The Great Trek

by Zane Grey

  In another moment, Red had himself and comrades under the bank where a ledge ran out a few feet and some long-plumed grasses obscured it from sight above. Sterl sat with Leslie clinging to him on one side, while he clutched the cowboy on the other. Lights of the corroboree gleamed and danced on the dark water; weird chanting wailed from the opposite bank; black forms moved mysteriously around the smoking fires; the savory odor of roasted beef scented the air.

  A rustle of weeds above, a footfall, and then Beryl’s rich voice: “Here, Ash, this is far enough. I’d like to hear the corroboree.”

  “Yes, you like those damned niggers…. I smell cigarette smoke! Somebody has been here,” came in Ormiston’s voice, guarded and low. “Hazelton has been here with the damned little baggage,” he growled. “Neither her father nor mother has sense enough to see….”

  “Of course, they see. But it’s something beautiful, not what you see.”

  “Hazelton is no good. Like as not, he’s one of those Western outlaws.”

  “No…no! Oh, Ash, darling, that would be…horrible!”

  “Hazelton is one of those American gunmen. A killer! Jack has been abroad. He knows. He saw six notches cut on Hazelton’s gun. That means the blighter has killed six men, at least. I’m no gun thrower. I’d be a fool to provoke him further.”

  “Indeed, you…would be, Ash,” she said, checking her sobs. “He has made himself valuable. I’d like to see you strike him! But not to kill. Dad has come to rely upon him.”

  “The Yankee is a help, I’m bound to admit that. But, Beryl, I can’t stand your praising him. I’m jealous. I see him watching you. He is as fascinated by your beauty as I am. He’s got it as bad as that red-headed chum of his. Their eyes just gloat over you…. Beryl, you are so lovely. I’m mad over you. I love you beyond reason.”

  “Oh, Ash…do you, darling?” she murmured. “And am I so…so lovely?”

  “Beryl, you are now the loveliest creature I ever beheld,” he replied passionately, and his kisses rang softly. “You were pretty enough in Downsville to distract any man. But how you have improved on this trek! Such beautiful color! Such glorious eyes. You’ve gained. You were too thin. But now you’ve filled out…. You luscious creature….”

  “Ash!…you…must not…,” she remonstrated, but it was the remonstrance of love, that invites rather than repels. That next tense moment, with its kisses, its gasps, its murmurings, must have been a dreadful ordeal for Red Krehl. Sterl’s heart was heavy for his comrade.

  “Ash, darling, we came away to talk seriously,” Beryl said, evidently regaining composure. “The dew is falling. It is warm, and I’m only lightly clad. I must not stay much longer. Tell me.”

  “Yes, we must settle it,” he rejoined in a deep, low voice, without a trace of hesitation. “Beryl, I am not going on with your father, or with Eric Dann, even if he does take the Gulf road. I’m splitting off at the head of this river, not many days from here.”

  “Ashley! Not going? Oh!”

  “No. We can’t get along. Your father will never cross the Never Never! Not up in this northern half of Australia. He will be lost.”

  “We dared that risk,” replied the girl. “Somehow father has imbued me with his wonderful faith. We’ll win through.”

  “I doubt it. I almost know it. This interior Outback grows impossible west of the Warburton. I want to live…to love and be loved. I’m no pioneer…no empire builder. I’m a man who ran off from home as a boy…and who has lived the bush life.”

  “Ash, I promised to marry you. I will. But come with us to the Kimberleys. Make a home there.”

  “No. You come with me. Stanley Dann will go on that interior trek without his brother and Hathaway and me and some of his drovers. It will be suicide…. Beryl, come. Elope with me.”

  “Oh-h, Ash! How I would love to! That calls to me…to my soul. But I daren’t listen. I will not betray my father. I will go on, even if they all desert him.”

  “They all will, sooner or later.”

  “Never! Not Hazelton! Not that droll Red Krehl! If ever a man rang true, he does! Not Leslie, or her family. They will go. And I will go, Ash.” Her voice had begun low and rich with emotion, lingering over the first statements, then gathering power and passion, to end with the ring of a bell.

  “But Beryl…you love me!” he cried huskily.

