The Great Trek

by Zane Grey

  “Boss…that is big and fine of you,” returned Bligh haltingly. Manifestly it griped him to fail this man. “We meant to ask only for horses and a little food. But this…. Honestly, sir.”

  “Don’t thank me, Bligh. I am in your debt.”

  Eric Dann called piercingly from under the shelter. “Bligh…tell him…tell him!”

  The listeners all appeared impelled to press closer, to see that wan visage standing out from the shadow of the darkening shelter. Sterl felt that the gathering suspense could grow no more before the break.

  “No, Eric,” returned Bligh sorrowfully. “I’ve nothing to tell.”

  “Tell me what?” boomed the leader, like an angry lion aroused. “Bligh, what have you to tell me?”

  “Nothing, sir. Eric is out of his head.”

  “No, I’m not,” yelled Eric, and his attempt to push himself higher on the stretcher ended in a shriek of pain. But he did sit up, and Mrs. Slyter supported him.

  “Eric, what could Bligh tell me?” queried Stanley Dann.

  There ensued a silence that seemed long to Sterl. It was terrible. Every moment added to the torment of coming terrible disclosures. Eric Dann must have been wrenched by physical pain and mental anguish to a point beyond resistance. “Stanley, we are lost!”

  “Lost?” echoed the giant blankly.

  “Yes…yes. Lost!” cried Eric wildly. “We’ve been lost all the way! I didn’t know this bushland. I’ve never been on a trek…through outback Queensland!”

  “Merciful heaven!” boomed the leader, his great arms going aloft. “Your plans? Your assurances? Your map?”

  “Lies! All lies!” wailed Eric Dann. He was stricken with horror at some perfidy and by a horrible need to unburden himself. “I never was inland from the coast. I met Ormiston. We talked cattle. He inflamed me about a fabulous range in the Northern Territory…west of the Gulf. Gave me the map we’ve trekked by. I planned with him to persuade you to muster a great mob of cattle. I didn’t know he was the bush-ranger Pell. But I found out too late…. That map is false. We are lost. We must be way south of the Gulf…instead of west. I couldn’t confess! I couldn’t! I kept on blindly. We’re lost! Bligh knows that. Ormiston could not corrupt him. Yet he wouldn’t betray me to you. We’re lost…irretrievably lost, and I’m damned to hell!”

  Stanley Dann expelled a great breath and sat down on a pack as if his legs had been chopped from under him. He whistled with an intake of breath. “Lost? Yea, God has forsaken me,” he whispered.

  Bligh was the first to move after a stricken silence. “Boss, you’ve got to hear that I didn’t know all that Eric confessed.”

  “Bligh, that is easy to believe, thank heaven,” Stanley Dann said presently, his voice gaining timbre. He wrestled with himself, as if to shake off a demon. “We’ll thresh it all out right now. Somebody light a fire to dispel this hateful gloom. Let me think a moment.” And he paced somberly to and fro outside the shelter.

  “Listen, all of you,” he began, and again his voice had that wonderful deep roll. “I see it this way. I cannot desert my brother. Nor can I stay here alone. Whoever does stay must carry on with me and the trek, when we are able to continue. You are all free to decide for or against me. I have exacted too much of you all. I grieve that I have been wrong, self-centered, dominating. Beryl, my daughter, will you stay?”

  “Dad, I’ll stay!” There was no hesitation in Beryl’s reply, and, to Sterl, she seemed at last of her father’s blood and spirit. “I don’t want to go back. My place is with you. Don’t despair. We shall not all betray you!”

  A beautiful light warmed his grave visage as he turned to Leslie. “Child, you have been forced into womanhood. I doubt if your parents should influence your decision here.”

  “I would not go back to marry a royal duke!” she replied.

  “Missus Slyter, your girl has, indeed, grown up on this trek,” went on Dann. “But she will still need a mother out there across the Never Never. Will you stay?”

  “Need you ask, Stanley? I don’t believe what ever lies in store for us could be so bad as what we’ve lived through,” rejoined the woman calmly.

  “Slyter, how about you?”

  “Stanley, I started the race, and I’ll make the good fight,” replied the drover.

  “Hazelton!” demanded Dann, without a trace of doubt. His exclamation was not a query.

