The Great Trek

by Zane Grey

  “Mebbe, if they’d come. But Dann wouldn’t come. Pard, I’m afraid he’s leanin’ to a belief we Yankees air too hard-hearted an’ suspicious.”

  “I had that thought, too,” said Sterl soberly. “Red, you’re figuring we’d better look out for our own scalps and let these drovers find things out?”

  “I reckon I am, pard, though I ain’t had time to figger much.”

  “Maybe you’re right, Red. You’re harder-headed than I am. Little sentiment about you in this kind of deal. But I find it, well, not easy to fall in with.”

  “Why so, Sterl?”

  “If Ormiston is really as bad as he is…heavens! He’ll not stop at anything. There’s Leslie to think of…and Beryl. I can see no difference in the way he looks at either girl. He’s a tiger.”

  “Leslie is yore lookout, pard, an’ Beryl is mine. She’s a vain little flirt…the damnedest proposition I was ever up against…but thet’s no call for me not to save her, if I can. Besides, pard, I cain’t help lovin’ her, damn my fool heart.”

  Friday returned to say: “Boss, no black fella tracks alonga here.”

  The cowboys mounted, each taking a last glance at the dead horse, with its sinister meaning, then they followed Friday.

  It was not far to where he came upon the black man tracks thick in every bare spot. He led the cowboys past dead campfires, merely a few charred sticks crossed, and on for several hundred yards to a trampled, blackened, sandy patch where a large fire had burned. A steer’s head, skinned and split, needed not the scattered bones, all of them gnawed, and the bloody ground to mark the spot where there had been an aboriginal feast. What amazed Sterl was the completeness of it. No hide or hoofs left! Only a few bones divested of their marrow. From that spot foot tracks of a horde of natives led on in the direction of the trek.

  Friday pointed to smoke signals so many miles ahead that they showed only faintly.

  “Wal, thet’ll be about all, pard,” said Red. “Let’s ride around across this heah flat, an’ come up behind the mob on Slyter’s side.”

  “While meditating that there are bloody hombres here, like those we thought we’d said good bye to at home?” Sterl asked bitterly.

  “I reckon human nature is the same all over the world,” observed Red.

  Chapter Ten

  That day’s trek, owing to the larger mob of cattle becoming infused with the excitement which dominated Ormiston’s, proved to be the longest so far. There were steers among them that had native spears sticking from their backs. When Dann halted for camp in a wide vale of grass with a lake in the center, dusk came on too quickly for the drovers to put the wounded cattle out of their misery, which Sterl supposed they would do.

  That night the vote of argument went against Stanley Dann. The drovers contended that to kill the speared cattle would be playing into the native’s hands. The decision showed lack of foresight, thought Sterl. The blacks would spear more cattle night after night, and all of these would die eventually, or become diseased and a menace to the mob and so would have to be killed.

  Sterl’s reply to Dann’s interrogation carried little weight with Ormiston and his adherents. Sterl had said: “Sure. Kill the speared cattle, and shoot enough more for these blacks to gorge themselves for a month or two. Maybe then we could lose them.”

  At this camp Sterl had little inclination and not much opportunity to add to Slyter’s worries by telling him that Woolcott had been murdered. But Slyter did confide in Sterl and Red that he had learned from the Danns of Ormiston’s claim to Woolcott’s fifteen hundred head of cattle for a gambling debt. Sterl was staggered, and the fluent Red rendered speechless for the moment.

  “Hathaway verified it,” went on Slyter. “Told me Ormiston, Woolcott, and those drovers, Bedford and Jack, gambled every night.”

  Later, when Slyter went about his tasks, Red came out of his dumb spell. “Pard, thet ain’t so. It’s another of Ormiston’s damn’ lies. Hathaway might believe it, I reckon. He always went to bed with the chickens. For months, almost, either I have seen Ormiston with Beryl, or I have been with them drovers, Jack an’ Bedford. Cairds was never mentioned to me, an’ you know I had a roll of English pounds thet would have choked a cow. I got a hunch they figgered on stealing it from me. An’ there wasn’t no hurry, ’cause where’n’ll could I spend it out heah?”

  “A-huh. So the plot thickens,” mused Sterl.

  “An’ misfortunes ain’t comin’ singly. I was jest waitin’ for somethin’ to start.”

