Wilderness Trek (1988) Page 8

  "That goes for you, Les," he rejoined, heartily. "How prettily you tan!"

  "Flatterer! I've had to ride myself nearly to death to extract that compliment from you. Oh, what a trek! Sterl, you must help me with my journal."

  "Sure will. Let's see." It was then that Sterl discovered they had trekked thirty-one days through these mountain ranges for an aggregate of only one hundred and seventy-eight miles. "Not so good."

  "My journal? You don't help me!"

  "I was referring to our trek, not your journal. It's very neat. Only there's so little. I saw Beryl's journal the other night. It has yours skinned to a frazzle."

  "Yeah? She writes in the wagon. And Red helps her at night. That was another thing which made Ormiston jealous."

  "Well, add a long footnote here. I can remember the important things. Of course you would record your loss of Duchess."

  "Oh, Sterl, that broke my heart."

  "She'll trail us, if she wasn't crippled or stolen by blacks. Put this down. Slyter lost two horses, and some twenty-odd head of cattle. Bad crossing at the ford you called Wattle Rapids. Flooded a wagon there, but no damage. Visited by only few blacks. Growing unfriendly. Mosquitoes terrible at the Forks. Big tree ferns. Grand mountain-ash trees. Bad going last few days. Short treks. Wagons need repairs and grease. Leslie about stripped to rags and lost say five pounds."

  "Umpumm, cowboy! I don't record that!"

  Supper, as usual on short day treks, came early--this time, as had happened often, without Red in attendance. Members of Slyter's group were always too hungry to mind the sameness of fare. Beef, alternated with game, was the prime factor. Damper, tea, dried fruits and beans were the other essentials, and on occasion Bill, the cook, managed some surprising pastry. Cowboys, Sterl realized, drank too much coffee, sometimes ten cups a day. Sterl and Red had learned to like tea, but they confined drinking it to two meals a day.

  "We haven't talked with Stanley for ten days," said Slyter after supper, "Come along with me, Hazelton."

  The Dann camp was bustling. One wagon had been jacked up, while the hubs were being greased; hammers rapped vigorously on another, which had been partly unpacked; tents were in process of erection; a brawny drover was splitting firewood. Red sat on the ground beside a hammock, in which Beryl lay, writing in her journal.

  Dann, the blond, golden-bearded giant, greeted Slyter and Sterl in booming welcome.

  "Heard my order that we hold up here a week?" he queried.

  "Yes. Heald brought it. I'm glad. A good few days will put us right again. Sterl agrees."

  "Just had words with Ormiston. He disagrees. Says one day is rest enough. I told him he had my order. He replied that he'd go on with Woolcott and Hathaway. At that I put my foot down. He left in high dudgeon."

  "Why does he try to block everything?" Sterl queried. "Why? Any fool would know the cattle need rest. Let's ask Red." Sterl called over the happily engaged cowboy, informed him of Ormiston's defection and asked if he could throw any light on it.

  "Boss, I cain't give any reason for Ormiston's angle, except he's a mean cuss."

  "Immaterial to me whether he does or not. He'd surely wait for us to catch up."

  Dann and Slyter withdrew, leaving Red, accompanied by Sterl, to return to Beryl. She received Sterl with a rather distant hauteur. If anything, Beryl had gained on the trek, in a golden tan, in a little weight, and certainly in beauty. Sterl took advantage of the moment to tell her so. Her answering pleasure betrayed the vain jewel of her soul. Even if she hated a man she could not help responding to a tribute to her beauty.

  Sterl returned to Slyter's camp, for he had an engagement with Leslie to climb to the saddle of the ridge and view the country. Letting her carry his rifle, he secured a long stout stick, and they set out. Along their route, knee-high grass had not been trampled, and Sterl kept an eye out for snakes. Presently a movement of grass and a sibilant hiss startled them into jumping back. Then with the long stick Sterl located the snake. Jones had informed Sterl that this species was very poisonous and during the mating season would attack a man.

  "Isn't he pretty? Tan, almost gold, with dark bars. Hasn't got a triangular shaped head as our bad snakes have."

  "Step back, Sterl. Let me shoot his head off," demanded Leslie, who manifestly was not sentimental over snakes.

  "Umpumm. What for? He might be a gentleman like our rattler, who won't strike unless you step on him."