  “Yes, I do. I do! But I would not betray my father. Ash, I beseech you…give up this selfish blind purpose of yours. It frightens me. You were not like this at first. You were so…so wonderful…for my sake, Ash, reconsider!”

  “Darling, I will, despite my better judgment,” Ormiston made haste to reply. And he fell to kissing her again. Presently she was whispering brokenly, won over anew, if not to compliance, then surely to belief. They moved away from the log.

  Not for a long moment did Red let go of Sterl’s hand. Then he sat with drooping head. He heaved a long sigh. “Pard, in the pinch heah she saved me my belief in her honor,” he said, his voice trembling.

  “She did, Red, she did, and I feel like a coyote…like a lowdown idiot. But she had me buffaloed.”

  “Me, too. But my hunch was true. Sterl, Leslie, if it wasn’t for you both, an’ a hell-bent somethin’, I’d walk right in this heah river!”

  But Leslie was in no condition to answer. She clung to Sterl, weeping convulsively. Sterl held her closely.

  “We gotta get outta heah,” spoke up Red. “Gosh, I jest found we’re bein’ eaten alive by muskeeters.”

  “There weren’t any a while back, I only just noticed them. Light a cigarette, Red, and smoke them out. We better not go back yet. Now, what to do, old-timer.”

  “Lord! We got the cairds. But how to play them? I say lay low, wait an’ watch. If we’d tell all this to Dann, we’d bust the trek wide open right heah. I’m a dumb-haid, though. I cain’t think of anythin’ but thet pore misled girl. Pard Sterl, it’s up to you to plan!”

  Chapter Fifteen

  On the morning of December Twenty-Fourth, the day before Christmas, Stanley Dann’s trek toiled and limped into camp at the forks of the Diamantina, there to be stranded until after the rainy season.

  The last fifty miles of that trek—owing to water holes lying in deep cuts almost inaccessible to the cattle, and dragging sand and terrific heat—turned out to be an all but insurmountable distance. Smoke signals preceded the drovers, and aborigines still followed them.

  Dann selected his permanent campsite on the west side of the river above the junction of the several branches, which were steep-banked, deep, dry beds of rock and sand, with water holes dispersed at widely separated points, and where the heat was fast absorbing the water. Animals and birds ringed these spots in incredible numbers. Those water holes would be dry in a few weeks. But below this junction the main water hole of the Diamantina was a mile-long, narrow, partly shaded pool that would last until the next rainy season, even if that took a year in coming. Except in sandy patches, grass grew abundantly. Dann was assured of these cardinal necessities for man and beast for as long a spell as they were compelled to wait there.

  Dann ordered camps pitched on the left bank in a grove of blossoming eucalyptus, standing far apart in stately aloofness from each other, spreading giant branches over a grassy, flowered bench where there were no marks of floods reaching that high.

  The pitching of this camp registered for the trekkers an immense relief and joy, but it had some significant features, the most potent of which was Ashley Ormiston’s refusal to camp on that side of the river. He drove his cattle and Allan Hathaway’s, which together constituted a mob of about three thousand head—according to Sterl’s calculation—across the dry streambeds to the farthest bank. Grass appeared more abundant on that side, and a shadier grove offered more comfort—two facts Ormiston gave as reasons for his choice. As a bird flew, however, the distance between the two camps was scarcely a quarter of a mile. Dann stood on his bank and for a long time watched Ormiston’s mob trekking across in detour, raisi
ng clouds of dust, and scattering flocks of birds. No one knew what was in his mind, but Sterl thought he could make a fairly accurate guess. He knew this action of Ormiston’s was a split, and not a procedure prompted by grass and shade, or more privacy for him and his drovers. The significance was ominous. He wanted to be on that side of the river, when the floods rolled down.

  All hands worked hard that day at pitching permanent camp, while a few riders guarded the mob and remuda. The latter task was merely a matter of method and habit. Neither cattle nor horses would actually need guardianship for many a day.

