by Grey, Zane
"Farther up," returned Sterl. "I see low banks and bars. It'll take time, but be easy. It's afternoon already and Dann will hardly order us to cross today."
They recrossed the river without incident, to be met by Leslie. Stanley Dann called them over to where the leaders stood grouped. Ormiston, despite his tan, showed an unusual pallor. Sterl felt that this queer composite of fool and villain would have blamed the stampede upon his partners and their drovers, if there had been any possible excuse.
"Men, it is our first major disaster," boomed Stanley Dann. "That stampede could not have been avoided. I commend you all for heroic work--Hazelton particularly, with Krehl, and Larry and Cedric. You save the main mob twice, first when you turned the head up this way, and secondly when you got them out of that animated whirlpool. I never saw the like."
"Thanks, boss. Thet last was jest a little mill. All in the day's ride," said Red.
"Dann, we lost one man," added Sterl.
"Yes. Ormiston's drover, Henry Ward. He was warned. But he was overbold and befuddled. Poor fellow!"
"Who warned him?" queried Sterl, bluntly.
"Why, Ormiston sent a drover, he said," returned the leader.
"Ormiston did nothing of the kind," denied Sterl. "When we rode around to the rear of the herd, to give your orders, Ormiston grew furious. He said he wouldn't let his mob mix with yours. I told him he couldn't help it. He told me to mind my own business. It was Drake who sent Roland to ride between your mob and Ormiston's to warn the drovers to come out. Roland, back me up here."
"Yes, sir. Hazelton is right," replied Jones, frankly.
"Ormiston, this report hardly agrees with what you said," declared Dann. "If it is true, you are responsible for Ward's death."
"What do I care for these lie-mongers?" stormed Ormiston, his bold eyes popping. "I gave you my version. Believe it or not!"
Roland Jones thrust forward a reddening visage. "See here, Mr. Ormiston, don't you call me a liar."
"Bah, you big lout! What are you going to do about it?"
"Men, the situation is bad enough already," said Stanley Dann, calmly. "I'll not permit fighting. We've had a trying day, and we're upset."
They all heeded the patient leader's wisdom, except Ormiston. Not improbably he saw opportunity to flay without risk to himself, or else at times his temper was ungovernable.
"Dann, these riffraff drovers of yours haven't a pound to their names. They can't pay for the loss of my cattle. I demand that of you!"
"Very well. I'll be glad to make up for your loss. It was my gain. Your cattle saved mine," boomed the leader.
Red Krehl let out a sibilant hiss. Ormiston's rolling eyes lighted avariciously. Sterl interrupted his reply to Dann. He spurred King into a jump to confront the drover.
"Ormiston, you go to hell!" said Sterl, with a stinging cold contempt that a whole volley of epithets could never have equaled. For once Ormiston's ready retort failed. With a gesture to his lieutenants, Bedford and Jack, he wheeled his horse and rode toward camp.
"Pard, Dann's gonna ask you to make a count of the daid cattle," whispered Red. "An' you lie like a trooper."
Sterl made no reply, though he received that suggestion most sympathetically. He turned to Leslie.
"Les, it'll be a dirty bloody mess. Don't go."
"Why not, Sterl?"
"Why? Heavens, you're a girl! Not a hard, callous, blood-spilling man, used to death!"
"Yeah?" she said, flippant on cracking ice and airing her cowboy vocabulary, "Well, I've a hunch there'll be another bloody death around here pronto--and I'll be tickled pink."
Stanley Dann rode the hoof-torn slant of recently plowed earth, gazing down at the mashed bloody bodies of cattle, all the grotesque horned heads pointing to the sky, mouths open, tongues sticking out, staring dead eyes.
"Sterl, what is your count?" he asked, tersely.
"Boss, I'd rather not say," replied Sterl, with a deprecatory spread of his hands. "I'm only fair on the count. Red has always been the most accurate and reliable counter of stock we ever had on our ranges."
"Very well, Red. I'm sure you could have no higher recommendation. I'll rely upon you. How many?"
"Wal, boss, I'm shore surprised," returned Red, with an air of perfect sincerity, "I was afeared we'd lost a damn sight more'n we really have. Thet water was shallow all along heah. I seen the cattle pitchin' up the mud. But they're layin' only about three deep heah. Yes, sir! We're darned lucky. I been countin' all along, an' my tally is just three hundred an' thirteen. Preecislee. An' I'll gamble on thet."
"Is it possible?" boomed the drover, elated. "I am poor in calculation. I thought we had lot a thousand head."
"No, indeedee, boss," returned Red, emphatically, "You take my tally. I'm kinda proud of my gift."
"Righto. It's settled. How fortunate we are, after all! I have been blessed with my faith in divine guidance!"
