Gently North-West Read Online Free Page A

least to view the point of departure of the ‘guid path’ to the Keekingstane.
    ‘Oh come now, George,’ Geoffrey objected. ‘We all know where listening to you will get us. It’ll just be one thing after another till we’re at the top of that blessed mountain.’
    ‘Maybe a few steps up it,’ Gently grinned. ‘Just to the first place with a view.’
    ‘Yes, and up to our knees in bogs before we’ve gone a dozen yards!’
    In the end they separated, with Brenda electing to accompany Gently. If they were not down by closing-time, Geoffrey said, he’d alert Whitehall and the Mountain Rescue.
    The road over the bridge formed a T-junction with a narrow back-road behind the strath, and almost opposite the junction was the wooden field gate with its bright Forestry notice. The notice informed the public of its privilege to use, but not abuse, the Forestry tracks, but offered no indication of where the track was supposed to be. In effect the gate opened into a grassy tangle of small bushes, broken by rock outcrop and shaded by tall oaks and graceful ashes. To the right a noisy torrent burled down over green, gloomy boulders, and some way off, on the strath side of the road, a large house showed through the trees. Brenda nodded towards the house.
    ‘We could ask the laird. He should know where the track is.’
    ‘I think it’s towards the left,’ Gently said. ‘The other way we’d run into that torrent.’
    ‘If Highness says so. But I’d love to meet a real heather-bashing laird.’
    ‘They went out with hansom cabs,’ Gently said. ‘Come on. This is the only way that makes sense.’
    He led through a thin curtain of underbrush into a grassy space divided by a rivulet, and here a couple of stones which might have been stepping-stones suggested that others used that way. A diagonal line across the opening brought them to a plantation of young firs, where a definite path upward was indicated by a lane or fire-break through the trees. It was rocky and muddy and obstructed with brush and quite unnecessarily perpendicular, and seemed to be going on for ever with no other prospect but more trees.
    ‘Do you think it’s right?’ Brenda gasped at last. ‘You owe me a new pair of shoes already.’
    ‘It’s right,’ Gently grunted. ‘There’s someone ahead of us. We keep passing fresh bootmarks and snapped twigs.’
    ‘Oh hell,’ Brenda panted. ‘These bloody professionals. I’ll tell you something about him too.’
    ‘What’s that?’
    ‘He’s no stupid English tourist. He’s a native who knows about ‘‘guid paths’’!’
    But at last the fire-break came to an end and plunged them into the twilight of some matured firs, beneath which the bare soil, slippery with needles, made them grab for handholds as they clambered upwards. Then there was day-light again. They had reached the lowest of the horizontal breaks, a broad, grassed, friendly-looking strip carrying a fence of sheep-netting. There was a gate in the fence and beside the gate a smooth stone. Brenda plumped down on the stone and gasped and dashed the hair from her eyes.
    ‘This stone is the first sign I’ve met that the Forestry is human!’
    Gently hung himself on the gate, taking great lungfuls of earthy air. In a way the break was disappointing, because it suggested a view it didn’t offer. It curved at each end into the sky, just refusing a glimpse of the glen, while below and above them were merely trees and more trees.
    ‘We’re not so fit,’ he puffed. ‘Or maybe just not used to mountains.’
    ‘Do you like your women sweaty?’ Brenda gasped. ‘Oh, why didn’t I listen to Geoffrey? I
like
Geoffrey.’
    ‘We’re high, I think. We can’t be far from the foot of the crag.’
    ‘George, you can
keep
the crag.’
    ‘Look, more bootmarks.’
    ‘Oh!’ Brenda panted. ‘Oh!’
    After ten minutes the sweat began drying and they’d got their second wind; then another push at the track seemed a little less daunting. Beyond