  Red had clairvoyant power, or hunches as he called them in his cowboy philosophy; and in this instance what he said proved to be in the nature of prophecy.

  Leslie, in order to replenish the fire so that she could see to write, picked up a bundle of firewood that Friday had packed in and, having neglected to put on her gloves, she was severely bitten by what Slyter feared was the red-back spider.

  Friday found the spider, which he gave an unintelligible name, and which Slyter pronounced to be one of the deadly poisonous species. While he applied what remedies were at hand, the black ran off to get one of his native cures.

  The spider had been killed but not crushed. Sterl and Red examined it with attention, as evidently it was more dangerous than their well-known tarantula. This red-back had a body as large as a small marble, with a red band around it, and eight legs, two long ones in front, and the same at the back, with the four shorter ones between.

  From the swelling of Leslie’s shapely hand, and the pain which grew intense, it was evident, indeed, that the red-back bite produced somewhat the same symptoms and consequences Sterl had experienced in a rattlesnake bite and in other cowboys who had been bitten.

  Leslie made light of it, especially after Friday returned to paste some herb concoction of his own upon the ugly wound. Sterl had found out that strong coffee was a better remedy for snake bite than whiskey. He plied the girl with coffee and walked her up and down for hours, keeping her awake until she fell asleep in his arms from exhaustion. Then he carried her to the wagon and laid her on her bed.

  Soon after that the night guard changed, with Larry bringing in the horses. When they called Red, it was to discover that he was ill with chills and fever, the like of which had never before fallen to that cowboy. But he refused to stay in bed. The three men rode out together, preceded by Friday. They made connection with Cedric at the back end of the mob and Eric Dann at the front, when they separated as before to patrol their respective beats.

  Sterl, once more alone, reverted to concern over Leslie’s condition, and to the menace of the night. The only comfort he had was the presence of the black man. While Friday sat on a stone, motionless and alert, Sterl had no fear of being surprised.

  The night was warm with sweet scents on the breeze. Wild fowl out on the lake uttered weird cries. He listened in vain for the howling of dingoes and native dogs, and the melancholy chanting. The mob quieted down into repose and another dawn wore around.

  That day Red was so sick he could not sit his horse. Stanley Dann claimed his ailment was intestinal and came from something he had eaten. Red swore and asked for whiskey. He rode on the dray, high on top of the great load of flour bags, where he went to sleep.

  Leslie should not have ridden at all, but neither her father nor Sterl could dissuade her. “Shucks,” she said. “I’m all right. I won’t give into thet pesky old red-back!”

  Sterl rode close to her that day, during which she fell out of her saddle twice. She was game, and she did not lose her sense of humor or even the new audacity that had developed on this trek.

  “Red says I’m gonna be a genuine cowgirl, didn’t he?” And on the occasion of the second sliding out of her saddle, which Sterl thought came from her falling asleep, she swayed to and fro in his hold, unable to mount without his aid. “Dog-gone it, Sterl,” she said, when she was up, “if I fall off again, treat me to some of that …that medicine you gave me back at that one camp.”

  Two days of laborious travel followed. Befor
e sunset of the first, the expedition stalled before a considerable stream with steep banks. Even when the mob, driven across in advance, had trampled out crude roads, it required eight horses to drag each wagon across. Leslie was still too weak to brave the treacherous current, and Sterl, mounted on King, carried her across in his arms. Mid-current, she looked up and said softly: “I’d like to ride all the rest of the way like this.”

  “Yeah? Three thousand miles?” responded Sterl. “Well, you wouldn’t have much consideration for King…and me.”

  “King? Oh, he can carry double. And you are so strong,” she murmured, her eyes closing. Sterl thought she was falling asleep.

  This little occurrence he registered as one of the dangerous incidents, if not misfortunes, that were multiplying.

  Dry camp that afternoon awakened Sterl anew to the alarming probability that lack of water headed Stanley Dann’s list of obstacles to the trek. So far it had been negligible. Camp stood picturesquely in a great open bush with huge gums wide apart, spinifex and mulga abounding, sassafras trees pointing skyward like inverted ice-cones, and flowering flame-trees burning in the sunset.

