by Zane Grey
King’s mane and smooth hide were a dead black, yet somehow they shone. Friday, stalking beside Sterl with his spears and wommera, naked except for the loincloth he wore, presented another kind of black, a glistening ebony. The mob of cattle appeared to consist of a hundred hues, yet there were really only very few. It was the variation of them that gave the living mosaic effect. They looked as clean and bright as if they had been freshly scrubbed.
Compared to one of the trail driver’s herds in Texas, the long-horned, moss-backed, red-eyed devils that were the bane of cowboys’ lives, this mob of five thousand bulls and steers and cows and calves were tame, lazy, fat pets. The slow trek, the widely separated frightening situations, and the kindness of the drovers accounted for this. Sterl had never seen a bunch of cattle like it, especially in this atmosphere which made them look as if they were painted.
This new golden sun, shining down upon everything living and inanimate, gave all a supernatural touch of infinite loveliness. Stanley Dann had predicted this as God’s promise in the rainbow.
Ahead of the leisurely moving mob the grass resembled that of the Great Plains in thickness and height, but in its richness of color and multitude of flowers it could have no comparison. Out of that eight months’ baked soil, by the magic or rain, had sprung up above and around the bleached and dead grass an abundant growth of green and gold and purple. When King bent his spirited head to tear off a long tuft of blossoms and grass, it gave Sterl a pang.
In the distance all around loomed purple bush-crowned hills, and to the north, far beyond, lilac ranges hung to the fleecy clouds like mirages right side up. If there could be enchantment on earth, here Sterl rode amidst it. That he seemed not the only one under its spell he proved by glancing at his companions on the trek, trying to pierce their minds. Every one of them rode alone, except Friday, who stalked lost in his own lonely, impenetrable thought. The drovers sat their horses and gazed, no doubt, at things that were only true in dreams. Red Krehl had forgotten his cigarette. Leslie rode far behind lost in her world. The wagon drivers rolled on from time to time, and halted between whiles. Nothing about them suggested the stern labor of the trek.
So the long bright day, like one endless golden afternoon passed without Sterl realizing where the hours had gone. At sunset, Larry, who had been sent on ahead to locate a camp near water, rode back to halt the herd and direct the teamsters to a wattle-bordered stream that meandered away to join the middle fork of the river.
A thousand white cockatoos swooped out of the trees, screechingly resentful of this invasion. Kangaroos dotted the level, standing head and shoulders above the grass. These live creatures and the physical attributes of their environment were part and parcel of the trek.
At this place Stanley Dann inaugurated a new order of arrangement whereby supplies and cooks and trekkers were consolidated into one camp. Red Krehl grumbled about eating with the Danns and Slyters, but Sterl’s curiosity as to the reason was wasted. He had known sooner or later that even such a big company must settle down into one family. Their members and supplies were being reduced, which fact had its advantages as well as drawbacks.
The exhilaration of the morning had carried through to evening. A sudden change from dark to bright, from gloom to hope, from stagnation to activity, from one terrible camp to a new one without terrors, from torrid heat and drenching rain to pleasant warmth and fragrant air, where, marvelous to experience, flies and mosquitoes were conspicuous by their absence—these facts could not help but be gratefully, almost rapturously, received. Only Sterl, perhaps, bothered to think that they would not last, that he must make the uttermost of them while they were present.
“Pard, it’s kinda good to be alive at thet,” Red drawled.
“Red, you’ve never fooled me about your indifference to beautiful places any more than to girls,” replied Sterl satirically.
“Yeah? Wal, mebbe Les was right, when she said once thet I wore my heart on my sleeve.”
“Red Krehl,” spoke up Leslie, “if you have a heart, it’s an old boring bag stuffed with grass and what-not.”
Leslie had come over to where Sterl sat writing in the journal, and Red was smoking. Friday, as usual, had made a little fire. The day was done, and the darkness was descending. A multitude of insects had begun night music.
“Gosh, am I thet bad?” rejoined Red mildly.
“Why wouldn’t you come with me to see Beryl, when I asked you before supper?”
“Wal, I reckon I didn’t want to see Beryl.”
