by Zane Grey
“Beryl, even if we are trapped here until we die, we can’t become exactly abo’s,” rejoined Sterl, not quite sure why he said that.
“But it would be well, if we could!”
Stanley Dann said: “As God gave us thoughts and vocal powers, we use them, often uselessly and foolishly. You young people express too many silly ideas. You girls are not going to be old maids, or are you cowboys ever going to be old bachelors. Or will we be trapped here! We are going through.”
“Shore we are, boss,” flashed Red. “But if we all could forget an’ face this hell like you an’ also be silly an’ funny once in a while, we’d go through a damn’ sight better!”
Dann slapped his knee with a great broad hand. “Right-o! You Yankee sage! I deserve the rebuke. I am too obsessed…too self-centered. Never mind my cross-grained temper. But I do appreciate what I owe you all. Relax, if you can. Forget! Play jokes! Have fun! Make love, God bless you!”
As Dann stamped away, Sterl remarked that there was gray in the gold over his temples—that his frame was not so upright and magnificent as it had once been. And that saddened Sterl. After all, the trek had been Dann’s responsibility. How all the dead must haunt him.
“Red Krehl, your bluff has been called,” said Beryl sweetly.
“Dog-gone it! Thet wasn’t no bluff, Beryl,” complained Red, disconcerted.
“Very well, show me! I’m from Missouri, as you say so often.”
“Yeah? Wal, I reckon you’re from heaven, too, but you shore got a little hell in yore make-up.”
“That goes for the other star-eyed member of this quartet,” said Sterl with a laugh. “I feel compelled to tell you that all of a sudden this little argument has revived my gladness to be alive. But just yet I’m not quite able to relax…play jokes…have fun…and make love!”
“Whoopee!” drawled Red with mild elation. “Pard, you saved my life. Girls, listen. All the rest of my days I’ll hand it to yore sex for courage an’ sacrifice, for somethin’ upliftin’ an’ great. An’ also for thet cussed, everlastin’, infernal, sweet, an’ wonderful passion you have to rope an’ corral some pore fool man!”
The abrupt change from excessive labor, sleeplessness, and fear to rest, ease, and a sense of safety reacted on every one of the trekkers. It took several days for them to become wholly rational again. They had one brief spell of exquisite tranquillity before the void shut down on them with its limitless horizon lines, its invisible confines, its heat by day, its appalling solitude by night, its dread sense that this raw nature had to be fought.
Nothing happened, however, that for the time being justified such fortification of soul and body. If the sun grew imperceptibly hotter, that could be gauged only by the touch of bare flesh upon metal. The scarcity of living creatures of the wild grew to be an absolute barrenness, so far as the trekkers knew. A gum tree blossomed all scarlet one morning, and the girls announced that to be Christmas Day. They had long memories in one regard and an ulterior motive. Sterl and Red seemed blind to sentiment and deaf to innuendo until the day was far spent. Then they found the last of the gifts they had brought on the trek. Candy and nuts were dug up. At supper, presentations followed. The result was not in Sterl’s or Red’s calculations. From vociferous delight Beryl fell to hysterical weeping, which even Red could not assuage. And Leslie ate so much of the stale candy that she grew ill.
“Girls, the evils of civilization were behind us,” said Stanley Dann. “And look at you! Dragged from your serene primitive state back to Christmas gifts and sweets! Still, have we forgotten what Christmas commemorates?”
One day Friday sighted smoke signals on the horizon. He pointed them out to the drovers, shook his shaggy head, and said: “Black fella close up!”
At once the camp was plunged into despair. Dann ordered fortifications thrown up on two sides. Peace had been theirs only long enough to realize its preciousness. Before supper Friday called the drovers’ attention to a strange procession filing in from the desert. Human beings that did not appear human! They came on, halted, edged closer and closer, halted again, paralyzed with fear yet driven by a stronger instinct. First came a score or less of males, excessively thin, gaunt, black as ebony, and practically naked. They all carried spears, but appeared the opposite of formidable. The gins were monstrosities. There were only a few lubras, scarcely less hideous than the gins. A troop of naked children hung back behind them, wild as wild beasts, ragged of head, and all remarkable for their huge potbellies.
