The Great Trek

by Zane Grey

  Sterl saw all this, understood it only vaguely. Always he had resisted the insidious charm, had fought it, and had won because the cause, the resistless contact with nature, had sustained a break before he became utterly a savage. On this endless trek, however, he had his doubts about a break in time. It would be too long before the home instinct could counteract this tremendous influence. A ceaseless fight to carry on, to overcome, to kill the beasts and aborigines, liberated the instincts and passions that made for internal conflict in Dann’s band.

  Ormiston had already succumbed to it, added to his greed and lust, which would lead to his death, soon enough Sterl hoped, to circumvent his evil schemes, what ever they were. Red would succumb to it, as he had done before, unless a genuine love for Beryl Dann proved too strong for this life in the raw. Even so, Red had it in him to be great. All the drovers were being affected, and Sterl felt that not many of them would turn out gods. The women, Sterl was certain, were hopelessly in the grip of nature. Being female, being responsible for the reproduction of the species, they were closer to nature, closer to the earth, and, therefore, prey to all primitive things.

  Beryl responded slowly but surely to this urge. And in her its first effect was a growth of her natural instinct of acquisition of admirers. Every night at Dann’s camp a half dozen or more young drovers vied with Ormiston and Red for her smiles. It was amusing and interesting at first, but came to be the only circumstance that had power to irritate Stanley Dann. He reared his displeasure on several occasions, notably after Ormiston badly beat the boy, Cedric. Red played his game differently from the other rivals. He was wise in knowledge of what would come to pass. He confined his efforts to serving Beryl, so that the girl seemed to rely upon him while being piqued that he was not at her feet. Ormiston’s inordinate jealousy grew. Always when he and Red were near Beryl at the same time, there was a charged suspense in the very air. Beryl reveled in it. Red bore a cool, careless demeanor that deceived all but Sterl. Ormiston might have made Red’s detective task an easy one, but for the girl.

  Leslie, being the youngest in the trek and a girl of red blood and spirit, tumbled more rapidly than any of them in her relegation to the physical. She loved horses, action, danger, achievement. She lost her fear. Sometimes she would let out a piercing wild cry of sheer rapture. She had never been squeamish about blood and death, circumstances that some way or another on the trek were of daily occurrence. After that sunset hour in the gateway of the pass, when Sterl, yielding to the loveliness of their purple land, and the appeal of the girl, had so boldly embraced and kissed her into an awakening of love, she had avoided being alone with him for weeks. But here shyness gradually fell away from her, like dead scales no longer of use, and as the long trek went on through austere days and nights of time and distance, she warmed anew to Sterl, naturally, growing less ashamed as consciousness of it faded, until her need of him was that of a mate.

  But Sterl had never transgressed again, as at that mad and unrestrained sunset climax, though there were times when he desired to almost overwhelmingly. Nevertheless, love had come to him again. Her beauty and youth and charm had not all to do with this saving thing. Her perfect adaptation to this strenuous and perilous life, her call to the manhood in him, and his recognition of her sterling qualities of strength and nerve—these constituted the greatest factor in his love. Yet in all his rides with her, their hunts and walks, he never let himself dwell upon a future. For many of Stanley Dann’s troop, and very possibly for him, there might not be an earthly future.

  “Plenty smoke,” said Friday, one afternoon when camp had been made on a dry stream bed, where only a few water holes, widely separated in deep holes, afforded drink for thirsty cattle.

  Sterl and Slyter, together at the campfire when Friday spoke, scanned the horizon, where on the moment all was clear. Sterl had observed smoke throughout the day, to his eye no different from those of yesterday. But the black’s somber eyes and deep voice made Sterl’s flesh creep.

  “Friday, what you mean?” queried Slyter anxiously. “We come far.” He held up three fingers. “Moons…three moons. Plenty smokes. No black man. All same alonga tomorrow?”

  “Black fella close up.” The aborigine made slow, trenchant gestures to signify as plain as print that the smoke-signaling natives were traveling along with the trek, gathering more day by day. “Black fella go alonga us. Plenty black fella. Come more. Bimeby no more smokes. Spear cattle…steal!”

  “How long, Friday? When?”