“But she begged to see you. She looks better today. Glad for such perfect weather…and to leave that horrid Forks. I made sure you’d come with me, Red. And I was embarrassed. I lied to her.”
“Shore, you always was a turrible liar.”
“I was not. Red, you’re so queer. You never were hard before. Why, you stood positive cruelty from that girl, when she was a devil! And now, when she’s such a shadow of her once lovely self, she needs to be cheered, fussed over…loved.”
“A-huh. That weakness got her into a pack of trouble, Les Slyter. But would you mind shettin’ up, onless you want me to go out an’ commune with the kangaroos?”
“You mean the aborigines, Red Krehl,” Leslie returned spitefully. She was disappointed.
“Wal, I would at that, if there was any about.”
Leslie plumped down beside Sterl, and, pretending to peep at the journal, which he believed was only a ruse to get close to him, she asked to see it.
“I’m busy, Leslie.’ Way behind. Will you slope off to bed, or somewhere?”
“No, I won’t slope off to bed…or to hell, as you hint so courteously,” she retorted petulantly, but she left them.
“Pard, what’d she mean by that crack about aborigines?” asked Red.
“I think it was a dirty crack. But don’t ever overlook this, old pard. Every dirty crack a woman makes, every mean or rotten thing she does, every terrible blunder, like Beryl’s for instance, can be blamed on some man.”
“Aw, hell! You’ve said that before. It ain’t so. What did you ever say or do to make Nan Halbert double-cross you, an’ send us off to this turrible Australia?”
That blunt query pierced like a blade in Sterl’s heart. Not only was he amazed at Red, but the sudden opening of a healed wound flayed him. Still it drove him to be honest.
“Red, I flirted with Nan’s best friend…that damned, little, black-eyed hussy who wouldn’t let any man alone.”
“Hell you say! You mean Flo, of course. Wal, so did I! But what you mean by flirtin’? Thet ain’t nothin’ a-tall.”
“Well, it was enough to make Nan furious. Proud and jealous, you know. We quarreled. She smacked me something fierce. Then to hurt me she went hot foot after Ross Haight. And there she made her terrible blunder. It was my fault.”
“But, you locoed two-faced Romeo, you never told me thet. You swore Nan liked Ross best.”
“I lied, Red,” returned Sterl somberly, closing the journal. He would write no more in its pages that night.
“Wal, I’m a son-of-a-sea-cook! If you’d told me that back home, Ross Haight could have gone to jail for his little gun play. An’ we wouldn’t be heah!”
“For me, Red, it is better so. Only I grieve for what I led you into.”
“Funny how things come about. But you needn’t grieve too hard. I’m not sorry we’re heah.”
“Honest, Red?” Sterl appealed earnestly.
“Honest to Gawd. This trek is right down my grub-line trail. ’Course, I’ve had an orful blow in the gizzard. But if I get over it, an’ we get through…. Wal, wherever we end up, I’m bound to make some punkins of a man.”
“Red, you’re a good many punkins of a man right now. The best cowboy…the best friend I ever knew!”
“Wal, I can return thet compliment,” replied Red feelingly. “Heah we are throwin bouquets at each other! I call thet fine. Nobody else has a good word for us. That crack of Leslie’s….”
“Red, she lo
ves Beryl, and she’s hurt that you wouldn’t go with her to see Beryl. You ought to have gone. That surprised me. You used to be kind to anyone sick, even a no-good cowboy or a horse.”
“Mebbe I was. Mebbe I’ve changed a lot,” Red rejoined bitterly. “I wouldn’t want to see Beryl, if she was like she used to be before that hot spell, but let alone now, after….”
“Red! You’re here!” exclaimed Sterl sharply.
“Shore. Harder than the hinges of the gates of hell. But, if you cain’t see thet I’ve had a-plenty to make me hard, wal, you’re as blind as a bat, an’ gettin’ further an’ further from yore old thinkin’ self.”
“I deny that, Red Krehl,” flashed Sterl. “Sure you’ve had enough to make you flint. But you’re not flint…. Are you keeping something secret from me?”
“No. Jest the same I cain’t go around barin’ all my pore thoughts to you.”
“Red, you haven’t told me everything about Beryl.”
