by Zane Grey
At the first contact the screaming horses had reared high, pawing the air. The dead steer drifted in between the two teams to lodge against the wagon tongue. And the great reptiles attacked the horses. They made a tremendous commotion, completely obscuring themselves and the front horses with churning splashes. The snap of huge jaws, the crack of teeth, the rend of flesh could be heard amid the roar of water and the clamor of the drovers.
It was an unprecedented and terrible situation. No one knew what to do. Eric pulled his gun and shot. Not improbably he hit the horses instead of the crocodiles. The left front horse reared high with a crocodile hanging to its nose. Sterl sent a bullet into the head of this beast, but it did not let go. It pulled the horse under. The right front horse was in the clutches of two crocodiles. The open jaws of one stuck beyond the neck of the horse. Blood streamed to redden the water. Krehl’s rifle cracked. Sterl shot to kill a horse, if he missed a crocodile. The second team had been attacked by half a dozen of them.
At that awful moment for Eric Dann, horses and wagon were pulled into deep water. The wagon sank above its bed and floated. Between the threshing horses the dead steer rolled and rocked with four legs standing up. Eric leaped to the driver’s seat and held on. As he turned to those on shore, his visage appeared scarcely human. If from his open mouth any sound issued, no one could hear it. And the crocodiles, probably a dozen or more, were tearing the horses from the wagon as it drifted down the river.
“Fellers, fork yore hosses!” yelled Red. Leaping on Duke, his rifle aloft, he raced into the bush to catch up with the drifting wagon. Sterl was quick to follow, and he heard the thud and crash of the drovers at his heels. But Sterl lost sight of Red and had to trail his passage through the thickets and between the trees. The bush proved to be dense. Red had gone through it at breakneck speed. There was no opening along the bank to see out into the river. And not for a good long run did Sterl break out into the clear.
A low bank afforded means to get down to the river. It made a bend there. Sterl yelled to those behind and sent King tearing through the brush. He came out at the edge of the mud. Sterl saw Red and the wagon in one glance. The cowboy had Duke in the mud, wading out. The wagon had lodged in shallow water. It had turned around with the horses toward the shore. A horrible fight was going on there. Beyond it several other crocodiles were tearing at a horse that had been cut adrift. Eric Dann clung to the driver’s seat. The tips of lashing waves splashed over him. One huge, slimy reptile slithered in front of the wagon and gave it a resounding smack with his tail.
Stanley Dann and his followers arrived on the scene. For once, the leader’s booming voice was silent at a crisis. Even Sterl could not yell to the daring cowboy.
Red had thrown aside his rifle. He held his gun in his left hand and a lasso in his right. On the moment, a lean, black-jawed crocodile stuck his snout and shoulders out of the water and, reaching over the wagon, snapped at Eric. He missed the cowering man, but not by more than two feet. It had been plain to the cowboy, and it now became to Sterl and the others, that Eric would not last long there.
The horses had ceased to struggle. Sterl could not locate the dead steer. What with the tugging and floundering of the crocodiles, the wagon appeared about to tilt over. That meant instant end to Eric Dann. It would all be over with quickly, if the brutes did not tear the horses free.
Red sent that grand horse plunging into the water. Duke’s ears stood up; his piercing snorts made the other horses neigh wildly. Red was taking a chance that the crocodiles would be too busy to see him. Sterl’s breast caved in with relief, when he saw that the cowboy had the terrible situation in hand. When Duke was up to his flanks and the curdled, foamy maëlstrom scarcely a lasso’s length distant, Red yelled piercingly: “Stand up, Eric!”
The man heard, for he tried to obey. But he must have been paralyzed with horror.
“Stick out yore laig…yore arm!” shrieked the cowboy, in a fury, and he shot the outside crocodile, sliding into view.
But Eric was beyond helping himself. Again that ugly brute lunged out and up, his corrugated jaws wide, and, as they snapped like steel, he missed by only a few inches.
“Rope him, Red!” yelled out Sterl.
