Wilderness Trek (1988)

by Grey, Zane

  The driver's seat was vacant. No one in sight! But another shot cracked. The cowboy was alive! Sterl drove King down upon the wagon with tremendous speed.

  Suddenly to Sterl's right and ahead, he caught the gleam of something white, something red, something black. There was a bare glade close ahead--a huge gum towering over the wagon--a low branch sweeping down. Through the thin foliage that white thing moved. And a woman's scream, high-pitched, piercing, rent the air.

  Sterl lay back with all his might upon the bridle. King plunged to slide on his haunches into the glade.

  Red, his temple bloody, was lying in the middle of the bare spot, raised on his left elbow, his gun extended, his posture unnatural. In a flash Sterl was out of his saddle.

  The white thing was Beryl Dann, half nude, in the grasp of Ormiston. A black blanket had slipped to her knees. Ormiston crouched behind her, left arm around her middle. In his right he had a gun leveled at Red. As he fired, the girl threw up his arm. She shrieked in terror, in fury. And she fought the drover like a panther. The red thing near them was Leslie's horse Sorrel, saddled and bridled. Ormiston had tried to get away on that horse.

  "Kill him--Red--Don't mind me!" panted the girl, wildly.

  Chapter 20

  Sterl leveled a cocked gun, but dared not risk firing. Only a portion of Ormiston's body projected from behind the desperately struggling girl.

  She hung onto Ormiston's rigid arm as he lifted her in his effort to align his gun upon Krehl. He fired. Dust and gravel flew up into the cowboy's face. Red rolled convulsively over and over, as if struck. Sterl just barely held himself back from a rash onslaught at the drover. But Red came out of that roll to lie flat with his gun forward.

  "Hurry, St--erl!" shrieked the girl, frantically.

  Then the drover espied Sterl, and struggled to aim at him. Sterl leaped to dive behind a rock. On his knees he thrust his gun over the top.

  He had time to see Beryl's last frenzied struggle to destroy the bushranger's aim. Then she collapsed, arms, head and shoulders hanging down, supported by Ormiston's clutching clasp. Ormiston's stooping caused him to bend his left leg, and his knee became exposed. Red's gun cracked. Sterl heard the bullet thud into flesh. That shot of Red's had broken his aim. Cursing savagely the bushranger gathered his forces for another attempt.

  Sterl's finger quivered on the trigger, in the act of imperiling Beryl's life to save Red's. Then behind him a strange, tussling sound checking his firing. Whizz! A dark streak flashed across his line of vision, Chuck! Sterl's taut senses registered the sickening thud of something rending flesh.

  Ormiston uttered a strangling, inhuman yell and sprang up as if galvanized. His gun went flying to the ground. Beryl dropped from his hold like an empty sack. His hands went up, clutching as a drowning man might at straws. An aborigine spear stuck out two feet beyond his throat. Its long end still quivered. Ormiston's hand tore at it, broke the shaft square off.

  "Friday!" yelled Sterl, as he leaped from behind the rock. "Look, Red, look! Friday has done for him!"

  Red got up, bloody-faced and grim as death. Blood flowed from a shot in his head and his left shoulder. But he showed no weakness. As he strode toward the whirling Ormiston, swift footfalls thudded behind Sterl, and Friday came leaping into the open. He held a long spear low down.

  "Hold on, Friday!" yelled Red, blocking the aborigine. "No go with thet. You're gonna help me with a little necktie party!"

  Sterl could not turn his sight from the spectacle of the doomed Ormiston. He reeled and swayed like a drunken man, his hands still tearing at the spearhead. A red-tinged froth issued from his mouth. He fell, to bound up again with marvelous vitality. Sterl ran over and kicked Ormiston's gun into the grass. And again his trigger finger pressed quiveringly as the bushranger made ghastly inarticulate sounds and plunged like a wounded bull.

  Red's jangling footfalls sounded behind Sterl, just as Ormiston's protruding eyes fell upon Beryl. She was on her knees trying to pluck up the blanket over her bare shoulders. He made at her, insane to drag even her to perdition. But before Sterl could shoot, a hissing lasso shot out. The noose fell over Ormiston's head. Red gave the rope a tremendous pull. Ormiston lunged backward, to fall face upward, his arms upflung, and that queer vociferation ended abruptly.

  "Lend a hand, Friday," shouted the cowboy. "Don't forget how this white trash treated you!"