  The drovers threw the mob in a huge circle, closely bunched. Ormiston pitched his camp a stone’s throw from the Dann’s; Slyter kept to his rule of isolation at some distance.

  Friday anticipated a native corroboree that night, and it was forthcoming, with its accompaniment of dingo choruses and dog howls. No fires were visible off in the bush. Dann’s order was to let the aborigines alone, unless they stole into camp to attack. Morning disclosed no close evidence that the blacks had killed cattle, but Slyter shrewdly claimed their leader could have found out he put Friday and the cowboys to hunting tracks.

  All day the smoke signals rose far ahead, the sun burned hotter, the tiny flies swarmed invisibly around the riders’ and drovers’ heads. Ten miles or more onward through the deepening bush a small stream invited camp and rest. At dusk flying-foxes, like vampire bats, swished and whirred over the camps; opossums and porcupines had to be thrust out of the way; stealthy animals rustled in the spinifex almost within the circle of campfire light. Every piece of firewood hid a horde of ants, and, as they crawled frantically away in every direction, Bill, the cook, scooped them back into the fire with a shovel. But in spite of that they swarmed everywhere and bit everybody, which, although a trivial thing, Sterl thought, yet acutely added to the irritating discomfort and the sense of misgiving.

  Then there was a large bug that came out of decayed wood, a blue-black bug over an inch long, which was not painful like the fierce ants, but decidedly more annoying in the vile odor it gave off when discovered. Slyter called it a cockroach. Friday gave it an unpronounceable name, but Red Krehl roared: “Jest a plain ole stinkin’ American bedbug growed into a giant!” And Sterl was bound to admit that his cowboy comrade’s description was felicitous. Snakes, too, became more common in the bush as the trek neared the tropics. Sterl espied a death-adder under his lifted foot, stepped on it before he could jump, and then leaped like a bent sapling sprung erect. Red, scared as he was, let out a yell of glee. “Aw, pard, it ain’t a-comin’ to us, not a-tall!” After that the friends did not take off their chaps at the end of the day’s trek; and Sterl cut down an extra pair of his for Leslie to wear. The girl’s extraordinary delight in them was equaled by the picturesque exaggeration of her charm. Red proposed to Beryl that he model a pair of his for her, which offer she received with pleasure. But Ormiston pooh-poohed the idea, she explained, and told Red he need not sacrifice his chaps. Sterl thought that more than usually a mark of the ascendancy the handsome drover was acquiring over Dann’s daughter. “Wal,” declared Red to Beryl, “if you’re more afraid of Ormiston’s ridicule than snake bite, why go ahaid an’ get bitten. Shore would tickle me.”

  There were times when Red showed a side that puzzled and piqued Beryl to redoubling her charm over him. There would come a time, Sterl reflected, when the girl would fail with Red.

  On and on the trek plodded to the north and west, its progress retarded somewhat by the bush, but scarcely hampered by the blacks who followed. Several nights Ormiston’s drovers fired upon marauding aborigines, so they claimed; then so far as shooting was concerned, there might not have been any thieves bent on stealing beef. But there were, because Friday informed Sterl of it, and Sterl told Slyter. The news never got to Stanley Dann.

  For weeks after Woolcott’s death Ormiston kept mostly to his camp. He had even neglected Beryl, a circumstance Red had made the most of. Stanley Dann made the remark that Ormiston had taken the Woolcott tragedy very grievously. Dann had been gratified by the drover’s throwing his cattle in with the main mob. The strained relation was certainly no worse, if it had not grown better. But Sterl was not deceived by Ormiston. Red had abandoned his plan of intimacy with Ormiston’s drovers, and apparently worked a miracle in his transformation of behavior. He bided his time. He still clung to his belief that Beryl Dann would be instrumental in exposing Ormiston in his true colors.

  The old track of the first and only cattle trek into that northland was easy to locate, though difficult to travel. This open bush appeared to be a plain, bounded by hills ranging in the same direction. On clear mornings purple mountains shone ahead. Pests and vermin and heat and failing water holes increased perceptibly every day’s trek.

  Finally the smoke signals gradually diminished in number until they were seen no more. The hungry horde of blacks, abreast of the trek for a month or more, had satiated their ravenous appetites and had gone, vanished like their mysterious smoke.

