Wilderness Trek (1988) (6 page)

"Boys, I'll enjoy your stories, when time permits," boomed the drover. "I thank the good Lord for sending you to Australia! Hazelton, one thing more. How did you drive your mobs?"

"We rounded them up into a great triangle, with the apex pointing in the direction we had to go. 'Pointing the herd,' that was called. Two of the nerviest cowboys had the lead at the point. The mass of cattle would follow the leads. Two cowboys on each side at the center of the herd, the rest at the broad base where stragglers and deserters--'drags' we called them--had to be watched and driven."

"Were you one of those cowboys who rode at the head?" queried Dann.

"No, but Red was, always. I was a good hand after the drags."

"Shake hands with me, cowboys," bellowed Dann. "Slyter, I'll order my drovers to start my mob tomorrow, positively. I'll tell Ormiston to go or stay, as he chooses... Meet us soon out on the trek. Good-by."

Sterl became aware that the store was full of inquisitive people. He and Red were the cynosure of all eyes. Red enjoyed such attention, but Sterl hated it, especially, as had happened so often, when he had just engaged in a fight. He shivered when he thought how closely he had come to shooting Ormiston. He had hoped Australia had not bred the type of bad man among whom he had been compelled to work.

Leslie met him outside with her arms full of packages. Sterl and Red promptly relieved her of them. After one look at Leslie's white face and eyes blazing almost black, Sterl felt too dismayed to speak. She had witnessed his encounter with Ormiston. As she walked along between him and Red, she had a hand on Sterl's arm. They came to a point opposite the horses.

"Heah we air, Jester, agonna make a pack hoss out of you fust thing," spoke up Red, and Sterl knew that the cowboy was talking to ease the situation.

"Leslie, have you finished your buying?" asked Sterl.

"Not quite. But I'll not stay longer--in town," she replied in thick unsteady tone. She mounted her horse as Sterl remembered seeing Comanches mount. "Let me have some of the parcels."

Handing these to her, Sterl looked up into her face.

"Leslie--you were there?" he asked. "Yes. I saw it--all."

"I'm sorry. Bad luck like that always hounds me."

"Who said it was bad luck?" she retorted. "But Sterl--you jumped at that chance to hit Ormiston--on my account?"

"Well--Friday's first--and then yours. Still I'd have interfered if I'd never heard of either of you. I'm built that way, Leslie."

"You're built greatly, then... A thrill hardly does justice to what I felt--when you hit him... But, afterward--when it looked like shooting--I nearly fainted."

"So that's why you're so pale?" rejoined Sterl, endeavoring to speak lightly, as he mounted. Red rode a tactful distance ahead.

"Am I pale?" she asked.

"Not so much now. But a few minutes back you were white as a sheet."

"Sterl, I ran into Ormiston."

"And what did he say?"

"I don't remember everything. One thing, though, was what you called him."

"That's not calculated to make Ormiston love me any better."

"Do you think he'll make good his threat not to go on the trek?"

"I do not," said the girl, positively. "Ash Ormiston couldn't be kept from going. I wouldn't say wholly because he's so keen after Beryl Dann and me."

"Beryl too? Well!... He's what Red would call an enterprising agent."

"He's deep, Sterl. I distrust his attitude toward the trek."

"Leslie, what had he against your black man?"

"He had enough. I should have told you that... Once when Mum and Dad were in town, Ormiston found me in my hammock. He made violent love to me. I was scared, Sterl. He... I... I fought him--and Friday ran up with his spear. It was all I could do to keep him from killing Ormiston."

"Is Friday going on the trek?"

"Dad wants him. To track lost horses. The blacks are marvelous trackers. But Friday says no. Maybe you can persuade him, Sterl. A black never forgets a wrong or fails to return a service."

"I sure will try. What a lot I could learn!"

They rode on at a canter and halted at the paddock. "Come up later for tea--oh, yes, and to see my pets," said Leslie, as they dismounted and gathered up her bundles.