  The black leaped to Red's assistance. They dragged the bushranger under the spreading arm of the huge gum tree. The cowboy paused there to gaze down at his victim.

  "Rustler, you swing! Jest the same as any cattle thief in my country! But bad as they came, I never seen one as low down as you!"

  Red threw the free end of his lasso up over a low branch and caught it as it fell.

  "Git in an' help me, Friday! Pull, you black man who's shore no nigger! All my life I'll love you for this day's work. Ha! There you air, Ormiston! Swing an' kick!"

  Sterl wrenched his gaze from the gruesome spectacle and wheeled to Beryl. She was on her knees, the blanket slack in her nerveless hands, her big blue eyes fixed in horror.

  "Beryl! Don't look!" cried Sterl, sheathing his gun and rushing to her. "Shut your eyes, Beryl. It's--all over. You're saved. And he... It's justice, no matter..."

  But he realized that she had fainted. He carried her to the wagon, laid her in the seat out of the rain and tucked the blanket around her bare feet. Her eyes fluttered open. "Okay now?" inquired Sterl. She nodded, "Then lie here awhile until you get yourself together. No more danger." And he drew away.

  A jingling step, and he turned to see Red approaching. Beyond, Friday appeared, gazing fixedly up at the limp figure in dark relief against the gray sky.

  "Close shave, pard," said Red, just a little huskily, as he wiped his bloody hands with his scarf, and glanced up to see Beryl's pale, quiet face. Sterl indicated by a gesture that the cowboy should leave her alone.

  "Gosh! I don't recall a closer shave!" ejaculated Red. "But wasn't Beryl the game kid? She kept him from borin' me a second time. She fainted! I'm glad she didn't see the end of it."

  "But she did, Red. She did! She saw it all, believe me!"

  "Aw, thet's too bad. But, pard, did you get it? Beryl had on only her nightgown. Thet hombre stole her from her bed. She didn't run off with him!"

  "Yes, I savvied that, Red, and I never was any gladder in my life... But you're all shot up. Let me see!"

  "They'd have to be a hell of a lot wuss than they air to croak me now. Let me tell you. When I ran down on Bedford he saw me comin', an' he was ready for me. I bored him, but damn if he didn't hit me heah in this shoulder. Ormiston was trying to get away with Beryl on the sorrel there when I run in on him. Beryl was fightin' him. But for her I'd shore have bored him before he got in thet first shot. It knocked me flat. Better look these bullet holes over an' tie them up. This one on my haid hurts like hell."

  Examination disclosed in Red's head a groove that cut through the scalp, but had not touched the skull, and another in his left shoulder, high up. The bullet had lodged just under the skin on the far side. It would have to be cut out, but Sterl left that operation for camp, and bound his scarf tightly around the wound.

  "We'd better leave the other one open," he said. "Hello, what's that?"

  Red rose up to listen. "Fag end of a stampede, I'd say. Look out for Beryl. I'll wrangle the horses. Come, Friday."

  The black ran off under the gums to get Duke, while Sterl drew King and the sorrel back away from the open. A bobbing line of cattle hove in sight down through the brush, loping along wearily.

  "Wal, they might have started wild, but they're bein' chased now," said Red. "Get the rifles heah, pard, an' if it happens to be any of Ormiston's outfit, they'll never get nowhere."

  On a front so wide that Sterl could just make out the far end, a herd of cattle came loping past, scattered and bawling, almost ready to drop.

  "Coupla thousand haid, shore as you're born," said Red when they had passed. "Thet's
sort of queer. I recognized that bull. Pard, thet was the bunch raided out of Dann's last night!"

  "Might be."

  "Heah comes some riders. Two! Thet's Larry's hoss. An' Rollie too. But Drake ain't with them."

  From some hundred paces away the riders espied the bushranger swinging with horrible significance, and this brought them to a quick halt. Then they rode slowly up, their eyes gleaming, their lips tight.

  "Beryl?" queried Larry, hopefully.

  "She's up theah, on the seat, comin' out of a daid faint."

  Larry slumped out of his saddle to sit down like a man whose legs were wobbly. Sterl did not like the look of either of the drovers.

  "Where's Drake?"

  "He wouldn't shoot barefaced from ambush," replied Larry, tragically. "Rol and I didn't know it though, till right at the last, he ran out, yelled at Anderson and Henley. They drew their revolvers and he shot them both off their horses. I--I killed Buckley. Herdman and Smith had begun to shoot. It was Herdman, I think, who hit Drake and did for him. Rol's horse was shot from under him. The mob rushed, ran us back into the brush. Herdman and Smith had to ride hard. But they got around them and headed off to the east. We couldn't chase them until the cattle had run by. Then it was too late."

