Wilderness Trek (1988) (21 page)

"Lemme have a look, you hawg," spoke up Red. He glued his eyes to the glass and remained rigid for a long time.

"Wal, thet's over, whatever it was," he said, presently. "Dann is comin' back. He's carryin' the world on his shoulders, if I know a sucker when I see one. He doesn't know Ormiston is goin' to double-cross him, any more than does Stanley Dann. Gosh, I can hardly wait to bore thet beady-eyed bastard! There he goes, 'back to thet wagon they're packin'."

His ice-blue eyes glinted as he faced Sterl. "All over but the rain--an' the shootin,' pard," he rang out.

"Well, dammit, suppose we go over there and do the shooting before it rains," snapped Sterl.

"Now! There ain't no good motive yet thet'd go far with--Stanley Dann. We gotta have thet. What we been waitin' for all these months? Use yore haid, pard."

"Red, oughtn't we tell Stanley?"

"Hell no! Not before, an' ruin our chance to bore that hombre. Afterward we won't have to talk. Ormiston will raid the boss's mob an' remuda, shore as yore born."

"Okay then. But where does Beryl come in?"

"Pard, thet stumps me, too. Beryl thinks Ormiston will take the Gulf road, now thet Stanley has given in. But Ormiston isn't takin' it, as we know. An' I'm about shore there's no hope of Ormiston persuadin' Beryl to elope. He ain't the kind of a man who'd risk much for a woman. Shore you've seen how Beryl has failed lately. She'd be a burden. What he wants air hosses an' cattle."

"Red, you're overshooting here," declared Sterl. "Beryl's physical condition wouldn't deter him one single whit, if he wants her. He has to travel with wagons. She can be packed like a bag of flour. If she dies on the way, what the hell?"

"Wal," cut in Red, wearily, "let's wait for the show-down. It's a cinch Ormiston will try to steal some of Dann's hosses an' cattle. Mebbe some of Slyter's too. But if he's as pore a bushranger as he is everythin' else, why, hell, it'll make us laugh!"

Stanley Dann sent orders by Cedric for all to lie quiet that day, protected from the direct rays of the sun. Before that, the cattle had strung out in the shade of the trees along the river-banks. Kangaroos kept to the brush. The whirling hordes of flies were out early, but they soon vanished. The sun was too hot for them. The younger blacks stayed in or by the water; the older ones did not move from their shelters.

Sterl and Red found the inside of the tent unendurable. Almost naked they lay under their wagon on the grass. Friday lay in the shade of a big gum tree. That was the only time Sterl ever saw him incapacitated. He, too, although as perfect an engine to resist the elements as evolution had ever turned out, had to fight for his life.

The sun set at last. That awful odor of the blast furnace closed. In the west colossal thunderhead clouds loomed halfway to the zenith. Low down over the horizon their base was a dusky purple, but as they billowed and mushroomed upward, the darker hues changed to rose and gold, and their rounded tops were pearl white.

Friday appeared stalking under the gum trees. He came directly to them.

"Howdy," he said, using the cowboy greeting Sterl had taught him. And accompanying it was a transfiguration in the black visage that Sterl recognized as Friday's exceedingly rare smile.

"Boss, rain come," he said, as if he were a chief addressing a multitude of aborigines.

"Bimeby?" asked Sterl, huskily.

"Alonga soon night. Rain like hell."

A call to supper disrupted this conversation. While the cowboys forced themselves to partake of the eternal damper, meat and tea, the magnificent panorama of pillared cloud pageant lifted perceptibly higher. The bases closed the gaps between and turned to inky black. The purple deepened and encroached upon the gold, blotting it out until the sculptured, scalloped crowns lost their pearl and white. Slyter heard the good news and ran across the way to tell the Danns. Red whooped and hobbled after him, evidently to inform Beryl.

"I'm going to ride herd tonight," announced Leslie, brightly, approaching Sterl.

Her face showed the havoc of these torrid weeks less than that of anyone else, Sterl observed, but the change was enough to give him a pang.

"Yeah? You look like it," he rejoined, dubiously.

