Wilderness Trek (1988) (20 page)

Sterl wondered if the leader was breaking. But that very night, when Ormiston, who had not attended the funeral, presented himself at Dann's camp, professing grief for the loss of his friend, the leader delivered himself of a significant speech.

"Ormiston," he boomed in his sonorous voice, "you need not demean yourself to tell me that you won Hathaway's cattle at cards, or that he otherwise owed you money."

That staggered the bushranger for a moment, perhaps because both the cowboys and Beryl were present. His dark gaze, scarcely veiling malignance, would have warned a man less noble than Stanley Dann. He dropped his head and went his way.

"Dad!" exclaimed Beryl, petulantly, "Anyone would think you doubted Hathaway owed Ash money. I knew it ages ago."

"Yes, daughter, anyone who hadn't a mind would think that," returned her father, and left her. The cowboy sat staring into the fire, enduring its smoke to insure a relief from the pest of mosquitoes that had been recently added to the tribulations of the forks.

Sterl revolved Dann's caustic speech in his mind. Their leader was not so guileless after all. He was merely greater than most men! When would this giant stamp upon the viper?

Sometime during that night Sterl opened his eyes, wide awake instantly. It was pitch dark, stifling hot, still as the grave, yet in a flash his consciousness told him that he had been awakened by something unusual. Despite the heat and his own burning sweat, a queer little chill ran over him.

Suddenly the painful silence broke in a long low rolling rumble. Thunder! Was he dreaming? It sounded again, like the distant roar of stampeding buffalo. Yes, it was thunder!

Sterl sat up. His heart thumped audibly. He had a dry mouth and a constriction in his throat.

"Red--Red!" he panted, huskily.

"Hell, pard. I heahed it!"

There came Friday's voice.

"Boss, bimeby rain!"

They pulled on their boots, crawled from under their mosquito nets, and out of the tent. There was starlight enough to see Friday's tall black image, the pale wagons, the spectral trees. The air was sultry, oppressive, heavy, yet strangely different. Then a flare of lightning ran along the eastern horizon. How exceedingly beautiful, beneficent, overwhelming! With bated breath Sterl waited for the thunder, to assure himself, to enable him to judge how far distant. Would it never come? That storm was far away.

"How far--when?" Sterl asked Friday. "Rain mebbe soon--mebbe no!"

Slyter came stamping from the direction of his wagon. Leslie's rich, glad voice rang out. Stanley Dann boomed to his brother. The drovers were calling one to another. Across the river lights flashed at Ormiston's camp. They had all heard. They were all astir.

Slyter's thought was for his horses. Dann boomed to his drovers that thunder and lightning, after so long a dry spell, might stampede the mob. In short order all were mounted and on guard.

But that storm passed by to the southward. Soon, however, the disappointed trekkers thrilled to more thunder. In due course that storm, too, passed by the forks, but closer, heavier, longer.

But just the same the sun rose fiery red--molton steel. The birds and wild fowl came in to water. The slopes and flats were black with kangaroos and wallabies. Again the heat blazed down; again the internal horde of whirling, humming, biting, bloodsucking flies settled down around man and beast.

After breakfast Stanley Dann called all his trekkers to his camp.

"Friends, countrymen, my brother, my daughter," he boomed, "my prayers have been answered. The wet season is at hand. We are saved, and we lift up our voices in thanksgiving to Him, in Whom we have never lost faith. When the rains cease, or when it has rained enough to fill the rivers and creeks, we shall proceed on our trek. But with this change: we will go by the Gulf route, and on to Darwin, and from there to the Kimberleys. A year longer--but that is better than to divide our party, our cattle, our strength, our harmony. Ormiston, you who have been even more stubborn than my brother in refusal to cross the Never-never, you can rejoice now that I have changed my mind."

A loud hurrah from a half dozen lusty-throated drovers broke up the silence following Dann's address. The leader waited, naturally anticipating a response from Ormiston. But none came. The drover turned away his dark face. Beryl dropped her head as if stupefied and made for her wagon. Eric Dann, however, received the news with a blank visage, then a gradually breaking expression which Sterl interposed as consternation.

