Midnight Never Comes - Jack Higgins [23]
It was easy enough on the lower slopes with the heather springy to the feet, but within half an hour, he came out onto a great cascading bank of scree and loose stones that moved alarmingly beneath him with each step he took, bringing the heart into his mouth.
He worked his way to the left, making for the waterfall he had observed from the train, and when he reached it, followed the channel upwards, jumping from one great boulder to the other. Finally, he moved out on to a small plateau and faced the granite cliffs.
From the station, they had looked impossible, but now he was close enough to see that instead of being perpendicular, they leaned backwards gently in a series of great tilted slabs, cracked and fissured by the years.
He paused for as long as it took him to eat half a bar of chocolate, then slung his raincoat over his back, fastening it securely with its own belt and started to climb.
He wondered how the girl was doing, but there was no means of knowing, for the shoulder of the mountain was between them, and he climbed on, testing each hold securely before moving. He turned once to look down into the glen and saw the ticket collector moving from the station to his small cottage adjoining. When he looked down again half an hour later, he could see nothing, and suddenly a cold wind seemed to move across his face.
He climbed on doggedly and as he scrambled over the edge of a great up-tilted slab of granite a few minutes later, grey mist spilled across the face of the mountain with incredible speed, wrapping itself around him like some living thing.
He had spent enough time in hill country in various parts of the world to have learned that in such circumstances it was fatal to make any kind of move at all unless there was a well defined track to follow. Remembering what lay beneath him, he sat down between a couple of boulders and lit a cigarette.
He had a long wait and it was just over an hour later when a sudden current of air snatched the grey curtain away and beyond, the valleys lay dark and quiet in the evening sunlight, the mountains touched with a golden glow.
He started to climb again and an hour later came over the final edge and found himself on a gently sloping plateau that lifted to meet the sky a quarter of a mile away, a great cairn of stones marking the ultimate peak.
There was no sign of Asta Svensson and when he cut across the track, he turned and hurried back along it until he reached a point where he had a clear view of its zigzag course for two thousand feet up the great northern slope of the mountain.
So she had beaten him to the summit--so much was obvious. But that was hardly surprising, for with the track to follow, the mist must have proved no problem at all. He turned and trudged along the track towards the cairn, feeling suddenly tired for the first time. Tired and annoyed. He'd tried to be clever and he'd made a mess of it, it was as simple as that. Far better to have struck up a conversation with her in the train while he'd had the chance.
He moved towards the cairn, head bowed as he took the final slope and then he paused, the breath hissing sharply between his teeth at the vision of splendour unfolded before him.
The sea was still in the calm evening, the islands so close that it was as if he had only to reach out to be able to touch the Rum and Eigg and Skye beyond, on the dark horizon, the final barrier against the Atlantic, the Outer Hebrides.
Below, a small loch cut deep into the heart of the hills, black with depth in the centre, purple and grey where granite edges lifted to the surface, and on Skye the peaks of the mountains were streaked with orange.
The beauty of it was too much for a man and with an inexplicable dryness in his throat, he turned and hurried along the track down into Glenmore.
Asta Svensson was tired and her right ankle was beginning to ache rather badly, legacy of an old skiing injury. It had taken her much longer to cross the mountain