Left to his own devices, Sterl went among his string of horses, which Roland had tethered in the shed, and while he set about the slow and pleasing task of making friends with them, he mused over the momentous journey from Brisbane. He could no more keep things from happening to him than he could stop breathing. But he recalled only one man, out of the many rustlers and hard characters who had crossed his trail, who had incited as quick a hatred in him, as had this man Ormiston. If possible, he must keep out of the man's way. Offsetting that was the inspiring personality of Stanley Dann. Here was a man. And Sterl did not pass by the fair-haired Beryl, with her dark-blue eyes and the proud poise of her head. Leslie was appealing in many ways, but the charm she had, which he found vaguely sweet and disquieting, was the fact of his apparent appeal of her, of which she was wholly unconscious. Well, he was in the open again, already in contact with raw nature, about to ride out on this incredible trek. That was all left him in life--this strenuous action of the natural man. Sterl discounted any lasting relation with these good white folk who needed him.

When he returned to the tent, Sterl found Red sitting before the flap, profoundly thoughtful and solemn. He had not even heard Sterl's approach.

"Pard, did you heah anythin'?" he asked, almost in a whisper.

"Hear?--When?"

"Jest about a minnit ago--mebbe longer. I don't know. I'm dotty... Did I have any drinks uptown?"

"You sure didn't."

"Gosh, I'm shore I've got the willies... Sterl, I was in the tent heah, when somebody busted out in a laugh--snortinest hosslaugh you ever heahed. 'Who'n hell's laughin' at me'?' I said, an' I was mad. Wal, pard, you never in yore life heahed such a loud brayin'-ass laugh. When the smart alec got through I come out to bust him. Seen nobody. Then I seen a big brown an' white bird, sittin' right there on thet branch. Stuck his haid on one side an' looked out of his devilish black eyes at me, as if to say, 'Heah's one of them Yankee blighters.'... If thet bird didn't give me thet hosslaugh, then yore pard has gone plumb stark ravin' crazy."

"Let's go up and ask Leslie."

On the way up the path under the wattles they met her. Red burst into the narrative of his perplexing experience. Leslie burst into uncontrollable mirth.

"Oh--Oh! It was--Jack," she choked out. "Jack who?"

"My pet kookaburra--Oh, Red!--my laughing jackass!"

"Wal, I figgered he was a laughin' hyena, all right! But thet pet kooka somethin'--thet has me beat."

"Jack is our most famous bird. He is a kind of giant kingfisher. I'm taking him on the trek, but I can't take my little bears. It breaks my heart--Come in to tea." At the door Leslie whispered to Sterl. "I didn't tell Mum about what happened uptown."

Slyter had not returned, nor did his wife expect him. "I'm too terribly busy to chat," she said, after serving them, and drinking a cup of tea. "Les, I wanted Friday to carry things down to the wagon. Have you seen him?"

"I'll find him, Mum."

"Mrs Slyter," said Sterl when the party settled down. "I'd like a look at your wagon while it's empty. We must make a boat out of it, so that it can be floated across the rivers."

"How thoughtful of you! That had not occurred to Bingham."

"We'll fix up a little room in the front of your wagon, behind the seat," went on Sterl. "I've done that before. A wagon can be made really comfortable, considering all your baggage..."

Suddenly they were interrupted by a discordant, concatenated, rollicking laugh from outside.

"Jack saucing other kookaburras," declared Leslie. "Come and see him."

They went outdoors. The black man Friday stood under one of the gum trees, looking up into the branches, and holding out a queer stick with a white oval end. In his other hand he held out a long spear.

"Friday has his wommera--the stick he uses to throw his spear," said Leslie, gravely. "That doesn't look so good for Ormiston."

Just then a large brown and white bird fluttered down from the tree to alight on the black's spear. "There's Jack," cried Leslie. He was a rather short bird, built heavily forward, with a big head and strong bill.

Sterl's attention shifted to the black man. He was well over six feet tall, slender, muscular, black as ebony. He wore a crude garment around his loins. His dark visage held an inscrutable dignity.