“Hell’s fire, man, you can think, cain’t you?” Red cut in with that icy edge in his voice. “An’ let’s change the subject, before we say things you an’ me never was guilty of.”
“Red, I beg your pardon,” said Sterl, astounded into contrition. “I didn’t mean to hurt you, old man. Let’s forget it, and go to bed.”
But Sterl, however loyal he wanted to be, could not forget it. Long he lay awake, thinking. Red had said—Hell’s fire, man, you can think, cain’t you? And Sterl certainly indulged in that faculty. But what he eventually deduced—the one fatal thing that all threads of memory and significance led to—his consciousness refused to accept, although it substantiated insupportably the truth of his theory that nature in the raw and wild reduced human beings to its level far oftener than it exalted them.
In another day the trek fell back into its old leisurely time-effacing stride. What would have been spring back on Sterl’s range was autumn here in Australia, but the elements of the perennial renewal of the earth and its creatures and plants was just the same, only its beauty and freshness and bloom more joyous and vivid.
One day’s trek was like another, although every league of that lonely land had infinite variety as well as endless monotony. The blaze of a benign and pleasant sun lay over all. With the increase of miles there was increase in every detail of beauty that had marked the entrance to this level, rolling hinterland. Sterl had his surfeit of loveliness. It had passed into his being. At last seas of green and golden grass, islands of flowers, kangaroo-dotted plains, flamboyant bushland, a myriad of birds, flocks of emus, mile-wide ponds where the mob splashed across, scattering the flocks of waterfowl, winding tiny brooks and still reed-bordered streams, and always, every hour of the long day, that illusive beckoning haunting purple mountain range—at last Sterl Hazelton’s soul was everlastingly filled to the brim with these physical things which he divined were rewards in themselves, and which gave him fleeting, vague visions of the long ago, of other sons of time and their abundance, back in the arid ages, and the ice, and the volcanic, from which by some omniscience life and beauty and spirit had evolved.
The trek along the middle fork continued for seventeen days, to where its headwaters sprang from the tropic verdure of the foothills. This swiftly flowing, gradually narrowing stream had sheared to the northwest for many days and leagues, so that the purple mountain range lay in the eastward, beyond the foothills that rolled down from it.
“Camp here two days,” boomed Stanley Dann. “We will rest the stock, make repairs, and scout abroad for this Gulf road. Eric has not found it yet.”
Leslie named the place Wellspring. It was felicitous because the splendid volume of water sprang as from a well, deep under the shadow of a bold, dark green foothill. The cattle trooped for a mile along the stream that rushed from this spring. Three hundred horses frolicked in a pasture behind the camp, a level flower-spangled meadow of grass half surrounded by hills. Camp was pitched in the open within sound of the babbling of the brook. Soon fires sent columns of blue smoke curling upwards; the ring of axe kept the parrots squalling. Bill, with Scotty, the other cook, prepared for the best meal they could devise, in honor of Beryl Dann’s first attendance for many weeks.
Sterl and Red had heard this announcement before Leslie came to tell them. They had finished their camp tasks and, as Red put it, had shaved and spruced up a bit. Just before Leslie’s arrival, Sterl had had some words with his friend.
“Pard, you will be decent to Beryl? You have not spoken to her since…since that…mess.”
“Umpumm,” drawled Red.
“Say, do you see that?” rang out Sterl, extending a big fist.
“Shore, I ain’t blind.”
“You know where it used to hurt you to be hit?”
“A-huh. My belly. An’ I ain’t recovered yet, either.”
“That’s dinkum. If you don’t swear to be nice to Beryl, I’ll lam into you right now. And I’m not fooling.”
“Yeah? Wal, I choose the wusser of two evils. I’ll speak to Beryl an’ be as…as nice as I can. It’s gotta be done sometime, jest for appearances. An’, after all, what the hell do I care?”
“Thanks, Red. That’s more like my old pard,” rejoined Sterl dubiously.
Then Leslie arrived. Once again, after so long an interval, in feminine apparel, a flowered gown in which she looked extremely pretty. One glance at Sterl was sufficient for her to see that he meant to grace the occasion of Beryl’s return to their circle. But at Red she gazed most appealingly and fearfully.
“Red, you’ll…come?” she asked falteringly.
