Wilderness Trek (1988) (22 page)

"Red, we'd better pull leather out of here."

"I should smile. It's good the camp is on thet high bench... Gosh, do you heah her comin'?"

A seething, crashing, bumping roar bore down from the black night. The riders loped their horses toward higher ground. They encountered a two-foot wall of water rushing in at that end. Somewhere above the basin an overflow from a tributary had met the main flood head on. They waded their horses through to the rising slope.

Gray dawn broke. The rain had ceased except for a drizzle, but the overcast sky predicted continuous downpour. The mob of cattle stood heads down, knee-deep in the overflow. The stream that had half filled the basin had dwindled to a ribbon. Across the basin and the flat beyond, the mainstream raced full from bank to bank. Green trees and logs floated swiftly by. In the middle of the river huge waves curled up to break back upon themselves.

"Red, give us a count," said Sterl, grimly.

"Wall, I was jest about to," replied the cowboy. "About four thousand haid there now. Ormiston an' his bushrangers have sloped with half of our cattle!"

"Bushrangers!" yelled Larry. "Good grief!"

"Shore, bushrangers! Let's go to camp. All the rest of the drovers have rid in for tea, or they're drowned--or gone."

Friday met them and took Sterl's horse. The aborigine's blank visage and his silence were ominous. Bill had a fire going, with tea brewing. No womenfolk were in sight. Over at Dann's camp there was less activity, but a group of drovers stood as if stunned.

Slyter paced to and fro like a maniac confined in a cell. Some of Leslie's race horses were gone, including Lady Jane and Jester.

"What the hell you beefin' about, boss?" queried Red, curtly. "Thet ain't nothin' atall. Wait till you get the load."

Sterl, still silent, hurried to change into dry clothes, refill his belt with cartridges, and get out his rifle. He made sure that the oilskin cover was tight. Red cursed Slyter through his teeth. "What you think, Sterl? Thet hossmad geezer doesn't even know about the loss of the cattle. An' damn little he'd care if he did. It's a cinch Ormiston stole those race hosses."

"Rustler!" rasped Sterl. "We've got a job. And my God, am I ready for it!"

They hurried out to the fire and ate standing, eyes alert, thinking hard. Larry came running awkwardly on his bow-legs. His face was gray, and his eyes popped.

"Hey, wait a minnit, you!" ordered Red, sharply. "Get yore breath, Slyter, come heah."

The drover, gloomy-faced and disheveled, stamped to the fire, almost belligerently.

"How many bosses missin'?" asked Red. "Five! Leslie's! We can't track those racers, not after this deluge. And I'll lose them. It'll about kill Leslie."

"Yore hosses were stole, Slyter."

"Who--Who?" gasped Slyter, staggered. "By thet bushranger you an' Dann have been harborin'."

Sterl broke his silence. "Keep it from Leslie, boss, if you can. Bill, rustle me some meat and bread."

"Wal, Larry, if you can talk now come out with it," said Red.

"Two thousand head and five drovers gone! Eric Dann gone! Beryl gone!"

"Ahuh. How about Ormiston's wagons?"

"Gone too, so Drake said. Mob not in sight."

"Come, Friday," called Sterl.

They hurried toward Dann's camp, followed by the others. The leader turned from the group of drovers.

"Bad doing, boss," said Sterl. "What's your angle?"

"There was a rush during the storm. My drovers followed, but they are not in sight. Eric and Beryl must have crossed to Ormiston's camp last night and been stormbound."

"How do you account for five of Slyter's thoroughbreds being gone?"

"That is more news to me. They must have run away in the storm."

"Mr. Dann, it is our opinion that they were stolen," returned Sterl, bluntly.

Dann took that as Sterl imagined he would have taken a blow in the face--without the bat of an eyelash. "Stolen? Preposterous! What black would steal horses when there are cattle to eat?"

Red Krehl had listened attentively to this interview, while his blue eyes, clear and piercing, covered the camp. They flashed back to fix upon the leader.