  "Ahuh. Too bad about Drake. Air you shore he was daid?"

  "There was no doubt of that."

  "It's orful tough, Larry. I reckon Sterl an' me feel for you. But the fact is, we got off lucky."

  "Jack and--Bedford?"

  "They beat Ormiston to hell pretty considerable."

  "There's only one thing to do now," said Sterl. "Take Beryl back to camp pronto. You're all shot up, too. We've got to cross that infernal river before dark."

  Stanley Dann, the Slyters, with Heald and Monkton, and one of Dann's drovers stood on the east bank, awaited their landing, visibly laboring under extreme excitement and fear.

  "My--daughter?" asked Dann, almost voiceless.

  "Safe," replied Sterl, not looking at him, and leaped to the ground. He waved his sombrero to Red and Larry. Then as they waded in, Sterl untied his lasso.

  "Get your rope ready," he said to Rollie.

  Sterl had been aware of Leslie's presence close beside him and a little behind. One she touched him with a timid hand, as though to see if he were really back in the flesh. They were all talking except Leslie. Finally she spoke in her deep contralto: "Sterl!... Sterl!"

  Then he looked around and down upon her, meaning to be kind, trying to smile as he said: "Hello, kid!" but she instinctively-recoiled from his face. Sterl did not marvel at that. It had happened before to girls who, approached him after a hard job. But hover could he help it? Men had to kill other men! The wonder in him was that it made any-difference in his face and look.

  Sterl turned to watch the swimming horses as they entered the current. Sorrel, and Leslie's other horses, hesitated but finally followed. "Rollie, go below me... Everybody get back so I can swing this rope."

  Red and Larry were ten feet apart, heading evenly into the current. The lean noses came on abreast, and the shoulders of the riders rose into plain sight. The onlookers watched, tense and breathless, while the horses swept down with the current, at last to forge out of it, and come straight for the bank. A cheer of released emotions rent the air. Duke, as powerful as if he had not already performed miracles that day, waded out in King's tracks. To make sure, Sterl roped him and hauled lustily to help him pound up the bank. Rollie helped Larry. No one thought of Leslie's four horses, now making for shore.

  Stanley Dann crowded close, his bearded jaw wobbling, his great arms outstretched. With one shaking hand, Red unfolded the dripping slicker over Beryl and let it fall away from her white face. If her eyes had not been wide open, she would have looked like a drowned girl.

  Red lifted her and bent down to yield her to her father's eager arms.

  "Dann, heah's yore girl--safe--an' sound," said Red, in a queer voice Sterl had never heard before. "An' thet lets me out!"

  What did the fool cowboy mean by that speech, wondered Sterl? Red had settled some debt to himself, not to anyone else.

  "Ormiston?" boomed the drover.

  "Wal, the last we seen of thet bushranger, he was dancin'. Yep, dancin' on thin air!" And with that, passion appeared to have spent its forces as well as Red's strength. "Where the hell air--you--pard?" he went on, in a strangely altered tone. "I--cain't--see you... Aw, I--get it... Heah's where--I cash!"

  His staring blue eyes, as blank as dead furnaces, told their own story. He swayed and fell into Sterl's arms.

  Chapter 21

  Larry helped Sterl carry Red across to Slyter's camp, and into their tent. For Sterl all this slow walk was fraught with icy panic. It might well be that Red had been more severely wounded than a superficial examination had shown. How like Red Krehl to have such a finish! The fool cowboy would have died at Beryl's feet, to give the vain beauty everlasting remorse and grief.

  "Get hot water--Larry," he ordered. They undressed Red, rubbed him dry, forced whisky between his teeth. Then Sterl unbound the wounds, washed them thoroughly, ruthlessly cut open the one on his back, and extracted the heavy bullet. It had gone under his collarbone, to stop just beneath the surface. Sterl dressed the shoulder injury, bandaged it, and went on with steadying hands to that bullet groove in Red's scalp. Sterl could not be fearful over either wound. He had seen the cowboy laugh at scratches like this. But Sterl found evidence that Red had bled freely all during the ride back to the river. The water had washed him clean, but one of his boots was half full of diluted blood. There lay the danger!