  Sterl and Red pitched their tent in a clump of pandamus trees which grew in a circle so closely that all their tops commingled, forming a dense canopy. The great seeds, somewhat resembling small pineapples, clustered aloft amid the foliage. Pandamus leaves covered with a ground canvas furnished a thick and soft carpet for the tent. Their nets promised protection from mosquitoes and flies. But nothing could save them from the heat. They worked naked to the waist, and the sweat poured off their bodies. Friday built himself a bark shack in back of the tent, and Roland and Larry elected to stay with the wagon, which had been drawn up near the clump of pandamus. Slyter’s wagon, some fifty rods or more distant, was sheltered by the largest gum, or at least one with the bushiest foliage on the bench. Near at hand, Bill was working hard to establish a comfortable cooking unit. The camps of the Danns were lower down, nearer the riverbank, and most picturesquely located among the gums.

  Not until late in the afternoon did Sterl feel free to change his wet and dirty garments. He decided to get the lay of the land in his mind, and to that end sought out Leslie to accompany him. But she was an extremely warm and wet and bedraggled young person bent over a washtub.

  “Leslie!” Sterl ejaculated. “Have you been all day washing?”

  “Howdy, Sir Galahad! Where have you been all day? Have you anything you need washed?”

  “Yes, thanks, gobs of them. But Red and I are used to doing our own. Les, it looks like a grand camp.”

  “I haven’t looked. Oh…the heat…and the flies! Hell!”

  “Right-o! But Red says, if we don’t croak, we’ll get used to it. See you at supper.”

  “I’m croaking now,” Leslie sent after him.

  Sterl went back to his camp. “Come on, Red, let’s take a look at the scenery.”

  “Wha-at? To hell with the scenery!” growled the cowboy. “I wanna rest an’ there ain’t none.”

  Then Sterl turned to the never-failing black, Friday, who was always there when wanted. “Come, Friday. Let’s go look-see.”

  With rifle and spear the two crossed the grassy flat back of camp, and climbed a low ridge that in ages past had been the bank of a vast river. From this point Sterl expected to get in his mind’s eye the lay of this upper Diamantina land. But the blazing sunset and the appalling grandeur of that country drove from his mind at first any thought of topography. One glance at the fiery sun blinded him for moments.

  “Good camp place, Friday?” he asked.

  “Plenty wood, plenty water, plenty meat. All same bad,” replied the black.

  Sterl made for a big, flat rock, to use as a seat, while Friday stood beside him, resting his tall spear.

  “Why all same bad?”

  “Plenty black fella, plenty lubra, plenty fly. Eatum up alive. No rain long time. Big water bimeby.”

  “One thing at a time, Friday. Why plenty black fella bad?”

  “Some black fella good. No good alonga here. Eat…steal. More come all time. Eat…steal. White fella like lubra. That bad.”

  Sterl reflected upon the intimation in the black’s words. Perhaps Stanley Dann’s fine mind had never been troubled by such a contingency.

  “What black fella do about young girls, I mean lubra?”

  “Mebbe stickum white fella spear.”

  “Not so good. But I hope our friend Ormiston runs true to type, and gets speared,” muttered Sterl half to himself.

  “Friday spearum ’im bimeby.”

  The black had said that once before, months back. Gazing up at him, Sterl thought his native ally was not one to forget.

  “Save Red or me the trouble…. Friday, what you mean, no rain long time?”

  “Black fella tell all about,” Friday replied, making one of his eloquent gestures. It seemed to include the sun, the land, the growths, the living things within its compass. The black man was a part of all this. He had senses utterly beyond the white man’s ken.

  “Would you stay here till rain come bimeby?” went on Sterl.

  “Yes, boss. Good.”

  “Then it’s both good and bad,” Sterl mused. “I just about figured thet myself. Friday, why bad when rain comes bimeby?”

  “Big water. All alonga. Ribber washum away. Cattle stuck.” Friday’s gestures here were more indicative of drastic calamity than his specific words. Sterl conjured up a mental picture of floods that were frightful in the extreme. But he knew that he could not imagine how terrible they might be.

  “Friday, how longa stay here?”

  The black opened and spread his wonderful hands, enumerating with his fingers. “Moons. Plenty moons. Friday no tell. Mebbe plenty more.”

