The Great Trek

by Zane Grey

  “Watchum close, Friday.”

  Sterl enjoyed the strenuous labor. It was free of the peril that the trail drivers of Texas incurred crossing flood rivers. This fording supplies and belongings across the Diamantina was a colorful, noisy, mirthful, splashing procession. Red’s war whoop pealed above the shouts and songs of the drovers. But by noon-tide the labor ceased to be fun. The only pleasure about it was the feel of the cool water under that broiling sun. By mid-afternoon the riders were sagging in their saddles, wet with sweat and water, dirty and unkempt. When drays and wagons were emptied, they began the harder job of getting them across. Sunset found the drovers with most of their outfit on the right bank of the river, but half a dozen wagons left behind, with harness and tools and much paraphernalia that had to be guarded from a raid by the aborigines who had appeared in the background.

  Supper and bed were welcome that night. Red drawled wearily—“Pard, all same like old times.”—and then he sank in to sleep. Sterl was not long behind. They were called at two o’clock to go on guard. Red’s language might have been picturesque and reminiscent of trail driver days, but it was terribly profane.

  All during their hours on watch, big fires burned on the other shore and hordes of blacks murdered the night silence with their corroboree over the dead cattle.

  “Gosh, what a fiesta, pard,” Red said. “If them cannibals don’t eat themselves to death, they’ll foller us till hell freezes over, an’ thet ain’t gonna be soon in this heah hot country.”

  At sunrise they rode into camp for breakfast and a change of horses, then to continue the river fording. With all hands and the partners doing their share that toilsome job was completed by mid-afternoon. Then the implacable and imperturbable Stanley Dann had his drovers brand cattle to make up for Ormiston’s loss. That drover might not have been squelched, but for the time being he made no more ado and manifestly chose to stay on Dann’s side of the river. The leader ordered one day’s halt in that camp to rest and dry out things. He said to Sterl: “Hazelton, I know more about cattle rushes and crossing rivers, thanks to you.”

  There had been very little loss and breakage and only superficial injury to men and horses on that first ford of the Diamantina. It was significant that Eric Dann did not remember this river, although the trek he had been on had undoubtedly crossed it surely farther up. Sterl strolled out in the open late that day, to take a “look-see,” as the Indians used to call it, and stretch his cramped and bruised legs. Across the river he saw hundreds of blacks, like a swarm of ants, noisy and wild. From noon that day birds of prey had appeared in the sky, and by dusk dingoes were making the walking ring.

  Sterl was impressed by the riverbottom valley. Despite the heat and dry spell, grass was abundant and luxuriant. Water fowl swept by in flocks, and the sandbars were dotted with white and blue herons. When he went to bed, which was early after dark, he heard them flying overhead, uttering dismal croaks.

  Next day was a restful one with the cattle content to graze a mile or two up the river. The sky was black with buzzards, flocks of which spiraled down to share the feast with the aborigines. Kangaroos, wallabies, emus, rabbits were more abundant than at any camp for weeks. They were tame and approached to within a few rods of the wagons. Parrots and cockatoos colored the gum trees along the riverbanks. It was a camp that would be hard to leave, although Friday said it would be: “Same all alonga ribber.”

  At this Diamantina camp Leslie made several notations in her journal. Stampede. Bridge of cattle. Packed across river. Flies something terrible!

  And so they were. Used as Sterl had gotten to these various pests—the invisible little demons and the whirling dervishes—they drove him crazy, here, if he did not cover his face. In the heat that was vastly uncomfortable. But it was the trekkers’ misfortune to fall afoul of a bigger and meaner fly—a bold, black, green-winged fellow that could bite through shirts and pants. Red had been the first to discover this species to which Slyter could not give a name. Friday said—“Bite like hellum.”—and no doubt he emulated Red in that nomenclature.

  It chanced that Sterl came upon Red in the shade of a gum, where he had been working on a leather job. The cowboy had fire in his eye, as fierce as when Sterl had seen him bent on shooting some hombre.

  “Pard, have you been bitten by one of these big flies heah?”

  “Not yet, not by any big fly. But these little ones can bite big,” replied Sterl.