Not much was said by the drovers as this procession lined up outside of camp. At first glance panic had been the order of the moment. But somehow that oozed out.
Friday advanced to meet them. Sterl heard his voice, as well as the low replies. But sign language predominated in that brief conference. The black came running back.
“Black fella starbbin deff,” he announced. “Plenty sit down die. Tinkit good feedum.”
“Oh, good, indeed, Friday,” boomed Dann gladly. “Go tell them white man friends.”
“By Jove!” ejaculated Slyter. “Poor starved wretches! It’s a wonder we couldn’t see it. But we were frightened. That puts a different complexion on this visitation. We can feed them. We have crippled cattle that it will be just as well to slaughter.”
Benson had butchered a steer that day, of which only a haunch had been brought to camp. The rest hung on a branch of a tree a little way from camp down the river course. Head, entrails, hide, and legs still lay on the rocks, ready to be burned or buried. Dann instructed Friday to lead the aborigines to the meat. They gave the camp a wide, fearful berth. Slyter packed down a small bag of salt, of which the drovers had abundance. Larry and Rollie built a line of fires. Sterl and Red, with the girls, went close enough to see distinctly. It was an opportunity not to be missed, despite something repellent. The aboriginals crouched and stood around the beef and watched the drovers with ravenous eyes. Larry pointed to a big knife and cleaver on a log, then joined Rollie to one side. Sterl wondered what would happen. Red made fantastic speculations. All of them expected a corroboree. But this tribe of aborigines had evidently passed beyond ceremony. They did not, however, act like a pack of wolves. One tall black, possibly a leader, began to hack up the beef into pieces and pass them out to his fellows and gins. While they sat down to devour the beef raw, the children were given generous slices. Sterl did not see one aborigine place a piece of meat on the fire. They were too hungry. When, presently, the blacks attacked the entrails of the beef, Beryl and Leslie fled. The cowboys watched a while longer, intently curious and glad to see the famished wretches eat. But a call to supper hurried them away to camp, mindful of their own hunger and the need of sustenance. Relief and gladness were expressed at the table. It was well to feed some famished aborigines from whom hardly more than thieving proclivities need now be anticipated.
When darkness fell the little campfires flickered under the trees, and dark forms crossed them, but there was no sound, no chant. Next day discovered the fact that the aborigines had disposed of the entire carcass, and lay around under the trees asleep. More arrived that morning as famished as the first ones. Toward the end of the afternoon a number came in, evidently hunters who had been out scouring the desert for food.
Friday had some information to impart that night, when he returned. These aborigines he called some name no one could quite understand. They lived in that country from the hills to the hills, and for two years of drought had been a vanishing race. The birds and beasts, the snakes and lizards, the goannas and rabbits had all departed beyond the hills to a lake where this weak tribe dared not go because they would be eaten by giant men of their own color. Friday said that the old aborigines expected the rains to come after the wind and the duststorms.
The drovers took that last information with dismay and appealed to their black man for some grain of hope.
“Blow dust like hellum bimeby!” he ejaculated solemnly.
Days passed, growing uncomfortably hot during the noon hours, wh
en the trekkers kept to their shelters.
Dann fed the aborigines. They turned out to be good people. Day after day the men went out to hunt game and the gins to dig weeds and roots. The children rolled naked in the dust and sported in the pond. They grew less fearful of their white saviors as time passed. Presently it became manifest that the aborigines had recovered and were faring well. The suspicion of the drovers that they might reward good deeds with evil thefts had so far been wholly unjustified. The blacks never came into the camp.
In the morning Sterl and Red tramped around the country with their guns, but they never saw anything to shoot, and the monotony of the still bushland, everywhere open, vistas all alike, leading nowhere, was far more oppressive than laziness in camp. In the evenings after sunset they usually took the girls out to see the horses and walk a little for exercise. Both girls improved during that enforced idleness.
One night the sharp-eyed Leslie called attention to a dim circle around the moon. Friday shook his head gloomily, but offered no explanation. His silence was foreboding. Next morning the sun arose overcast, with a peculiar red haze.
