Wilderness Trek (1988) Read online

  Friday advanced to meet them. Sterl heard his voice, as well as low replies. But sign language predominated in that brief conference. The black came running back.

  "Black fella starbbin deff," he announced. "Plenty sit down die. Tinkit good feedum."

  "Oh, good indeed, Friday," boomed Dann, gladly. "Go tell them white men friends."

  "By jove!" ejaculated Slyter. "Poor starved wretches! We have crippled cattle that it will be just as well to slaughter."

  Benson had butchered a steer that day, only a haunch had been brought to camp. The rest hung on a branch of a tree a little way from camp down the river course. Head, entrails, hide and legs still lay on the rocks, ready to be burned or buried. Dann instructed Friday to lead the aborigines to the meat. They gave the camp a wide, fearful berth. Slyter brought a small bag of salt. Larry and Rollie built a line of fires. Sterl and Red, with the girls, went close enough to see distinctly. The abo's watched the drovers with ravenous eyes. Larry pointed to a knife and cleaver on a log. All of them expected a corroboree. But this tribe of abo's had passed beyond ceremony. They did not, however, act like a pack of wolves. One tall black, possibly a leader, began to hack up the beef into pieces and pass them out. The abo's sat down to devour the beef, raw. When presently the blacks attacked the entrails, Beryl and Leslie fled.

  When darkness fell the little campfires flickered under the trees, and dark forms crossed them, but there was no sound, no chant. Next day discovered the fact that the abo's had devoured the entire carcass, and lay around under the trees asleep. More abo's arrived that morning as famished as the first ones.

  Friday had some information to impart that night. These aborigines had for two years of drought been a vanishing race. The birds and beasts, the snakes and lizards, had all departed beyond the hills to a lake where this weak tribe dared not go because they would be eaten by giant men of their own color. Friday said that the old abo's expected the rains to come after a season of wind and dust storms.

  The drovers took that last information with dismay, and appealed to their black man for some grain of hope.

  "Blow dust like hellum bimeby!" he ejaculated, solemnly.

  Days passed, growing uncomfortably hot during the noon hours, when the trekkers kept to their shelters.

  The aborigines turned out to be good people. Day after day the men went out to hunt game, and the gins to dig weeds and roots. Dann supplied them with meat and the scraps from the camp table. Presently it became manifest they they had recovered and were faring well. The suspicion of the drovers that they might reward good deeds with evil thefts had so far been wholly unjustified. They never came into the encampment.

  One night the sharp-eyed Leslie called attention to a dim circle around the moon. Next morning the sun arose overcast, with a peculiar red haze.

  A light wind, the very first at that camp which had been named Rock Pools by Leslie, sprang up to fan the hot faces of the anxious watchers, and presently came laden with fine invisible particles and a dry, pungent odor of dust.

  Chapter 29

  "Any of you folks ever been in a dust or sandstorm?" asked Red Krehl, at breakfast.

  The general experience in that line had been negative, and information meager. "Bushwhackers have told me that dust storms in the outback were uncomfortable," vouchsafed Slyter.

  "Wal, I'd say they'd be hell on wheels. This heah country is open, flat an' dry for a thousand miles."

  "Are they frequent on your western ranges?" queried Dann.

  From the cowboys there followed a long dissertation, with anecdotes, on the dust and sandstorms which, in season, were the bane of cattle drives in their own American Southwest.

  "Boys, I've never heard that we had anything similar to your storms here in Australia," said Dann, when they had finished.

  "Wal, boss, I'll bet you two-bits--one bob--you have wuss than ours," drawled Red.

  "Very well. We are forewarned. By all means let us fortify ourselves. We have already roofed the rock pool. What else?"

  Without more ado Sterl and Red put into execution a plan they had previously decided upon. They emptied their tent and repitched it on the lee side of Slyter's big wagon. Then while they were covering the wheels as a windbreak, Beryl and Leslie approached, very curious.

  "Red, why this noble look on your sweaty brow?" asked Beryl.

  "Don't be funny, Beryl Dann. This heah is one hell of a sacrifice. Dig up all yore belongin's an' yore beds, an' put them in this tent."

