Wilderness Trek (1988) Page 21

  She broke down then. Leslie led her away from the stunned group of men. Eric Dann slunk away under the trees. Of all present, Sterl thought, his friend Red seemed the most staggered by Beryl's revelation. It was not in his case, as in that of the others, that Beryl's participation in Ormiston's plot had come to light. Red had known that! He had kept it secret even from Sterl. But now he knew why the girl had betrayed him and her father and all of them.

  After what seemed a long silence Stanley Dann said: "Men, we are being sorely tried, but let us not lose our faith in God and in each other. Krehl, I thank you, but I disagree, with my daughter. She is worth--all she declared she was not."

  "Wal, boss, if you ask me, I kinda reckon so myself," returned Red Krehl, ponderingly.

  "All of you back to work. We are goin' through!" boomed the leader.

  Sterl bent for his shovel and whispered to his friend: "Pard, now my job is to keep you from being shot in the back!"

  Before many more hours passed that break in their toil, with its resurgence of lulled passions, was forgotten in sheer physical exhaustion.

  But at last, and when the trekkers were sunk to their lowest ebb, Friday found a gateway for them out into the open. They faced vastly different country from that which Eric Dann had pictured to them. A few miles below a gentle green slope, out upon a velvet green down, Stanley Dann's mob of cattle grazed in a great colorful patch. Beyond them spread endless other downs dotted with clumps of pandanuses and palms, streaked by black fringes of trees, bisected from league to league by shining threads of water, and bordered by limitless purple horizon. They were all so overjoyed to get clear of that awful jungle that no one of them asked audibly where they were. Only Sterl thought of what Eric Dann had sworn--that the country beyond the range would be the same as that at the headwaters of the Diamantina.

  Chapter 24

  Days of leisurely and comfortable going now, over level downs with grass and water abundant but firewood so scarce that whenever they found any deadwood Bill collected it for the next camp. But one jarring fact--in a week's trekking they reached a point opposite the flattening out of that range whose crossing had cost them so many supplies, so much toil and life. By a week's detour, they could have gone round it. Six weeks more than lost!

  Late one afternoon, the black, ragged line that had gradually grown for days turned out to be a good-sized river. It flowed north. It presented a problem, not only to cross, but because the water, flowing the wrong way, upset their calculations. The Warburton, for which Dann thought he was trekking, would have flowed due west. According to the leader's rude map, when they crossed it they would be headed north to a point between the Never-never Land and the Gulf and would cross the headwaters of all the streams flowing into the Gulf. At Dann's conference, the first for a long time, Eric Dann asserted positively. "This is the Flinders River. Probably we are two or three hundred miles from the Gulf."

  "Flinders River? Gulf?" echoed Stanley, aghast. "That means salt water, crocodiles and cannibal abo's!"

  "Gosh!" ejaculated Red Krehl. "Boss, of course, hunches mean nothin' atall to you. But let's follow mine an' rustle back onto dry land."

  Any suggestion of the cowboy's was to Eric Dann like a red flag to a bull.

  "Stanley, it's along the fringe of the Never-never that bad blacks are to be encountered," he said, impressively.

  "How do you know that?" demanded the leader intensely.

  "I know it," returned Eric, stubbornly. "What is your objective?"

  "Southeast of Port Darwin," answered the brother, glibly, "there are fertile ranges. We can choose to stop there, if you like, and send in to Darwin for supplies. I think you will decide for this site instead of the Kimberleys."

  "Yes, true enough," mused the leader. "We have that information from more than one reliable source. I could always move on to the Kimberleys. Eric, you have made mistakes--this last one, terrible! But in your heart are you speaking honestly?"

  Before that stern and just leader, the hawk-eyed cowboys, and the dubious Slyter with his drovers, Eric Dann solemnly asserted his truth. What--Sterl wondered--was his game?

  The river, which Leslie called the Muddy, appeared to be fresh water, though it had a weedy taste, and the middle channel had to be swum. Neither accident nor injury marked the crossing of the wagons and the herd, though it took four days of persistent labor.

  Leslie and Beryl, with Friday, had been left for the last. Stanley Dann sent the cowboys Larry and Rollie back for them.

