Wilderness Trek (1988) Read online

  Flashes and reports came from several points, widely separated.

  "Aw, hell! Our cattle are wakin' up, pard. Heah comes Larry."

  The young drover came tearing up, to haul his mount back onto sliding haunches. "Boys, our mob--is about to--break," he panted.

  "Umpumm, Larry," replied Red. "They're jest oneasy."

  Sterl calculated that a thousand or more cattle were in motion, less than a third of Ormiston's mob. The rumble of hoofs began to diminish in volume as the gunshots became desultory. But the lowing of Dann's mob, the cracking of horns, caused Sterl great concern, in spite of Red's assurance. The center of disturbance appeared to be back along the sector from which Larry had just come.

  "Sterl, I'll go with Larry," said Red, wheeling Jester. "Jest in case. If we don't get back pronto come arunnin'."

  Presently, when he halted King to listen, Sterl found that--the dull trampling from across the flat was dying out, and that the ominous restlessness of Dann's mob was doing likewise. A rapid thud of hoofs proved to be Red, riding back.

  "Lost my matches. Gimme some," said the cowboy, as he reined in beside Sterl. Lighting a cigarette relieved Sterl. "They was movin' out up there, but easy to stop. This mob of Dann's fooled me. They've been so tame, you know, not atall like longhorns, thet I reckoned it'd take a hell of a lot to stampede them. But umpumm!--Say, I'll bet two pesos we'll be interested in what came off over there."

  "Yes, All quiet now, though. And it's daylight."

  At sunrise they rode back to camp. Slyter listened intently to Larry's report, which plainly relieved him.

  They had just finished breakfast when Cedric dashed up to inform Slyter that Dann wanted him and the cowboys at once.

  "What has happened?" queried Slyter.

  "Trouble with the blacks at Ormiston's camp," replied Cedric, then loped away.

  Slyter himself was the only one who showed surprise. Dominated by Stanley Dann, he just could not believe in calamity.

  "That's bad, I wonder who... Boys, come on."

  "Friday, run alonga me," said Sterl to the black.

  At the larger camp. Stanley Dann and Eric, with Cedric and another drover, were mounted, waiting for them. Beryl was watching them with big troubled eyes.

  "Bingham," spoke up the giant, calmly, "Ormiston just sent word that Woolcott has been speared by the blacks."

  "Woolcott! Cedric didn't tell us--I thought--Stanley, this is terrible. When--what?..."

  "No other word. I daresay if Ormiston had wanted us he'd have said so. But by all means I should go."

  "We all should go," rejoined Slyter.

  "Wal, I should smile," drawled Red, in a peculiar tone that only Sterl understood.

  The tall Hathaway, bewhiskered now and no longer florid, met Dann's group as they reined in near the wagons.

  "A terrible tragedy, Stanley," he said, huskily. "Woolcott insisted on doing guard duty, in spite of Ormiston's advice. The blacks attacked at dawn this morning... Killed Woolcott and his horse!"

  "Where is he?" asked Dann.

  Hathaway led them beyond the campfire, to a quartet of men beside a wagon. Ormiston, haggard of face, turned to meet the visitors. Two of the group had shovels, and had evidently just dug a grave.

  "Dann, it's a gruesome business I'd hoped to spare you," said Ormiston, not without harshness. "Woolcott heard the blacks, and he went on guard. I advised him particularly to stay in. But he went--and got killed."

  Woolcott lay limp as a sack, with a spear through his middle. Only the side of his gray visage was exposed, but it was enough to show the convulsions of torture that had attended his death.

  "Where's his horse?" asked Dann.

  "Out there," replied Ormiston, with a motion of his hand toward a low ridge. "We have the saddle and bridle. This won't delay us, Stanley. We'll bury Woolcott, mark his grave, and catch up with you."

  "Bury him without any service?"

  "You needn't wait to do that. If you wish I'll read a Psalm out of his Bible, and bury it with him."

  "I'd like that. We can do no less."

  "Wait, boss," called Sterl, "I want to see just what this black man spear work looks like." He slipped out of his saddle, and motioned Friday to come from behind the horses.

  "Me too," drawled Red, coolly, as he swung his long leg and stepped down.

  Sterl, stepping slowing out from the horses, made it a point to be looking at Ormiston when the drover espied Friday. Evil and forceful as Ormiston undoubtedly was, he was not great. Sterl had seen a hundred outlaws and rustlers who could have hidden what this man failed to hide--a fleeting glimpse of fear.

