark the way. Once over the top, the track is plain to the glen below.'
'Do you think the weather will hold?'
The ticket collector squinted up at the mountain. 'A touch of mist perhaps and rain in the evening. I shouldn't waste time on top.' He smiled suddenly. 'I'd tell the young lady that if I were you, sir. It's no place for a lassie to be on her own.'
Chavasse grinned. 'I'll do that. A pity to see her get wet.'
'A thousand pities, sir.'
At a small general store he purchased an extra packet of cigarettes and two half-pound bars of milk chocolate. Twelve miles on the other side of the mountain, the ticket collector had said and that wasn't counting the miles that stood up on end. A long walk and something told him he might be hungry before the end of it.
He marched down the quiet village street, his raincoat slung over one shoulder and crossed the bridge over a clear flowing stream. It was still and quiet in the hot afternoon sun and the road stretched before him, lifting upwards and away from the waters of the loch shining through the trees below.
There was no sign of the girl which suited him for the moment. Sooner or later a meeting was inevitable, in fact necessary, but he preferred that it should be at a time and place of his own choosing.
The track snaked up through the birch trees, lifting steeply, bracken pressing in on either side. It was cool and dark and somehow remote from the world, the path dappled with light where shafts of sunlight pierced the roof of green branches.
The trees grew sparser until he moved out on to a slope where the track disappeared into bracken that in places was waist high. Occasionally grouse or plover lifted out of the heather, disturbed by his passing. He moved up over a steep ridge and found himself on the edge of a boulder-strewn plain that lifted to meet the lower slopes of Ben Breac.
In the same moment he saw the girl, up on the shoulder of the mountain to his right, six or seven hundred feet above him.
She paused, turning to look out over the loch and he dropped back into cover. When he peered cautiously over the edge of the ridge a moment later, she had disappeared round the shoulder of the mountain.
She was certainly moving fast. Faster than he would have thought possible, but hardly surprising, remembering her litheness and the healthy glow of her golden skin and he took out an ordnance survey map of Moidart and unfolded it. The track she was following was plainly marked, skirting the shoulder of the mountain, climbing gradually to the final plateau and the summit. There was a quicker way, of course--straight up. But only a fool would try that.
Chavasse raised his eyes to the swelling breast of the mountain above, the great wall of granite beyond. A steady eye and strong nerves were all that was needed and he could be sitting on the