Wilderness Trek (1988) (17 page)

"You were fine, kid," complimented Sterl. "That'll do for you. This hot sun will dry you pronto."

"Plenty smokes, boss," said Friday, who sat in the shade whittling a new boomerang. Sterl saw them far off on the horizon.

"Watchum close, Friday."

This fording supplies and belongings across the Diamantina began as a colorful, noisy, mirthful, splashing procession. But by noontide the labor ceased to be fun. By midafternoon the riders were sagging in their saddles, soaked with sweat and water, dirty, unkempt. The other drays and wagons were not calked; they had to be fully unloaded. That was a harder job. Sunset found the drovers with most of their outfit on the right bank of the river, but half a dozen wagons, with harness and tools, were still left behind.

As the cowboys rode herd that night, big fires burned on the other shore, and hordes of blacks murdered silence with their corroboree over the dead cattle.

"Gosh, what a fiesta, pard," said Red. "If them cannibals don't eat themselves to death they'll foller us till hell freezes over, an' thet ain't gonna be soon in this heah hot country."

With all hands, and the partners doing their share, the toilsome job of crossing was completed by midafternoon. Ormiston, reversing himself, chose to stay on Dann's side of the river. The leader ordered one day's halt in the new camp, to rest and dry things out. He said to Sterl, "Hazelton, I know more about cattle rushes and crossing rivers, thanks to you."

Sterl wondered why Eric Dann did not remember this river, though on his former trek he had undoubtedly crossed it--surely farther up. He strolled out in the open late that day, to take a "look-see," as the Indians used to call it, and stretch his cramped and bruised legs. Across the river he saw hundreds of blacks, like a swarm of ants, noisy and wild.

Sterl was impressed by the river-bottom valley. Despite the heat and the dry season, grass was abundant and luxuriant. Waterfowl swept by in flocks, and the sandbars were dotted with white and blue herons. When he went to bed, which was early after dark, he heard them flying overhead, uttering dismal croaks.

Next day the sky was black with buzzards, flocks of which spiraled down to share the feast with the aborigines. Kangaroos, wallabies, emus, rabbits were more abundant than at any other camp for weeks. They were tame and approached to within a few rods of the wagons. Parrots and cockatoos colored the gum trees along the river-banks.

At this Diamantina camp Leslie noted in her journal, "Flies something terrible!" And so they were. Used as Sterl had gotten to the invisible little demons and the whirling dervishes, here they drove him crazy if he did not cover his face. In the heat, that was vastly uncomfortable. But it was the trekkers' misfortune to fall afoul of a bigger and meaner fly--a bold black green-winged fellow that could bite through shirts. Red had been the first to discover this species, to which Slyter could not give a name. Friday said: "Bite like hellum."

Off again, roughly following the old trail of some former trek up the Diamantina. Travel was slow, but easy. Red had been right in his opinion that the river had gone dry. Two miles above the first camp the trekkers could have crossed without wetting their feet.

Ten days along this river bed of waterholes and dry stretches tallied about a hundred miles, not good going to the cowboys, but satisfactory to their serene leader. The grass did not fail. In some deep cuts verdue of tropical luxuriance marked further advance toward eternal summer. But when the sun grew hot and the myriads of flies appeared, the trek became a matter of grim endurance. Sterl covered his face with his scarf and let King or Sorrel or Duke or Baldy graze along behind the remuda at will. Hours on end without one word spoken! Friday stalking along carrying his weapons, tireless on bare feet, ever watching the telltale smoke signals on the horizon! Red, slumped in his saddle or riding sidewise, smoking innumerable cigarettes, lost in his unthinking enchantment! The wagons rolling along, creeping like white-spotted snakes, far to the fore! The mob of cattle grazing on contentedly! The drovers, lost in habit now, nailed to their saddles, indifferent to leagues and distances!

Sterl marveled at Leslie Slyter. She rode with the drovers all the way. So sun-browned now that the contrast made her hair golden. She was the most wide-awake, though she sometimes took catnaps as they trekked on. How many times Sterl saw her face flash in his direction! Ever she turned to him, to see if he was there, absorbed in her dream.