  Friday stepped close to Woolcott's prostrate body, and with sinewy black hand, wonderful in its familiarity with that aboriginal weapon, laid hold of the spear.

  Ormiston burst out: "All blacks look the same to me!" And with murder in his protruding eyes he pulled a gun. Sterl, ready and quick as light, shot it out of Ormiston's hand.

  The horses, snorting, plunging, kept the riders busy for a moment. Friday backed away. Sterl stepped back a little, smoking gun extended, lining up the shocked Ormiston with his drovers, Bedford and Jack. Red was at Sterl's side. Stanley Dann bellowed an order from behind.

  "Ormiston, you and I will have real trouble over Friday yet," rang out Sterl. The bullet had evidently hit the gun, to send it spinning away. Ormiston held his stung hand with his left.

  "Next time you throw your gun, do it at me," added Sterl, scornfully. "You'd have killed this black man."

  "Yes--I would--and I'll do it--yet," shouted Ormiston, now purple in the face.

  "Ormiston, you're blacker at heart than Friday is outside."

  Stanley urged his big charger near to the belligerents.

  "What revolt is this?" he demanded.

  Sterl explained in few words. Ormiston contended that sight of the black had incited him to frenzy.

  "Let that do," boomed the leader. "Isn't Woolcott's death lesson enough? We must squash this dissension amongs us. Ormiston, I blame you most. Back to camp, all!"

  Dann, with Slyter and his brother Cedric, rode away. "Mosey along, pard," said Red, curtly, "but don't turn yore back."

  Sterl had not taken two backward steps before he bumped into King. The cowboys mounted and soon overtook the long-striding Friday. Slowing down to accommodate the black, they rode a beeline for their own camp.

  "Sorry, boss," said Sterl to Slyter. "I'm always deepening those furrows in your brow. But you must have seen that Ormiston would have shot Friday. Anyway you heard him say so."

  "I heard," declared Slyter. "I tried to convince Stanley that Ormiston has always meant to murder my black."

  Leslie bounced out from somewhere. "Dad! You heard what?" she cried, flashing-eyed and keen, not to be denied.

  "Oh, Lord!" groaned her father.

  "Leslie, put this down in your little book," said Sterl, and he made a concise report of the incident.

  She flamed even more readily than usual. "He would have shot Friday!" Then she swore, the first time Sterl had ever heard her use a word of the profanity so prevalent in camp. When her father looked shocked and helpless, Leslie went on, "The louse! The dirty low-down hombre!"

  "Haw! Haw! Haw!" rang out Red's laugh. "Les, you're shore learning to talk cowboy!"

  "Boss," spoke up Sterl, while he fastened the clinches on his rangy sorrel. "Red and I will start out on the trek. But after Ormiston is on the move, we'll go back there with Friday to look over the ground. Red and I can read tracks. And if it's too much for us, maybe Friday can see something. We'll catch up pronto."

  A few pieces of lumber lay scattered about Woolcott's grave: Sterl and Friday carry stones to cover it. Then they erected a makeshift cross. That done, they set out on foot, leading their horses. Half a mile out on the grassy flat, at the edge of rising, sandy ground, Friday located a dead horse.

  It was a bay, lying on its side, with a spear sticking un high. "Look heah," said Red, presently, pointing to a slash of dri
ed blood running from the ear on the under side of the head.

  The black had pulled out a long spear and was scrutinizing it.

  "Boss," he said to Sterl, "killum horse like white man." And Friday made one of his impressive gestures back toward Woolcott's grave.

  "How, Friday?" queried Sterl.

  The black fitted the bloody spear to his wommera, and made ready as if to throw.

  "No wommera. No black fella spearum white man! No black fella killum horse!"

  "By Gawd!" ejaculated Red, not in horror, but in confirmation of something that had been sensed.

  "How then?" cried Sterl.

  "Spear pushum in white man. Pushum in horse. No black fella do!" And Friday took the long spear, to shove it deliberately into the horse.

  "Heah, help me turn this hoss over," said Red. The three of them managed it, not without dint of effort. Red thrust his bare hand into the bloody ear. Suddenly he grew tense.

  "Shot!" hissed the cowboy. Then again he bend over to move his hand. "Got my finger in a bullet hole. Somebody shoved a gun in this hoss's ear an' shot him! Look heah!" As he pulled out his hand there were black stains merged with blood on his forefinger. "Powder! Burnt powder!"

