by Grey, Zane
The problem of the aboriginal was to eat, and he ate everything from dirt to grass and seeds and fruit to all living creatures, including ants--and his own species. He was a hunter. He made his own weapons, very few in number, and these he carried. Friday told Sterl that these people caught live fish under water with their hands. Sterl saw some of them, at Dann's camp, swim under water, drag ducks down beneath the surface. He saw them eat every last vestige of a bullock, meat, entrails, and even the smashed-up bones. He found lubras and children out on the plain, digging for roots, herbs, lizards, eggs, and one of their reptile luxuries, the goanna.
One morning Red accompanied Sterl and Leslie, with the inseparable Friday, on a visit to the aborigines. They came upon two blacks, both mature men, tall and lean, who fastened ghoulish eyes upon Leslie's supple and brown bare legs, and then shifted their black gaze to the cowboy's red head. One of them held a most striking posture. He stood on one long leg, leaning on his spear, while his other leg was bent at right angles, with his foot flat against the inside of his thigh. Yet he stood at ease.
"What'n'll is the matter with this gazabo?" inquired Red.
"Nothing. He's just resting. I see a good many blacks stand like that," replied Sterl.
The abo, evidently impressed by Red, spoke to him in his native jargon.
"Yeah?" drawled Red, and then added sonorously: "Holy Mackeli--Kalamazoo--Ras pa tas--Mugg's Landin'--You one-laiged black giraffe!"
Whereupon the aborigine, tremendously impressed, let out a flow of speech that in volume certainly matched Red's.
"Ahuh? Thet didn't sound so good to me. Friday, what he say?"
Friday indicated Krehl's red head and replied: "Makeum fun alonga you."
"Hell he did?" roared Red. "Hey, you! I'm from Texas, an' I'm liable to shoot thet one laig out from under you."
Upon their return to the Dann encampment Slyter called Red and Sterl to him, and informed them that Stanley Dann wanted to see them promptly.
"Now, what's up?" queried Sterl, impatiently, quick to catch Slyter's sober mood.
"I'd rather Dann told you," returned the drover. "There's been a fight, and the drovers are upset."
"Yeah? Wal, if you ask me thet ain't nothin' new these days," drawled Red, with a bite in his tone.
Slyter accompanied them the few rods under the trees to the bright campfire, where Stanley stalked to and fro. He was bareheaded, in his shirt sleeves, a deep-eyed giant standing erect under obvious burdens. Beryl was in the background, with her aunt and Mrs. Slyter. A group of men, just visible near one of the tents, stood conversing in low tones.
"You sent for us, sir," spoke up Sterl, quickly.
"Yes, I regret to say. Harry Spence has been shot. The drovers just fetched him in. He died without regaining consciousness."
"Spence? That is regrettable, sir, but it can hardly have anything to do with us," returned Sterl. He had not thought much of Spence, and several others of the rougher element among Dann's drovers.
"Only indirectly," rejoined Dann, hastily.
"Boss, who shot Spence?" interposed Red, coolly.
"Ormiston's drover, Bedford. Tom Bedford. He was badly wounded in the fight, but should recover."
"Wal, beggin' yore pardon, boss, an' if you ask me, there ain't much love lost in Spence's case, an' if Bedford croaked it'd be a damn good night's job," replied Red, in cold deliberation.
"I'm not asking for your judgments, Krehl," said the leader, tersely.
"I'm sorry, boss, but you gotta take them jest the same."
Sterl put a placating and persuasive hand on Red's shoulder. But he was glad that the cowboy had spoken out. He, too, was sick of subterfuge and concealment.
"Sir, why did you send for us?" repeated Sterl, quietly.
"Boys, it is only that I preferred to tell you myself, rather than have you hear it from others. I want to persuade you to see it my way. I have come to rely upon you both. I have come to have a personal regard for you. Can I exact a promise from you both--not to shed blood, except in some drastic necessity of self-defense?"
"Yes, sir, you can from me," declared Sterl, instantly rallying to his sympathy for this great and trouble-besieged man. "Red, you'll promise, too, won't you?"
"Boss," said Red, "you ain't goin' to ask me to make a promise like thet, an' keep it forever?"