  “Mebbe soon…mebbe bimeby.”

  “What do?”

  “Watchum close up. Killum!” declared the black sonorously. He reminded Sterl then of a great Kiowa chieftain, noted for his oratory.

  Slyter looked apprehensively at Sterl and threw up his hands. “We’ve been very fortunate. Here it is end of August, four hundred miles and more on our trek, with only minor mishaps. No black trouble. Nothing to worry about but the growing dissension among us. But this looks bad.”

  “It does, boss,” Sterl agreed gravely.

  “Let’s go tell Stanley.”

  They found their leader, as had happened before, patiently listening to Ormiston. Sterl’s keen eyes noted a graying of Dann’s hair over his temples. Ormiston looked hard and fit, trained down, but not lean, a man used to activity in the open. He had brooding dark eyes that did not meet Sterl’s.

  Slyter briefly told them of Friday’s sinister knowledge of an increasing aborigine horde on their track. Dann stroked his golden beard.

  “At last, eh? We are grateful for this long respite,” he said, his eyes lighting as if with good news. Dann never saw bad in anything.

  “I asked Friday what do? He said…‘Watchum close up! Killum!’ ” concluded Slyter.

  “Well! For a black to advise that!” exclaimed the leader ponderingly. “But I do not advise bloodshed.”

  “I do,” declared Ormiston bluntly. “If we don’t, this nigger mob will grow beyond our power to cope with it. They will hang on our trek, spearing cattle at a distance, attacking us in the early dawn hour, eventually driving us frantic.”

  Sterl wondered what was working in this man’s mind to influence him thus. But it seemed a wise ultimatum. “Boss, I agree with Ormiston.”

  “What’s your opinion, Slyter?” asked Dann.

  “If the blacks spear our cattle and menace, then I say kill.”

  Dann nodded his huge head in sad realization. “We will take things as they come. Probably they will not be as bad as we fear. Merge all the cattle into one mob….”

  “I told you I’d not agree to that,” interrupted Ormiston.

  “Don’t regard it as my order. I ask you to help me that much,” returned the leader, with patient persuasion.

  “Ormiston, listen,” interposed Sterl. “I’ve had to do with a good many cattle drives, treks you call them. After a stampede or a flood, or a terrible storm, things that are bound to happen to us, cattle can’t be driven separately again.”

  “That I do not believe.”

  “Yeah? All right,” snapped Sterl. “What you believe doesn’t count so damn’ much on this trek. What we believe does. And if you don’t throw in with us, we’ll believe you have the same secret motive that you have in opposing our leader’s plan to cross the Never Never!”

  “Ha! Hazelton, you mean that’s what you’ll believe,” retorted Ormiston, his lips ashen.

  “I believe it now. These partners of yours can’t go much farther in their incredible faith in you.”

  Ormiston gazed away across the purple veldt, his square jaw set, his eyes smoldering, his mien one of relentless opposition.

  “What’s more, I can change Woolcott’s allegiance to you, if not Hathaway’s,” declared Sterl.

  “Our differences are not the important issue now,” Ormiston said finally. “That is this nigger danger.” And without looking at his partners he stalked away.

  “Slyter, we’ll put double guards on watch tonight. Merge your cattle with my mob,�
� ordered Dann.

  Before dusk fell, this order had been carried out. Slyter’s cattle had become so tame that only a very unusual and unexpected event could frighten them into a stampede. They merely went on grazing along with Dann’s mob. Ormiston’s mob included Woolcott’s and Hathaway’s and grazed across the stream bed a mile distant.

  Supper at Slyter’s camp was late that night, and Red Krehl the last rider to come in. He sat cross-legged between Leslie and Sterl. His dry, droll humor was lacking. It gave Sterl concern, but Leslie betrayed no sign that she noticed it. After supper, at the campfire, she plagued him about Beryl.

  “Les, you’re a cold, fishy, soulless girl, no good a-tall,” finally retaliated Red.

  “Fishy? I don’t know about that. Sterl, should I box his ears?”

  “Red, do you mean she’s an angelfish?”

  “I should snicker I don’t. Back in Texas there’s a little catfish. And can he sting?”

