by Zane Grey
“It’s Christmas…. I’m going over to see the Danns. Mum is there. Won’t you come?”
“Les, I’m too dog-gone daid tired even to see Beryl, or to care whether it’s Christmas or the Fourth…days thet used to be red letters in a cowboy’s life.”
“Me, too, Leslie. You see, we’ve let down. I did have the strength to climb the hill back here. And it was worth the pangs.”
“I watched you, Sterl. Oh, that color…the light on everything! Glorious!”
When Leslie left, Sterl sat down heavily beside his comrade. “Any ’skeeters, pard?”
“Nary one yet. Gosh, wouldn’t it be grand, if this heah camp was minus moskeeters? But thet’d be too good to be true.”
“No. Might be, as Friday says. You know we’ve had camps where there weren’t any. It’s open here, even along the river.”
“Wal, I hope so. If we had the early mawnin’s an’ late evenin’s free from blood-suckers, we’d live through this wait.”
“Red, you remember that day in Brisbane when we spent so much money?”
“Hell, yes. But it seems years ago.”
“Well, I flatter myself I’m a pretty wise hombre, if I do say it myself. I bought Christmas presents for you and myself. And as we heard there were to be a couple of girls with us, I took a chance and bought some for them.”
“Aw, pard!” wailed Red. “But I didn’t. I never thought of thet. What a pore muddle-haided cowboy I am! Gosh, what a chance I missed! Ormiston is too selfish an’ stingy to buy nice things for girls.”
“Umpumm, Red, you haven’t missed it. I bought enough for you to give Beryl and Leslie, too.”
“Sterl, you were always the finest gazabo who ever forked a pony!” ejaculated Red, elated. “Spring it on me, pronto. What kind of presents?”
“Candy, for one thing.”
“Naw, not candy! Why, pard, you’re loco. Heah we been trekkin’ a thousand miles under this hot sun…candy would melt!”
“I’m sure this hasn’t melted. It’s hard candy in tin boxes. Then I bought some pretty handkerchiefs and sewing kits. Leslie, two leather cases full of toilet articles you know, the kind of things girls like. I found that out long ago. But out here in this country, after seven months of travel…gee…these things imported from England, mind you, make a hit.”
“Sterl, you’re shore a Mackavellian…or whoever that guy was! It jest fills me full of tingles. Not only to make Beryl happy, but to make that black-browed geezer sick!”
“Maybe that will make me feel good, too! All right…tomorrow morning we’ll unpack the stuff and plan our surprise. How about guard tonight?”
“Dann sent word by Slyter thet you an’ me could lay off tonight. But I said nix. Anyway, it’s only two hours on, an’ Larry will call us. Let’s roll in, pard, an’ go chasin’ dreams. Night before Christmas? My Gawd, I was a boy once!”
Broad daylight had come when Sterl and Red were called to take their turn at guard from four o’clock until six. Friday went with them. There were not many cattle standing, and the whole mob needed no watch. The Slyter remuda, having formed a habit of grazing alone, kept aloof from Dann’s several hundred horses.
The early morning was not cool, but it was delightfully pleasant. Not one single drawback. Kangaroos and emus dotted the grassy level and were outlined black against the skyline of the hill. A thousand parrots of all sizes and hues murdered the early morning serenity, and ten times that many waterfowl filled the air and littered the water holes.
Breakfast was called at sunrise. Both Sterl and Red beat Leslie and her parents in hearty Christmas greetings. The Downsville folk might have felt the significance of this Christmas Day, far from home, and with only uncertainty in the future, but the cowboys were happy to be right there in the Australian hinterland.
“Dann wants us all present after breakfast,” announced Slyter.
Sterl and Red appeared mysteriously from their tent, each carrying a canvas knapsack on his shoulder. It had developed in the tent, a little before this exit, that Sterl’s prodigality had made it possible to save some presents for a future surprise. “Dog-gone it!” Red had exclaimed, “I’m whole hawg or none. Mebbe we’ll never live till another Christmas. Or our outfit will be lost or stolen. Let’s give all the presents right now.”
