by Zane Grey
Every half hour or thereabouts, Sterl rode back to have a word with Red, during which interval Larry had come to report all was well at his end. On these trips Sterl came back by way of Slyter’s horses. The only time Sterl accosted Friday, the black held up his hand: “Bimeby!”
Therefore, all the encroachments of the feelings roused by night, solitude, space in no wise lulled Sterl away from the dark potency of Friday’s bimeby.
As the hours wore on the chanting of the aborigines ceased, and the corroboree fires glimmered fainter and fainter to die out. Just before dawn the air was cold and still. The cattle slept. The silence seemed uncanny. There was no dreaming, tranquil, long-drawn-out ending of the night. Sterl caught something from Friday, that, once sensing it, he felt in the air the stillness, the awakening of the cattle.
The first streaks of gray in the east heralded a rumble of hoofs, like distant thunder. How Sterl started up at that sound, his hair rising stiff, his skin cold and prickling! The mob of cattle belonging to Ormiston and his companions was on the run. Sterl galloped back to Red. Friday joined them.
“They’re runnin’, pard, but not stampeded,” Red said, his lean head bent, his ear to the east.
“Slowing down, Red,” returned Sterl, straining his hearing. “Friday, what happen alonga there?”
“Black fella spearum cattle,” was the reply.
“Not so bad, thet. But a stampede of this unholy mob would be orful,” declared Red. “Listen, Sterl…. they’re rollin’ again, back the other way.”
“Saw a gun flash!” Sterl cried, and then a dull report reached them.
“Wal, the ball’s opened,” said Red coolly. “Take yore pardners.”
Flashes from several points, wide separated, and booms of guns attested to the activity of Ormiston’s drovers.
“Aw, hell! Our cattle are wakin’ up, pard. Heah comes Larry.”
The young drover came tearing up to haul his mount back onto sliding haunches. “Boys, our mob…is about to…break,” he panted.
“Umpumm, Larry,” replied Red. “They’re jest oneasy. But if thet damn mess over there gets wuss, they might…. Keep quiet. Listen.”
More bangs of guns in lessening number accompanied the roll of hoofs. Sterl calculated a thousand or more cattle were in motion, less than a third of Ormiston’s mob. It began to diminish in volume as the gunshots became desultory. But the lowing of Dann’s mob, the cracking of horns, the restless hoofs caused Sterl great concern, in spite of Red’s assurance. The center of this disturbance appeared to be back along the sector from which Larry had just come.
“Sterl, I’ll go with Larry,” Red said, wheeling Jester. “Jest in case. You ride up an’ down heah. If we don’t get back pronto, come a-runnin’. But I’m shore it ain’t nothin’ much.”
Loping up and down Sterl put in a few moments of extreme anxiety. But presently, when he halted King to listen, he found that the dull trampling from across the flat was dying out, and that the ominous restlessness of Dann’s mob was doing likewise. There were no more gunshots. Gradually silence reigned again. A rapid thud of hoofs proved to be Red’s horse, loping back.
“Lost my matches. Gimme some,” said the cowboy, as he reined in beside Sterl. His lighting of a cigarette relieved Sterl. “They was movin’ out up there, but easy to stop. Larry can hold them, if there’s no more fuss. What the hell was goin’ on, pard?”
“Friday says…‘black fella spearum cattle.’”
“Yeah? Wal, if they don’t do any wuss than thet, we’re a lucky lot of hombres…. Sterl, this mob of Dann’s fooled me. They’ve been so tame, you know, not a-tall like longhorns, thet I reckoned it’d take a hell of a lot to stampede them. But umpumm!”
“We’ve got a lot to learn about Australian cattle, blacks, and white men, Red.”
“Wal, the men ain’t much different. Stanley Dann is another Chisholm, only not so hard. Slyter is one grand feller. Ormiston is a skunk…. Say, I’ll bet two pesos he’ll be interested in what came off over there.”
“Yes. All quiet now, though. And it’s daylight.”
At sunrise they rode back to camp, finding breakfast ready and the drivers busily hitching up for the day’s march. Slyter wore a grave aspect and listened intently to Larry’s report, which plainly relieved him. Leslie, brown and red-cheeked, was there to write the report in her journal. Presently Slyter went out to meet Friday, who was approaching from the flat. They had all just finished breakfast, when a mounted messenger in the person of Cedric dashed up to inform Slyter that Dann wanted him and the cowboys at once.
