Read Online The Snowmelt River (The Three Powers) by Frank P. Ryan - Free Book Online Page B

Kate’s contribution, they took a bearing on 76 degrees, northeasterly toward the Gap. Within minutes they were out of the shadows and squinting up into the face of the sun, weaving a path through mauve bell heather still soaked with overnight dew. They filed one by one over a stile made of lichen-coated stones, stopping to look upward. Alan pointed to a series of white posts in the distance that indicated the way to the Gap.
    Mark offered to high-five Kate.
    She hesitated. “No more stuff about Conan the Barbarian.”
    He grinned. “You want to know the truth? You were supposed to melt when I saved you—like throw your half-naked and bleeding body into my arms. But even in my fantasies you wouldn’t play along. You’d say stuff like, ‘We’ll always be friends.’”
    Kate shook with suppressed laughter.
    “Don’t ever stop laughing at me, Kate.”
    She punched his arm, then returned the high-five.
    Mark couldn’t help but be pleased at this. But Alan looked questioningly at Kate, who was now continuing to climb. He quizzed Mark. “You tell Grimstone why we’re here?”
    “It’s the only reason we’re still with you.”
    “He wasn’t suspicious?”
    “The whole idea was to get him suspicious.” Mark did a pretty good take on the Grimstone growl. “‘What were hiswords—I want the very words, and the manner he spoke them—when the old man asked you this?’”
    “What planet’s this guy on?”
    “All I know is he has suddenly taken it into his head to go back to London. He’s going to be away for two weeks, leaving Bethal in charge.”
    “Huh-huh-hooray!”
    The boys turned to look at Mo, who had been trailing behind at this point but had taken advantage of the exchanges with Kate to catch up to them.
    “But it was a close thing. I could see he was thinking maybe he should take us back with him if for no better reason than he knew we wanted so much to stay. Look, I’m really sorry, Alan, but I told him he was probably right about your grandfather. You know he thinks he’s some kind of pagan. Like a druid or something. I told him there was something going on—a lot more than Padraig is telling us.”
    Alan pinked with anger.
    “We couldn’t let him take us away, not now. And I could see it in Grimstone’s face, he was really thinking of doing that.”
    Mark didn’t add Grimstone’s words, as those eyes came close to peering directly into his own.
“You trollop’s whelp! Do you think I haven’t sensed the lust in you whenever you’ve been within a mile of that red-haired Jezebel? You’ve filled that confounded camera thing with pictures of the harlot.”
    “Kate isn’t a harlot. You see yourself in everybody!”
    Grimstone had taken hold of his ear on one side and slapped his face with all of his might on the other. Mark’s ear was still swollen, and there was a sound in his head like a high-pitched whistle.
    Mark pressed on into the stiff breeze, which was whistling through the heather. Forcing the memory of Grimstone out of his mind, he followed in Kate’s wake.
    From where she had once again fallen twenty or so yards behind the others, Mo watched Mark increase his pace to catch up with Kate. Mo’s blue anorak was already stained with the gold of pollen from the heather. They were all approaching the pass Alan had circled in red pen on the map. Thankfully, she had escaped last night’s interrogation. But she had seen poor Mark’s face when Grimstone had finished with him, and she hated the price her brother had paid for the fact they were here.
    But now, gazing around her at the increasing drama of the mountains, inhaling the scents of wildflowers, Mo wondered what it was that Padraig had been hinting at yesterday. What were they supposed to find up here? Was Padraig really some kind of pagan priest? The truth was that she had no answer to those questions. Yet it seemed to her that Padraig did not talk or behave like somebody steeped in any kind of religion. He talked about