"Dann, I'm orful sorry I have to hurt yore feeling's," he bit out, cool and bitter. "You been too friendly with a bushranger who turns out to be a slicker hombre than we savvied. Name of Ormiston, which I reckon ain't his real name by a damn sight. He stole Slyter's racers. He corrupted yore drovers an' raided yore mob. He made a sucker out of yore weak-minded brother. He..."

"You blasphemous Yankee lout--to whom not even blood relationship is sacred!" boomed the leader.

"Save yore wind, boss," snapped Red. "I'm pretty ---- riled myself! Mebbe it might help for you to see thet your brother's wagon is gone."

It was indeed. Only his dray was there, its cover dripping with rain. But that discovery did not by any means convince Stanley Dann.

"Dann, there's a lot to tell when I got time," went on Red. "I heahed Ormiston say he was a bushranger. An' Jack an' thet hombre Bedford were his right-hand men. I knowed they all were rustlers before I'd been a month on this trek. Sterl, heah, knowed it, too."

"Suspicion I don't listen to," thundered Dann. "If you had facts why didn't you produce them?"

"Hellsfire, Dann! No man could tell you some things! But you gotta heah this. Ormiston is gone! An' yore daughter went with him,--an' so help me Gawd I still reckon it was by force!"

"Proofs, man proofs!" raged the giant.

"Come on out along the river," retorted Krehl. He mounted in one long step. "Come, pard, fetch the black man. Drake, Slyter, all of you get in on this."

Across the river, under the trees, Sterl espied one wagon, from the blackened and dismantled top of which thin smoke rose aloft in spite of the drizzle. Pieces of canvas lapping from branches, boxes and bales littered around attested to a hastily abandoned camp. Sterl did not even look for cattle.

A mile up the river Red halted his horse to wait for the others to come up. At this point there was a break in the border of trees. Above, a constriction in the river bed marked the rough center of the current.

As Sterl and the others reined in to line up back of the cowboy, he swept a fierce hand at a deep, miry trough newly cut in the bank. It extended fully a hundred yards up the river. A big herd of cattle, densely packed, had been run along this course, to go over the bank. Across the flood the opposite bank was sloping, and the center of its sandy incline showed a deep, broad trail of tracks. A novice at the cowboy game could have read that tale. Someone had seized a timely period during the storm to cut out a couple of thousand head, and cross them before the flood rose.

"Mr. Dann," spoke up Drake, hollow-voiced. "I never trusted Ormiston and his drovers. They weren't friendly with us. They had a set plan, and it must have worked out as they plotted it."

All eyes turned to Stanley Dann. "It could have been a rush," he boomed, "a rush in the storm! My drovers are with them."

"You shore die hard," drawled Red, halfway between admiration and contempt. "I gotta hand it to you for thet! Only look heah--down the track aways. There's a daid hoss, an' a daid drover. I've a hunch it's Cedric."

Red dismounted beside the prone drover. He did not recognize the horse, but he knew that wavy, tawny hair, even though it was sodden with blood and sand.

"Pard, it's Cedric, all right, pore brave devil," said Red, as he knelt beside the prone figure. "Herd ran him down. Trampled to a pulp, all except his haid. Look aheah!--So help me Gawd!--Sterl, heah's a bullet hole!"

Sterl knelt to verify Red's diagnosis. He saw plainly the hole in the back of the young drover's head: His passion burned out the nausea caused by the ghastly remains of the fine boy. Then he espied the butt of a revolver almost concealed under Cedric's side. He pulled it out, shook off the sand, opened the chamber. Six empty cartridge shells dropped out.

At this juncture the others, surrounding Dann, arrived.

"Aye, Cedric it is, poor boy!" burst out Dann, his sonorous voice full of grief. "The mob rushed over him. He died on guard!"

"Dann, a blind man could see thet," drawled Red, whose habit was to grow cooler and deadlier as a hard situation tensely worked to its close. "It's a cinch Cedric died on guard. But he was shot in the back of his haid--murdered--before the herd run over him."

"Dann, it's true," put in Sterl, sternly. "There's the bullet hole."

"Larry, you examine thet hole," suggested Red, as he arose, drew out a scarf and wiped his gory hands. "I don't want no one heah to take my word. Nor Sterl's."