  "This tiger is no gentleman. You're very tenderhearted over snakes, aren't you?" said Leslie, with a subtlety into which Sterl thought he had better not inquire. As they surmounted the ridge, they looked down into the magnificent mountain pass through which they had come. From behind the sun shone golden and red. In places the shining ribbon of stream wound through verdure. On the far flat, flame trees were mounds of burning foliage, and the wedge-shaped sassafras trees glistened as with golden frost. But most striking of all was a waterfall which Sterl had not seen on the way through, a lacy, downward-smoking cascade leaping fall after fall in golden glory from the mountainside.

  "Sterl, not there--here!" cried Leslie, tugging to wheel him around. "That is pretty--reminds me of home. But this purple land we are trekking into..."

  From the height where they stood the glistening, grassy slope with tufts of flowers like bits of fire descended gradually to the camp, where tents and canvas wagon tops shone white, columns of blue smoke curled and great gum trees towered, their smooth trunks opal-hued, up to the immense spread and sweep of hoary branches, their leaves thin glints of green against the golden sky.

  These spreading gums were like pillars of a wide portal opening down into a softly colored vale, from which swells of land, covered with flowering trees, rose and fell away into a plain spotted with flame--trees and wattles, which lured the gaze on over timbered ridges, on and on with dimming gold into the luminous purple that intensified and darkened until it blended with the never ending vastness.

  He became aware that Leslie was pressing close to his side, clinging to him, gazing up with darkly shining eyes.

  "My Australia!" she murmured. "Isn't it glorious? Don't you love it? Aren't you glad you came?"

  "Yes, Leslie--yes," he said, his emotion naturally shifting to the sense of her beauty and nearness.

  "You will never leave Australia?"

  "No child--never," he replied, with sadness in his voice.

  "You are my dearest friend?"

  "I hope so. I'm trying hard to be--your friend."

  "And my big brother?"

  Suddenly there came a convulsion within his breast, a hot rush of blood that swiftly followed his surrender to her sweetness, to her appeal. "Not your big brother, Leslie!" he said, thickly, as he clasped her tight. "You're a woman--sweet. No man could resist... And you torment me." He kissed her passionately, again and again until her cool quivering lips grew hot and responsive--again and again! until she lay relaxed and acquiescent on his breast.

  "My God! Now I've done it," he exclaimed, remorsefully.

  "Sterl!" She drew back to gaze up with wondering eyes and flaming face. Then with a cry she turned and fled down the slope.

  "Cowboy, that's what Australia had done to you," he said and bent to pick up his rifle.

  Chapter 9

  Day after day the great trek crept across the wilderness that Leslie had called the purple land. Day after day the smoke signals of the aborigines arose and drifted away over the horizon. Friday grew mysterious and reticent, answering queries with a puzzling: "Might be." Sterl, grown wise from his long experience with the American Indians, knew better than to question the black about his people.

  Stanley Dann had no fear of blacks or endless trek or flood or heat or drought. As the difficulties imperceptibly increased so did his cheer and courage and faith. On Sundays he held a short religious service which all were importuned to attend. Sterl noted, as the spell of the wilderness worked upon the minds of the trekkers, that the attendance gradually decreased. Faith had not failed Stanley
Dann, but it had lost its hold on the others, who retrograded toward the primitive.

  Sterl saw all this, understood it only vaguely. Ormiston had already succumbed to this backward step in evolution. Red would succumb to it unless a genuine love for Beryl Dann proved too strong for this life in the raw. All the drovers were being affected, and Sterl felt that not many of them would turn out gods.

  Beryl responded slowly but surely to this urge. And in her, its first effect was a growth of her natural instinct for acquisition of admirers. Every night at Dann's camp a half dozen or more young drovers vied with Ormiston and Red for her smiles. Red played his game differently from his rivals. He confined his efforts to serving Beryl, so that the girl seemed to rely upon him while being piqued that he was not at her feet. Ormiston's inordinate jealousy grew.

  Leslie, being the youngest in the trek, and a girl of red blood and spirit, traveled more rapidly than the rest of them in her relegation to the physical. For weeks after that sunset hour in the gateway of the pass, she had avoided being alone with Sterl. But her shyness gradually fell away from her, and as the trek went on through austere days and nights of time and distance, she warmed anew to him.