  "Where's a horse for me to ride?" demanded Beryl, as the bedraggled riders waded their horses out to the bank.

  "Boss's order is for us to pack you over," replied Larry, uneasily.

  To Sterl's surprise, and certainly to Red's, Beryl acquiesced without further remark.

  "Red, I'd feel safer with you on Duke. He's so big," said Beryl, casually. "Besides you have carried me already."

  Sterl leaped off to help Beryl up in front of Red. Red put his left arm around her, and Beryl put her right arm around his neck. Anyway Sterl looked at the position it was an embrace, reluctant on Red's part, subtly willing on Beryl's. She laid her head back and looked up at him.

  "Red, it won't take long," said Sterl, in cheery significance. But he did not mean to trip across.

  "I don't care how long it takes--if only..." murmured Beryl, with a hint of her old audacity.

  Red's reaction was as natural as his sincerity was hidden. "Slope along, Duke," he drawled. "Pick out that deep hole, fall in, an' never come up!"

  Red entered the river with Larry close on one side and Rollie on the other. Leslie waited for Sterl, who watched the trio ahead for a moment before he started. Then he became aware of Leslie's poignant joy at sight of Beryl in the cowboy's arms.

  "Oh, Sterl! Isn't love wonderful?" she sighed, dreamily.

  "It must be. I can't speak from personal experience, as evidently you can. But real love must be wonderful."

  "That's true, you devil!" flashed Leslie, disrupted from her sweet trance, and rode ahead of him, splashing the water in great sheets.

  Sterl idled along, reflecting sadly that this little byplay had been the first pleasantry, the first lessening of the raw tension, for many a week.

  Dann's caravan covered in five days some fifty miles of green downs, not one long or short stretch differing noticeably from any other. Its beauty palled, its sameness irritated the nerves; its monotony grew unbearable.

  But on that fifth day darker and apparently, higher ground broke the level horizon. Two more days' travel proved that it consisted of low ridges and round areas covered with dense but scrubby timber. No blue foothills, however, loomed above the wandering black line of scrub. And the day came when Sterl, gazing backward, could no longer see the shadowy, purple ranges. They kept on to the northwest, traveling by compass.

  "Slyter," said Sterl, at Blue Grass camp, "if we are trekking through this country to get to the headwaters of the Warburton--it's all right. But if we're trekking deeper into these downs..."

  "Red says if we follow this four-flusher Eric Dann much farther we'll be lost."

  "We're the same as lost now, Sterl. But I won't nag Stanley any more. He's set. We're going through, he swears. Says to remember the bad times before--how we always came out."

  Days and days and days! And dark cool dewy nights, when the stars blazed white, the bitterns boomed from the reed-bordered lakes and streams, and the owls hooted dismally in the pandanus scrub! The moon soared in the sky, blanching the endless downs. Solitude reigned. Sterl fought a feeling that they had reached the end of the world. Insupportably slowly the trek went on into this forbidding land of grass.

  They came at length into a stranger, blacker, wilder country.

  The dense growth of bush denoted a river--a river somewhere beyond the dark fringe of giant ash trees and bloodwoods and enormous trees with multiple trunks grotesque and gnarled. They camped where a huge wide-spreading banyan afforded a thick green canopy for the whole caravan. A
boiling spring of sweet water ran away from the bank of bushland, forming a little stream that meandered away toward a pale lake, black and white with waterfowl. Kookaburras flew under the trees, perched on branches to watch the intruders, but they were silent. And that strange feature alone affected the morbid trekkers. The sun slanted in what appeared the wrong direction. Sterl was completely turned around. Red wearily said he did not give a damn and that he wished what was going to happen would come pronto.

  Friday appeared at suppertime. There was that in his mien to induce awe. All the trekkers mutely interrogated him; then the leader asked, "What ho, Friday?"

  "Plenty bad black fella along dere. Big ribber. Plenty croc. Plenty salt."

  They were crushed. Stanley Dann sat with his elbows on his knees, his broad hands over his golden beard. The corded veins stood out upon his bronzed brow.

  "Lost!" he ejaculated, in a hollow voice. "Hundreds of miles out of our way."