Larry, Drake and Slyter in turn minutely studied the wound in Cedric's skull, and solemnly agreed. Stanley Dann, with corded brow and clouded eyes, listened to them; but he maintained that it must have been an accident, that Cedric and the other drovers had been firing to hold the cattle back, that in the blackness of the storm anything could have happened.

Red Krehl eyed the leader with amazing tolerance and respect for that hard cowboy to exhibit at a hard time.

"Dann, from yore side of thet fence thet is good figgerin'," he said. "But I know Ormiston either shot Cedric or put somebody up to it. Let's don't argue any more. We're wastin' time, an' we'll know for shore pronto."

"Men, fetch shovels and a ground-cloth," ordered Dann. "We'll bury poor Cedric here on the spot of his brave stand. Keep it from the women!"

A shrill aboriginal yell startled the group. Friday appeared on the highest part of the bank, gesticulating violently.

"What the hell?" muttered Red. Then he mounted a fraction of a second behind Sterl. They raced for the black man, the drovers pounding behind.

With a long arm and a spear Friday pointed across the river. Sterl located an object crawling down a slight sandy slope.

"Man! White fella! Boss's brudder!" called Friday, dramatically.

Sterl wiped his eyes with steady hand.

"Look, pard. Make sure," he said, coolly. His faculties were swiftly settling for action.

"Friday's right," declared Red. "It's Eric Dann. Bad hurt from the way he moves!"

The man across the river flopped down a sandy slope, crawled, got to his knees to wave weakly.

"Ormiston has done for him," said Red.

"Red, strip King's saddle," flashed Sterl, leaping down to sit flat, and tear off spurs and boots. "I can land here, somewhere if you rope me."

"I could rope yore cigarette. Rustle."

"Hazelton, what do you intend doing?" boomed Stanley Dann.

Sterl had no time for the leader then. Leaping upon King he seized the bridle and wheeled the black up the river. At a hard gallop he covered the few hundred yards of open bank and hauled up. The flood here came swirling to the edge of the bank. The muddy torrent appeared crisscrossed with debris, logs and brush.

King champed his bit and snorted. He knew what he was in for and wanted to go at it. The drovers, led by Red, arrived at this juncture.

Stanley Dann thundered, "Hazelton, don't throw your life away. This is suicide!"

"Now!" pealed out Red Krehl, who had been watching the current for a favorable moment.

Sterl released his strain on the bridle and thumped King hard in the flanks. The black sprang into action and took off in three jumps. As they hit the current Sterl turned King downstream, quartering for a point far down on the opposite shore. Again and again, the backlash of the waves crashed over the heads of horse and rider. They were strangled, submerged, tossed. Logs grazed them, a huge piece of drift rolled over them, a great gum tree bore down on them, upending now its blunt trunk and now its roots. But just as it was about to fall, the roots caught momentarily on the river bottom and the stouthearted King swam on. Two hundred yards of this, and King struck the bottom. With a tremendous heave and snort, he waded out.

When King emerged from the river to shake himself like a huge dog, Sterl did not at once see the wounded man. Red's piercing yell and outstretched arm gave him a clue, and presently he saw Dann sprawled upon the sand. Sterl dismounted and ran to him.

Eric Dann lay flat on his back, arms wide, eyes open. That part of his face not covered with dirt and blood was ashen white and clammy. His hair, matted with blood, failed to hide a wound--probably from a blow with the barrel of a gun, Sterl reflected.

"Dann, you've been beaten up," cried Sterl, anxiously. "Have you been shot, too?"

"Not that--I know of," replied Dann, in faint, hoarse tones. "Must have--been unconscious some time."

"Ormiston's work?"

"Yes, Bedford, too--set upon me."

"When?"

"About daylight."

Lifting the drover to his feet, Sterl found that he could not walk even when supported. So Sterl heaved him up to straddle the horse, and holding him there urged King up the river. The bed of this fork of the river widened upstream, with a correspondingly flatter bank. Sterl turned to look across. Red sat his horse in the middle of the open space where the cattle had run. He waved his lasso. Surveying the scene, Sterl knew that King could cross again, if there was no accident. He waded the black into the shallow water up to his haunches.