Leslie, in the stress of the hour, forgot the estrangement she had caused between herself and Sterl and met him with eyes darkly excited, to grasp his arm with the old familiar intimacy.

"Oh, Sterl! I'm glad--glad in a way. But I did want to cross the Never-never. Didn't you?"

The answer that sprang to Sterl's lips was both cruel and insulting, but somehow he could not hold back the words: "Yes," he said caustically, "I sure hate the idea of having to spend a year longer in the society of two shallow, mindless girls like you and Beryl."

Her face burned red, her eyes blazed, and there was little doubt that but for Red's intervention she would have struck him. He went on his way, deeply disturbed by the encounter. Red caught up with him.

"Say, pard, the kid would have smacked the daylights out of you but for me," he said.

"That didn't escape me, Red."

"I left her cryin'. That was a mean kind of speech you gave her, Sterl."

"Agree with you," Sterl snapped. Then after a pause, "Did you look at Beryl?"

"Shore. Beryl was surprised. Mebbe she's not so strong for them noble idees of bein' true to her Dad. Mebbe she's been talked into elopin' with Ormiston."

"Ah, I had that thought, too. I hoped I was wrong. Red, Eric Dann was sunk at his brother's decision. Sunk!"

"He oughta be overjoyed. If he ain't--why ain't he? He always struck me as kinda phony--weak or somethin'. Gosh, ain't it hot again? Thet false alarm last night made us expect this gosh-awful sun wouldn't shine no more."

"But the air feels different."

There was an infinitesimal humidity in the atmosphere that morning. That afternoon white clouds, like ships at sea, sailed over the ranges to the northeast. They were good to see. Before they crossed the zenith the heat had dissipated them. The sunset was ruddy, dusky, smoky. The cattle lowed. There was an uneasy activity among the birds and kangaroos. Friday talked to the old men among the aborigines, and returned uncommunicative.

After supper, Sterl was reading by firelight when Red nudged him. In the gloaming distance--Ormiston and Beryl!

"Watch awhile, pard. It won't be long now!" said Red, getting up to glide off like an Indian.

Out of the corner of his eve Sterl watched Leslie, and knew she would approach him. At last she did.

"Red has followed them--Ormiston and Beryl. What's he going to do? Kill that blighter?"

Sterl did not answer.

"Eric Dann has got the willies, whatever Red means by them," went on Leslie, restlessly, edging closer. "And he was drinking whisky. In this heat!"

"How do you know?"

"I saw him. I smelled it. Sterl, the rains will come?"

"Friday says bimeby. Mebbe soon. Mebbe no."

"I thought I'd die last night, hoping, waiting. It'll never rain. We'll all dry up and blow away."

Leslie came closer, and suddenly, desperate, sat down beside Sterl.

"You hateful, callous, unforgiving cowboy!" she whispered, huskily.

"Leslie, how very unflattering!" he rejoined, mildly.

"I hate you!" she burst out.

"That is only natural, Leslie. Your are a headstrong child."

"Headstrong, yes, but I'm not even a girl any more. I'm old. I'll be like these gins, presently."

"Very well, then, you're old. What of it?"

"Oh, I don't care. Nobody cares. You don't. I--I wish I'd thrown myself away on Ormiston."

"Yeah? Is it too late?"

"Don't be a damn fool," she flashed. "It's bad enough for you to be a monster of indifference. A man of rock! I'm sick. I'm wild. I'm scared. I'm full of--of--"

"You must be full of tea, darling," interposed Sterl, lightly.

"Sterl Hazelton, don't you dare call me that--that--when you're making fun of me. I'm so miserable. And it's not all about myself."

"Who then?"

"Beryl. She's strange. She was lovely to me for awhile. Now she's changed. She's--numb. Sterl, you must do something, or she'll go away with him!"

"Les, hadn't you better go to bed?" he queried, gently.

"Yes. I'm weak as a cat and wet as water. But before I go I want to tell you something I heard Mum say to Dad. Mum said: 'I see Hazelton doesn't go to the lubras any more.' And Dad replied: 'I hadn't noticed. But it's none of your business, woman.' Then Mum snapped: 'Bingham Slyter, I didn't hold it against Sterl. I'd do it myself, if I were a man! In this horrible hole, where God only knows what keeps us from going mad!'

