Wilderness Trek (1988) Read online

  "Boss, if you don't mind, I'd like to have Ormiston's gun," said Sterl, restrainedly.

  "You're welcome to it. Now for your story, Sterl."

  Sterl told it as briefly as possible. Dann took the narrative as one who at last understood the villainy of evil men and the righteous and terrible wrath of hard avengers.

  "I'm not one to rail at the dispensation of Providence," said the leader, at length. "How singularly fortunate we have been! I've a mind to let well enough alone, except to try to save the mob that rushed to its old grazing ground across the river."

  "That can be done, Dann, as soon as the river drops. But I think you're wise not to attempt mustering the cattle that stampeded by us up there. Those two drovers will escape with one wagon and some of Ormiston's horses. Let them go, Dann. We have more cattle now than we can handle. And fewer drovers!"

  "Righto, Hazelton. But I'll send Larry and four men up there tomorrow, to fetch back the other two wagons. Later, we'll gather in that mob which obligingly rushed back to us. They won't leave that fine grazing over there."

  Sterl and Slyter left the chief, to return to their camp. "He was hit below the belt, Hazelton," said Slyter, "but never a word! I wonder what will happen next?"

  "All our troubles are not over, boss. Red would say, 'Wal, the wurst is yet to come!' By the way, how is Eric Dann?"

  "He'll be around in a few days. Good night. It has been a day. Never mind guard duty while Krehl needs attention."

  Friday loomed up in the dark.

  "Has he been quiet, Friday?"

  "All same imm like dead. But imm strong, like black fella. No die."

  Sterl struck a match in the darkness of his tent, and lighted his candle. Indeed Red looked like a corpse, but he was breathing and his heart beat steadily. "If he only hangs on till tomorrow!" whispered Sterl, fervently, and that was indeed a prayer. Sterl undressed, which was a luxury that had been difficult of late; and when he was stretched out he felt as if he would never move again. His last act was to reach for the candle and blow it out.

  Stress of emotion, no doubt, had more to do with his prostration than the sleepless night and strenuous day. He caught himself listening for Red's breathing. But sleepy as he was, he could not arrive at the point of oblivion. That speech of the cowboy's, when he delivered Beryl into her father's arms, haunted Sterl. It meant, he deduced, that Red had withstood love and shame and insult and humiliation and torture for willful and vain Beryl Dann; in the face of opposition and antagonism he had killed Ormiston to save the girl. And that had let Red out! Yet Red was tenderhearted to a fault, and never had Sterl, in their twelve years of trail driving, seen him so terribly in love before... Outworn nature conquered at last.

  When Sterl awakened day had broken and the rain had ceased temporarily. In the gloom he saw Red lying exactly as he had seen him hours ago. He crawled out of bed to bend over his friend, and his acute sensibilities registered a stronger heartbeat. But now pneumonia must be reckoned with--a disease likely to fasten upon a man so wounded and exposed.

  Sterl got out in time to see five horsemen across the river riding at a brisk trot to the east--the drovers Dann had sent after the wagons and horses, of course.

  While he ate breakfast with Slyter, Mrs. Slyter approached from Beryl's wagon. Her usual brightness was lacking.

  "Mum, you don't look reassuring," said Slyter, anxiously. "At midnight, Leslie said Beryl was sleeping."

  "Beryl has been shocked beyond her strength--any sensitive woman's strength," returned Mrs. Slyter, gravely. "She's violently delirious. I fear she'll go insane or die."

  Leslie, pale but composed, arrived in time to hear this.

  "What do you think, Sterl?" she asked.

  "Well, it's a cold gray dawn after two terrible nights with an awful day between. We can at least think clearly. Of course I don't know what Beryl had to endure before we appeared on the scene, but what happened afterward was enough to tax any girl's strength." Here Sterl described, sparing no detail, Beryl's fight with the bushranger, to keep him from killing Red, and the gruesome aftermath.

  "Beryl was game and she went the limit," he added. "If she had fainted when Friday speared Ormiston, it would not have been so bad for her. But she saw Ormiston plunge around, like a crazy bull... She saw--all the rest. I ran to shut out that sight. And it was only then that she fainted."

  "Mercy!" gasped Mrs. Slyter.