  “I am keen to go on,” answered Sterl, finding simplicity in the turmoil of his feelings. But these were for others. If he had only this great pioneer to consider, he still would have chosen to go on, knowing beforehand what his cowboy friend would do.

  “Krehl!”

  The cowboy was lighting a cigarette. Beryl was hanging to his arm. He puffed a cloud of smoke which hid his face.

  “Wal, boss,” he drawled, “it’s shore a great privilege you’ve given me. Jest a chance to know an’ fight for a man. I’ve rode for a coupla men like you, an’ I reckon thet’s why I’m Red Krehl. It’s shore a tough jam for you. I cain’t be sorry for Eric, but I am for these other fellers who show yellow in the pinch!” His last words of that vow of allegiance had a stinging bite.

  Bligh betrayed it most. Larry, Rollie, and Benson, almost in unison, hastened to align themselves under Red’s banner of heroism.

  Bill, the cook, stepped forward and unhesitatingly spoke: “Boss, I’ve had enough. I’m getting old. I wouldn’t mind dying so much, if I had some peace and rest. But this trek is more hell than I’ve earned. I’ll go home with Bligh.”

  “Bingham, put it up to our Friday,” said Dann.

  Slyter spoke briefly in the aborigine’s tongue, or in that jargon which the black understood.

  Friday leaned on his long spear and regarded the speakers with his huge, unfathomable eyes. Then he swerved them to Sterl and Red. He was weighing what ever might be in the balance. He understood. There was not the least doubt of that. His dark face included Beryl and Leslie.

  Friday tapped his broad black breast with a slender black hand. “Imm no fadder, no mudder, no brudder, no gin, no lubra,” he said, in slow laborious dignity. “Tinkit go bush alonga white fella cowboy pards!”

  At another time Sterl would have shouted his gladness, but here he only hugged the black man. And Red clapped him on the back. Friday astonished them at infrequent times with expressions he had absorbed. Always he seemed to divine what he did not wholly understand. Here had been evidence of loyalty and friendship, if not almost a sense of humor. Friday would carry on with his white friends, see them through. Sterl accepted the magnificence of his own conceptions.

  Suddenly a heavy gunshot boomed hollowly under the shelter, paralyzing speech and action. The odor of burnt powder permeated the air. There followed a queer, faint tapping sound—a shuddering quiver of hand or foot of a man in his death throes. Sterl had heard that too often to be deceived. Mrs. Slyter uttered a low cry. The girls had frozen in their grips upon the cowboys. Stanley Dann broke out of his rigidity to wave a shaking hand.

  “Go in…somebody…see,” he whispered.

  Benson and Bligh went slowly and hesitatingly under the shelter. Sterl saw them bend over Eric Dann on the stretcher. They straightened up. Bligh drew a blanket up over the man’s face. The pale blot vanished under the dark covering. The drovers stalked out. Bligh accosted the leader in hushed voice: “Prepare for a shock, sir.”

  Benson added gruffly: “He blew out his brains!”

  “My God!” gasped Stanley, and staggered away to lean against the wagon. Slyter followed to lay a hand on him. Bligh, with his companions, groped away into the dark, and presently their low voices came to Sterl’s ears. The other drovers eyed each other in the firelight, awed and tight-lipped. But their gaze flashed the intelligence of deliverance. Swiftly upon a consciousness of tragedy had followed for everyone there, possibly except their leader, a sense of release.

  Red Krehl was the first to speak, as he drew Beryl away from that dark shelter with its dim still image, prone on the stretcher
, and the smell of brimstone.

  “Pard,” he ejaculated with that low voice of surprise, “he’s paid! By Gawd, he’s shot himself…the only good thing he’s done on this trek. Squares him with me.”

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  No man ever again looked upon the face of Eric Dann. The agony of his last moment after the confession which had plunged his brother and the drovers into tragic catastrophe was cloaked in the blanket that had been thrown over him. Stanley Dann gave that order. An hour after the deed which was great in proportion to his weakness, he lay in his grave under a gum tree, with no sign to mark his last resting place. Stanley Dann most surely prayed for his soul, but no one heard that prayer. Sterl helped dig the grave by the light of the torch Friday held.