  But Sterl had never transgressed again, as at that mad and unrestrained sunset climax, though there were times when he desired it almost overwhelmingly. Nevertheless love had come to him once more. Yet he never let himself dwell upon a future. For many of Stanley Dann's troop, and very possibly for him, there would be none.

  "Plenty smoke," said Friday one afternoon when camp had been made on a dry stream bed, with only a few waterholes.

  Sterl and Slyter, together at the campfire when Friday spoke, scanned the horizon where at the moment all was clear.

  "Friday, what you mean?" queried Slyter, anxiously, "We come far." He held up three fingers. "Moons--three moons. Plenty smokes. No black man. All same alonga tomorrow?"

  "Black fella close up. Plenty black fella. Come more. Bimeby no more smokes. Spear cattle--steal!"

  "How long, Friday? When?"

  "Mebbe soon--mebbe bimeby."

  Slyter looked apprehensively at Sterl, and threw up his hands.

  "Let's go tell Stanley."

  They found their leader, as had happened before, patiently listening to Ormiston. Sterl's keen eyes noted a graying of Dann's hair over his temples.

  Slyter broke the news. Dann stroked his golden beard.

  "At last, eh? We are grateful for this long respite," he said, his eyes lighting as if with good news.

  "I asked Friday what to do? He said, 'Watchum close up! Killum!'" concluded Slyter.

  "Well! For a black to advise that!" exclaimed the leader, ponderingly. "But I do not advise bloodshed."

  "I do," declared Ormiston, bluntly. "If we don't, this nigger mob will grow beyond our power to cope with it. They will hang on our trek, spearing cattle at a distance."

  Sterl wondered what was working in this man's mind to influence him thus. But it seemed wise advice. "Boss, I agree with Ormiston," he spoke up.

  "What's your opinion, Slyter?" asked Dann.

  "If the blacks spear our cattle and menace us, then I say kill."

  Dann nodded his huge head in sad realization. "We will take things as they come. Merge all the cattle into one mob..."

  "I told you I'd not agree to that," interrupted Ormiston.

  "Don't regard it as my order. I ask you to help me to that extent," returned the leader, with patient persuasion.

  "Ormiston, listen," interposed Sterl. "I've had to do with a good many cattle drives, trek you call them. After a stampede or a flood or a terrible storm, things that are bound to happen to us, cattle can never be driven separately again."

  "That I do not believe."

  "Yeah? All right," snapped Sterl, "what you believe doesn't count so damn much on this trek!"

  Ormiston gazed away across the purple distance, his square jaw set, his eyes smoldering, his mien one of relentless opposition.

  "Our differences are not the important issue now," he said finally. "That is this danger of blacks." And without looking at his partners he stalked away.

  "Slyter, we'll put double guards on watch tonight. Merge your cattle with my mob," ordered Dann.

  Before dusk fell this order had been carried out. Ormiston's mob, including Woolcott's and Hathaway's grazed across the stream bed a mile distant.

  Supper at Slyter's camp was late that night, and Red Krehl the last rider to come in. He sat cross-legged between Leslie and Sterl. His dry, droll humor was lacking. It gave Sterl concern, but Leslie betrayed no sign that she noticed it. However, after supper, she teased him about Beryl.

  "Les, you're a cold, fishy, soulless girl, no good atall," finally retaliated Red.

  "Fishy? I don't know about that. Sterl, should I box his ears?"

  "Well, fishy is okay if he means angelfish."

  "Red, do you mean I'm an angelfish?"

  "I should snicker I don't. Back in Texas there's a little catfish. And can he sting?"

  "Red, I'd rather have you in a fighting mood. Three times before this you've been the way you are tonight--and something has happened.

  "Wal... Ormiston ordered me out of his camp just before I rode in heah."

  "What for?" asked Sterl, sharply.

  "I ain't shore, Beryl has been kinda sweet to me lately, in front of Ormiston. It ain't foolin' me none. But it's got him. Another thing. Her Dad makes no bones about likin'. me. Ormiston hates thet. I reckon he sees I'm someone to worry about."

  "You are, Red. But I've a hunch your attention to Beryl has kept you from getting a line on Ormiston."

  "Mebbe it has. All the same, shore as you're knee-high to a grasshopper, Beryl will give him away yet, or let out somethin' thet I can savvy."