The long, hot days wore on to the solemn starry nights, packed with dread of the unknown and the possible, separated from unreality and dream by the howls of wild dogs and the strange wailing chant of the aborigines. The waterholes in the Diamantina failed gradually. But the myriads of birds and hordes of beasts multiplied because there were fewer watering places for them. One night, at a camp Leslie had named "Oleander," Sterl strolled with her to the bank of the river, where it was narrow and the bed full of water. When dusk fell and the endless string of kangaroos silhouetted black against the gold of the horizon had passed by, there began a corroboree of the aborigines on the opposite bank. It was the closest these natives had been to a camp. By the light of their bonfires Sterl and Leslie could see the wild ceremony.

The cat-eyed Red came along the bank, walking as easily as if it had been day. He propped down on a log beside them, indulged in a little cowboy persiflage, before he came to the point. "I been spyin' as usual. Hasn't been much good lately, till tonight. But I always keep sayin' it'll come some day. An' we got nothin' but time on our hands. Gosh, Leslie, what date is it, anyhow?"

"My journal says December fourth."

"Jumpin' Jehosaphat!" ejaculated Red. "Near Christmas!"

"Maybe it'll please you to know that this Christmas I can remember last Christmas--and be far happier," said Sterl.

"Please me? Wal! All I can think of now is Gawd bless Leslie!"

"Me! Why should God bless me?" inquired Leslie. Intuitively she divined that she had taken the place of another woman.

Red gave her no satisfaction. Then seriously: "Sterl, I was snoopin' about early after supper, an' I heahed Ormiston talkin' low to Bedford. Near as I can remember heah's their talk word for word. Ormiston first: 'Tom, I tell you I won't go any farther with Dann than the forks of this river.' An' Bedford asked, 'Why not?' An' Ormiston said: 'Because I don't know the country across toward the Warburton River. It's two hundred odd miles from the head of the Diamantina through the mountains to my station. If the rains don't come we'll lose all my cattle.' An' Bedford said: 'Why not go on with Dann till we make sure of Hathaway's mob? An' also till the rains do come?'

"'I'll have his mob an' some of Dann's--you can lay to thet,' says Ormiston.

"'In thet case it's all right. Jack an' Morse have been kickin'. They want to make sure of more cattle. They came in on this because of a stake worthwhile--somethin' thet they could end this bush-rangin' on.' Then Ormiston stopped him for fear somebody was listenin'. He left, an' I seen him later with Beryl. How do you figger it?"

Sterl's speech flowed like running water. "Ormiston and his drovers have been rustling, in a two-bit way, until this Dann trek. Now they're playing for big stakes. Ormiston is the boss. He fooled the Danns. His drovers are all in it, aiming to lead some of Dann's men to their side. Old stuff. You remember how cheap, easygoing cowboys used to fall. How many have we seen hanged? They murdered Woolcott, got his mob. They have Hathaway's, and will do for him, sure as I know rustlers. Ormiston has a range somewhere over the mountains east of the head of the Diamantina. The pot will boil over up at the forks of this river. Ormiston means to get more cattle by hook or crook and then shake us. Damn it, the thing looms bad!"

"Pard, I should snicker to snort. We've never met its equal, let alone its beat. Bet you haven't figgered Beryl. Where's she comin' in?"

"Thunder and blazes! I forgot Beryl,"

"Yeah. But I haven't. An' I say she's the pivot on which this deal turns. Ormiston's outfit haven't that hunch yet, I reckon. But we have."

"You bet. Red, that hombre will persuade Beryl to go with him--or he'll take her anyway."

"Do you reckon he can persuade her?"

"I hate to think so--but I do."

Red's voice sank to a whisper. "Hey--I see someone comin'!" He peered like a nighthawk into the gloom up the riverbank. "Holy Mackeli, talk about the devil! It's Beryl an' Ormiston. Let's hide. Heah, this way!"

In another moment Red had himself and comrades under the bank, where a ledge ran out a few feet, and some long plumed grasses obscured it from sight above.

A rustle of weeds above, a footfall, and then Beryl's rich voice: "Here, Ash, this is far enough. I'd like to hear the corroboree."

"Yes, you like those damned niggers. I smell cigarette smoke! Somebody has been here," came in Ormiston's voice, guarded and low.

"Well, they're gone. And all I smell is cooking meat."