  Night had fallen then—black, starless, with its haunting sounds. They were called to a late supper. Bill, actuated by a strange sentiment at variance with his abandonment of the trek, excelled himself on this last meal for Dann and those he would never cook for any more. The leader did not attend that meal. Mrs. Slyter and the girls had to force what little they ate. But the drovers were all of a mind with Krehl’s philosophical remark: “Wal, it don’t ’pear human. But we’re a pore starved outfit…an’ there’s hard work an’ more hell ahaid. Come an’ get it, fellers!” Sterl was famished, and he ate his fill. The same old fare, this time embellished by a few little sweets and luxuries Bill had contrived to hang on to.

  No orders to guard the mob were issued that night. But Sterl heard Bligh tell his men they would share their last watch. The girls haunted the bright fire, which Friday kept burning. They were wide-eyed and sleepless. They did not want to be alone. Mrs. Slyter finally dragged them off to Beryl’s wagon. Sterl and Red sought their own tent, and removed only their boots.

  “Hard lines, pard,” said Red with a sigh, as he lay down. “It’s turrible to worry over other people. All my life I been doin’ thet. But mebbe this steel trap on our gizzards will loosen now that Eric at last made a clean job of it. You never can tell about what a man will do…. An’ as for a woman…didn’t yore heart jest flop over, when Beryl answered her dad?”

  “Red, it sure did! And the crack of Leslie’s…that she wouldn’t go home to marry the Prince of Wales!”

  “Wal, she’s got a prince. I told her you was a prince. I reckon you’ve been one to me.”

  “Oh, she’s mad and so’s Beryl. You’re mad, and I’m going.”

  “It’d be kinda sweet, bein’ thet way, but for all this work an’ pore grub, an’ those crocodiles, an’ the bloody mess we never get jest free of…. Gosh, I’d like to be like Friday.”

  “I’d like that, too, Red. But it can’t be. Try to sleep, old man, and don’t think of tomorrow.”

  Sterl could give sage advice that he could not live by himself. In a few moments Red was asleep. And Sterl lay awake, grateful for the flimsy sheet of canvas that shut out the light and counterfeited protection. Once he got up noiselessly to peep between the flaps. Friday sat by the fire, propped against a pack, his spear over his shoulder, his head bowed. How did he know that the aborigines would not prowl during the early hours of night? Sterl returned to bed and at last fell asleep with the howling of dingoes in his ears.

  Awakening brought a vague sense of unutterable relief. It puzzled Sterl. He had to inquire into that. His unconscious mind had cast off a dread. They were across the crocodile-infested river with horses and cattle. Eric Dann’s malignant influence had passed. Sterl had been lost many times, and for him another time held no fears. Dann would turn his back on the endless northward trek this very day. The gray light awakened Red. And a bustle outside attested to the drovers’ activity.

  “Bingham, we break camp at once,” said Stanley Dann as he met Slyter at breakfast. “What do you say to trekking west along this river?”

  “I say good-o,” replied the drover. “What do you say to splitting the load on the second dray? There’s room on the wagons. That dray is worn out. It retards our progress. Leave it here.”

  “I agree,” returned the leader. Already the tremendous incentive of getting on a new trek in the right direction had seized upon them.

  “My wife can drive any wagon. So can Leslie, where it’s not overly rough. We’ll be shy of drovers, Stanley.”

  The leader nodded a realization of increased obstacles. Yet, that silent gesture was far removed from a doubtful shake of his head.

  “Plenty bad black fella close up,” Friday broke in upon them, and his indication of the absence of smoke signals was far from reassuring.

  Rollie tramped up to report that the mob was still resting, but that the larger herd of horses had been scattered. Larry and Benson, helped by Bligh’s drovers, had them mustered now just out of camp.

  “We found one horse speared and cut up. Aborigine work,” added Rollie.

  “Could these savages prefer horse flesh to beef?” queried Dann, incredulous.

  “Some tribes, so I’ve been told. Bligh heard blacks early this morning,” asserted Slyter. “We cannot get away from Doré’s Bush any too soon now.”