  “Hell, no. You haven’t been bit a-tall. I got it twice through my shirt. By gosh, I thought some aborigine had speared me. Then right through my pants! Am I whoopin’ mad? I heahed him buzzin’ around, so I sat quiet, waitin’ for him. Shore enough, he showed up, to light on my knee. Damn near the size of a hummin’ bird! He was black, except for greenish or grayish wings. He must have had a proboscus like an augur. Wow! He went through my pants, right heah. I whaled away with my sombrero…knocked him flat. Bounded like a rock hittin’ the ground. I reckoned I had done for him, an’ wanted to pick him up so I could see what the hell he had stuck into me. He began to buzz like a threshin’ machine, an’ then he was off like a bullet. If I get bit by another one of them Outback flies, I’m gonna walk home.”

  Sterl had not long to wait for a visitation from one of Red’s discoveries. And he decreed that his comrade had not done the new fly justice. Resignation was of no avail. Every time one of these insects bit Sterl, he set out on the warpath, or sought the cover of the tent.

  It turned out that leaving that camp was a matter of rejoicing. While on the move, only the smaller species of flies irritated the riders, and that was enough.

  Travel was slow but easy up the Diamantina. Eric Dann had missed the road of the earlier trek, but that was not serious because it followed the river to its headwaters. Red had been right in his opinion that the river had stopped flowing. Two miles above the first camp the trekkers could have crossed dry shod. It must have mortified Stanley Dann, for at the next camp he took the trouble to tell Red that he would listen to him next time.

  Ten days along this river bed of water holes and dry stretches tallied about a hundred miles, not good going to the cowboys, but satisfactory to their serene leader. The grass did not fail. Trees appreciably lessened in size and number. In some deep cuts verdure of tropical luxuriance marked advance toward eternal summer. The old monotonous trek set in for Sterl every day after the fresh morning hours. But from dawn until a while after sunrise the waterfowl and animals, making colored circles around the water holes and clouds of various hues above them, and the leagues of grass of white and green, the clumps of pandamus, the flowering gums of rose—all these afforded Sterl a pleasure that not even his sober mood could nullify.

  But when the sun grew hot and the myriad of flies beset him, then the trek became a matter of grim endurance. He covered his face with his scarf and let King or Sorrel or Duke or Baldy graze along behind the remuda at will. Hours on end without one word spoken! Friday stalking along, carrying his weapons, tireless on bare feet, ever watching the tell-tale smoke signals on the horizon. Red, slumped in his saddle or riding sidewise, smoking myriad of cigarettes, lost in his unthinking enchantment. The wagons rolling along, creeping like white-spotted snakes, far to the fore. The mob of cattle grazing on contentedly. The horses, lazy and fat, sometimes nipping the grass, often asleep as they walked. The drovers, lost in habit now, nailed to their saddles, indifferent to leagues and distances.

  Sterl marveled at Leslie Slyter. She rode with the drovers all the way. So sun-browned now that the contrast made her hair golden. She was the most wide-awake, although she sometimes took catnaps as they trekked on. How many times Sterl saw her flash in his direction! Ever she turned to him, to see if he was there, absorbed in her dream.

  The great trek rolled on. The long hot days slow, golden, full to every moment, with their millions of humming pests that still could not quite make life unendurable, wore on to the short, solemn, starry nights, packed with dread of the unknown and the possible, separated
from unreality and dream by the howls of wild dogs and the strange, wailing chant of the aborigines.

  The water in the Diamantina failed gradually as the trek added to its leagues. There were fewer ponds, farther apart, smaller in size. But the myriad of birds and hordes of beasts multiplied because there were fewer watering places for them. Each camp presented a marvelous spectacle of wildlife and color.

  Droving cattle along the course of this river was slow work, owing to sand and ruts in the soil, but it was no hardship, apart from the flies. The cattle grew fat on abundant grass and pure water. They waddled along, slowed up by the plodding wagons. Sometimes it took hours to fill the ruts in the dry soil.

  Again Sterl grew conscious of the strange recurrence of the unthinking side of his dual nature. But for the passion in him, the love of Leslie, the hate of Ormiston, the hope that Beryl would go through the fire of this crisis to come out pure gold, the loyalty to Dann, the intense and unabatable desire to make this almost impossible trek a success—but for these Sterl could never have kept himself from reverting to the savage. “Gone bush,” these Australians called that. For Sterl it meant merely the return of man to his age-old natural environment and state. He would have loved to do it. There were many of the drovers, most of them, in fact, who were too stolid, too unimaginative to have gone bush. But a year or two of this would make them clods, mere eating, drinking, fighting, self-preserving beasts. Perhaps that was a wise provision of nature for their survival.