  "I'd like to have been there," declared Leslie Slyter, with an unnatural calm that was belied by the piercing glint in her hazel eyes.

  "Talk sense, you wild creature!" returned her mother.

  Sterl had not at all intended such a disclosure, and felt at a loss to understand why he had yielded to the impulse. If it was to see Leslie's reaction, however, he had been strangely justified.

  Toward what would have been sunset if there had been any sun, Sterl admitted Dann to the tent. The leader bent over the cowboy, listened to his breathing and--heart, studied his stone-cold face. Then he said: "I've played many parts in my time, including both Wesleyan clergyman and amateur physician. Be at peace, Sterl. He will live."

  They went out, to be followed by Friday. Rain had set in again, and the air was muggy. Sterl sighted a large wagon, which he recognized as Ormiston's, rolling into the timber toward the old camp across the river. Four riders were driving a bunch of horses down to the shore. Larry led off into the river, with the four drovers behind urging and whipping the loose horses ahead of them. The flood had dropped, and neither riders nor unsaddled horses required any help at the landing.

  "Well done, Larry," said Dann, as the young drover rode up to make his report.

  "We got them all, I think," was the reply. "The--the two who got away--took four teams, but only one wagon. They either buried Jack and Bedford or took them away. Ormiston's wagon had been fired, but its load was so wet that it wouldn't burn... We erected a cross over Drake's grave."

  "That was well," replied Dann, as Larry hesitated. "But what about Ormiston?"

  "They left him hanging. So did we."

  There was flint in Larry's eyes and words. Stanley Dann, seldom at a loss for words, found none to say here.

  That night at supper there was a release of tension as to Red's condition, but not as to Beryl's. She had fallen into a lethargy that preceded the sinking spell Mrs. Slyter feared. Eric Dann, too, according to Slyter, was either a very sick man or pretended to be.

  At daybreak, Red came out of his stupor and whispered almost inaudibly for whisky.

  "You son-of-a-gun!" cried Sterl in delight, as he dove for a flask. "Easy, now, old-timer!"

  Red did not heed Sterl's advice. A tinge of color showed in his gray cheeks.

  "How--long?" he asked, in a husky whisper.

  "This is the third day."

  "Get anythin'--back from?..."

  "One wagon, Ormiston's, twenty odd horses--and this." Here Sterl picked up Ormiston's bulky belt to shove it in front of Red. "He sure was heeled, pard. Dann took out what was due him, with Woolcott's and Hathaway's money and shares for the boys. The rest is yours. Wages justly earned, the boss said."

  "Hell--he did... How much?"

  "I only took a peep. But plenty mazuma, pard."

  "I'm gonna--get drunk. Never be sober--again."

  "Is that so?"

  "Gimme a cigarette."

  "No. But I'll see what Mrs. Slyter advises in the way of grub."

  Still the sky stayed drab and gloomy, shedding copious rains at slowly widening intervals. On the fifth day there came a break in Red's fever and a lessening of his pain. The river had fallen low enough for the drover to pack Ormiston's supplies and wagon across, piece by piece. And in the next day or so the cattle on that side were to be swum across. Eric Dann was up and about, moody and strange. That day, however, showed no improvement in Beryl's condition. Red continued to mend. He was a tough as wire, young and resilient, and as soon as his depleted blood began to renew itself, his complete recovery was only a matter of days. Bu
t not even of the persistent and sentimental Leslie did he ever ask about Beryl.

  During the last few days of this period, it still rained, but far less frequently. The flat, dull sky broke at intervals, showing the first rifts of blue sky for over weeks. Bird life with its color and melody predicted a return of good weather; kangaroos and wallabies, emus and aboriginals appeared in increasing numbers. The last, Friday asserted, were different black fellas from those who had crowded at the forks before the flood. The great triangle of grassland, which had its apex at the junction of the river forks, waved away incredibly rich with new grass. Larry and Sterl reported that the trek could be resumed, rain or shine. But the patient Dann stroked his golden beard and said: "We'll wait for the sun. Eric is not sure about the road. He thinks it'd be more difficult to find in wet weather."

  "Then you'll keep to this Gulf road, if we find it?" queried Sterl, quietly.

  "Yes, I shall not change my mind because Ormiston is gone."

  "Mr. Dann," ventured Larry, with hesitation, "the creeks, waterholes, springs will be full for months."

