by Zane Grey
Sterl got out in time to see five horse men across the river, riding at a brisk trot to the east. They were, of course, the drovers Dann had sent after the wagons and horses. The sky was dark, except for some broken rifts, low down in the west. A wet drab landscape offered another cheerless day. The river had fallen a couple of feet; driftwood had ceased to pass by, and the muddy water was clearing.
While Sterl ate breakfast with Slyter, and Friday stood by Bill’s fire, meat and drink in hand, Mrs. Slyter approached from Beryl’s wagon. Her usual brightness was lacking.
“Mum, you don’t look reassuring,” Slyter said anxiously. “I was up at midnight with Leslie. We had a cup of tea. She said Beryl was sleeping, when she left her.”
“Beryl has been shocked beyond her strength…any sensitive woman’s strength,” returned Mrs. Slater gravely. “She’s violently delirious. I fear she’ll go insane or die.”
Leslie came in then, pale but composed, to take a seat at Bill’s makeshift table.
“ ’Mawnin’. What’d you fear, Mum?”
“That Beryl would go crazy from shock, or die.”
“How awful! Oh, no, Mum, let’s not give in to that! What do you think, Sterl?”
“Well, it’s the cold gray dawn after two terrible nights with an awful day between. We can at least think clearly. Of course, I don’t know what Beryl had to endure before we appeared on the scene, but it probably was enough to tax any girl’s strength.” Here Sterl described Beryl’s fight with the bush-ranger, her fierce effort to keep him from killing Red. “Beryl was game, and she went the limit. She wrestled with Ormiston, kicked and bit him, spoiled his aim every shot. Well, then, Friday ended that fight by spearing Ormiston through the neck. He knew where he was sending that spear and had no fear of hitting Beryl. I don’t believe I ever lived the equal of that few moments. If Beryl had only fainted then, as any soft creature like we thought her would have done, it would not have been so bad for her. But she didn’t faint. She saw Ormiston roar and plunge around, like a mad bull. She saw Red rope him, around his…neck, over that spear he was tearing at. Saw Red drag him under the tree, and yell for Friday to help. They hanged Ormiston! I could hardly tear my eyes away from that kicking wretch. But when I did, it was to see Beryl on her knees, staring in transfixed horror at him. I ran to cover her…shut out that sight. And it was then she did faint.”
“Mercy!” gasped Mrs. Slyter.
“So that was how it happened?” ejaculated her husband, spellbound.
“I’d like to have been there,” Leslie declared, with an unnatural calm that was belied by the piercing glint in her hazel eyes.
“Talk sense, you wild creature,” returned her mother impatiently.
Sterl had not at all intended such a disclosure and felt at a loss to understand why he had yielded to the impulse. If it was to see Leslie’s reaction, however, he had been strangely justified.
“And your patient, how is he?” Mrs. Slyter asked anxiously.
Sterl expressed his hopes for Red and retained his morbid fears.
“Oh, I pray that he will recover,” sighed Mrs. Slyter. “What a story we are living! It can never be told because no one would believe us.”
“Mum, have you observed that I’m growing gray before my time?” Slyter queried in grim jocularity.
It rained on and off all day. During the intervals Sterl left his vigil by Red’s bedside to walk out, stretch his cramped legs, have a bite to eat and a cup of tea, and always to watch the falling river. Toward what would have been sunset, if there had been any sun, he admitted Dann to the tent. The leader bent over the cowboy, listened to his breathing and heart, studied his stone-cold face. Then he said: “I’ve played many parts in my time, including both minister and physician. I’m happy that I shall not have to administer pontifically to our valiant cowboy. Be at peace, Sterl. He will live.”
“Ah! I had almost dared to believe that myself.”
“Come out with me,” added Dann, arising. “The drovers have returned. I see one wagon and probably two score horses.”