"Well, well!" ejaculated Sterl, taken aback, and flustered. "Then what did your dad say?"

"He swore terribly at Mum."

Sterl relaxed into the flimsy protection of silence. All these good people might be forgiven for anything. It was a diabolical maelstrom--this trek.

"That--distressed me--Sterl," went on Leslie, falteringly. "I'm as crazy as Mum, or any of them. I--I lied when I said I hated you. It hurt me that about you--and the lubras. But I forgive you. I--I don't care. There! I've told you. Maybe now I can sleep."

She ran off sobbing. It was well, he reflected, that she did. A kind word, a tender touch from him at that crucial moment would have brought the distracted girl into his arms. There could never be anything between them. He could keep the secret that had made him a man without a country.

Sterl sat there a long time. The fire died down and Friday crossed a couple of sticks over the ashes. Mosquitoes began to snarl. Red returned, dragged his feet, his gait like that of a whipped cur. A furious flame of passion waved over Sterl. That this cowboy, as keen as flint, a man who had laughed and drawled in the very face of death--that he should crawl back to the firelight, ashamed and abased, crushed at the weakness or perfidy of a girl, was too revolting to withstand. Sterl leaped up muttering, "I won't endure it!" Then a deep low roll of thunder brought him to himself.

Chapter
17

Thunder! Deep, detonating, long-rolling! Krehl approached the burned-out campfire, his head lifting like that of a listening deer. Again the heart-shaking rumble!

"You heah, pard?" he queried.

"You bet. Deeper, heavier tonight, Red."

Friday loomed out of nowhere, soft-stepping, black as the night. He replenished the fire with two sticks laid crosswise, squatted down, rested his weapons, and became a statue like black marble. Friday could sleep in any position, at any time. Sterl had caught him asleep standing on one leg, like a sandhill crane.

Back inside the tent, pulling off his boots, Sterl said, "What kicked you in the middle, pard?"

Red heaved a sigh. "Somethin' wuss tonight, Sterl. I had my gun out to kill Ormiston when that first clap of thunder fetched me to my senses."

Sterl cursed his friend lustily. It silenced Red and relieved his own overwrought feelings. Then he stretched out on the hot blankets to rest if not to sleep. As on the night before, this thundering forerunner of the season's storms passed by the forks, booming on, rolling on to rumble and mutter and die away in the distance. Day broke. And when the sun rose, fire again possessed the sky and earth.

At breakfast Larry told how three thunderstorms had passed by about midnight; the last had gone to the west of the forks.

"We'll get socked right in the eye tonight," he said, cheerfully.

"Folks, am I gettin' balmy or is it hot sooner an' wusser than yestiddy mawnin'?" inquired Red.

Slyter interposed to inform them that the last day of a hot spell was the hottest. The temperature this day would top one hundred and thirty degrees. If the forks had been a +dusty place, with hot gales blowing, life would have been impossible.

"As long as your face is wet, you're all right," he said. "But if it gets dry and hot, look out. Keep in the shade with a pail of water and bathe your head."

When Sterl followed Red to their tent, Friday pointed to Eric Dann crossing the main fork of the dry river bed toward Ormiston's camp. Sterl got his field glass from under a flap of the tent.

"From what I heard last night," said Red. "He's carryin' a message from the big boss. He's gonna persuade Ormiston to drive his herd back on this side, before the river rises. Haw! Haw! Like hell--"

"Here by this log," interrupted Sterl. "Nobody can see us." He adjusted the glass. At first glance he saw that Ormiston's camp was a busy place considering the torrid heat. Drovers naked to the waist were carrying things from one wagon to another. Ormiston paced under a shelter of palm and pandanus leaves. His right-hand man, Bedford, sat on the ground mending harness. They saw Eric Dann plodding up the sand of the river slope, and their remarks must surely have fitted their malevolent looks. But in a moment more the drover was again the smiling Ormiston, greeting his visitor agreeably. They talked, and Sterl did not need to hear them to know that Eric Dannn ever delivered his brother's message.