  Red wiped his hand on the sand and grass, then completed the job with his handkerchief. He stood up, and searching his pocket for tobacco and matches sat down to roll a cigarette.

  Sterl addressed the watchful black. "Friday, look--see tracks--black fella tracks all around?" Sterl himself could not see a single one except Friday's. Naturally there were boot tracks all around, in every sandy spot. Then he sat down heavily.

  "Murder!"

  "Pard, as shore as Gawd made little apples!" replied Red. "Hell, we shouldn't be surprised. We knowed it all the time--only we was afraid to think!"

  Red let out as if in relief a long string of vile names--the worse that the western range afforded.

  "Why--why?" queried Sterl, passionately.

  "What the hell why?" flashed Red, getting up. "It is! We don't care why!"

  "Could we prove murder to those drovers, if we fetched them back here?"

  "Mebbe, if they'd come. But Dann wouldn't come. Pard, I'm afraid he's leanin' to a belief we Yankees air too hardhearted an' suspicious."

  "Red, you're figuring we'd better look out for our own scalps, and let these drovers find things out?"

  "I reckon I am, pard, thought I ain't had time to figger much."

  "Maybe you're right, Red. There's Leslie to think of--and Beryl. And Ormiston's a tiger!"

  "Leslie is yore lookout, pard, an' Beryl is mine."

  Friday interrupted to say: "Boss, no black fella tracks alonga here."

  They followed Friday further into the bush, past dead campfires, merely a few charred sticks crossed, and then to a trampled, blackened, sandy patch where a large fire had been burned. A steer's skull marked the spot where there had been an aboriginal feast. What amazed Sterl was the completeness of it. No hide nor hoofs left!--Only a few bones divested of their marrow! From that spot foot tracks of a horde of natives led on in the direction of the trek.

  Chapter 10

  That day's trek, owing to the larger mob of cattle becoming infused with the excitement which dominated Ormiston's, proved to be the longest so far. At camp, Sterl had little inclination and not much opportunity to add to Slyter's worries by telling him that Woolcott had been murdered. But Slyter confided in Sterl and Red that he had learned from the Danns of Ormiston's claiming Woolcott's fifteen hundred head of cattle for a gambling debt. Sterl was staggered, and the fluent Red for the moment rendered speechless.

  "Hathaway verified it," went on Slyter. "Told me Ormiston, Woolcott, and those drovers Bedford and Jack, gambled every night."

  When Slyter went about his tasks Red came out of his dumb shell. "Pard, thet ain't so. It's another of Ormiston's lies. Hathaway might believe it. He always went to bed with the chickens. For months, almost, either I have seen Ormiston with Beryl, or I have been with Jack an' Bedford. Cairds was never mentioned to me an' you know I had a roll thet would have choked a cow."

  That night Leslie, in picking up a bundle of firewood, neglected to put on her gloves, and was severely bitten by a red-back spider. She made light of it, especially after Friday returned to paste some herb concoction of his own upon the swelling hand. Sterl had found a better remedy for snakebite than whisky. He plied the girl with coffee, and walked her up and down for hours, keeping her awake until she fell asleep in his arms from exhaustion. Then he carried her to the wagon and laid her on her bed.

  Then when they called Red to ride herd, it was to discover that he was ill with chills and fever, the like of which had never before befallen that cowboy. But he refused to stay in bed. By breakfast time, he was so ill he could not sit his horse. Stanley Dann declared that his ailment was intestinal and came from something he had eaten. Red swore and asked for whisky. He traveled that day on the dray, high on top of the great load of flour sacks, where he went to sleep.

  Leslie should not have ridden at all, but neither her father nor Sterl could dissuade her. "Shucks," she said, "I'm all right. I won't give in to thet pesky old red-back!" She was absorbing the cowboy vocabulary.

  Sterl rode close to her that day, during which she fell twice out of her saddle. But she did not lose her sense of humor.

  "Red said I'm gonna be a genuine cowgirl, didn't he?" she said when she slid out of her saddle the second time. "Dog-gone it, Sterl, if I fall off again treat me to some of that--that medicine you gave me back at Purple Land camp."

  Two days of laborious travel followed. Before sunset of the first, the expedition stalled on the banks of a considerable stream with steep banks. Even when the mob, driven across in advance, had trampled out crude roads, it required eight horses to drag each wagon across. Leslie was still too weak to brave the treacherous current and Sterl, mounted on King, carried her across in his arms. Mid-current, she looked up and said softly:

  "I'd like to ride all the rest of way like this."