“What has happened?” queried Slyter.
“Blacks killed somebody at Ormiston’s camp,” replied Cedric, then loped away.
Slyter himself was the only one who showed no surprise. Dominated by Stanley Dann he just could not believe calamity would overtake them.
“That’s bad. I wonder who…? Boys, let’s go. Larry, I’ll ride your horse. Fetch in horses for today’s trek.”
“Wal, it’ll jest be too bad if Ormiston got a spear through his gizzard,” drawled Red.
“No fear,” Leslie replied with a caustic little laugh. “Dad, can I go with you?”
“Good heavens, child…no!”
“Friday, run alonga me,” said Sterl to the black.
In a few minutes they reached the larger camp. Stanley Dann and Eric with Cedric and another drover were mounted, waiting for them. Sterl espied Beryl, watching them with big troubled eyes. She waved a hand to Red.
“Bingham,” spoke up the giant calmly. “Ormiston just sent word that Woolcott had been speared by blacks.”
“Woolcott! Cedric didn’t tell us…! I thought…? Stanley, this is terrible. When…what?”
“No other word. I dare say, if Ormiston had wanted us he’d have said so. But by all means I should go. In the excitement I suppose Ormiston forgot or didn’t think it was necessary.”
“We all should go,” rejoined Slyter.
“Wal, I should smile,” Red drawled in a peculiar tone that only Sterl understood. The cowboy was thinking hard. His eyes had a glint. His mind had leaped, as had Sterl’s, to instant speculation. Sterl knew that the keen cowboy would disregard anything except his own observations and deductions.
They set out on a trot for Ormiston’s camp. Cedric followed a well-defined path of hoof tracks. The dry stream bed, with its fringe of trees, made a wide bend, around which the camp appeared, and beyond grazed cattle and horses.
The tall Hathaway, bewhiskered now and no longer florid, met Dann’s group as they reined in near the wagons.
“A terrible tragedy, Stanley,” he said huskily. “Woolcott insisted on doing guard duty, in spite of Ormiston’s advice. The blacks attacked at dawn this morning. Speared Woolcott and his horse! We fired guns to scare them off. But too late!”
“Where is he?” asked Dann.
Hathaway led them beyond the campfire, where drovers were eating, to a quartet of men beside a wagon. Ormiston, haggard of face, turned to meet the visitors. Two of the group had shovels, and had evidently just dug a grave, as indicated by a pile of yellow soil.
“Dann, it’s a gruesome business I’d hoped to spare you,” said Ormiston, not without harshness. “Woolcott heard the blacks rowing, and he went on guard. I advised him, particularly, to stay in…that the blacks probably meant only a raid for beef. But he went…and got killed.”
“Let me see Woolcott,” boomed the leader.
“Bedford and Jack just fetched him in…. There!”
Woolcott lay on his side, a ghastly figure, limp as a sack, with a spear through his middle. Only the side of his gray visage was exposed, but it was enough to show the convulsions of torture that had attended his death. Sterl met the sinister antagonism in his mind with the visual facts, but they left him not wholly convinced.
“Where’s his horse?” asked Dann.
“Out there,” replied Ormiston with a motion of hand toward a low ridge. “We have the saddle and bridle…. This w
on’t delay us, Stanley. Go on with the trek. We’ll bury Woolcott, mark his grave, and catch up with you.”
“Bury him without any service?”
“You needn’t wait to do that. If you wish, I’ll read a psalm out of his Bible, and bury it with him.”
“I’d like that. We can do no less. Poor Woolcott! Men, do not let this dishearten you. It is our first catastrophe. There will be others, but we are going on.”
“Wal, boss,” Sterl called, as Dann appeared about to leave. “I want to see just what this black man spear-work looks like.” Sterl slipped out of his saddle and motioned Friday to come from behind the horses.
“Me, too,” drawled Red coolly, as he swung his long legs and stepped down. “Reckon it’ll be my luck to get bored by one of them spears. An’ I’d jest like to see how they stick in a fellar.”