Then the lasso, like a shiny striking snake, shot out, and the noose cracked over Eric’s head and shoulders. Red whirled the big horse and spurred him shoreward. Eric was jerked off the wagon, over the very backs of those threshing crocodiles. One snapped at him too late; another cracked at him with a mighty tail. But Red dragged him free, through the shallow water, up on the mud. Red leaped off, to run and loosen the noose. Eric’s head had been dragged under through the mud. Then Stanley and two others were off, lifting the half dead man, and packing him ashore. Sterl sat his horse, his throat constricted, his tongue falling from the roof of his mouth. He had not cared much about Eric Dann, but the mad risk that intrepid cowboy had run!
“He ain’t…hurt none,” Red panted, coiling the muddy rope. “I was afraid I’d get the noose around his throat. But it was a narrow shave.”
They washed the mud from Eric’s face. He coughed and spat. His breath wheezed. He was unable to stand alone, but it appeared fairly evident that he was not injured.
Red led Duke out on the grass, and looked up at Sterl. His fire-blue eyes were full of dancing, devilish little flecks. “Not so pore…huh?” he asked huskily.
Sterl could hardly curse his friend before these men, so he remained silent and took it out in looking.
“Pard, thet’s one hoss…in a million,” he said, drawing Duke’s head close. “By Gawd, I was scared he wouldn’t do it. But he did, he did!”
They laid Eric Dann on the bank to let him recover. Then they attended to the battle of the leviathans. Sterl dismantled with his rifle, and every time a head or a body lunged up, he met it with a bullet. But the angle was bad. Most of the bullets glanced singingly across the river. One by one the horses were torn loose from the traces, and dragged away, a ghastly and gory spectacle, until they were taken under the deep water. The heavy wagon had remained upright, with the back end and wheels submerged. The tide was falling.
“Miraculous, any way you look at it!” exclaimed Stanley Dann. “One more lunge by that black crocodile would have reached Eric! Red Krehl, as if my debt to you had not been great enough!”
“Hell, boss. We’ve all been around yestiddy an’ today, when things came off,” dragged on the cowboy.
“Yes, but in this case….” He paused eloquently. “Some of you take Eric back to camp. Fetch my teams harnessed.”
At low tide Ormiston’s wagon was hauled out and back to camp. Nothing perishable had been left in it. The contents were unloaded and laid out to dry. During this latter procedure the girls clamored for the story. Red laughed at them, but Sterl told it, not wholly without elaboration. He wanted to see Beryl Dann’s eyes betray her quick and profound emotions. If he had ever seen anything lovelier than her eyes, he did not remember.
“Beryl, all in the day’s ride,” drawled Red, but he was gratified at her reaction. “Now if you was only like Duke!”
“Red, I am not a horse. I am a woman,” she rejoined with no response to his humor.
“Shore, I know thet. I mean a hoss, if he’s great like Duke an’ cottons to a feller, as he shore has to me, why he’ll do anythin’ for you. Beryl, I’d die for him, an’ I’m shore he’d die for me.”
“I’d like you to feel that way for me,” she returned vibrantly. “I would die for you.”
“Wal, yore wants, like yore eyes an’ yore heart, air too big for you, Beryl.”
Leslie let go of Duke’s neck to face Red. She appeared almost as deeply moved as Beryl. “Red, I give Duke to you. And you can return jester to me,” she said.
“Well, dog-gone it, Les, you hit me below the belt. No cowboy could turn a deaf ear to thet, much less me.”
“It’ll make me happy. And Beryl, too. Sterl, do you approve?” “Les, since I can’t have Duke, and you in the bargain,
I’d love to see Red get him.”
Leslie blushed furiously, as she was wont to do when off her guard and suddenly shocked. But she rallied: “Sterl Hazelton, you can have all my horses, and . . . and. . . .”
Stanley Dann broke in upon them with his booming order. “Cut more poles. The tide will be low enough. We’ll relay the road and cross my wagon before this day is done.”
While his drovers worked like beavers, he had Beryl’s bed and baggage unloaded from his wagon. The bed was put in Sterl’s tent. The baggage was packed down to the edge of the mud, ready to be moved. When the brush road was done, Dann said to the cowboy: “You and Friday make sure of the time for me to take to the river.”
“It’ll be safer now the tide is low,” averred Slyter. Stanley drove his big wagon and changed from the seat to his saddle, and cheered and helped the drovers in their strenuous labor. Friday sighted crocodiles, but none came near. Load and wagon were crossed in record time, after which six drovers carried Beryl’s belongings across in two trips.