Sterl went up to Friday, tapped him on his deep breast and asked, "Friday no hurt bad?" The native understood, for he grinned and shook his head.

"Leslie, you ask him to go with us on the trek."

"Friday, white man wantum you go with him, far, far that way," said Leslie, making a slow gesture which indicated immeasurable distance toward the outback. Friday fastened great, black unfathomable eyes upon Sterl.

"White man come from far country, away cross big water," said Sterl, pointing toward the east, and speaking as if to an Indian. "He need Friday--track horse--kill meat--fight--tell where pads go."

"Black fella go alonga you," replied Friday.

Leslie clapped her hands. "Good-o! I was sure he'd go, if you asked him," she cried. "Dad will be happy!"

Red slouched over to Friday and handed him a cigar.

"You close up boss?" asked the black, looking from one to the other.

"Shore, Friday," replied Red.

"You um fadder?"

"Fadder? Hell no!... Gosh, do I look thet old? Him my brudder, Friday.

"Black fella im brudder your brudder," declared Friday, loftily, and stalked away.

Chapter
5

It turned out that Leslie's freeing of her native bear pets was merely a matter of saying good-by to them, for they were not confined. They lived in the trees of a small eucalyptus grove back of the house. Sterl enjoyed the sensation of holding some of them, of feeling their sharp, strong, abnormally large claws cling to his coat. The one that pleased Sterl most was a mother that carried her baby in a pouch. The little one had his head stuck out, and his bright black eyes said that he wanted to see all there was to see.

Gently but firmly Leslie drew the little bear from the pouch and placed it on the mother's back, where it stuck like a burr and appeared perfectly comfortable. Sterl never saw a prettier animal sight, and said so emphatically.

"Marsupials!" said Leslie. "All sorts of them down under, from kangaroos to a little blind mole no longer than my finger."

"Well I'm a son of a gun!" exclaimed Red. "What's a marsupial?"

This started Leslie on a lecture concerning Australian mammals and birds. When she finished with marsupials, which carry their babies in a pouch, and came to the unbelievable platypus which wears fur, suckles its young, lays eggs and has a bill like a duck and web feet fastened on backward, she stretched Red's credulity to the breaking point.

"How can you stand there, a sweet pictoor of honest girlhood, and be such an orful liar? How about thet liar bird Jones said you could show us?--the wonderfulest bird in Australia!"

"Rightho! Boys, if you'll get up early, I'll promise you shall hear a lyrebird, and maybe see one."

"It's a date, Leslie, tomorrow mawnin'. Right heah. Hey, pard?"

"You bet," said Sterl, "And now let's get to work making that wagon."

The wagon, which Slyter intended for his womenfolk and all their personal effects, was big and sturdy, with wide-tired wheels, high sides, and a roomy canvas top stretched over hoops. Sterl examined it carefully.

"How about in water an' sand?" queried Red, dubiously.

"In deep water she'll float--when we fix her. Red, dig up a couple of chisels and hammers while I get something to calk these seams."

In short order they had the wagon bed so that it would not leak. Then, while Red began the same job on the other wagon, Sterl devoted himself to fixing up some approach to a prairie-schooner tent dwelling. Sterl had Leslie designate the bags and trunks which would be needed en route; with these he packed the forward half of the wagon bed two feet deep. Then he transformed the rear half into a bedroom.

Slyter arrived with the dray, and climbed off the driver's seat to begin unhitching. His face was dark, his brow lined and pondering.

"Roland, pack all the flour on top of this load and tie on a cover," said Slyter. "Hazelton, how's the work progressing?"

"We're about done. Hope nothing more came off uptown?"

"Testy day. Just my personal business... You'll be interested in this. Ormiston sobered up and tried to get back into our good graces. Stanley Dann accepted his apologies."

"Then Ormiston will go on the trek?"

"Yes. He said to tell you he had been half drunk, and would speak to you when opportunity afforded. But he asked me if you cowboys had any references!"

"I was surprised that you did not ask for any."