Sterl, stepping slowly out from the horses, made it a point to be looking at Ormiston when the drover espied Friday. Evil and forceful as Ormiston undoubtedly was, he was not great. Sterl had seen a hundred outlaws and rustlers who could have hidden what ever this man had to hide. One was a sudden flaming hate of the black or of all blacks, and the other a fleeting glimpse of startled fear.
Friday stepped close to Woolcott’s prostrate body, and with sinewy black hand, wonderful in its motion, its lifetime of familiarity with that aboriginal weapon, he laid hold of the spear, to move it, to bend over.
Ormiston burst out: “All niggers look the same to me!” And with murder in his protruding eyes, he pulled a gun. Sterl, ready and quick as light, shot the gun out of Ormiston’s hand.
Pandemonium broke loose. The drover yelled lustily. The horses, snorting, plunging, kept the riders busy for a moment. Friday backed away, probably frightened, though no sign of it showed in his inscrutable face. Sterl stepped back a little, smoking gun extended, lining up the shocked Ormiston with his drovers, Bedford and Jack. Red was at Sterl’s side. Stanley Dann bellowed an order from behind.
“Ormiston, you and I will have real trouble over Friday yet,” rang out Sterl. He had meant to cripple the drover, shoot his hand off, but the bullet had evidently hit the gun, to send it spinning away. Ormiston had been holding that stung member with his left. He gazed at it as if he expected to see blood and shot flesh. But his hand was intact.
“Next time you throw your gun, do it at me,” Sterl added scornfully. “You’d have killed this black man.”
“Yes…I would…and I’ll do it…yet,” shouted Ormiston, now purple in the face. “All niggers look alike to me.”
“Ormiston, you’re blacker at heart than Friday is outside.”
Stanley Dann urged his big charger near to the belligerents. “What damned revolt is this?” he demanded.
Sterl explained in few words. Ormiston contended that sight of the black had incited him to frenzy.
“Let that do,” boomed the leader. “Isn’t Woolcott’s death lesson enough? We must squash this dissension amongst us. Ormiston, I blame you most. To attempt to kill Friday was unwarrantable. Give Woolcott a decent burial. Put up a cross. Then come on with the trek. Back to camp, all!”
Dann, with Slyter and his brother, Eric, and Cedric, rode away. “Mosey along, pard,” Red said curtly, “but don’t turn yore back pronto to these hombres.”
That idea had been far from Sterl’s mind. He had not taken two backward steps before he bumped into King. The black had stood his ground. Sterl led him away. Passing Hathaway, who appeared extremely upset, Sterl called out that Red had meant no offense to him. Beyond the wagons Sterl leaped astride King and spurred him to the side of his comrade, already mounted. They soon overtook the long-striding Friday. Slowing down to accommodate the black, they rode a beeline for their own camp.
Slyter came in while Sterl and Red changed horses. The drover looked as if thought was a confusing faculty at the moment.
“Sorry, boss,” said Sterl. “I’m always deepening those furrows in your brow. But you have eyes. You must have seen that Ormiston would have shot Friday. Anyway you heard him say so.”
“I saw and I heard,” declared Slyter, wagging his head. “I tried to convince Stanley that Ormiston meant to murder my black. But, no!”
“Let Dann take his own time.”
Leslie bounced out from somewhere, like a handsome, lithe boy in rider’s ragged garb. “Dad! You saw and heard what?” she cried, flashing-eyed and keen, not to be denied.
“Oh, Lord!” groaned her father.
“Leslie, put this down in your little book,” Sterl said, and he made a swift, concise report of the incident.
She flamed even more readily than usual. “He would have shot Friday.” Then she swore, the first time Sterl had ever heard her use a word of the profanity so prevalent in camp, and most often on the drawling cowboy’s lips. When her father looked shocked and helpless, Leslie went on. “The louse! The dirty lowdown hombre!”
“Haw! Haw! Haw!” rang out Red’s laugh, this time with a deadly note. “Les, you’re shore the makin’s of one genuine American cowgirl.”
“Boss, come here and listen,” Sterl spoke up while he fastened the cinches on his rangy sorrel. “Red and I will start out on the trek. But we’ll come back with Friday, and, after Ormiston is on the move, we’ll ride around back there to look over the ground. Red and I can read tracks. And if it’s too much for us, maybe Friday can see something. We’ll catch up pronto.”