The sun set red and evilly upon that eventful day. The trekkers ate, and tried to be oblivious to the aborigine signals, the uncanny bats, the howls of the dingoes, and the unseen menace that hovered over Doré’s Bush.
Sterl was not subject tonightmares, but that night he had one. An enormous crocodile had hold of his boots. He could not kick the beast free, nor rise up to shoot, nor yell for help. A terrific wrench of some kind broke that dream. It turned out to have been delivered by Red.
“For cripe’s sake, stop diggin’ me with them bear claws of yours,” growled the cowboy.
They were sleeping in the open, beside a fire that had burned out. The Danns and Slyters, and some of the drovers, lay under the wagons. Sterl and Red had been on guard for three hours, after which they rolled on their ground cloths, covered their heads, and sank into the slumber of exhaustion. After the nightmare Sterl lay awake. That hour at the low ebb of vitality was no time to think. He tried not to think, but he could not help feeling. The dew, the silence, the oppression weighed upon him. All around and over him swished the uncanny and infernal flying-foxes. They squealed like fighting rats. The river made a low, somber, gurgling sound, as if it were strangling life out of something. Once he raised up to peer around. Red, Friday, Larry lay prone, dark faces indistinct in the paling starlight. Was it a shadow or a kangaroo that moved across his vision? Wearily, he fell back.
Stanley Dann roused them all in the gray of dawn. It was wet and chill. Dingoes bayed dismally in the bush. Bill appeared slow at his tasks in this camp. He did not whistle while he worked. Sterl chopped wood until his lethargic blood awakened in his veins. Red Krehl, the indefatigable, the unconquerable, sat staring into gray space, his mop of tangled red hair hanging over his drawn face. When the crippled Larry crossed his sight, Red came to himself.
“Lay off them bridles, you geezer. Don’t you know when you’re knocked out? Me an’ Sterl will wrangle the hosses.”
They found two of Dann’s drovers mustering horses for the day. The cowboys bridled Duke, King, and Lady Jane, and drove the rest of Leslie’s horses into camp. Stanley Dann’s hearty voice, his spirit, the drab gray dawn lighting ruddily, the hot breakfast—all seemed to work against the gripping, somber spell.
“Men, this is our big important day,” boomed the leader. “Roland’s wagon first. Unload all the heavy stuff. Pack these bags of dried fruit Ormiston had…unknown to me. Carry all this cowboy junk down to the river.”
“Boss, I reckon we’re gonna need all thet junk,” remonstrated Red.
“Those heavy packs! Slyter, will you drive Roland’s wagon?”
“Yes,” replied Slyter. “Mum, here’s where you ride with me.”
“Husband, I pray it will not be our last,” responded Mrs. Slyter cheerfully. This sturdy little woman was far from being a drawback.
“With Beryl and Leslie, that will be a load,” went on the leader.
“Dad, I won’t cross in the wagon,” spoke up his daughter decidedly.
Leslie interposed to say: “I’m riding Lady Jane.”
The leader gazed at these pioneer daughters with great, luminous eyes, and made no further comment to them. He hurried the unpacking and the hitching of two big draft horses to Roland’s wagon. The sun came up gloriously bright. Shining river, shining green bush, sailing waterfowl, clamor of cockatoos all seemed to give the lie to that forbidding night spell. When Slyter mounted the high wagon seat, ready to drive, shouts from across the river told him that the drovers there were ready. Roland straddled one of the lead horses of the teams. Bligh and Hod sat their horses. The tide was on the make, wanting a foot in height and a dozen yards up the mud bank to fill the riverbed.
“Friday! Everybody watch the river for croc’s,” ordered the leader.
Leslie sat her horse, beside Sterl on King. The girl looked pale, resolute. She knew the peril. At this juncture Beryl emerged from the tent, slim in her rider’s garb. She had not forgotten or neglected to brush her fair hair. It rippled and blazed in the sun. She carried a small, black bag. She walked quickly, graceful and erect.
“Red, will you carry me across?” she asked simply. Her darkly dilated eyes betrayed her terror.
“Shore, Beryl, but why for?” drawled the cowboy.
“I’d feel safer…and…and….”