A light wind, the first at that camp which had been named Rock Pools by Leslie, sprang up to fan the hot faces of the anxious watchers, and presently came laden with fine invisible particles and a dry, pungent odor of dust.
Chapter Twenty-nine
Any of you folks ever been in a dust or sandstorm?” Red Krehl asked at breakfast.
The general experience in that line had been negative, and information meager. “Bushwhackers have told us that duststorms in the Outback were uncomfortable,” vouched Slyter.
“Wal, if it blows, I’d say they’d be hell on wheels. This heah country is open, flat, an’ dry for a thousand miles.”
“Are they frequent on your Western ranges?” queried Dann.
From both cowboys there followed a long dissertation, with anecdotes, on the dust and sandstorms which, in season, were the bane of cattle drives in their own American Southwest.
“Boys, I’ve never heard that we had anything similar to your storms here in Australia,” said Dann.
“Wal, boss, I’ll bet you two bits you have wuss than ours,” drawled Red.
“How much is two bits?”
“One bob.”
“I think I might risk such an extravagant wager,” Dann returned with a smile. “But upon what do you base your conviction?”
“Nothin’ more than the heat. It’s almost as hot heah as it was back at thet Forks camp. Only we’ve turned into blacks, an’ we don’t feel it so bad.”
“Very well. We are forewarned. By all means let us do something to fortify ourselves. We have already roofed the rock pool. What else?”
Without more ado Sterl and Red put into execution a plan they had previously decided upon. They emptied their tent and repitched it on the side of Slyter’s big wagon. While they were covering the wheels as a windbreak, Beryl and Leslie approached, very curious.
“Sterl, what in the world are you doing?” asked Leslie.
“Red, why this noble look on your sweaty brow?” asked Beryl.
“Don’t be funny, Beryl Dann. This heah is one hell of a sacrifice. Dig up all your belongin’s an’ yore beds, an’ put them in this tent.”
“Why?” queried Beryl incredulously.
“ ’Cause yore gonna bunk in heah an’ stay in heah till this comin’ duststorm is over.”
“Yeah? Who says so?”
“I do. An’ young woman, when I’m mad, I’m quite capable of usin’ force.”
“I’ll just love that. But it’s one of your bluffs.”
Red appeared checkmated for the moment. Leslie was less obdurate.
“Sterl, it’s kind of you boys to think of our comfort, but really we can’t accept it. We’ll manage all right in the wagon.”
“That is no protection. You’d stifle. And all your nice things would be loaded with dust. Leslie, please let me be the judge.”
“Oh, of course, Sterl, I’ll do as you wish,” decided Leslie.
But Beryl was of a different mind. She stood before Red in her slim boy’s garb, hands on her hips, her fair head to one side, her purple eyes full of defiance, and something else that was as fascinating as it was unfathomable. She was lovely and provocative. Sterl felt glad his comrade seemed not impervious to her mood.
“Beryl, I’ll muss yore nice clothes all up,” insisted Red.
“You will do nothing of the kind.”
“But they gotta go in this tent an’ so do you.”
“Red Krehl, you are a tyrant. I’m trained to be meek and submissive, but I’m not your slave yet!”
“You bet you’re not an’ you never will be,” said Red, hot instead of cool. “But thet talk is just ornery, Beryl. You meek an’ submissive…my Gawd!”
“Red, I could be both,” she returned sweetly.
“Yeah? Wal, it jest wouldn’t be natural. Beryl, listen heah.” Red evidently had reacted to this situation with an inspiration. “I’m doin’ this for yore sake. Fact is, I hate to give up this tent. There’s yore good looks to think of. Beryl, you air the damnedest prettiest thing in the world. Most yore hair an’ eyes, of course, which wouldn’t suffer. But yore face, Beryl, thet lovely gold skin of yores, smooth as satin, an’ jest lovely. A dry duststorm will shrivel it up into wrinkles. Why, I’ve seen thet happen even to Injun girls. But it needn’t happen to you. Pack all yore things in the tent. An’ when the duststorm comes, get in heah with Leslie an’ stay. Sterl an’ me will keep a wet sheet over the door heah. Thet’ll keep out the dust except what filters through the canvas. An’ it’ll be bad enough. You should use oil or grease on yore skin, but no water. Water will dry yore skin to leather. You girls will have to stay heah while the dust blows. All day long! At night it usually quiets down, at least where I come from. Then you can come out. Then we’ll eat, if we can eat. If it’s a bad storm you’ll almost die, but you won’t die. Please now, Beryl.”