“Umpumm, pard. And I’ll bet you see why pronto,” responded Sterl.
Leslie caught up with them on their way to Dann’s camp. Her bright simple garb graced the occasion. She appeared mightily curious about the contents of the knapsacks. Upon trying to feel what was in Sterl’s, only to be severely rebuffed, she grew suspicious.
“I’ll bet you Yankees are up to something,” she said.
Neither cowboy gave her any satisfaction whatsoever. They were the last to arrive at the Dann encampment. All of the trekking party were present except Ormiston’s drovers and several of Dann’s. Stanley Dann stood up, bareheaded, to read a passage from the Bible. After that he offered up a general prayer, commemorating the meaning of Christmas, of peace on earth and good will to man, and ended with a specific thankfulness to God for their good fortune, and his unshakable faith in all to come.
Beryl, looking lovely in a blue gown that had evidently been donned for this occasion, was holding a little court all her own in the shade of a tree near her wagon.
“Tip off your mother an’ dad to rustle over heah pronto,” whispered Red to Leslie.
“Tip off?” queried Leslie, mystified but intensely eager. “Talk English, you funny fellow.”
“Wal, no matter. I see everybody trekkin’ over heah to Beryl.”
“Oh, Red! What have you got up your sleeve?”
Even then Sterl felt certain that Leslie did not guess the truth. They approached Beryl at her court in the rose shade of the tree, where Cedric and Larry and the younger drovers were offering felicitations of the day. Ormiston, shaven and in clean garb, occupied what looked like a privileged place close to Beryl. His handsome face and person were strikingly in evidence, and his manner was one of assurance and civility.
Suddenly Beryl espied Sterl and Red. Her pleasure was evident when they made their gallant bows and wished her the greetings of the season. She kissed Leslie in sincere gladness. But her attention deepened into sparkling-eyed delight and anticipation when the cowboys unlimbered their knapsacks, to set them down with a flourish in front of Beryl and Leslie.
“Wal, folks, me an’ Sterl heah air playin’ Santa Claus,” drawled Red, with his smile that made him boyishly good to look at. “But he is a modest gazabo, so I have to do the honors.”
Beryl let out a shriek of delight. Leslie, blind to the issue until that moment, flushed with amaze and rapture. The Danns and their company looked on with smiles.
Then Red and Sterl, acting with the accord which, indeed, had been rehearsed, reached into the knapsack, with the air of magicians, to fish out a small box of cigars for Dann and his partners, some brightly wrapped gifts for Emily Dann and Mrs. Slyter.
“My word!” boomed Stanley Dann. “I haven’t had a smoke for months…. Well, well, to think these Yankees could outdo English people in memory of Christmas!”
The donors gave Beryl and Leslie handy little sewing kits which were received with deep appreciation. Then came the two handsome leather cases which evoked cries of delight.
“Out here in the Never Never!” exclaimed Beryl incredulously.
“Sterl Hazelton,” cried Leslie, with glad eyes upon him. “When all my things are gone or worn out…. Aladdin!”
“Girls, thet ain’t nothin’ a-tall,” beamed Red. “Come on, pard, all together.”
Then in slow deliberation, purposely tantalizing to the quivering girls, each cowboy produced two boxes—one of goodly size, the other small—both wrapped in shiny paper and tied with colored ribbons.
“What in the world?” cried Beryl, her eyes shining in purple eagerness.
“Oh! Oh! Oh!” burst out Leslie, reaching brown hands for her boxes. “What? Oh, what?�
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“Candy!” Sterl shouted triumphantly.
“Red Krehl…not candy? Not ever,” whispered Beryl. “You could not guess how I’ve missed that…but…but candy would be too much!”
“Wal, Beryl, it is candy,” drawled Red happily.