They went out, to be followed by Friday. Rain had set in again, and the air was muggy. Sterl sighted a large wagon, which he recognized as Ormiston’s, rolling into the timber toward the old camp across the river. Four riders were driving a bunch of horses down to the shore. By the time Sterl and Dann had arrived at the landing point above camp, Larry had led off into the river, with the four riders behind urging and whipping the extra horses ahead of them. With the flood down six feet and no driftwood running, Sterl anticipated no difficulty in their crossing. So it proved to be. Neither riders nor unsaddled horses required any help at the landing. Dann expressed satisfaction upon seeing the best of his horses returned.
“Well done, Larry,” said Dann, as the young drover rode up to make his report. “I’m glad, indeed, to see my saddle horses brought back.”
“We got them all, I think,” was the reply. “Herdman and Smith left last night, soon after our departure. They took the four teams, but only one wagon…the food supply wagon driven by Jack. They either buried Jack and Bedford or took them away in the wagon. Ormiston’s wagon had been fired, but its contents were so wet it wouldn’t burn. We erected a cross over Drake’s grave.”
“That was well,” replied Dann, as Larry hesitated. “But what about Ormiston?”
“They left him hanging. So did we.”
“Indeed! That seems strange. But they were hurried. You, of course, gave Ormiston decent burial.”
“We did not, sir. We, too, left that bush-ranger for the buzzards!”
There was flint in Larry’s eyes and words. Stanley Dann, seldom at a loss for words, found none to say here.
“Larry, sure you fetched Red’s lasso?” Sterl asked laconically. “It was his favorite…too good a rope to waste on such a skunk as Ormiston.”
“Sorry, Sterl. But we didn’t. We left Ormiston hang!”
“Dog-gone, Larry, you’re going Western, and maybe bush, too!” exclaimed Sterl mildly, when he would have liked to whoop.
“Any more orders, sir?” Larry asked of their leader.
“Not tonight. Change your wet clothes, and come to my tent for whiskey before supper,” answered Dann gruffly.
That night at supper there was a release of tension as to Red’s condition, but not for Beryl’s. She had raved half the day, then fallen into a lethargy that preceded the sinking spell Mrs. Slyter had feared. Eric Dann, too, according to Slyter, was either a very sick man or pretended to be. Red was running a high temperature that night. He showed no symptom of having caught cold, however, and that eased Sterl’s mind of one serious possibility.
Again it rained, hard and softly, on into the night, subsiding at daybreak. That morning Red came out of his stupor, or unconscious spell, and he whispered almost inaudibly for whiskey.
“You son-of-a-gun!” cried Sterl in delight, as he dove for a flask. “Easy now, old-timer! You had fever last night…and your head is not well still.”
Red did not hear Sterl’s advice. A tinge of color showed in his gray cheeks. “How…long?” he asked in a husky whisper.
“This is the third day. How you feel, pard?”
“Orful! Air you…shore…I’m not daid?”
“You’re not lively, but you’re shore no corpse.”
“Got anythin’…back from…?” He moved his thumb to indicate across the river and eastward.
“One wagon, Ormiston’s twenty-odd horses…and this.” Here Sterl picked up Ormiston’s bulky belt to shove it front of Red. “He sure was heeled, pard. Dann took out what was due him, with Woolcott’s and Hathaway’s. The rest is yours. Wages justly earned, the boss said.”
“Hell…he did. How much?”
“I was afraid to count it. But I took a peep. Plenty mazuma, pard.”
“I’m gonna…get drunk. Never be sober…again.”
“Is that so?”
“Sterl, give me…another pull at…thet.”
“Umpumm. You’re a
sick man.”
“Gimme a…cigarette.”
“No. But I’ll see what Missus Slyter advises in the way of grub.”
Red was forced to swallow some gruel, which he would never have done had he not been too weak to lift his hand. The fever augmented again, accompanied by throbbing pains. Sterl sustained anxious hours that night before Red found relief in sleep. He did not awaken until late the next day, and that day turned out to be a terrible one for the cowboy. Sterl seldom left his bedside and then only to eat. He scarcely saw Leslie, who was in faithful attendance upon Beryl. She was in a far more precarious condition than Red.