  Each day Sterl caught himself drifting many a time, and always he could rouse out of that sweet lull by gazing across at pensive Leslie as she rode along, at the cowboy who had abandoned home and range for love of an outcast, at the great mob of cattle, and the heat-veiled smoking hinterland, stretching away to purple nothingness.

  This trek was enough romance and adventure and strife for one man in one lifetime. Sterl grew more obsessed, as the days passed, to make good his faith in the power of man to conquer nature at its worst. Where did he get that faith?

  One night, at the camp Leslie had named Oleander, Sterl strolled with her to the bank of the river, where it was narrow and the bed full of water. At this sunset hour the bird and beast life was something to conjure with, entirely aside from its color and beauty. When dusk fell and the discordance subsided, and the endless string of kangaroos silhouetted black against the gold of the horizon had passed by, there began a corroboree of the aborigines on the opposite bank. The distance was not far; in fact, the closest these natives had been into a camp. By their bonfires, Sterl and Leslie could see the wild ceremony. Their chanting was not unmusical; their black shadows, grotesque and spectral, passing in front of the fire, fitted the primitive sound and background.

  The heat of the day was lessening its hold on the land, moving away on a slight breeze. Mosquitoes were not in evidence here, and that alone would have made the hour unusually pleasant. Besides, Leslie had grown dependent upon Sterl, or thought she was, for the strength to resist all that bore down heavily. And this sweet dependence worked upon him as deeply as her youth and charm.

  They must have sat there on the big log for an hour or more when the cat-eyed Red came along the bank, walking as easily as if it had been day.

  “Howdy lovebirds!” he drawled. “I been lookin’ for you. Gee! This ain’t so bad for spoonin’.”

  “Say, you cowboy maniac on love,” Sterl retorted, “we’ve been listening to the corroboree. Not spooning!”

  “No offense, pard. Reckon I jest seen enough spoonin’ to make me a maniac,” Red rejoined with pathos.

  “Yeah? Well, we forgive you. Who and where?”

  “Sterl, besides us, there couldn’t be anybody but Beryl and Ormiston…or…or some other fellow,” interposed Leslie, who had taken Sterl literally.

  “Shore, it was Beryl. An’ Leslie, I happened to run into them back heah. But I didn’t stay long. They was too het up for me.”

  “After all, pard Red, what difference does it make?” asked Sterl philosophically. “All we can hope for is to get out of this alive.”

  “No difference a-tall. Thet’s all I hope for…gettin’ Beryl out alive. An’ leavin’ thet slicker heah daid!”

  Sterl felt Leslie quiver, and her hand tighten on his arm. Red’s tone then had a hint of the inexorable justice and ruthlessness of the Western cattle trails.

  Red put his arm around Leslie. “Les, you’re gonna come out of this trek with a big brother, an’ a sweetheart. Do you savvy thet?”

  “Oh, Red! I…I hope so,” Leslie faltered, disturbed and softened.

  “Wal, it’s a cinch…. Now, would you mind runnin’ back to camp an’ let me have Sterl a bit?”

  “Red!” protested the girl. “You bet I’d mind. I won’t do it. This is the first time I’ve had him this way for ages. Let me stay, Red. I don’t care what you talk about. I won’t listen.”

  “All right, honey. I guess I was pretty mean. We have no secrets from you. Shore you can be trusted. But I’m sorta upset.”

  “Red, get it off your chest,” Sterl rejoined grimly. “Sometimes I help you a little in the way you always help me a lot.”

  “I been spyin’ as usual,” went on Red. “Hasn’t been much good lately, till tonight. But I always keep sayin’ it’ll come some day. An’ we got nothin’ but time on our hands. Gosh, Leslie, what date is it, anyhow?”

  “My journal says December fourth.”

  “Jumpin’ Jehosaphat!” ejaculated Red, astounded. “Near Christmas! Oh, Lord, I shouldn’t have said thet.”

  “Pard, you must be upset,” Sterl replied kindly. “Maybe it’ll please you to know that this Christmas I can remember last Christmas…and be far happier.”

  “Please me? Wal! All I can think of now is Gawd bless Leslie!”