“All for my good looks!” murmured Beryl, with great, dubious eyes upon him. “Red, I’m afraid I don’t care so much about them as I used to.”
That might have been true, and again it might have been a bare-faced falsehood. Sterl could not tell, so bewildering were the transformations of this girl.
“But I care,” rejoined Red.
“Then I’ll obey you,” she said. “You are very sweet to me. And I’m a cat! Come, Leslie, let’s hurry before it gets too hot.”
The cowboys helped the girls move their beds, blankets, and heavy pieces into the tent, and then left them to their own devices. For their own protection they packed their belongings under the wagon, then proceeded to fold and tie canvas all around it and weight down the edges. The important thing was to make the improvised tent as dust-proof as possible. When this task was done, they were satisfied. They advised the drovers to do likewise, which advice was followed. Dann and Slyter had covered their wagons with extra canvases. Sterl, going to the rock-pool for water, saw that the aborigines were erecting little windbreaks and shelters. At this hour the sun had lost none of its heat but some of its brilliance.
Sterl and Red walked away from camp out into the open to the highest point nearby, which had no great altitude. There seemed to be fine, invisible fire embers in a wind that had perceptibly strengthened. Except for the rustle of leaves and grass there was absolute silence. Transparent smoke appeared to be rising up over the sun. A dry, acrid odor, a fragrance of eucalyptus and a pungency of dust, seemed to stick in the nostrils.
“There she comes, pard, rollin’ along,” drawled the Texan, pointing northeast, over the low ground where the bleached streambed meandered.
Sterl saw rolling, tumbling, mushrooming clouds of dust, rather white than gray in color, moving toward them over the land.
“Dust all right, Red, and plenty thick,” returned Sterl. “I hoped it might be a false alarm.”
“Aw, hell, we cain’t have no luck! Dann is Jonahed from A to
Z. Thet may be
jest a little blow. But all these days! An’ the daid calm! An’ the talk about rains! Makin’ for a gale, mebbe. This heat has to blow off before cool air brings the rain. Feel this stone, pard. Hot as a skillet.” “It’ll be the toughest yet on the girls.”
“If we can only keep them in thet tent while the dust blows!” With incredible speed the duststorm appeared still a few miles distant, but it had now reached to the zenith, blotting out the sun, spreading gloom over the earth, bearing down in convolutions. Like smoke expelled with tremendous force, the front bellied and bulged and billowed, whirling upon itself and throwing out great rounded masses of white streaked by yellow, like colossal roses exploding, blossoming, to be sucked back into a vortex and then puffed out again.
Shadow as from dark clouds eclipsing the sun fell around the watchers. Every instant the spectacle grew more formidable and august. It had too much violence to be beautiful. It typified unrest, change, rage.
“You dog-gone,’ ory-eyed galoot!” ejaculated Red. “Come on.”
“Red, your soul has atrophied.”
“I reckon, but we gotta get in our cubbyhole before the dust blows in. Do you savvy thet?”
“It’s monstrous, Red. Magnificent! One time I had Nan out riding. It was late fall. A snow squall was sweeping at us. I raved. What do you think that girl said?”
“I have no idee, pard, but I’ll gamble it was smart.”
“Nan was like you, Red. Soulless! She said…‘Ain’t nature enough grand!’ I never forgave her for that.”
“Sterl, mebbe I’m not so daid as you fear. Leastways, I had enough soul to stick to you…you handsome, moon-gazin’, no-good geezer!”
They ran back to camp, aware of thick streams of dust racing ahead of them. They wet two sheets and fastened one over the door of the girls’ tent.
“Air you in there, girls?” shouted Red.