  Strangely enough Sterl became alive to the fact that such a prospect was dreamingly good. He was glad without thinking of the cost in the end. There was rest, rest from that infernal trek, water, plenty of water to drink and bathe in, food enough, and unlimited meat, protection from the flies, Leslie to ride and walk and hunt with, and this glorious place. Sterl awakened to the fact that this last, which included Leslie’s part in it, too, held the significance of his unconsidered content. Therefore, he climbed up on the rock to grasp to his mind and heart the reason for such a devastating and ruthless forgetting of the meaning and success of this trek. And he found the same old thing facing him—the ever-new, strange, and stupendous nature of this Australian wilderness.

  A sheen of gold illumined the sky and enveloped the land. The three forks of the Diamantina, dry watercourses, white and glaring by day, now wound away like rivers of golden fire. That afterglow of sunset left the league-wide areas of green grass faintly suffused with its hue, but the riverbeds of rock and sand took on a phenomenal and supernatural intensity of color. There was a deeper tinge of gold on the canvas wagon tops, the tents, and a flock of white cockatoos, covering the branches of a dead gum tree, appeared transformed birds of paradise of that hue. Below camp to the right, where the water of the river gleamed through the trees, there was a flickering, twinkling myriad of golden facets.

  But this peculiar glow and glory of the scene over which Sterl’s gaze roved from place to place was only physical beauty, not by any means the dominating, compelling force that he felt, yet had not grasped. All he could do in those moments of fading effulgence was to drag his gaze from the scene at his feet, and face the wilderness into which these three spreading river courses wound away into mere threads of fire, to become lost in magnificent and illimitable purple haze.

  In his helplessness, as if he had been lost again and starving, Sterl appealed to the black man—the evolved product of this boundless country.

  “Friday! What see? How far? Where?”

  The aborigine understood him. Sterl had absolute assurance of that, as also conviction that the black could see clear to the horizons and beyond them. Friday’s long spear described a grand curve impressively holding the height of the arch toward the west, where the golden luminosity still emphasized a silhouette of ragged mountains.

  “Never Never Land!” said Friday in the white man’s language.

  Sterl was answered, and, although that answer seemed inexplicable, he felt satisfied. He would have to live a lifetime in this country to understand and assimilate it—a lifetime which he thought would be well-spent.

  From the Diamantina’s three-pronged fork the land spread away with grassy plain and rugged bush, a level land that never appeared to end, yet rose to long, heaving ridges with wide valleys between, a
nd low ranges leading westward, and on and on over never-ending blank spaces of purple, toward a horizon-wide portal between black domes and gold-rimmed peaks, far within this gateway there lifted an upflung spectral range, like a mirage in the moon, that beckoned and called with never-ending lure and promise.

  Dusk fell while Sterl made his way by easy stages back to camp. Every part of him except his mind felt tired. What an adventure he was living! What a pity it could not last. How hateful to contrast all he had just seen with the hate, greed, lust he knew existed in this camp!

  Red sat with his back to a tree, his hands spread listlessly. The cowboy was too tired to care about anything. “Pard, I seen you up there, like an Apache scout. Pretty nifty, huh?” he drawled lazily.

  “Red, I’ve no regrets, any more.”

  “Wal! Not a-tall?”

  “Not a-tall, old friend.”

  “Thet’s dog-gone good! Neither have I, Sterl. Couldn’t we jest be happy but for thet bastard Ormiston?”

  “Ha! We could be, and almost are…. Maybe, in spite of him.”

  Leslie approached, for once not running or even showing any of her usual energy. She had changed her rider’s ragged garb for a light cotton dress, and, as she came into the circle of Red’s little fire, both cowboys were struck by the difference.

  “Gosh, Les, you look sweet. I’d jest like to hug an’ kiss you,” drawled Red.

  “Why don’t you, then?”

  “Wal, I have two good reasons. One is, I want to preserve my life, an’ the other is I kinda want to be true to Beryl.”

  Sterl laughed. “Leslie, I dare say wholesome flattery like Red’s rings sweet in your ears. But such invitation as you offer him is rather risky.”

  “Do you boys know what day tomorrow is?” she asked wistfully.

  Sterl knew, but he remained thoughtfully silent.