Evidently Leslie had been rendered mute, but she bestowed upon Sterl’s cheek a kiss that left no doubt of her unspoken delight.
Beryl scrambled to her knees, unmindful of the dainty gown, and she held all her presents in her arms.
“Leslie, you shall not outdo me in thanks,” she cried with spirit. “Red Krehl, come here! I would knight you, if I were a queen. I am glad that somebody remembered me on Christmas Day.” And as the awkward cowboy, impelled beyond his will, stumbled to his knees before the girl, she lifted a lovely rosy face and kissed him.
Sterl, glancing at Ormiston, saw his face grow ashey and a glare of terrible jealous hate light his prominent eyes. Then Ormiston turned on his heel and strode away, an erect, violent, forbidding figure.
Ash Ormiston, after leaving Dann’s camp in high dudgeon on Christmas morning, did not return the next day or the next. Beryl palpably chafed and worried at this evidence of his resentment, but, so far as Sterl could see, her pride upheld her. His conviction was now that Ormiston, having arrived at the scene of his intended split with Dann, had another arrow to his bow besides persuasion.
A different kind of fight had begun for Stanley Dann’s trekkers, a fight not against distance and time, rough land, treacherous water, but against heat and flies and what was worst of all, the peril of the idleness of waiting and of their effect on the mind. Each day—between the blazing sun and the thirst of thousands of cattle—saw the water in the long water hole recede inches down the sand and rock. One night from Ormiston’s side of the river gunshots and shrill yells of aborigines startled the campers on Dann’s side. There was no corroboree that night.
Next morning a drover reported to Dann that Ormiston’s men had shot five blacks. No reason was given. It was well known how Ormiston hated blacks. Stanley Dann was overheard to express the opinion that his surly partner had sought to drive thieving natives away from camp. But Sterl, after talking with Friday, came to the conclusion that Ormiston wanted to drive the aborigines across the river. At any rate that was what had happened. The several hundred blacks had congregated in a grove at the lower end of the long water hole.
By way of reparation and kindness Dann ordered crippled cattle shot and dragged down to the aborigine camp. Blacks, lubras, gins, pickaninnies deserted their camp while this restitution took place. But later, after Friday had visited them, they gradually approached nearer and nearer to Dann’s camp. Dann argued for pursuing any course that would keep the blacks friendly, and Slyter agreed with him. Friday might have influenced Dann in this attitude, but Sterl thought that their leader, in any case, would be generous and the opposite of hostile. When Sterl asked Friday what he had told Dann and Slyter, the black replied: “ ”Plenty black fella good. Mebbe steal bimeby. No fightum.”
“Wal, I’d rather stand for thet,” asserted Red, “than rile them into slitherin’ spears about. I’ve an orful dread of one of them things through my gizzard.”
It appeared that Beryl weakened in the end, to send a note by one of the drovers across the way to Ormiston, and that evening he came to see her. Thereafter, he appeared at Dann’s camp every evening, exactly as Red had predicted to Sterl. Beryl Dann would need a terrible lesson before she began to react from her infatuation and then it might come too late. More obviously than any other of Dann’s trekkers, she was responding to the wild environment.
The trekkers settled down to suffer and to wait. The second hour after sunset usually brought a night breeze that gave welcome respite to the torrid heat of the day. Sterl devoted himself to Leslie at this time, and they seldom remained in camp. Leslie felt alienated again from Beryl, and did not like to see the girl and the drover together. Sterl strangled his disgust for Beryl, and tried to emulate the patient, long-suffering Red. As he did not have the motive which sustained Red, he found patience difficult.
The morning hours, from daylight until an hour or more after breakfast, were the most supporting and profitable of the day. Sterl made use of this time, often with Leslie or Friday. He soon learned, however, that the middle of the day was intolerable in the sun and just endurable in the shade. The cattle needed no watch then—although Dann maintained a short one for two drovers—as they sought the shade of the trees where they lay down or stood resting.