  "Salt water!" burst out Slyter, appalled. "It must be the Flinders River," croaked Eric Dann.

  "Wha-at?" roared the giant. "According to you we crossed the Flinders weeks back!"

  "But afterward I remembered it was not. This is the Flinders. Near its source. Once across we will find higher ground."

  He seemed so fired with inspired certainty that most of his listeners, grasping at straws, felt a renewal of hope. But Red and Sterl eyed him with suspicion.

  The sun rose on the wrong side.

  "Spread along the river to find a place to cross," ordered Stanley Dann to his drovers.

  Below camp some distance, Sterl, Red and Larry found an opening in the bush where the mob could be driven to the river, and where a road could be opened for the wagons.

  "Look dere," called Friday, who strode beside Sterl, and he pointed to smoke signals rising beyond the break in the bush. "Imm black fella know."

  They rode through the opening, with Friday in the lead, scaring the tiger snakes out of his path with his long spear, and presently emerged upon the low bank of a wide river. Slopes of yellow mud ran a hundred yards out to meet the turgid channel of about the same width, and the opposite slope ran up to the bush.

  "Tide running out. Swift too," observed Larry.

  "Gosh, you mean this heah is tidewater?" queried Red.

  "It must be. Friday said it was salt water."

  "Friday, go alonga see how deep mud," said Sterl.

  Ankle-deep the black waded some rods out, and then began to sink in deeper and deeper until he was over his knees.

  "Even with the tide in full the mob would have to wade a bit, at least close to shore," observed Larry, seriously. "And the wagons. What a job to cross them here!"

  "Righto. But it can be done," averred Red.

  "We'd cut poles and brush to make a road. Thet channel buffaloes me, though. What say, Sterl?"

  "Boys, without the menace of crocodiles, which Friday mentioned, we'd have a killing job here. Larry, how big do these Gulf crocodiles grow?"

  "Up to twenty-five feet, I've heard. They can break a man's leg with one whack of their tails."

  "Red, how will we get the girls across?"

  "Aw, thet's a slicker. I was thinkin' about it. If we only had a boat! Mebbe we could build a raft. In a pinch we might use the bed of our wagon. But I wonder--should we go across?"

  They rode back to camp. The other drovers who had ranged still farther up the river reported no practical crossing.

  "Boss, there's a ford below. But it looks awful tough," said Sterl.

  "Mr. Dann, cain't we get out of tacklin' this heah river?" queried Red, anxiously.

  "Krehl," returned the chief, patiently, "as we cannot go back we must cross."

  "Hell no! We can go back aways, an' thet'd save an orful job, a lot of cattle, an' somebody's life shore as Gawd made little apples! Dann, yore a cattleman as big as all this heah outdoors. But a dry land drover."

  But Eric Dann's abnormal and malignant obsession again protruded its hydra head.

  "Krehl is afraid," he shouted, hoarsely. "Once and for all, I demand to be heard! No foreigner is going to upset my plans--to make me ridiculous."

  "Brother," rejoined the leader, "I ask you once more--do you know what you're doing when you advise us to cross this river?"

  "Yes, I know. I know too that Krehl is afraid. Ask him yourself. I'll ask him! See here, cowboy, are you man enough to confess the truth--that you are afraid?"

  Red Krehl gave the drover a long, uncomprehending gaze. Dann was indeed a new one for the Texan. Then he spoke: "Hell yes. I shore am afraid of this river, the crocs an' the abo's. But I reckon I oughta be more afraid of you, Mr. Dann. Because you're a queer mixture of fool, liar an' crook."

  Sterl restrained himself until this argument ended, then he addressed the leader.

  "Dann, I want you to know--and to remember--that I strongly advise against the attempt to cross this river here."

  "Sorry, Hazelton. But we cross!"

  But the river and the tide had something to say about that, and when they were right, as near as the drovers thought they could be, then the cattle had the last word. This' mob had been extraordinarily docile and easily managed, as the cowboys knew cattle. Many of the calves and cows that had distinguishing marks or habits that brought them into the daily notice, had become veritable pets. Toward the end of that day, however, they manifested evidences of a contrary disposition. About midafternoon Friday reported that they stopped grazing and became uneasy. Slyter went out to observe for himself. Upon his return he announced: "For some reason or other they dislike this place."