“Sterl, let me go,” begged Leslie.
“No.”
Ormiston had manifestly lost little time trekking away after the Danns. And it was Sterl’s opinion that he would now drove his cattle to unite in one mob.
Woolcott had been hastily buried in a shallow grave without a headmark. A few pieces of lumber lay scattered about. Sterl had Friday carry stones to place on the grave, after Red and he had stamped the ground hard. Then they erected a makeshift cross, which could be seen at a distance and would last for years.
That done, with the black in the lead, they set out on foot, leading their horses, to find what signs they could of the tragedy. Half a mile out on the grassy flat, at the edge of rising, sandy ground, Friday located a dead horse.
“Pard, shore makes me sore the way this black man can see,” complained Red. “Why, I reckoned I had eyes. They must be gettin’ pore, or Friday is jest too damn’ good.”
“Red, I found that out long ago. Friday has the eyes of an eagle.”
The dead horse was a bay, lying on its side, with a spear sticking up high. While Friday scrutinized it, laid gentle hold of it, the cowboys walked around the prostrate bay. They had seen thousands of dead horses—dead from every cause that accident and the elements and the brutality of man could bring about.
“Look, heah,” said Red, presently, pointing to a bloody ear on the underside of the head. “Wait until Friday is through…then we’ll turn this hoss over.”
The black had pulled out the long spear and was scrutinizing it.
“Boss,” he said to Sterl, “all same killum horse like white man.” And Friday made one of his impressive gestures back toward Woolcott’s grave.
“How, Friday? Show me?” Sterl queried intensely.
The black fitted the bloody spear to his wommera, and made ready as if to throw.
“No wommera. No black fella spearum white man! No black fella killum horse!”
“By Gawd!” ejaculated Red, not in horror, but in confirmation of something that had been sensed.
“Friday, let me have them,” said Sterl in swift passion. He adjusted the spear to the wommera in his awkward way and, as Friday had illustrated, made about to throw. “No black fella throw spear? No killum Woolcott that way? No spearum this horse?”
“No…no, me tinkit!” replied Friday emphatically. His great eyes glowed like ebony balls on fire.
“How, then?” cried Sterl.
“Spear pushum in white man. Pushum in horse. No black fella do.” And Friday took the long spear, to shove it into the horse, a deliberate and intelligent actio
n.
“Heah, help me turn this hoss over,” Red said. The three of them managed it, not without dint of effort. The cowboy got down on his knees to examine the bloody ear. The little stream of blood had dried. Red threw off a glove and thrust his bare hand into that ear. Suddenly he grew tense. When he looked up, it was certain that Sterl had an accelerated heartbeat and a mind in which whirling thoughts were centering—fixing. He had seen Red look like that before.
“Shot!” hissed the cowboy. Then again he bent over to move his hand. “Got my finger in a bullet hole…. Somebody shoved a gun in this hoss’s ear an’ shot him! Look heah!” As he pulled out his hand, there were black stains merged with blood on his forefinger. “Powder! Burnt powder!”
Red wiped his hand on the sand and grass, then completed the job with his handkerchief. He stood up, and, searching his pocket for tobacco and matches, he sat down to roll a cigarette. His tense, lean face, red as fire, and his luminous blazing blue eyes disappeared in a cloud of smoke.
Sterl addressed the watchful black. “Friday, look…see tracks …black fella tracks all around.” Sterl himself could not see a single one except Friday’s. Naturally there were boot tracks all around in every sandy spot. Sterl sat down heavily.
“Murder!”
“Pard, as shore as Gawd made little apples…it was murder,” replied Red, blowing away the smoke. “Hell, we shouldn’t be surprised. We knowed it all the time…only we was afraid to think. Thet…!” Red let out as if in relief a long string of vile names—the worst that the Western range afforded.
“Why…why?” queried Sterl passionately.
“What the hell why?” flashed Red, getting up. “It is! We don’t care why. Did we ever care for low-down rustler motives? We had Ormiston figgered from thet fust minnit we seen him!”
“Stanley Dann will never believe it. Slyter, neither, though he is beginning to show faint signs of intelligence. Could we prove murder to these drovers, if we fetched them back here?”