  "I am aware of that. But Eric has importuned me and I have decided."

  Dann might have been actuated to delay because that would be better for Beryl. She had come to herself, and only time and care were necessary to build up the flesh and strength she had lost.

  When one night the stars came out, Dann said, "That rainbow today is God's promise. The wet season is over. Tomorrow the sun will shine. We go on and on again with our trek!"

  Chapter 22

  Sunrise next morning was a glorious burst of golden light.

  The joyous welcome accorded this onetime daily event seemed in proportion to that of the Laplanders after their six months of midnight. Even Beryl Dann, from under the uprolled cover of her wagon, gazed out with sad eyes gladdened. Breakfast was almost a festival. The drovers whistled while they hitched up the teams to the packed wagons; they sang as they mustered the mob for the trek.

  Sterl, mounted on King, and as eager as the horse, waited with Friday for the wagons to get under way. But Slyter was detained by Leslie's pets. At the last moment Cocky had betrayed that his freedom at this long camp was too much for him. Leslie had not even clipped his wings. And when he flew up to join flock of screeching white cockatoos he became one too many. Laughing Jack, the tame kookaburra, also turned traitor. He sat on the branch of a dead gum with three of his kind, bobbed up and down, ruffled his feathers, and laughed hoarsely at the mistress who had been so kind to him. Both had tasted the sweetness of freedom.

  "I--I always lose everything I love," wailed Leslie, and mounting Lady Jane she rode out under the trees and did not look back.

  Sterl was the last to leave the forks. He was glad to go, because that was imperative, yet he felt a strong regret as he rode over the grazed and trampled grass to his old position at the left of the mob. Many cattle and horses, several wagons, fourteen dead men and one dead woman had been left behind. Only Slyter's five drovers, not including him and Red, and four of Dann's remained to get the mob, three hundred horses and six heavily laden wagons across the endless leagues.

  The sky was deep azure, floating a few silver-white clouds. The sun appeared no relation to that molten copper disk of a few weeks past. King's mane and smooth hide were a dead black, yet somehow they shone. Friday, stalking beside Sterl with his spears and wommera, naked except for his loincloth, presented another kind of black, a glistening ebony. The mob of cattle appeared to consist of a hundred hues, yet there were really only very few. It was the variation of them that gave the living mosaic effect. They looked as clean and bright as if they had been freshly scrubbed.

  Compared to one of the trail driver's herds in Texas, these long-horned, moss-backed, red-eyed devils that were the bane of cowboys' lives, this herd of five thousand bulls and steers and cows and calves were tame, lazy, fat pets. The slow trek, the frightening situations and the kindness of the drovers accounted for this.

  Ahead of the leisurely moving mob, the grass resembled that of the Great Plains in thickness and height, but in its richness of color and multitude of flowers it could have no comparison. In the distance all around loomed purple, bush-crowned hills, and to the north, far beyond, lilac ranges hung to the fleecy clouds like mirages right side up. If there could be enchantment on earth, here Sterl rode amidst it. That he seemed not the only one under its spell he proved by glancing at his companions on the trek. Every one of them rode alone, except Friday, who stalked lost in his own lonely, impenetrable thought. The drovers sat their horses and gazed, no doubt, at things that were only true in dreams. Red Krehl had forgotten his cigarette. Leslie rode far behind, lost in, her world.

  At the wattle-bordered stream beside which they camped, Stanley Dann inaugurated a new arrangement whereby everything was consolidated into one camp. The exhilaration of the morning had carried through to evening.

  "Pard, it's kinda good to be alive at thet," drawled Red.

  "Red, you've never fooled me about your indifference to beautiful places any more than to girls," replied Sterl, satirically.

  "Yeah? Wal, mebbe Les was right when she said once thet I wore my heart on my sleeve."

  "Red Krehl," spoke up Leslie, "if you have a heart it's an old burlap bag stuffed with grass, and what not."

  Leslie had come over to where Sterl sat writing in the journal--he had long ago relieved her of that duty--and Red was smoking. Friday, as usual, had made a little fire.

  "Gosh, am I thet bad?" rejoined Red, mildly.

  "Why wouldn't you come with me to see Beryl when I asked you before supper?"