  “Oh, I see. Red, I’d rather have you fighting than the way you are tonight,” she returned more earnestly.

  “All same me, too,” chimed in Sterl.

  “An’ for why?” the cowboy retorted.

  Sterl let Leslie reply to that. She said: “Red, three times before this you’ve been like you are tonight…and something has happened.”

  “Yeah? An’ how am I tonight?”

  “Cool. Aloof. Hard as flint. Your eyes glitter. And if you smiled, your face would break like glass.”

  “Right-o, pard, Leslie has grown as keen as a whip. I’ve told you what’s on my chest. How about yours?” Sterl asked.

  “Ormiston ordered me out of his camp just before I rode in heah.”

  “What for?” asked Sterl sharply.

  “I ain’t shore. Beryl has been kinda sweet to me lately in front of Ormiston. It ain’t foolin’ me none. But it’s got him. Another thing. Her Dad makes no bones about likin’ me…havin’ me look after Beryl. Ormiston hates thet even more’n he does Beryl’s playin’ with her other beaux. I reckon he sees I’m someone to worry about.”

  “You are, Red. But I’ve a hunch your attention to Beryl has kept you from getting a line on Ormiston.”

  “Mebbe it has. All the same, shore as you’re knee-high to a grasshopper, Beryl will give him away yet, or let out somethin’ thet I can savvy.”

  “Is Beryl in love with him?” Sterl asked.

  “Hell, yes,” replied Red gloomily.

  “Les, what do you think?”

  “Hell, yes,” repeated Leslie, imitating Red’s laconic disgust. “Beryl’s had a lot of love affairs I know of. But this one is worse.”

  “You’re both wrong,” rejoined Sterl. “Beryl is fascinated by a bold, snaky man. It’s the time and the place. She’s a natural-born flirt. But I figure she has depth. She’s not shallow, only vain, and thinking of herself. Wait till she’s had real hell!”

  “Pard, you’re a comfortin’ cuss. An’ sharp as a dagger about wimmin. I hope you’re right. If hell’s all Beryl needs, I reckon she’ll get it pronto.”

  Friday loomed out of the shadow. He carried his wommera and bundle of long spears. “Plenty black fella close up. Corroboree!”

  “Listen!” cried Leslie.

  On the instant a wild dog howled. It seemed a mournful and monstrous sound, accentuating the white-starred, melancholy night. Sterl saw the lights of fires, away beyond Ormiston’s camp. Then a low, weird chanting of many savage voices, almost drowned by the native dogs baying the dingoes, rose high on the still air into a piercing wail, to die away. It was a blood-curdling sound, and Sterl could not analyze its power to make a white man shudder. But the wilderness took on stranger meaning, of isolation, of immensity, of agelessness, of all that was inimical to white men.

  “Leslie, is it a war dance?” Sterl asked.

  “They dance, I know…. Friday, what mean this kind corroboree?”

  “Black fella sit down alonga us ebry night. Bimeby plenty black fella. Spear cattle…steal everythink.”

  “Friday, will these black men kill us?” queried Sterl.

  “Might be bimeby. Watchum close”

  Slyter came to the fire, holding up a hand to silence the talk. As he turned his ear to the east, his weather-beaten visage betrayed a somber apprehension. He listened. They all listened. The howling of dingoes, the barking of native dogs, the chanting of the aborigines transcended any wild sound Stern had ever heard. The staccato, concatenated barks of coyotes, the lonely mourn of blood-thirsty wolves, the roo-roo-roooo of mating buffalo, the stamping, yelling war dance of the Indians—these were wild sounds of the open, but hardly to be compared to this Australian bushland chant of beast and aborigine. Sterl sustained a queer thought that the incalculable difference might have been cannibalism.

  “Cowboys, how does that strike you?” asked Slyter grimly. “That comes from the black men, the oldest men on earth, in Australia, the oldest continent, the cradle of the human race.”

  “Not so good, boss,” replied Red. “I don’t want to be alone no more. Makes my gun hand itch.”

  “Slyter, I am amazed…distressed…scared,” Sterl admitted darkly. “For me to feel all that at once takes some figuring.”