  Sterl took a long pull at the flask Larry offered. It burned the coldness out of his vitals. Then he rubbed himself thorougly and got into dry clothes.

  "I'd feel all right, if only Red..." he choked over the hope. He went on. It was almost dark and the rain still fell steadily. Under Bill's shelter, a bright blaze gleamed with shining rays through the rain. Bill had steaming vessels upon the gridiron.

  "Eat and drink, lad," said Slyter. "We have to go on, you know... How is Red?"

  "Bad. Bled almost to death... But I hope--I--I believe he'll recover... How did the kid take the return of her horses?"

  "Sterl, you wouldn't believe it--the way that girl cried over them... But it was a breakdown, after all this day's strain, and the tremendous relief of your return."

  "Of course! Leslie is not one to crack easily."

  "My son, I very much fear Leslie is in love with you."

  "Slyter, I fear that, too," replied Sterl, ponderingly, a little bitterly. "I hope, though, that it isn't quite so bad as what happened to Beryl."

  "My wife says it's good. We have trusted you, Hazelton."

  "Thanks, my friend. That'll help some."

  The return of Slyter's womenfolk put ark end to that intimate talk. Much to Sterl's relief. They threw off wet coats and stood before the fire, Leslie with her back turned and her head down.

  "Leslie, how is Beryl?" asked Sterl.

  "I don't know. She--she frightened me," replied the girl, strangely.

  "How is your friend Red? He looked terribly the worse for this day's work," interrupted Mrs. Slyter.

  Sterl briefly told them his hopes for Red, omitting his fears. But that sharp-eyed psychic, Leslie, did not believe him. When Sterl looked at her she averted her piercing gaze.

  "Who shot him?" rang out Leslie, suddenly.

  "Yes, you'll have to be told about it all, I suppose," returned Sterl, in sober thoughtfulness. "Bedford shot Red first in the shoulder--and then Ormiston nicked his head. Not serious wounds for a cowboy. But Red lost so much blood!"

  "I heard Red say to Mr. Dann--that about Ormiston dancing on thin air. I know... But Bedford?"

  Slyter interposed: "Leslie, wait until tomorrow. Sterl is worn to a frazzle."

  Sterl wanted to get part of it over with and he bluntly told Leslie that Red had killed Bedford.

  "What did you do?" queried this incorrigible young woman, unflinchi
ngly.

  "Well, I was there when it happened." That seemed to be all the satisfaction Sterl could accord the girl at the time.

  "Thanks, Sterl. Please forgive my curiosity. But I must tell you that I asked Friday."

  "Oh, no... Leslie!" exclaimed Sterl, taken aback.

  "Yes. I asked him what happened to Ormiston. He said: 'Friday spearum. Red shootum. Me alonga Red hangum neck... Ormiston kick like hellum... Then imm die!'"

  It was not so much Friday's graphic and raw words that shocked Sterl as the girl's betrayal of the element.

  "Retribution!" added Mrs. Slyter, in a moment. "He stole Beryl from her bed. I'll never forgive myself for believing she ran off with him!"

  "Neither will I, Mrs. Slyter," said Sterl, in poignant regret.

  "I was afraid of it," put in the girl, frankly.

  "Sterl, Dann will want to see you. Let us go now, before Les and Mum loosen up," suggested Slyter.

  Glad to escape, though with a feeling for Leslie that he did not wish to analyze, Sterl accompanied the drover through the dark and rain. They found Dann at his table under a lighted shelter. Before him lay papers, watches, guns, money and money belts.

  "Hazelton, do I need to thank you?" asked Dann, his rich voice thick.

  "No, boss. All I pray for is Red's recovery."

  "Please God, that wonderful cowboy lives! Slyter, our erstwhile partner had thousands of pounds, some of which I recognize as belonging to Woolcott and Hathaway and put aside for their heirs. I appropriated from Ormiston's money what I consider fair for my loss. Do you agree that the rest should go to the cowboys, and Larry, and Roland?"

  "I do, most heartily," rang out Slyter.

  "Not any for me, friends," interposed Sterl. "But I'll take it for Red. He deserves it. He uncovered this bushranger. He made our plan today, saved Beryl--and hanged Ormiston."

  "Terrible, yet--yet... I'll want your story presently. I've heard that of Larry and Roland. Poor Drake! Too brave, too rash! You may not know that Drake was friendly with both Anderson and Henley. That may account--what a pity he had to find them unworthy--to see them seduced by a notorious bushranger--and kill them! Yet how magnificent!"