Still the sky stayed drab and gloomy, shedding copious rains at slowly widening intervals. On the fifth day there came a break in Red’s favor and a lessening of his pain. It seemed a definite crisis passed. At supper that night Bill told Sterl the river had fallen low enough for the drovers to pack Ormiston’s supplies and wagon across, piece by piece. And the next day or so the cattle on that side were to be swum across. Eric Dann was up and about, moody and strange, which hardly seemed unnatural for a man who had been severely beaten over the head by a supposed friend. That eventful fifth day, however, showed no improvement in Beryl’s mental or physical condition. Her father averred that she would pull through. Red knew nothing of this. He had not mentioned Beryl, except during some of his deranged flights, and Sterl did not vouchsafe the information.
After that day Red began to mend. He was as tough as wire, young and resilient, and, as soon as his depleted blood began to renew, his complete recovery was only a matter of days. On the tenth day of the rains he sat at table with Sterl and complained to Bill about fare not fit for a grub-line cowboy. On the twelfth he had Larry fetch Jester in. Red saddled his favorite and rode around the camp, out to see the mob, a full five thousand strong again. And on the fifteenth he told Sterl: “Wal, if the sun would only come out, I’d be rarin’ to go.”
“Go where, pard?” retorted Sterl.
“Hell, I don’t know. Anywhere away from this heah doggone hole.”
Red Krehl was himself again almost—lithe and lean, blue fire-eyed, drawling in his speech, vital once more with that spirit which upheld Sterl and had come to galvanize the drovers to whom he had become a hero. But not even to the persistent and sentimental Leslie did he ever ask about Beryl or hear, apparently, her disclosures and confidences. The only thing Sterl ever heard him say to Leslie that might have had, and probably did have, some bearing upon Beryl was: “Wal, darlin’, a burnt child dreads the fire!” And Leslie retorted: “Darling, nonsense. I’m not your darling, and I wouldn’t be if you wanted me…you heartless, soulless Yankee cowboy!”
During the last few days of this period there were encouraging signs of the rainy season loosening its grip. It still rained, but far less frequently. The flat, dull sky broke at intervals, showing the first rifts of blue sky for over weeks. Still the sun did not show.
Stanley Dann sent Sterl and Larry across the ridge and flat to have a look at the west branch of the river. Smaller than the main fork, it ran swiftly and almost clear. Birdlife, with its color and melody, predicted a return of good weather; kangaroos and wallabies, emus and aboriginals appeared in increasing numbers. The last, Friday claimed, were different black fellas from those who had crowded at the Forks before the flood. The great triangle of grassland, which had its apex at the junction of the river forks, waved away, incredibly rich with new grass, and everywhere on the miles where the riders covered there were pools of water. Larry and Sterl reported to the leader that the trek could be resumed, rain or shine. But the patient Dann stroked his golden beard and said: “We’ll wait for the sun. Eric is not sure about the road. He thinks it’d be more difficult to find it in wet weather.”
“Then you’ll keep to this Gulf road, if we find it?” queried Sterl quietly.
“Yes. I shall not change my mind because Ormiston is gone.”
“Mister Dann,” Larry ventured with hesitation, “the creeks, water holes, springs will be full for months.”
“I am aware of that. But Eric has importuned me, and I have decided.”
Dann might have been actuated to delay because that would be better for Beryl. She had come to herself, and only time and care were necessary to build up the flesh and strength she had lost.
When one night the stars came out, Dann said. “That rainbow today is God’s promise. The wet season is over. Tomorrow the sun will shine. We go on and on again with our trek.”
Chapter Twenty-two
Sunrise next morning was a glorious burst of golden light. The joyous welcome accorded to this one-time daily event seemed in proportion to that of the Laplanders after their six months of midnight. Even Beryl Dann, from under the uprolled cover of her wagon, gazed out with sad eyes gladdened. By the exultant cheer and hope the agony of that endless enforced wait and the trial of the rainy season with its tragic ending could be measured. How they had prayed for the coming of the rains and how they prayed now because of the sun and the bright face of the trek again!
Breakfast was almost a hilarious event. The drovers whistled while they hitched up the teams to the packed wagons; they sang and called to one another as they mustered the mob for the trek.