  With the departure of the aborigines, relieving the guard duty and the ever-present menace, Sterl reverted somewhat to his absorption in natural phenomena. It was hard to be enthusiastic and vigilant with a blazing sun overhead, a swarm of black flies obscuring his sight, and the invisible little devils, biting like fire. Leslie had constructed a head-net which saved her face and neck. During the trek through the bad fly country the cowboys let their beards grow and wore silk scarves up to their eyes, and even over them at times.

  Both Mrs. Slyter and the girl were in good health and spirits despite the hard work, ceaseless movement, and nervous strain. As for the last, however, Leslie could not have been said to possess nerves any more. She thrived on the spare rations, the days astride horses, the innumerable details of the trek. Sterl had since worn out his perturbation at the girl’s speaking eyes, with their light for him. If it helped Leslie to feel about him as evidently she did, to sustain her courage and lend to romance, then Sterl was glad. He could well put off the distant day when they might come out of this hazardous trip alive.

  One night Red returned to camp rather earlier than usual, and his look prepared Sterl for a disclosure.

  “Pard, I jest happened to heah somethin’,” he whispered impressively, leaning his falcon-shaped red head toward Sterl. “I was after a bucket of water for Beryl, kinda under cover of the bank where the brook was clean. Ormiston with Jack an’ Bedford came along above. I heahed low voices, kinda sharp, before they got to me. Then, right above, Ormiston spit out…‘No, I told you. Not till we get to the headwaters of the Diamantina.’”

  Sterl echoed his last four words. “Red, what do you figure from that?”

  “Wal, it’s plain as print so far. What ever Ormiston an’ outfit have in mind, it’s to come off at the haidwaters of thet river. No doubt his men, those two hombres I’ve distrusted all along, want to pull off the deal sooner.”

  “Big stake in it for them,” pondered Sterl.

  “Shore. Money stake. Mebbe all the whiskey they can drink. Don’t imagine thet wouldn’t go a long way with those hombres. This thirsty trek has got their very flesh cryin’ out for likker.”

  “Money stake? Ormiston wouldn’t let everyone in on a big deal?”

  “Right-o, pard. Wal, what is thet deal?”

  “You tell me, Red.”

  “Hell, you used to have brains. Cain’t you help me figgerin’?”

  “I’l
l try. Suppose I analyze this in what we will call an Australian way. Then you give me your old cowboy range American slant.”

  “Hop to it, pard.”

  “Ormiston wants to be a partner of Stanley Dann’s after the trek. Or get control of a big mob of cattle, and marry Beryl. He is working his deal so that his antagonism to Dann and his threatened split will induce Dann to give almost anything to keep him on the trek. Ormiston’s drovers want a showdown for their labors on a speed-up of the break.”

  “You ain’t calculatin’ anythin’ a-tall on our idee thet Woolcott was murdered?”

  “Hardly. That is a sticker, I admit, but I am trying to find a motive more credible for those Australians.”

  “Umpumm! Hell, no! Not a-tall!” Red exploded. “Cain’t you get it in yore dumb haid thet one or more of these Australians can be jest plumb bad?”

  “Yes. But Stanley Dann or Slyter couldn’t figure that way.”

  “No. An’ thet’s why they’ll get it where the chicken gets the axe, unless we circumvent the deal…. Pard, listen to a little plain sense from a Texas hombre who’s knowed a thousand bad eggs. Ormiston is a drover, mebbe, a cattleman, mebbe. He’s been used to the open, what these people call the Outback. Thet we can be shore of. He’s after Beryl, shore, but he’s no keener after her than he was Leslie. She’s in the deal. He’s after cattle, all he can steal! It’s a cinch he killed Woolcott, or had one of his outfit do it. Woolcott probably bucked. Wanted to go back to Dann. Their gamblin’ debt can be discounted. Ormiston is workin’ to persuade some of Dann’s riders to side with him. I know thet. They jest damn’ near approached me, which was what I was wantin’! Wal, muss thet all up an’ figger. Ormiston has control of three thousand haid. He’ll get hold of more, by hook or crook. An’ he’ll split with Dann at the haidwaters of thet river, take Beryl with him by persuasion or force, an’ light out for some place he knows, or is figgerin’ on. Thet, my son, is what old Dudley Texas says!”