  "Yeah? Three thousand miles?" responded Sterl. And he registered this little occurrence as one of the dangerous incidents--if not misfortunes--that were multiplying.

  A dry camp that afternoon awakened Sterl anew to the alarming probability that lack of water headed Stanley Dann's list of obstacles to the trek. Friday anticipated a native corroboree that night, and it was forthcoming, with its accompaniment of dingo choruses and dog howls. Dann's order was to let the aborigines alone, unless they stole into camp to attack. Morning disclosed no evidence that the blacks had killed cattle, but Slyter shrewdly declared that their leader could have found out had he put Friday and the cowboys to hunting tracks.

  All day the smoke signals rose far ahead, the sun burned hotter, the tiny flies swarmed invisibly around the riders' and drovers' heads. At dusk flying foxes, like vampire bats, swished and whirred over the camps; opposums and porcupines had to be thrust out of the way. Every piece of firewood hid a horde of ants, and as they crawled frantically away, Bill the cook scooped them back into the fire with a shovel.

  Then there was a large insect which came out of decayed wood--blue-black, over an inch long--which was not a biter like the fierce ants, but decidedly more annoying in the vile odor it gave off when discovered. Snakes, too became more common in this bush. Sterl espied a death adder under his lifted foot and stepped on it before he could jump. After that he and Red did not take off their chaps at the end of the day's trek; and Sterl cut down an extra pair of his for Leslie to wear. The girl's extraordinary delight in them was equaled by the picturesque exaggeration of her charm.

  For weeks after Woolcott's death Ormiston had kept mostly to his camp. He had even somewhat neglected Beryl, a circumstance Red had made the most of. Stanley Dann remarked that Ormiston had taken the Woolcott tragedy very grievously. Dann had been gratified by the drover's throwing his cattle in with the main mob. The strained relation was certainly no worse, if it had not grown better. But Sterl was not deceived by Ormiston.
Red had abandoned his plan of intimacy with Ormiston's drovers. He bided his time. He still clung to his belief that Beryl Dann would--be instrumental in exposing Ormiston in his true colors.

  One night, Red returned to camp rather earlier than usual; and his look prepared Sterl for a disclosure.

  "Pard, I jest happened to heah somethin'," he whispered, impressively, leaning his falcon-shaped red head to Sterl. "I was after a bucket of water for Beryl, kinda under cover of the bank where the brook was clean. Ormiston with Jack an' Bedford came along above. I heahed low voices, kinda sharp, before they got to me. Then right above Ormiston spit out: 'No, I told you. Not till we get to the haidwaters of the Diamantina.'"

  Sterl echoed his last four words. "Red, what do you figure from that?"

  "Wal, it's plain as print so far. Whatever Ormiston has in mind it's to come off thar. I figure that those two hombres want to pull off the deal sooner."

  "You used to have brains. Cain't you help me figgerin' what the hell?"

  "I'll try. Suppose I analyze this. Then you give me your old cowboy American slant."

  "Hop to it, pard."

  "Ormiston wants to be a partner of Stanley Dann's after the trek. Or to get control of a big mob of cattle, and marry Beryl. He is working his deal so that when he threatens to split out from this drive, Dann will give almost anything to keep him. Ormiston's drovers want a showdown for their labors or a speed-up of the break."

  "You ain't calculatin', anythin' atall on our idee thet Woolcott was murdered?"

  "That is a stickler, I admit, but I am trying to find a more credible motive for those other Australians."

  "Pard, listen to a little plain sense from a Texas hombre who's knowed a thousand bad eggs... Ormiston is a drover, mebbe, a cattleman, mebbe. He's after cattle, all he can steal!... It's a cinch he killed Woolcott, or had one of his outfit do it. Woolcott probably bucked. Wanted to go back to Dann. An' he got Woolcott's cattle, didn't he? The gamblin' debt can be discounted. Ormiston is workin' to persuade some of Dann's riders to side with him. I know thet. They jest damn near approached me! Wal, muss thet all up an' figger. Ormiston has control of three thousand haid. He'll get hold of more, by hook or crook. An' he'll split with Dann at the haidwaters of thet river, take Beryl with him by persuasion or force, an' light out for some place he is figgerin' on... Thet, my son, is what Old Dudley Texas says!"