"Hazelton has been here with that damned little baggage," growled Ormiston.

"Hazelton is no good. Like as not he's one of those American gunmen. A killer! Jack saw six notches cut on his revolver. That means the blighter has killed six men, at least. I'd be a fool to provoke him further."

"Indeed you--would be, Ash," she said. "He has made himself valuable. Dad has come to rely upon him."

"The Yankee is a help, I'm bound to admit that. But, Beryl, I can't stand your praising him. I see him watching you. He is as fascinated by your beauty as that redheaded churn of his. Their eyes just gloat over you. Beryl, you are so lovely! I'm mad over you. I love you beyond reason!"

"Oh, Ash--do you, darling?" she murmured. "Ash--you!--must not..." she remonstrated, but it was the remonstrance of love, that invites rather than repels. That next tense moment, with its murmurings, must have been a dreadful ordeal for Red Krehl. Sterl's heart was heavy for his comrade.

"Ash, darling, we came away to talk seriously," said Beryl, evidently regaining composure. "I must not stay much longer. Tell me."

"Yes, we must settle it," he rejoined, in a deep low voice, without a trace of hesitation. "Beryl, I'm leaving this trek at the forks of this river, not many days from here."

"Ashley! Not going?--Oh!"

"No. We can't get along. Your father will never cross the Never-never! He will be lost."

"We dared that risk," replied the girl. "Somehow Father has imbued me with his wonderful faith. We'll win through."

"I doubt it. I almost know it. This interior outback grows impossible west of the Warburton. I'm no pioneer--no empire builder."

"Ash, I promised to marry you. I will. But come with us to the Kimberleys. Make a home there."

"No. You come with me. Stanley Dann will go on that interior trek without his brother and Hathaway and me. Beryl, come!"

"Oh-h Ash! How I would love to! But I will not betray my father. I will go on, even if they all desert him."

"They will, sooner or later."

"Never! Not Hazelton! Not that droll Red Krehl! Not Leslie, or her family. They will go. And I will go, Ash!"

Her voice had begun low and rich with emotion, then gathering power and passion, ended with the ring of a bell.

"But Beryl--you love me!" he cried huskily.

"Yes, I do. I do! But Ash, I beseech you--give up this selfish blind purpose of yours. For my sake, Ash, reconsider!"

"Darling, I will, despite my better judgment," Ormiston made haste to reply. Presently she was whispering brokenly, won over anew, if not to complaisance then surely to belief. They moved away from the log.

Red sat with drooping head. He heaved a long sigh.

"Pard, in the pinch heah she saved me my belief in her honor," he said, his voice trembling.

"She did, Red, she did, and I feel like a coyote--like a low-down greaser, spying on her."

"Me, too. But my hunch was true. Sterl, Leslie, if it wasn't for you both, an' a hellbent somethin', I'd walk right in this heah river!"

But Leslie was in no condition to answer. She clung to Sterl, weeping convulsively.

Chapter
15

On the morning of December twenty-fourth, the day before Christmas, Stanley Dann's trek toiled and limped into camp at the forks of the Daimantina, there to be stranded until after the rainy season.

Owing to waterholes lying in deep cuts almost inaccessible to the cattle, dragging sand and terrific heat, the last fifty miles of that trek turned out to be all but insurmountable. Smoke signals still preceded the drovers and aborigines still followed them.

Dann selected his permanent camp site on the west side of the main river, above the junction of the several branches, which were steep-banked, deep, dry beds of rock and sand, with waterholes dispersed at widely separated points. The heat was fast absorbing the water. Animals and birds ringed the pools in incredible numbers. They would be dry in a few weeks. But below this junction the main waterhole was a mile-long, narrow, partly shaded pool that would last until the next rainy season. Except in sandy patches, grass grew abundantly. Dann was assured of the cardinal necessities for man and beast for as long a spell as they were compelled to wait there.

Dann picked a camp site on the left bank, in a eucalyptus grove, standing far apart in stately aloofness. The pitching of this camp registered for the trekkers an immense relief and joy. Ormiston, however, refused to camp on that side of the river. He drove his cattle and Hathaway's which together constituted a mob of about three thousand head, across the dry stream beds. As a bird flew, the distance between the two camps was scarcely a quarter of a mile.