  "Wal, I reckon I didn't want to see Beryl."

  "But she begged to see you. And I was embarrassed. I lied to her."

  "Shore, you always was a turrible liar."

  "I was not. Red, you're so queer. You never were hard before. Why, you've stood positive cruelty from that girl! Now, she needs to be cheered, fussed over--loved."

  "Would you mind shettin' up, onless you want me to go out an' commune with the kangaroos?"

  "You mean the abo's, Red Krehl," returned Leslie, spitefully.

  "Wal, I would at thet if there was any about."

  Leslie plumped down beside Sterl and pretended to peep at the journal, which he believed was only a ruse to get near to him.

  "I'm busy, Leslie. Way behind. Will you slope off to bed, or somewhere?"

  "No, I won't slope off to bed--or to hell, as you hint so courteously," she retorted petulantly, but she left them.

  "Pard, what'd she mean by that crack about abo's?" asked Red.

  "I think it was a dirty crack. But don't ever overlook this, old pard. Every dirty crack a woman makes, every terrible blunder, like Beryl's for instance, can be blamed on some man."

  "Aw hell! You've said thet before. It ain't so. What did you ever say or do to make Nan Halbert double-cross you, an' send us off to this turrible Australia?"

  That blunt query pierced like a blade in Sterl's heart. The sudden opening of a healed wound flayed him. Still it drove him to be honest.

  "Red, I flirted with Nan's best friend--that damned little black-eyed hussy who wouldn't let any man alone."

  "Hell you say! You mean Flo, of course. Wal, so did I! Thet ain't nothin' atall."

  "Well, it was enough to make Nan furious. Then to hurt me she went hotfoot after Ross Haight. And there she made her terrible blunder. It was my fault."

  "But, you locoed two-faced Romeo, you never told me thet. You swore Nan liked Ross best."

  "I lied, Red," returned Sterl, somberly, closing the journal.

  "Wal, I'm a son of a sea cook!... If you'd told me thet back home, Ross Haight could have gone to jail for his little gunplay. An' we wouldn't be heah!"

  "For me, Red, it is better so. Only I grieve for what I led you into."

  "Funny how things came about. But you needn't grieve too hard. I'm not sorry."

  "Honest Red?" appealed Sterl, earnestly.

  "Honest to Gawd. This
trek is right down my grub-line trail. 'Course I've had an orful blow in the gizzard. But if I get over it, an' we get through..."

  "Red, Leslie's hurt that you wouldn't go with her to see Beryl. You used to be kind to anyone sick, even a horse."

  "Mebbe I was. Mebbe I've changed a lot," rejoined Red, bitterly. "I wouldn't want to see Beryl if she was like she used to be before thet hot spell, but let alone now, after..."

  "Red! You're hard," exclaimed Sterl, sharply.

  "Shore. Harder than the hinges on the gates of hell. But if you cain't see thet I've had aplenty to make me hard, wal, you're as blind as a bat!"

  "Red Krehl," flashed Sterl, "are you keeping something secret from me?"

  "Hellsfire, man, you can think, cain't you?" cut out Red, with that icy edge in his voice. "An let's change the subject."

  The trek fell back into its old, leisurely, time effacing stride. One day was like another, though every league of that lonely land had infinite variety as well as endless monotony Sterl had his surfeit of loveliness. It had passed into his being. At last seas of green and golden grass, islands of flowers, kangaroo-dotted plains, flamboyant bush-land, myriads of birds, flocks of emus, mile-wide ponds where the mob splashed across, scattering the flocks of water fowl, winding tiny brooks and still reed-bordered streams, and always, every hour of the long day, that illusive beckoning haunting purple mountain range--at last Sterl Hazelton's soul was everlastingly filled to the brim with these physical things which he divined were rewards in themselves.

  Seventeen days, to where the headwaters of the middle fork sprang from the tropic verdure of the foothills. "Camp here two days," boomed Stanley Dann. "We will rest the stock, make repairs, and scout for this Gulf road. Eric has not found it yet." Leslie named the place Well-spring. It was felicitous, because the splendid volume of water sprang as from a well, deep under the shadow of a bold, dark green foothill. Bill, with Scotty, the other cook, prepared the best meal they could devise, in honor of Beryl Dann's first attendance at supper for many weeks.