No man then could have refused Beryl Dann anything she might have asked for.
“What you got in thet bag?” queried Red.
“My few treasures and keepsakes.”
“Wal, dog-gone! Let me get hold of you. There. Put yore foot on my stirrup…. Up you come! No, I cain’t hold you thet way, Beryl. You’ve gotta fork Duke. Slip down in front of me. Sterl, how about slopin’?”
“Friday grins good,” replied Sterl grimly. “Les, keep above me close. Larry, keep upstream from Red. Idea is to move pronto.”
The four plunged in as Stanley Dann boomed to Slyter and the drovers. Loud thumping splashes attended the onslaught upon the river. Roland and his comrades cheered. Friday appeared leaping through the shallow water, his spears and wommeras aloft. He added sinister reality to that scene. Duke and King, slightly ahead, sent the yellow splashes flying. The other two horses leaped not to be left behind. Then the four passed Slyter’s teams and the drovers, and plunged into the deeper water.
“Fellers, get ready for gun play!” shouted the hawk-eyed Red. “Shet yore eyes, Beryl!”
Across the river from the reedy bank above Roland’s position came a crackling rush, a waving of reeds, then a zoom, as a big crocodile took to the water and slid along with surprising speed. The guns of Roland’s group banged, and the mud spattered all around the reptile.
“Larry, watch out for thet bird,” yelled Red. “I reckon he won’t come, but he might.”
Farther upstream, muddy-backed crocodiles, as huge as logs, piled into the river. The drovers were clamoring in fright and excitement. Slyter had driven his teams in up to their flanks. One drover was unfastening the traces, while two others were ready to drag the teams into the channel. Sterl spared only a glance for them. Roland and his men came pounding through the shallow water. All seemed to work with machine-like precision. Halfway across—two-thirds! Bligh’s horse was lunging into the channel above Larry, carrying the tackle and rope for the wagon.
Suddenly, almost in line with them, an open-jawed, yellow-fanged monster spread the reeds, and zoomed off the bank. He moved across the slippery mud into the water. Red was shooting. But the crocodile came on, got over his depth, and disappeared.
“Watch for the wake!” called Red. “Thet feller is mean. We gotta hit him, pard. Watch!”
All Sterl’s nerves were on edge. In any event that situation was terrible, but with the girls….
“Heah he comes! See them little knobs. Thet’s his haid!”
Sterl espied them, along with the long chain of tiny, ragged notches weaving to and fro. He regretted having left his rifle in the wagon.
“Drop behind me, Lesli
e,” called Sterl. “Don’t weaken. We’ll get him!”
It was impossible to tell whether or not the crocodile meant to attack. The chances were that he would, unless the commotion in the water turned him. Sterl did not fire because he did not want to drive the brute underwater again. Evidently Red had the same thought. The cowboy headed Duke quarteringly away from the long ripple, and he leaned far forward, gun extended. His left arm held the drooping girl. At the right instant he spurred Duke. It must have come at the instant when Duke struck bottom, because he lunged, powerfully. The crocodile was less than six feet distant, when Red turned his gun loose in a volley. The bullets splashed and thudded. But they did not glance. With a tremendous swirl the reptile lurched partly out, a ghastly spectacle. Sterl sent two leaden slugs into it. Falling back, the monster began to roll over and over, his ten-foot tail beating the water into foam. Sterl and Leslie waded out below, while Red and Larry waded shallow water above.
“Hey, Rollie,” yelled Red, “don’t worry none about this bird!”
They waded past the teams and waiting drovers, out on the bank to the wide path trampled up the slope. The drovers cheered. Sterl, with Leslie behind him, followed Red up to a wide, level spot, where wagons and packs marked the camp.
Red slid off and laid his gun on the grass. Beryl swayed in the saddle, her eyes tightly shut, her fingers in her ears.
“Wal, Beryl, come out of it,” shouted Red, and he tugged at one of her arms. She opened eyes as black as night. Her arms fell weakly.
“I won’t faint! I won’t,” she cried, still with passion left in her weak voice.
“Who said you would?” drawled Red, as he helped her off. “Beryl, you’re gettin’ to be a pretty dog-gone good cowgirl. If you jest wasn’t so sentimental. Come, let me help you off.”