"How do I look?" she retorted, hastily. "Terrible."

"So do you. If I look terrible you should see Beryl! What do you mean by terrible?"

"Eyes hollow, lines you didn't use to have."

"Oh, Sterl! Am I pretty no longer?"

"You couldn't help being pretty, Leslie!" replied Sterl, yielding as always to the appeal which destroyed his relentlessness.

"Then I'm not to ride herd with you tonight?"

"I didn't say so."

"But you're my boss.

"Long ago, Leslie, before this trek had made me old and you a little savage--then I called myself your boss. But no more!"

"What if I am a little savage?" she asked, wistfully.

Red and Slyter returned from the Dann camp, and Slyter said: "Saddle up, all hands. Stanley wants the mob driven into that basin out there, and surrounded."

Sterl went on with Red. The afterglow of sunset shone over the land. The vast mass of merging clouds shut out the northeast. The two seemed to be in conflict.

"I seen Beryl," Red was saying, his voice deep with pain. "She lay on her bed under the wagon. When I called she didn't answer. I stepped up on the wheel, so I could look down at her. I spoke an' she whispered, 'Bury me out on--the lone prairie!' You know I used to sing thet to her--before Ormiston... Sterl, could Beryl Dann look at me like thet, smile like thet, say thet to me if she meant to run off with this black-faced rustler?"

"Red, give me something easy," replied Sterl, grimly, "Back home I'd swear to God she couldn't. But out here, after what we've gone through, I say hell yes, she could! Take your pick."

"Pard, if you was me, would you watch Beryl's wagon tonight, instead of guardin' herd?"

"No!--Red, you might kill Ormiston, and kill him too soon. Let these Danns find out what we know. Then you can break loose an' I'll be with you. Man alive, she can't get away--Ormiston can't get away--not with her or his stolen cattle or his life. If he took Beryl on horseback we'd run him down. Red, old man, come to your senses!"

"Thanks, pard. Reckon I--I was kinda queer. Mebbe the heat--Heah's the hosses."

"What'll you ride?" asked Sterl, as he, looked the remuda over. King whinnied and thudded toward him.

"Leslie's Duke. He's a big water dog. An' mebbe there'll be a flood. Them clouds all same Red River color, pard."

Mounted, the cowboys headed for the grassy basin already half covered with cattle. Slyter, pounding along to join the cowboys, expressed anxiety for his horses. Red said he was sure that they would stand, unless run down by a frightened mob. The peril lay with the cattle.

Stanley Dann rode around the mob, hauling up last where Sterl and Red had been joined by Larry and Roland. "Station yourselves at regular intervals. Concentrate on the river and camp sides," said Dann. "Probably the mob won't rush. If they do, keep out of their way. They won't run far. From the looks of it we are in for a real storm."

"Let's stick pretty close together," suggested Sterl to Red.

"You can't lose me, pard!"

"The air's stirring. Smells dusty!"

"But it's them low clouds thet holds the storm. Gosh, but they're black!"

Then the first deep, detonating thunder rolled toward the waiting drovers. The tired, heat-dulled cattle gave no sign of uneasiness.

"Bet you they won't stampede," called Red, some yards to Sterl's right.

"They're English cattle. They can't be scared, maybe," returned Sterl, jocularly.

Thunder boomed over the battlements of the ranges north and east. Flashes of lightning flared from behind them. Puffs of moving air struck Sterl in the face, hot like the breath of fire. The lacy foliage of the eucalyptus trees began to toss against a sky still clear. Heavy thunderclaps turned Sterl's gaze back to the storm. The front of it had rolled over the ranges.

"Whoopee!" yelled Red. "She's acomin', an' a humdinger!"

A hot gale struck Sterl. He turned his back, and felt that he was shriveling up like leather in a flame. The gum trees bent away from its force; streaks of dusty light sped along the ground; the afterglow faded into a gloaming that was a moving curtain before the wind. Leaves and grass and bits of bark whipped by, and King's mane and tail stood straight out.

