conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know the first five paragraphs for a book with the title 'The Highway Men'? Start with the sentence 'The Highway Men
  Sandstone Press gratefully acknowledges the ongoing support of Highland Council, Highland Adult Literacy Partnership, and Essex County Council Libraries'.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The Highway Men
  Sandstone Press gratefully acknowledges the ongoing support of Highland Council, Highland Adult Literacy Partnership, and Essex County Council Libraries.
  It was Murdo Mac who noticed it first. He was riding shotgun. So he could see farther ahead. I had to keep my eye on the road. First I know of it, Murdo bangs on the cab roof. Signal to stop. I braked gently. The early morning road was icy and treacherous. We were about half a kilometre outside a village a bit out from Dingwall. More a thin straggle of houses, really, like most villages in the Highlands. And like most, it was empty. We knew that.
  I rolled down the window. Cold air came in. Murdo poked his head into the cab. His face was red inside the furry parka hood.
  I looked sideways at Euan Campbell. He handed me the binoculars. I propped my elbows on the steering wheel and got the glasses into focus. The five or six houses were on a curve of the road up ahead. I could see all of them. They had that Highland look of being out of place. Like suburban houses stuck down on the moors. Gardens overgrown, sheds falling apart, big bay windows black and empty.
  Murdo's head disappeared from the window. Checking the wing mirror I could see he had ducked back into the lookout's bucket. Shaped like an oil drum, it was bolted to the back of the cab, right behind the driver. It had a low seat, and a roll of armour padding wrapped around the inside. Not very comfortable. We used to take turns.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know three more paragraphs?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The trains don't run any more on the Kyle line – too many landslides – so the rails were free to carry heavy equipment. Any day now the machine would come chugging down from Inverness. Then it would slowly chug back, digging a trench alongside the railway track as it went. Same trick for laying the cable. All we'd have to do was follow behind and shovel the dirt in, and lay prefab concrete covers over any stretches where the cable had to be trailed over bare rock.
  All very straightforward. But first we had to dig this trench through a couple hundred metres of soil that was on the way to freezing solid. Tomorrow's permafrost. And the day after tomorrow's swamp, if Alaska and Siberia are anything to go by. But that's the day after tomorrow's problem.
  Liam Morrison had done his bit with the theodolite and laser gadget. His two assistants (I could see from the names on the drawing) had done their thing with sticks and string. The line they'd marked out for the trench to follow stretched straight from the Carron's left bank to just east of the station. Easy.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Do you know the last four paragraphs?
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: I threw myself flat on the grass. I watched six men spin and drop in front of me. Saw the others down by the lochside fall too. It was over in seconds. I lay with my hands clasped over my head and then stood up and puked.
  Dark figures popped up on the hillside at the far side of the loch and began to walk down. Men, women, kids, about twenty in all, far more than I'd seen the day before. Two of them lugged a light machine gun. They were Martin and Angus. I had wondered why they hadn't been drafted. I was wrong. They had done their stint. And once you've been in the army, they told me later, it's not that hard to find a way to find the weapons. You can get it all on the black market.
  What happened right then, while the kids were looting the dead, was that Ailiss walked up to us with her face all black and a rifle in her hand. Her grin was very white on her dirt-smeared face.
  I looked at Murdo and Euan. They looked back at me. I knew what they were thinking. We couldn't go away now. For a start, there was no way the gang here would let us go. For the very good reason that we would tell everything we knew. One way or another.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Delete the first sentence.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: I watched six men spin and drop in front of me. Saw the others down by the lochside fall too. It was over in seconds. I lay with my hands clasped over my head and then stood up and puked.
  Dark figures popped up on the hillside at the far side of the loch and began to walk down. Men, women, kids, about twenty in all, far more than I'd seen the day before. Two of them lugged a light machine gun. They were Martin and Angus. I had wondered why they hadn't been drafted. I was wrong. They had done their stint. And once you've been in the army, they told me later, it's not that hard to find a way to find the weapons. You can get it all on the black market.
  What happened right then, while the kids were looting the dead, was that Ailiss walked up to us with her face all black and a rifle in her hand. Her grin was very white on her dirt-smeared face.
  I looked at Murdo and Euan. They looked back at me. I knew what they were thinking. We couldn't go away now. For a start, there was no way the gang here would let us go. For the very good reason that we would tell everything we knew. One way or another.