Chapter 14
Guard duty was split that night, half the drovers riding herd from dark till midnight, and the other half from then till sunrise. It was a needless precaution, for, as Sterl told Slyter, the cattle were almost too tired to graze.
Next morning Friday greeted Sterl with an enigmatic: "Black fella close up."
"Bad black fella, Friday?"
"Might be some. Plenty black fella."
"How do you know?" queried Sterl, curiously.
"Lubra tellum."
Sterl told Slyter, who burst out that it was about time. "Except once," he went on, "we've had no trouble with abo's. And we expected that to be the worst of our troubles."
"All same plenty bimeby," put in Friday with his air of mystery.
"What're the orders, Slyter?" asked Sterl. "Transport wagons over the river."
"Wal, it'll be one sweet job. Whereabouts?" asked Red.
"Somewhat above where we droved the mob yesterday."
"Look aheah, boss. Thet's an orful place. No ford atall. We oughta go up the river a ways. This is just a big pond. It's towards the end of the dry season, and shore as shootin' this river ain't runnin'. I'll bet we could find shallow fords."
"Dann's orders, Red. And he's mad this morning."
"Mad? Good heavens! Fust time or I'll eat my sombrero. Gosh, I'm glad he's human, ain't you, Sterl? What about?"
"I'm not certain, but I think it's Ormiston."
"Slyter, does Dann really expect to get across today with this outfit?" asked Sterl, skeptically.
"By noon, he says!"
By a half hour after sunrise Dann had all the wagons packed. They started, with Slyter's remuda following in charge of Larry and the cowboys. Dann, who drove the leading wagon, halted on the bank of the river some distance above where the stampede had crossed the day before. He sent for Sterl, who found him arguing with Eric. Ormiston stood by, taciturn and brooding.
"Hazelton," boomed the leader. "This is the place where we're going to cross. Eric is against my judgment. Ormiston swears he'll drove his mob back to this side. Will you take charge?"
"Yes, sir. It can't all be done today," answered Sterl, earnestly. "But all goods must be crossed before dark because the abo's will be here by night. It's a pack job. Give me twenty riders. Five changes of horses. We'll empty the wagons and drays. Each rider will carry over what he can carry safely and keep dry. Provisions to go first."
"Men," boomed the leader, "you all heard Hazelton. Take orders from him. Let's unhitch and get at it!"
"Dann, I want a word in edgewise," demanded Ormiston.
"Ashley, I heard you. No more! I forgot to tell you that I ordered your brand burned on three hundred odd of my cattle, as soon as we cross."
Red had already made for Roland's wagon, and dismounted there to begin unloading. Sterl joined him. Leslie was putting her pets into cages, much to their vociferous disgust.
"Sterl, I've a hunch Stanley Dann will ride roughshod over our friend Ormiston one of these days," said the cowboy.
"You haven't a corner on all the hunches," ret
orted Sterl. "I had that figured long ago. Beryl now is the last connecting link."
"Bet yore life, pard. An' I'll bust thet!"
"All right. Go over to Beryl and tell her I sent you to pack her and her treasures across the river. Savvy?"
"Dog-gone yore pictoors!" ejaculated Red, rapturously. "I never thought of thet. Watch me!" And he strode away.
When again Sterl encountered Red, never had he seen that cowboy in such a transport.
"Pard, bless yore heart. Beryl's jest about eatin' out of my hand," whispered Red, huskily. "She'd been cryin'. I reckon her Dad must have hopped her. What do you think she said--Sterl is a big help to Dad. He'd be a good sort if he wasn't hipped over thet chestnut-haired kid!' Beryl wanted to know how I'd get her across, an' I said I'd pack her in my arms if she was afraid to ride. She said thet would make her look a little coward, which she swore she was. An' she said she'd ride if I came along close to her. I reckon I'll take her and Miss Dann together."
"Righto. I'll send Friday across to watch the stuff."
In short order Sterl had twenty riders, not including Leslie and himself, swimming their horses across the river with packs in front and on their shoulders. Friday grasped King's long tail and held on, to be dragged over. On the return, Sterl met Ormiston and Hathaway in midstream, and farther on, the Danns.
It required twenty trips for each rider to unload Slyter's wagon to the extent where it would be safe to ferry it across. Then ten men lifted the half-loaded wagon-bed off the wheels, carried it down to the river and set it in the water. It floated. It was a boat. It did not leak. With the use of long ropes and a team of horses on the far bank the start was made. There was no mishap. The heavy wheels, dragged along by ropes, gave a good deal more trouble. But they were soon across and up the bank. In a few more minutes the wagon was set up and reloaded. Leslie was as happy as her birds, and they squawked their glee.
"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!"