  "Why?" queried Beryl, incredulously.

  "'Cause you're gonna bunk in heah an' stay in heah till this comin' dust storm is over."

  "Yeah? Who says so?"

  "I do. An', young woman, when I'm mad I'm quite capable of usin' force."

  "I'll just love that. But it's one of your bluffs."

  Beryl stood before Red in her slim boy's garb, hands on her hips, her fair head to one side, her purple eyes full of defiance and something else, fascinating as it was unfathomable.

  "I'll muss yore nice clothes all up," insisted Red. "But they gotta go in this tent an' so do you."

  "Red Krehl, you are a tyrant. I'm trained to be meek and submissive, but I'm not your slave yet!"

  "You bet you're not an' you never will be," said Red, hot instead of cool. "You meek an' submissive?--My Gawd!"

  "Red, I could be both," she returned, sweetly.

  "Yeah? Wal, it jest wouldn't be natural. Beryl, listen heah." Red evidently had reacted to this situation with an inspiration. "I'm doin' this for yore sake. Yore face, Beryl--thet lovely gold skin of yores, smooth as satin, an' jest lovely. A dry dust storm will shrivel it up into wrinkles! You girls will have to stay in heah while the dust blows. All day long! At night it usually quiets down--at least where I come from... Please now, Beryl."

  "All for my good looks!" murmured Beryl, with great, dubious eyes upon him. "Red, I'm afraid I don't care so much about them as I used to."

  "But I care," rejoined Red.

  "Then I'll obey you," she said. "You are very sweet to me. And I'm a cat!"

  The cowboys helped the girls move their beds, blankets, and heavy pieces into the tent. For their own protection, they packed their belongings under the wagon, then folded and tied canvas all around it, and weighted down the edges. They advised the drovers to do likewise which advice was followed. Sterl, going to the rock pool for water, saw that the abo's were erecting little windbreaks and shelters.

  There seemed to be fine invisible fire embers in a wind that had perceptibly strengthened. Transparent smoke appeared to be rising up over the sun. A dry, acrid odor, a fragrance of eucalyptus and a pungence of dust, seemed to stick in the nostrils.

  "There she comes, pard, rollin' along," drawled the Texan, pointing northeast, over the low ground where the bleached stream bed meandered.

  At first, Sterl saw a rolling, tumbling, mushrooming cloud, rather white than gray in color, moving toward them over the land. With incredible speed it blotted out the sun, spread gloom over the earth, bore down in convolutions. Like smoke expelled with tremendous force the front bellied and bulged and billowed, whirling upon itself and threw out great rounded masses of white streaked by yellow, like colossal roses.

  They ran back to camp, aware of thick streams of dust racing ahead of them. They wet two sheets and fastened one over the door of the girls' tent.

  "Air you in there, girls?" shouted Red. "Yes, our lords and masters, we're here. What's that roar?" replied Beryl.

  "It's a storm, an' a humdinger. Don't forget when the dust seeps in bad to breathe through wet silk handkerchiefs. If you haven't handkerchiefs use some of them folderol silk things of Beryl's thet I seen once."

  "Well! You hear that, Leslie? Red Krehl, I'll wager you have seen a good deal that you shouldn't have."

  "Shore, Beryl. Turrible bad for me, too. Adios now, for I have no idee how long."

  Sterl's last glimpse, as he crawled under the wagon, was the stiated, bulging front of the dust cloud, almost upon them.
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  "And now to wait it out," he said, with a sigh as he lay down on his bed. "We have a lot to be thankful for. Suppose we were out in it?"

  "Suppose thet mob rushes? There wouldn't be no sense in goin' out to stop them."

  They settled down to endure. It was pretty hot inside. After awhile invisible dust penetrated the pores and cracks in the canvas. Red had covered his face with a wet scarf, and Sterl followed suit. After sunset the wind lulled. The cowboys went out. An opaque gloom cloaked the scene. The dust was settling. The drovers were astir; the Slyters getting supper.

  By evening the air had cleared a good deal and cooled off. After supper, Sterl and Red went out with the drovers to look for the horses and cattle. They had not strayed, but Dann ordered guard duty that night in three shifts. When they returned, Friday sat by the fire with a meat bone in one hand and a piece of damper in the other.