"Krehl, don't misunderstand me," returned Dann, in haste. "I would not presume to have you deny your creed, your honor. I beg this promise only for the present, because I still hope we can go through this trek without more bloodshed."
"Wal, boss, as I see it, you won't," flashed Red. "It wouldn't be natural. You've got some low-down hombres mixed up with you on this trek. All the same, I'll give you my promise thet I won't raise a hand against Ormiston, or anyone, except in self-defense--or to save somebody's life."
"Thank you, Krehl," replied Dann. "Now, for the detail that will be as offensive to you as it was to me. This morning a new contingent of blacks arrived. It seems there were some unusually comely lubras among them. Ormiston propitiated them with gifts--an action Slyter and I are strongly opposed to. But Ormiston did it, and took several to work around his camp. Spence and Bedford quarreled over one of them. It was obvious that all the drovers had been drinking. The two men fought, with the result I told you. Ormiston sent the report to me. And I at once ordered him here. I took him to task. We had bitter words, that might have led to worse but for Beryl. She came between us; and in part, when Ormiston maligned you boys, she took his side. She believes him. I do not."
"Thanks, boss. But spill it. What has Ormiston said now?" retorted Sterl, harshly.
"He ridiculed my offense at the idea of his drovers making up to the lubras. And the part applicable to you is this, in his own words: 'Look at your Yankee cowboys--Hazelton, posing as a gentleman, and Krehl as a comedian--to please the ladies! They go from their soft speeches to Beryl and Leslie to the embraces of these nigger lubras!"
If Stanley Dann expected the cowboys to arise in rage to disclaim against their traducer, he reckoned without his host. Nothing Ormiston might do or say could surprise them any more.
As fate would have it Leslie had followed them over, and Beryl with the two older women, evidently wishing to intercept her, had all come within range of Dann's stern voice. Sterl threw up his hands. What was the use?
Red did not fortify himself with knowledge and bitterness, as Sterl had done. But his innate chivalry permitted of no intimation that these girls could believe such vile slander.
"Beryl, you needn't look so orful bad," he said, gently. "Leastways not on my account. I jest promised your Dad I wouldn't throw a gun on Ormiston for what he said."
"You don't deny it, Red Krehl?" cried Beryl, passionately, beside herself.
"What you mean--I don't deny?"
"Ormiston's accusation that you cowboys go from me and Leslie--to--to those nigger lubras," rang out the outraged girl. She was pale under her tan and her big eyes strained with horror.
Red twitched as if he were about to draw a gun. His visage lost its ruddiness then. "My deny thet? Hell no! I'm a Texan, Miss Dann. You English never heahed of Texas, let alone know what a Texan stands for in regard to women. What you've got in your mind, Beryl Dann, what you think of me, is what's true of your rotten lover. An' by Gawd, someday you'll go on your knees to me for thet!"
The girl recoiled. She gasped. Her eyes dilated. But she could not cope with passion and jealousy and hate--those primitive emotions that this trek had increased by leaps and bounds. She let Red stalk away without another word.
"Sterl!--Sterl!" burst out Leslie, wildly. "You deny--that--that--or I'll hate you!"
"Leslie, it is a matter of supreme indifference to me what you believe," returned Sterl, cold and aloof. Then he addressed the parents of the girls. "Dann, Slyter, and you, Mrs. Slyter, you all can't fail to see what your wilderness outback has done, to your precious offspring. Next, they'll condone, in Ormiston and his bunch, the very thing they insult u
s with now!"
Chapter 16
Leslie met Sterl next morning at breakfast as if awakening from a nightmare; she appeared stunned to bewilderment that he did not notice her. Sterl felt that she, the same as Beryl, must learn her bitter lesson. Until that time she would not exist for him, so far as intimacy and friendly contact were concerned. He was deeply hurt, but not resentful. She was only a sentimental young girl, placed in a terrible situation. Sterl felt sorry for her. Little by little his love had grown until it had almost made him forget that he was an outlaw who, if he considered marriage, must find himself in a grave plight. Sterl had been hurt before by love. He could not kill this new love but he put it aside. Krehl's love affair with Beryl, however, had a fair chance to survive, if the girl herself proved strong enough to survive. Sterl seemed to feel something deep and latent in this Dann girl. She was blindly in love with this dark-browed bushranger. But when she learned the truth about Ormiston, as must inevitably happen, it was Sterl's opinion that the girl would hate him more than she had loved him.