Sterl, keen to see and share all this excitement, was perhaps the only one to observe that Eric Dann was not in accord with it. It struck Sterl that Dann would have felt the exhilaration of the hour, if they had been headed homeward. The man had never felt the greatness of this trek as had the others. He did not have his pioneer brother’s soul. He was afraid. But he was the first to start, driving his own wagon. Stanley, driving the big canvas-covered wagon that carried Beryl, sent his trusted drover, Bligh, ahead with the second wagon, and followed it, calling lustily for the others to come.
Sterl, mounted on King, and, as eager as the horse, waited with Friday for the other wagons to get under way. But Slyter was detained by Leslie’s pets. At the last moment Cocky had betrayed that the freedom he had been trusted with at this long camp was too much for him. Leslie had not even clipped his wings. And when he flew up to join a flock of screeching, white cockatoos, he became one of many. Gal, sitting on top of the wagon, exhibited a tremendous squalling and flapping joy at Cocky’s base desertion. Leslie gave up trying to call Cocky back.
Laughing Jack, the tame kookaburra, also turned traitor. He sat on the branch of a dead gum tree with three of his kind and helped in an uproarious concatenation of raucous jackass mirth. When they paused for breath, Leslie called: “Jack! Jack! Come down here, you rascal! We’re leaving!” Jack led another outburst of deafening clatter, he bobbed up and down, he ruffled his feathers, and he laughed hoarsely and derisively at the mistress who had been so kind to him. But he would not come down.
“Imm go alonga kookaburra,” said Friday.
That filled Leslie with anger and despair. She called furiously. In vain! Then she used some of the profanity she had heard from Red’s careless lips. Red laughed, and Leslie’s mother reproved her. All to no good. Jack had tasted the sweetness of utter freedom.
“Les, he’s gone bush,” said her father.
“Back to the wild!” Sterl added. “Leslie, would you ever be content to live with us again, after nearly a year on this free trek?”
“No, but I…I always lose everything I love,” wailed the girl, and, mounting Lady Jane, she rode out under the trees and did not look back.
Sterl was the last to leave the Forks. He was glad to go, because that was imperative, yet he felt a strong and inexplicable regret. He was the last to look at the crosses of the trekkers who had perished there. What lonely graves! The full-banked river ran swiftly and green; the wattles and gums were bright with colorful blossoms and wildfowl. On the opposite bank a line of blacks stood at gaze, motionless, wild, locked in their mystic thoughts. Blue and white herons lined the sandbars. Turning away, Sterl loped King out of the timber upon the level, to pass the line of wattles, and go on over the grazed and trampled grass to his old p
osition at the left end of the mob.
On their way—on the great trek again—with the unknown calling! Sterl felt the swell of his heart. But his emotion was not all exultance. Many cattle and horses, several wagons, and fourteen dead men and one woman had been left behind. Slyter’s five drovers, not including him and Red, and four of Dann’s, remained to handle that mob and three hundred horses, and six heavily laden wagons, across the endless leagues. The trek assumed more monumental risks and travails than ever.
Yet the start, the fact, the fate seemed unutterably inspiring. Why was it, wondered Sterl, so soul-stirring, so pulse-ringing? The answer was romance, adventure, the call of the unknown, the unconquerable spirit of man to roam, to seek, to find, and never to yield. Stanley Dann and Slyter might think in terms of new grassy downs, perennial springs and rivers, and multiplying cattle, an empire of their own, but that was not their ruling passion. They were the explorers, the doers, the finders. Even Ormiston must have been actuated by the spell of the bushland. And Eric Dann had succumbed to it without the courage to carry on like a man. Never in all Sterl’s life of riding ranges had his sight been assailed by so much brightness.
The sky was deep azure, floating a few silver-white clouds. The sun appeared no relation to that molten copper disc of a few weeks past. And the waving, rippling, shining landscape, in all its infinite variety of brilliant hues, stormed and assailed Sterl’s beauty-loving and color-worshipping senses.