  "How long storm last?" asked Red.

  "Old black fella say bery long."

  "Friday, I wish the hell you'd be wrong once in awhile," complained Red.

  "Bimeby," said the black.

  Sterl kept a smooth-barked piece of eucalyptus in his tent, and for every day that the dust blew and the heat grew more intense he cut a notch. And then one day he forgot, and another he did not care, and after that he thought it was no use to keep track of anything because everybody was going to be smothered.

  Yet they still carried on. Just when one of the trekkers was going to give up trying to breathe the wind would lull for a night. Every morsel they ate gritted on the teeth. The drovers nightly circled the mob and horses; and butchered a bullock now and then for themselves and the abo's. Fortunately their drinking water remained pure and cool, which was the one factor that kept them from utter despair.

  Leslie, being the youngest, and singularly resistant in spirit, stood the ordeal longest before beginning to go downhill. But Beryl seemed to be dying. On clear nights they carried her out of the tent, and laid her on a stretcher. At last only Red could get her to eat. Sterl considered it marvelous that she had not passed away long ago. But how tenaciously she had clung to love and life! Red had become silent, grim, in his grief over Beryl.

  One night, after a scorching day that had been only intermittently windy, the air cleared enough to let a wan spectral moon shine down upon the camp. There was a difference in the atmosphere which Sterl imagined to be only another lying mirage of his brain. Friday pointed up at the strange moon with its almost indistinguishable ring, and said: "Bimeby!"

  In the pale moonlight Beryl lay on her stretcher, a shadow of her old self, her dark little face lighted by luminous lovely eyes that must have seen into the infinite, She was conscious. Dann, in his indestructible faith, knelt beside her to pray. Red sat at her head while the others moved to and fro silently, like ghosts.

  "Red--don't take it--so hard," whispered Beryl, almost inaudibly.

  "Beryl--don't give up--don't fade away!" implored Red, huskily.

  "Red--you'd never--marry me--because of..."

  "No! But not because of thet... I'm not good enough to wipe yore feet!"

  "You are as great--as my Dad."

  Sterl let the weeping Leslie away. He could endure no more himself. Red would keep vigil beside Beryl until she breathed her last. He had no feeling left when he put the clinging Leslie from him and slunk back to his prison under the wagon, to crawl in like an animal that hid in the thicket to die. And he fell asleep.

  He awoke in the night. The moan of wind, the rustle of leaves, the swish of branches were strangely absent. The stillness, the blackness, were like death.

  Then he heard a faint almost imperceptible pattering upon the canvas. Oh! That lying trick of his fantasy! That phantom memory of trail nights on the home ranges, when he lay snug under canvas to hear the patter of sleet, or snow, or rain! He had dreamed of it, here in this accursed Never-never Land!

  But he heard the jingle of spurs outside, and the soft pad of Friday's bare feet.

  "Pard!--Pard! Wake--up!"

  That was Red's voice, broken, sobbing.

  "I'm awake, old-timer," replied Sterl.

  "It's rainin'--pard!--Beryl's gonna live!"

  For nineteen days it rained--at first, steadily. Before half that time was over the dry stream bed was a little river running swiftly. After the steadiest downpour had ceased, the rains continued part of every day and every night. On the morning of the twentieth day since the dust storm, the drovers arose to greet the sun again, and a gloriously changed land.

  "On with the trek!" boomed Stanley Dann.

  He gave the aborigines a bullock, and steel implements that could be spared. When the trek moved out of Rock Pools these black people, no longer scarecrows, lined up stolidly to watch the white men pass out of their lives. But it was impossible not to believe them grateful.

  The grass waved green and abundant, knee-high to a horse; flowers born of the rain bloomed everywhere; gum trees burst into scarlet flame, and the wattles turned gold; kangaroos and emus appeared in troops upon the plain. Water lay in league-wide lakes, with the luxuriant grass standing fresh and succulent out of it. Streams ran bankfull and clear, with flowers and flags bending over the water.

  The Never-never Land stretched out on all sides, boundlessly. It was level brushland, barren in dry seasons, rich now after the rains. Eternal spring might have dwelt there.