January blazed to its end, but the rains did not come. They might skip a year. The heat and the flies had become insupportable. Yet human life lived on, though in each and every person there were signs, even in himself, revealing to Sterl's keen eyes that white people could not live there for long. The days were terrible; the sky a vast copper dome close to the earth; the night hot even till dawn. Work and meals were undertaken before sunrise and after sunset. The mob of cattle grazed slowly by night and rested by day. The flies were harder on them than the sun. Hundreds of calves were born. Stanley Dann had now more cattle than when he had left Downsville.
Bedford, being a tough and phlegmatic man, recovered from his serious wound. Hathaway came down with some kind of a fever which neither Ormiston nor Dann could alleviate. Stanley Dann's sister was a woman along in years, unused to life in the open, and despite what had appeared at first a certain robustness she began to fail. It was mental, Sterl thought, more than physical. She simply dried up into a shadow of her former self, and met death with a wan and pathetic gladness.
Eric Dann presented a problem to Sterl. The man had something on his mind, either a cowardice he could not beat, a gnawing indecision about splitting with his brother, or something secret. Sterl had seen criminals not big enough to stand up under the adversity that tried men's souls; and it seemed to him there was a furtive similarity between their moods and Eric's. Ormiston had turned gaunt of visage, hollow-eyed. But for that matter, all the drovers lost flesh, hardened, tanned almost as black as Friday, and if they ever smiled, Sterl did not see it. It was in Ormiston's eyes, however, that the difference lay. He never met Sterl's scornful gaze.. He ceased to eat at Dann's table, but at sunset and dusk he haunted Beryl, and kept her up late. Beryl Dann could not lose her grace of form or beauty of profile, but she grew thin, and her large violet eyes had a wild look.
Leslie bore up surprisingly well. She lost but little weight. The sun burned her very dark. She grew quieter, less cheerful, more considerate and helpful. She approached Sterl endlessly with subterfuges, innocent advances, unthinking expectations which were never realized and which left her pondering and sad.
Stanley Dann proved to be the great physical and spiritual leader Sterl had imagined he would be. He remained imperturbable, cheerful, confident. But he seldom talked to his brother, he never voluntarily addressed Ormiston, though he often came to Slyter's camp to smoke and talk.
Always when Sterl watched these people he ended by going back to study Friday, the aborigine, who day by day loomed greater in his sight. Here was a man. His color mattered little. He was always on night guard with Sterl and Red. He had made their lives his life. He asked nothing for his allegiance. Separated from them by inestimable ages, by aboriginal mystery and darkness of mind, he yet felt for them, for their trials and sorrows and terrors.
"Bimeby rain come. All good," he said, on several nights. And once, as if the question of rain was not altogether the trenchant thing, he wagged his black head, and gazed at Sterl, his great black eyes unfathomable, "Ormiston tinkit he get cattle, Missy Dann, eberyting. But no, boss Hazel, nebber!"
On Friday, February thirteenth, the limit of heat was reached--a hundred and twenty-five in the shade. In had to be the limit because Dann's thermometer burst as if the mercury had boiled. Red said it was a good thing. They all had been asking how hot it was, watching the instrument, wondering how much hotter it would get. But now there would be no way to learn. The noonday sun would have burned the eyeballs sightless. Sterl and Red waded into the river a dozen times without bothering to remove their garments. The birds and beasts and reptiles Sterl encountered in his early morning walk did not trouble to move out of the way. Almost he could pet the gray old kangaroos; the wild fowl pecked at him, but did not fly.
Hathaway's death, coming one night when he was unattended, shocked everyone, even the cowboys, out of their abnormal unfeeling states. For days he had been delirious and burning up with fever. They buried him beside Emily Dann, and erected another cross. Stanley Dann, in his faltering prayer, committed his soul to rest and freedom from the plague of unsatisfied life.
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?"