  “Me! Why should God bless me?” Leslie inquired very curiously. Intuitively she divined that she had taken the place of another woman.

  Red gave her no other satisfaction than a hug. Then seriously: “Sterl, I was snoopin’ about early after supper, an’ I heahed Ormiston talkin’ low to Bedford. Wait. I forgot to tell Friday gave me the hunch where to find them. We’re all camped together heah, an’ I slipped up on them. Ormiston first…‘Tom, I tell you I won’t go any farther with Dann than the forks of this river.’

  “‘An’ why not?’ asked Bedford.

  “‘Because I don’t know the country across toward the Warburton River. It’s two hundred-odd miles from the head of the Diamantina through the mountains to my station. If the rains don’t come, we’ll lose all my cattle.’

  “‘Why not go on with Dann till we make sure of Hathaway’s mob? An’ also till the rains do come?’

  “‘I’ll have his mob an’ some of Dann’s…you can lay to thet.’

  “‘In thet case it’s all right. Jack an’ Morse have been ill-satisfied. They want to make sure of more drovers an’ more cattle. They came in on this because of a stake worthwhile…something thet they could end this bush-rangin’ on.’

  “‘Sshh,’ whispered Ormiston. ‘You talk too much an’ too loud around camp.’”

  Red hesitated a moment, and concluded. “Thet hombre grumbled a bit an’ then shut up. An’ thet was all as Ormiston left, an’ as I told you I seen him later with Beryl. Wal, pard, is thet a load to get off my chest?”

  “You bet your life!” Sterl exclaimed.

  “How you figger it?” demanded Red impatiently.

  Sterl turned to Leslie. She clung to his arm with both hands. Her face was pale and her eyes unnaturally big in the starlight.

  “Leslie, you heard?”

  “Oh! How could I help it? I’m sorry. But Red didn’t whisper!”

  Sterl’s speech flowed like running water. “Ormiston and his drovers have been rustling in a two-bit way, until this Dann trek. Now they’re playing for big stakes. Ormiston is the boss, but not so clever as he thinks he is. But he fooled the Danns. His drovers are all in it, aiming to lead some of Dann’s men to their side. Old stuff. You remember
how cheap easy-going cowboys used to fall. How many have we seen hanged? They murdered Woolcott, got his mob. They have Hathaway’s and will do for him sure as I know rustlers. Ormiston has a range somewhere over the mountains east of the head of the Diamantina. He doesn’t want to risk going farther with the Danns. And there he figures right. The pot will boil over up at the forks of this river. Ormiston means to get more cattle by hook or crook. That’s how I see it, Red.”

  “Pretty bright boy, but you haven’t seen it all.”

  “Suppose Ormiston can persuade four or five of Dann’s drovers to go in with him. Whew! What a hell of a fight there’d be. And we don’t know the rest of these drovers would stand up under fire. Red, you and I, we could hardly stand off a gang as big as that, unless we had the drop on them with rifles from behind a wagon, or something…. Damn it, the thing looms bad!”

  “Pard, I should snicker to snort. We’ve never met its equal, let alone its beat…. Bet you haven’t figgered Beryl. Where’s she come in?”

  “Thunder and blazes! I forgot Beryl.”

  “Yeah. But I haven’t. An’ I say she’s the pivot on which this deal turns. Ormiston’s outfit haven’t thet hunch yet, I reckon. But we have.”

  “You bet. Red, that hombre will persuade Beryl to go with him…or he’ll take her anyway.”

  “Do you reckon he can persuade her?”

  “I hate to think so…but I do.”

  “Wal, there we differ, pard. If Beryl is thet low-down, she’ll deserve all she’d get, if we don’t spoil Ormiston’s plans.”

  “We’ll probably find out,” Sterl returned gravely. He had his doubts of Beryl.

  “You can gamble on it, an’ thet’d be a good thing. Some hell to pay might dig into the conceited, flattery-lovin’ little hussy!”

  “Oh, Red! Don’t you call Beryl a hussy. She’s not…she’s not,” Leslie declared spiritedly.

  “I see someone comin’,” Red’s voice sank to a whisper. He peered like a nighthawk into the gloom up the riverbank. “Holy Mackeli, talk about the devil! It’s Beryl and Ormiston. Let’s hide. No, not by this log…. Heah, under the bank.”