  Chapter 30

  Only the black man Friday could tell how the trekkers ever reached the oasis from the camp where Beryl came so near dying in the dust storm and his limited vocabulary did not permit of detailed description.

  "Many moons," repeated the black perplexedly. "Come alonga dere." And he pointed east and drew a line on the ground, very long, very irregular.

  "No black fella, no kangaroo, no goanna. This fella country no good. Plenty sun. Hot like hell. White fella tinkit he die. Boss an' Redhead fightum. Cattle no drink, fall down. Plenty hosses go. White fella sit down. No water. Friday find water. One day two day along dis. Imm waterbag. Go back. Makeum come."

  That was a long dissertation for the black. Sterl pieced it together and filled in the interstices. His mind seemed to be a labyrinthine maze of vague pictures and sensations made up of hot sun and arid wastes, of wheels rolling, rolling, rolling on, of camps all the same, of ghostly mirages, the infernal monotony of distances, and finally fading faces, fading voices, fading images, a horrible burning thirst and a mania for water.

  He had come to his senses in a stream of clear, cool running water. Gray stone ledges towered to the blue sky. There were green grass, full-foliaged trees blossoming gold, and birds in noisy flocks. Once more the melodious cur-ra-wong of the magpie pealed in his dulled ears.

  "God and our black man have delivered us once more. Let us pray instead of think what has passed," said Stanley Dann, through thick, split lips from which the blood ran. All seemed said in that.

  As great a miracle as the lucky star that had guided the trekkers here was their recovery through sweet fresh cool water. Even its music seemed healing. It gurgled and bubbled from under the ledges to unite and form a goodly stream that sang away through the trees to the west. That was the birth of a river which ran toward the Indian Ocean. For Sterl, and surely all of them, it was the rebirth of hope, of life, of the sense of beauty. On the second morning Leslie staggered up to gaze about, thin as a wafer. She cried: "Oh, how lovely! Paradise Oasis!"

  Beryl could not walk unaided, but she shared Leslie's joy. How frail a body now housed this chastened soul! Hammocks were strung for them in the shade, and they lay back on pillows, wide-eyed.

  Wild berries and fruit, fresh meat and fish, bread from the last sack of flour, added their wholesome nourishment to the magic of the sweet crystal water.

  "Let me stay here forever," pleaded Beryl. And Leslie added: "Oh, Sterl, let us never leave!"

  One morning Friday sought out Sterl. "Boss, come alonga me."

  "What see, Friday?" queried Sterl.

  The black tapped his
broad breast with his virile hand. "Black fella tinkit see Kimberleys!"

  "My--God!" gasped Sterl, suddenly pierced through with vibrating thrills. "Take me!"

  They scaled a gray escarpment. Far across a warm and colorful plain an upflung range rolled and billowed along the western horizon.

  Turning toward camp and looking down, Sterl cupped his hands and loosed a stentorian yell that pealed in echo from hill to hill. He waved his sombrero. The girls waved something white in return. Then Sterl ran down the hill, distancing the barefooted black.

  Leslie ran to meet him, her heart in her eyes. But Sterl saved his speech for that gaunt, golden-bearded leader. The moment was so great that he heard his voice as a whisper.

  "Sir--I report--I sighted--the Kimberleys!"

  Ten days down the stream from that unforgettable Paradise Oasis the trek came out of a brushland into more open plains where rocks and trees and washes were remarkable for their scarcity. The trekkers had been reduced to a ration of meat and salt with one cup of tea, and one of stewed fruit each day. They throve and gathered strength upon it, but Sterl felt certain that the reaction came as much from the looming purple range, beckoning them on. Twenty-two hundred strong, the mob had improved since they struck good water, and every day calves were born, as well as colts. No smoke signals on the horizon!

  One day Sterl rested a lame foot by leaving his saddle for Slyter's driver seat. Slyter's good wife lay alseep back under the canvas, her worn face betraying the trouble that her will and spirit had hidden while she was awake. Sterl talked to Slyter about the Kimberleys, the finding of suitable stations, the settling, all of which led up to what was in his mind--the future.