All at once Sterl's senses awoke to a startling fact. The hot furnace blast had gone on the wind! The air was cool--damp! Red's wild yell came, splitting Sterl's ear. And with it a roar, steady, gaining, tremendous--the roar of rain.

The pall bore down upon them, steel-gray in the blazes of white fire, to swallow up earth and night and lightning and thunder. He could not see a hand before his face. But how he reveled in that drenching!

It swallowed up time, too, and he almost forgot the great mob of cattle. But to think of them was futile. Sterl shut his eyes, bent his head, and thanked heaven for every drop of that endless torrent. Stanley Dann's faith and prayers were justified; the trek was saved! Then a rough hand on his shoulder roused him. He opened his eyes. The lightning flashes were far to the west, and the thunder rolled with them. The rain was pouring down, but not in a solid sheet. He could see indistinctly.

"Pard!" yelled Red, close to his ear. "Stampede! Feel the ground shakin'!"

Chapter
18

"Let's find the break!" shouted Red. "You ride back. I'll ride ahaid."

Turned away from the pelting rain, Sterl could distinguish the darker line of cattle against the white grass. They were not moving on this side. He rode forward and checked King to listen again. There was a decided roar of hoofs, but it was lessening in volume.

He pulled King to a walk. Perhaps a spur of cattle had broken out of the main mob. Then, in a lull of the heavy downpour he caught gunshots! Turning to peer back he saw dim flashes far across the herd. Dann's drovers on that side were trying to hold the mob.

Presently Sterl made out the dark shape of a horseman. Riding close he shouted and got an answer. It was Roland.

"They're quiet here," yelled the drover. "They'll hold now. If they were going to rush over there, it's strange they didn't when the storm was worst."

"Strange at that," replied Sterl. "Where's your next guard?"

"Not far along. Drake. He told me Slyter was fussing about his horses."

"Small wonder. I'll ride back to Red."

The rain still poured down, with intermittent heavier bursts. He had sent Friday back to the camp before the break of the storm, and he did not feel sure just where he and Red had parted. He halted and on the last stop found the cattle jostling and pressing one another. The roar seemed to have grown louder. In the gray gloom the mob moved and swayed as if from irresistible pressure at its center.

Sterl trotted King a hundred yards farther around the herd. Two riders emerged from the impenetrable black.

"Heah you air," shouted Red, as the three met.

"All jake down the line on this side," reported Sterl.

Larry told him that Dann's drovers on that side of the herd were all gone.

"Cattle rarin' to slope around there," interposed Red. "It ain't safe, but we might stop a stampede."

"But those guards will be back unless..."

Red interrupted: "Like hell they will! Pard, we had it figgered. Some of them drovers, in cahoots with Ormiston, have cut out a bunch of cattle. It wasn't no stampede. But there will be one if we don't watch out. Let's mosey."

The three riders loped their mounts through the driving rain and lashing grass.

"Ride up an' down heah," shouted Red. "Blaze away with yore guns. If there's a break anywhere, run for yore lives."

They separated. Sterl rode back firing, along the way they had come. Close to the herd he felt their unrest and heard their bawling. Along Sterl's line of progress the restive cattle finally settled down and stood. But in the other direction Red and Larry were encountering extreme difficulty. Sterl joined them at the crucial point. For a few moments it seemed vain to attempt blocking the cattle. But the intrepid riders, at the expense of practically all their ammunition, finally held the animals in check. The excited fringe of the mob quieted down.

"Jest luck!" panted Red, as the three reined to together.

"Boys," said Larry, "I'll tell the Danns who saved their mob. New work to me, and my heart was in my throat half the time... Where are those drovers?"

"Haw! Haw! Yes, shore, where in the hell air they? Heah! Listen... What's thet roar?"

"My God, they're on the rampage again!"

"No, boys," yelled Red. "Thet's not cattle! I know thet noise! It's the river!"

Sterl marveled that he had not been as quick as Red to recognize that steady, increasing roar. All in a flash he was back along the Cimarron, the Purgatory, the Red, the Brazos--all those western rivers that he had known and battled in flood.

"Fellers, thet big dry wash has been raisin' all the time. This is flood!"