  "Then, we may be in for a night of it. I wouldn't care to try to stop a rush in this bush."

  "Might be smellum crocs," said Friday.

  Flying foxes had appeared during the afternoon, great, wide-winged, grotesque bats, swishing out of the brush over the cattle, and their number increased toward sunset.

  "Shore, it's them dinged bats thet have the herd buffaloed, an' they're gonna get us, too," said Red Krehl.

  Here was one camp where a fire did not flame brightly, cheerily. The wood burned as if it were wet, and the smoke was acrid. Night settled down black, with the stars obscured by the foliage on three sides.

  Supper had been eaten and five drovers had ridden out on guard when all left in camp were startled by a weird, droning sound off in the bush, apparently across the river.

  "Black fella corroboree. Imm no good," said Friday, his long black arm aloft.

  Suddenly--a trampling roar of hoofs. The cowboys were as quick to leap up as Larry and Rollie. Slyter came thudding from his wagon. Eric Dann lifted a pale and haggard face. "A rush!" cried Stanley Dann.

  "Aw, I knowed it," said Red, grimly. "Come, Sterl. Let's rustle our hosses."

  "Wait, you cowboys," ordered Dann. "Some of us must guard camp. Larry, Roland. Call Benson and join the drovers out there."

  Slyter made off with the hurrying drovers, shouting something about his horses. Friday, at the edge of the circle of light, turned to the others and yelled, "Tinkit mob run alonga here!"

  "My God!" boomed Stanley Dann.

  "Stand ready all! If the mob comes this way, take to the trees!"

  The increasing roar, the quaking ground, held all those listeners fraught with suspense and panic for an endless moment.

  "Stampede'll miss us!" yelled Red Krehl. Then Friday stooped to make violent motions with his right arm, indicating that the herd was rushing in the direction of the river. Gun-shots banged faintly above the din.

  "All right! We're safe!" yelled Sterl, and then felt himself sag under the release of tension. It had been a few moments of terrible uncertainty.

  Then a crashing augmented the trampling roar. The stampede, now evidently pointed up the river, had run into the bush. The noise lasted for minutes before it began to lessen in volume.

  "Providence saved us again," rang out Stanley Dann, in immense relief. "But this rush will be bad for the mob."

  "Dog-gone bad for the drovers,
too, I'd say," declared Red.

  "You may well think so. But usually a mob does not rush long. I am hopeful."

  "They might stampede into the river," interposed Sterl.

  Eric Dann sat down again and bent his gaze upon the ruddy fire embers. It was necessary to sit close to the heat and smoke to be even reasonably safe from mosquitoes. Eric Dann, however, sat back in the shadow. Not improbably he had too much on his mind to feel bites. Presently Slyter returned to camp.

  "Horses all right," he was saying to Dann as they approached the fire. "The rush was bad. But half the mob were not affected."

  "That was strange. Usually, cattle follow the leaders, like sheep. Uncanny sort of a place."

  "Righto. I jolly well wish we were out of it. Hello, Mum. You and Les should be in bed."

  "I see ourselves, with the mob threatening to run us down. And Stanley calling us to climb trees!" retorted his good wife. "But we'll go now."

  "Beryl, that would be a good idea for you," said her father.

  "I'm afraid to go to bed," replied the girl, petulantly.

  "Me too," added Leslie. "These sneaky, furry bats give me the creeps. I just found one in our wagon. Ugh!"

  "Well, as long as Sterl and Red have to sit up, I suppose it's all right for you girls. But it's not a very cheerful place for courting."

  Beryl let out a scornful little laugh. "Courting! Whom on earth with?"

  "Sometime back it was royalty condescending. Now it's how the mighty have fallen!" returned Mrs. Slyter, subtly, and left them.

  "Leslie, whatever did your mother mean by that cryptic speech?" asked Beryl, annoyed.

  "Oh, Mum's got softening of the brain," returned Leslie, and she dropped down on the log very close to Sterl. Red, who sat across the fire from them, looked up at Beryl, who was standing.

  "Say, all you women have softenin' of the brain," he drawled.