  "Is Beryl in love with him?" asked Sterl.

  "Hell, yes," replied Red, gloomily.

  "Les, what do you think?"

  "Hell, yes," repeated Leslie, imitating Red's laconic disgust. "Beryl has had a lot of love affairs. But this one is worse."

  "You're both wrong," rejoined Sterl. "Beryl is fascinated by a no-good, snaky man. She's a natural-born flirt. But I think she has depth. Wait till she's had real hell!"

  Friday loomed out of the shadow. He carried his wommera and bundle of long spears. "Plenty black fella close up. Corroboree!"

  "Listen!" cried Leslie.

  On the instant a wild dog howled. It seemed a mournful and monstrous sound, accentuating the white-starred, melancholy night. Then a low, weird chanting of many savage voices, almost drowned by the native dogs baying the dingoes, rose high on the still air into a piercing wail, to die away.

  "Bimeby plenty black fella. Spear cattle--steal ebrytink," volunteered Friday.

  "Will these black men try to kill us?" queried Sterl.

  "Might be, bimeby. Watchum close."

  Slyter came to the fire, holding up a hand for silence. The howling, the barking, the chanting, transcended any wild sound Sterl had ever heard. The staccato concatenated barks of coyotes, the lonely mourn of bloodthirsty wolves, the roo-roo-rooooo of mating buffalo, the stamping, yelling war dance of the Indians--were hardly to be compared to this Australian bushland chant. Sterl entertained a queer thought that the incalculable difference might be cannibalism.

  "Cowboys, how does that strike you?" asked Slyter, grimly. "Daughter, would you like to be home again? Mum has her hands clapped over her ears."

  The girl gave him a wan, brave smile. "No. We're on the trek. We'll fight."

  "Righto!" ejaculated Slyter. "Les, you have a rifle. If you see a black man spear a horse--kill him!"

  It struck Sterl significantly that Slyter thought of his horses, not his cattle.

  "Get some sleep," he concluded. "Don't risk your tent tonight. Black men seldom or ever attack before dawn, but sleep under your wagon."

  The cowboys piled packs and bundles outside of the wheels of their wagon. Then they crept under to stretch out on their blankets without removing coat or b
oots. Friday lay just outside of the wheels. When they rolled out, dressed to ride, rifles in hand, Larry was saddling horses, Drake and his three drovers drinking tea.

  "How was the guard?" asked Sterl.

  "Mob quiet. Horses resting. No sign of blacks. But we heard them on and off. Look sharp just before and at daylight."

  "Boys," said Larry, when they reached the herd, "I'll drove the far end."

  Sterl passed Dann's horses, patrolled by one rider, and a mile further down came upon another horseman, who turned out to be Cedric. He had been on guard for an hour and reported all well. Sterl rode back.

  At intervals low blasts of the corroboree waved out across the plain. The campfires of the aborigines still glimmered. Dogs and dingoes had ceased their howling. Sterl recalled the first time he had stood guard on the Texas range when Comanches were expected to raid. They had done it, too, matchless and fleet riders, swooping down upon the remuda to stampede it and drive off the horses, leaving one dead Indian on the ground, victim of his rifle. He was sixteen years old then and that was his first blood spilling.

  Every half hour of thereabouts he rode back to have a word with Red. The only time he accosted Friday the black held up his hand, "Bimeby!"

  Now the chanting of the aborigines ceased, and the corroboree fires glimmered fainter and fainter to die out. The cattle slept. The silence seemed uncanny. The first streaks of gray in the east heralded a rumble of hoofs, like distant thunder. The mob of cattle belonging to Ormiston and his companions was on the run. Sterl galloped over to Red. Friday joined them.

  "They're runnin', pard, but not stampeded," said Red, his lean head bent, his ear to the east.

  "Slowing down, Red," returned Sterl, straining his hearing, "Friday, what happen alonga there?"

  "Black fella spearum cattle," was the reply.

  "Not so bad, thet. But a stampede of this unholy mob would be orful," declared Red. "Listen, Sterl, they're rollin' again, back the other way."

  "Saw a gun flash!" cried Sterl, and then a dull report reached them.

  "Wal, the ball's opened," said Red, coolly. "Take yore pardners."