  Bligh and his three dissenters drove a string of horses across the river. Bill, the cook, had slipped down the bank, under cover of the brush, to straddle one of those horses. He did not say good bye or look back. Heald waved his hand to the cowboys. Hod and Derrick packed bags across on their saddles. They left Heald to hitch up two teams to Ormiston’s wagons while they returned with Bligh for their bags and beds. On, their trip back through camp Sterl saw that Bligh hung back somewhat, and seemed possessed. Still, he overcame his weakness and followed the drovers down the path and into the river.

  “Queer deal, thet,” spoke up the ever valiant Red, who sat by the fire, oiling and loading his rifle. “Bligh was sweet on Beryl there at first. It seems years ago. An’ the damned little jade encouraged him! You’d reckon he’d say good bye an’ good luck to her, if not the old man. Wal, men air queer ducks.”

  “Red, he’ll come back,” said Sterl. “Bligh is a real guy. He rings true.”

  “Yeah? You heahed him say he had a girl back home,” Red replied sarcastically. “Mebbe to save his face. But if he’s smart, he won’t say good bye to Beryl Dann. Not after failin’ her dad at the crisis of his life!”

  “I’ll bet you two bits Bligh comes back.”

  “Gosh, I hope he does. I like the fellar. But I jest feel sorry for him, as I shore do for the other geezers who got turribly stuck on Beryl Dann.”

  “Um…oh!” warned Sterl too late.

  Beryl, running about at the tasks she and Leslie had undertaken, had passed Red to hear the last of his scornful remark to Sterl. Beryl was lovely when in one of her sweet and appealing moods, with her better side uppermost, but Sterl was most moved by her when, as now, she was furious and her wonderful eyes blazed purple fire.

  “You’re sorry for whom, Red Krehl?”

  Then Red was in a bad predicament, because his remark could have been and had been taken for an insult. Red had been hard, unforgiving, cold to this girl who had played with him and flouted him, but he had always been a gentleman.

  “Beryl, I was sorry for Bligh,” drawled Red coolly. “Me an’ Sterl air gamblin’ on his sayin’ good bye to you. I’m bettin’ thet, if he’s smart, he won’t try. Sterl bets he will.”

  “And if Bligh’s smart, why won’t he try to say good bye to me?” retorted Beryl.

  “Wal, he’ll get froze for his pains.”

  “He will, indeed…the coward! And now what about the other geezers who’re stuck on Beryl Dann?”

  “Aw, jest natoorally I feel sorry for them,” returned Red with his easy, cool nonchalance. But there were dancing flecks in his blue eyes.

  Sterl would have taken another gamble, then—that Red would not fail to rise to the occasion. But Beryl exemplified the fury of a woman scorned.

  “Wal, Miss Dann, it so happens thet I’m one of them unfortunate geezers who got turribly stuck on you,” returned the cowboy.

  The
bitterness of his sarcasm was wholly lost upon Beryl Dann. It was the deliberate content that struck her overwhelmingly.

  For Sterl it was remarkable to see her, all in one moment, transformed from a desperately hurt woman, passionately furious, to one amazed, struck to the heart, bluntly told the truth that she had yearned for and ever doubted, robbed at once of all her blaze, to be left pale as pearl.

  “Mister Krehl, it’s a pity…you never told me!” she cried. “Perhaps the geezer who’s so terribly stuck on me might have found out he’s not really so unfortunate, after all.”

  Red, spirited and ready-tongued as he always was, could hardly have responded adequately to the feminine unanswerable retaliation. Sterl understood how Red could have gotten the best of her once and forever, and that would have been—right there before him and Leslie and others—to hold out his arms to her. But Red was a long way from that capitulation. Sterl saw signs of it that the suddenly humble girl could not grasp.

  The situation was disrupted, however, by the appearance of Bligh.

  “Come out of it, kids,” whispered Sterl. “Here comes Bligh, and I win the bet.”

  The young drover faced Beryl to remove his sombrero and bow. Water dripped off him from the waist down. He smelled of river ooze, but he appeared a handsome, manly fellow, uncertain of his reception, but sure of his feeling and duty.

  “Beryl, I hate to go like this,” he said huskily. “But when I came on this trek, I had hopes of…of…you know what. I must leave…and this is the time. I pray your dad gets safely through. And I wish you happiness…prosperity in the future. If it is as we…we all guess, then, indeed, the best man has won.”