  Leslie added: “Something wonderful and terrible!”

  “Daughter, would you like to be home again?” queried her father. “Mum has her hands clapped over her ears.”

  The girl gave him a wan, brave smile. For an instant this mystic evil had caused a regurgitation of feeling for home, for security, for what had been normal civilized life. But it faded swiftly.

  “No. We’re on the trek. We’ll fight.”

  “Right-o!” ejaculated Slyter. “Les, you have a rifle, and Hazelton has made you a dead shot. If you see a black man spear a horse…kill him!”

  It struck Sterl significantly that Slyter thought of his horses, not cattle.

  “Get some sleep,” he concluded. “Don’t risk your tent tonight. Black men seldom or never attack before dawn. But we won’t trust that. Sleep under your wagon. Drake is on guard with three men. He’ll call you, when they come in.”

  At that, they all stood up to say good night. “Red, keep my horses bunched,” said Leslie. “Gosh, Sterl, I’m glad you built that board fence around my wagon!”

  The cowboys piled packs and bundles outside the wheels of their wagon, on the side toward the open. Then they crept under to stretch out on their blankets in their old cowboy custom without removing coat or boots. The night was warm, and would not cool off until late. Friday lay just outside the wheels. Red growled about the corroboree keeping him awake, but it did nothing of the kind. Sterl thought he would find it hard to get to sleep with that savage crescendo in his ears. Habit was too strong, however, when he composed himself to sleep. Then it seemed he had hardly secured forty winks, when Red rudely shook and called him.

  “Come on, pard. I shore don’t want to be alone in the dark no more.”

  They rolled out, dressed to ride, rifles in hand. Larry was saddling horses. Drake and his three drovers were drinking tea.

  “A cowboy’s life is hard,” Red sang under his breath.

  “What time, Drake?” asked Sterl.

  “Long past midnight. Near two o’clock, my watch says.”

  “How was the guard?”

  “Mob quiet. Horses resting. No sign of blacks. But we heard them on and off. Look sharp just before and at daylight. Good you have Friday with you.”

  They took time only for a cup of hot tea and to light cigarettes before they were mounted and off into the night, with Friday trotting ahead. Crossing the gray stream bed, they rode out into the starlit open. The first black patch on the blanched grass was Slyter’s horses, resting and grazing, a contented remuda, Sterl thought, if there ever was one. Beyond, some distance, vague and dark, stretched the great mob of cattle, quiet enough considering their numbers.

  “Boys,” said Larry, “I’ll drove the far end, up and down this side. Meet you here every once in a while.”

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p; Sterl told Friday and Red to stay there while he rode down along the other end. He passed Dann’s horses, patrolled by one rider, and a mile further down came upon another horseman, who turned out to be Cedric. They greeted each other. Cedric had been on guard for an hour and reported all well. Sterl rode back to Red.

  “Wal, pard, it’d be OK but for thet damn moanin’ over there,” reported Red. “Gives me the willies.”

  “Same as any other night, so far as the stock is concerned. But what do we know? Listen and watch, Red. Keep me and Friday in sight.”

  “OK. I bet my chaps thet what ever’s gonna pop will be over there,” rejoined Red, pointing toward Ormiston’s position.

  Sterl kept a hundred yards or so away from the mob and patrolled a short beat, letting King graze when he was inclined to, and ever and anon making sure he could see Friday and Red. At intervals low blasts of the corroboree waved out across the veldt. The campfires of the aborigines still glimmered. Dogs and dingoes had ceased their howling. Sterl’s senses, strung to acute alertness, gradually toned down. Nevertheless, it would not have been easy for a rabbit to escape his vigilance. His state recalled the first time he had stood guard on the Texas range when Comanches were expected to raid. They had done so, too, matchless and fleet riders, swooping down upon the remuda to stampede it and drive off horses, leaving one dead Indian on the ground, victim of Sterl’s unerring rifle. Sterl had been sixteen years old then, and that had been, his first blood-spilling.

  The years had sped by, hardening him with their risks and pains, and fights and wounds, and killings, so that as he sat astride King on this wild Australian hinterland, with cannibals chanting off in the darkness, he felt that these black men had better give him a wide berth.