“No, Les,” he said, contriving to wink at Sterl. “Umpumm, now, nix come the weasel!”
That he could jest at such a moment, certainly poignant and important to Leslie, called to all that was spirited in her.
“You ornery, bull-headed, low-down…,” she burst out, choking over the last two words, which, like those preceding, were from Red’s vocabulary, only they were indecorous and scandalizing on a girl’s sweet lips, although most eloquently forceful. Then as quickly as the flare-up of her tongue, she broke into sobs.
“Aw, now, Leslie, don’t cry, please,” begged the cowboy, who could not bear to see a girl cry. “I didn’t mean it a-tall. You see I’m all spruced up. I’ll go with you an’ do the elegant.”
“Hon-nest, Red? You’re such a…a brute. You might be…teasing.”
“No, I mean it. Thet is I’ll go, if you stop cryin’. Why, the idee! Spoilin’ thet happy face! An’ you did look the prettiest I ever seen you.”
The magic of his words cured that crying spell. Leslie came out of it like the sun from behind a rain cloud. “Oh, it was so…so silly of me! Thanks, Red, you can be a dear. Sterl, have I…do I look terrible?”
“Personally I prefer you in tears,” said Sterl with a laugh. “Come, let’s go before our pard changes his mind.”
The Danns’ three wagons were only a few rods distant, and between two of them, a canvas shelter had been erected on poles. A large ground cloth table and chairs gave an air of comfort. The Slyters were there, also Larry and Rollie, and Stanley Dann, from whose knees Beryl arose to greet her visitors. The blue gown, which she had worn at one other time, hung loosely upon her slender form, yet not at the expense of grace. Every vestige of the golden tan had vanished from her face, the whiteness of which accentuated the loveliness of her violet eyes and fair hair. Her beauty struck Sterl with great force, and suddenly he understood both Ormiston and Krehl.
Beryl advanced a few steps to meet them. Leslie had been hanging onto Red, who was behind Sterl. Now she ran to Beryl. “Oh, it’s so dinkum to see you out again!” Beryl returned her kiss and greeting, then offered her two hands to Sterl. “Now, Mister Cowboy, what do you think of me, up and well…and rarin’ to go?”
“I think it’s great,” Sterl responded heartily, as he took her hands. “Beryl, you look just beautiful!”
But she did not even get that last. Red stepped out from behind Sterl, and then Sterl, with a
pang, saw what a terrible moment this was for both of them.
“Beryl…I…I’m shore dog-gone glad to see you out again,” Red said huskily, and he was both gallant and self-possessed. One of his long strides bridged the distance between them.
Her eyes dilated and turned black. “Red…Red,” she whispered as she put out quivering hands. But this meeting was not what she had anticipated. None of those present, except Red, had any idea what that meant. She was facing the cowboy whom she had lured to a love beyond belief, who had passed by slight and indifference and insult, who had withstood jealousy in the front of monstrous and just trial. She was facing the cowboy, the stranger, the alien, the common uncouth man whose ruthlessness had saved her from the ruin only she and he knew. It was too much for the girl. Her groping hands missed his, to clutch his blouse. She fell against him with a gasp and fainted in his arms.
A shocked silence held all of the witnesses mute. Then Red cried hoarsely: “My Gawd! Too much for her!”
“It was, indeed,” replied Dann reproachfully. “She is not as strong as she thought. Let me have her.” Dann took her from Krehl and sat her gently down in the one rocking chair, which he tipped back somewhat. “Missus Slyter…Leslie!”
Sterl could not withdraw his gaze from Beryl’s face. Her eyes were closed, long fair lashes on her white cheeks. Had the shock hurt her? Sterl turned to Red and forgot his concern for Beryl in the dumb misery of his friend. He kept his mouth shut, by biting his lips, but he clutched Red with lean strong hands until he recovered. Dann’s hearty voice attested to the fact that Beryl had regained consciousness.
“I fainted,” she said weakly. “How stupid. But all went black…. I’m all right now. Dad, let the rocker down. Why, Leslie, you are as white as a sheet.”
“No wonder! Beryl, I thought you’d gone to join the angels.”
“No such luck for me. Boys, come back. I promise you, I won’t be such a weakling again.”