The sun grew hot enough almost to drive a man crazy, and the ever-increasing flies made existence well-nigh unbearable. During this period, when it was possible, all of the trekkers kept under cover of the tents or wagons or mosquito nets, where they shut the flies out. The constant humming and buzzing outside, like that of a great hive of bees, made this protection so welcome that the stifling heat was endurable.
The days wore on endlessly, each one hotter than the last. The small water holes dried up. All living creatures were dependent upon the long water hole. No cloud appeared in the sky. No hope of rain, although hope would not die. At midday rocks were so hot that they blistered a naked hand, the cattle ceased to bawl, the birds to scream, the aborigines to move about. The whites lay prone, enduring, unless forced to some task. Sterl had always thriven on hot weather, likewise Red. They could sleep, but they would awaken wringing wet with sweat. But when the mercury rose to a hundred and ten degrees, then the cowboys were hard put to endure it.
When Friday was asked if the rains were ever coming, he would reply: “Might be, bimeby.”
When Sterl made signs to any of the other blacks, he would be invariably answered by indistinguishable talk accompanied by gestures almost as unsolvable. But Friday would translate.
“Black fella say plenty rain someday.”
“He might mean another year,” expostulated Sterl.
“Might be,” said the imperturbable black.
But the bearable hours always renewed interest in things of the moment and hope for the future.
Sterl never tired of the aborigines nor of his efforts to observe and understand them. His first contacts were productive only of awe, nausea, bewilderment. These blacks seemed far below Friday in development. But they belonged to the same age as Friday, and that was the Stone Age.
Friday could not name this tribe of natives, but he understood their language well enough to interpret, and it was through this that the overtures of Stanley Dann and Sterl counteracted the fright and hostility for which Ormiston and his drovers were responsible.
Sterl learned that, when a death occurred in a camp of theirs, they moved away at once. Ormiston’s ruthlessness, apparently, was exercised merely to get rid of the aborigines. They had fled across the river, far below the forks, but later, after their fears had been allayed, they moved closer to Dann’s camp. Every day newcomers arrived, and still the smoke signals continued to rise above the horizons. Some of these smoke signals could be seen fifty miles and more distant.
They went stark naked except for a breechcloth of woven grass or hair. The men were tall, lean, although muscular, black as coal, with broad faces and large heads covered by a mop of tangled black hair. The troops of pot-bellied youngsters, upon being approached, scattered like a flock of frightened quail. The women, or gins as Slyter called them, were such monstrosities of human creatures that Sterl had to force himself to glance at them. For the most part the lubras were not good to look at either, although they were young, sturdy, chattering, shining-eyed girls. Some few of them, however, were prepossessing and far from averse to making eyes at the younger drovers. One of the tribal customs was the punishment of adultery by death. This was identical with a law of some of the Indian tribes Sterl had known.
It was a singular thing for Sterl to realize he had little interest in the religion, if they had one, the strange age-old customs, and the mental evolution of these primitive people. To him they seemed the lowest order of human bein
gs on the face of the earth—not only had their development from the dark ages been incalculably slow, but they appeared to have been arrested in the Stone Age at this period. Doubtless before they could evolve much further, civilization would wipe them out.
This was a pitiful, astounding tragedy, but aside from Sterl’s awe and sadness over such a fate, he did not delve deeply into the spiritual mystery. To him they were not far removed from their ape ancestors. They could never change and grow, unless left to themselves. Contact with the white man would only hasten the inevitable dissolution. They should be left alone in their fight with Nature.
At this stage the aboriginal’s life consisted of preservation and reproduction. The latter took care of itself, and, if there was no birth control, there certainly was an elimination of the unfit and the encumbrance. Babies born during nomadic wanderings, if they were in the way, or retarded progress, were sacrificed. But preservation filled every hour with its ceaseless demand. The problem of the aboriginal was to eat, and he ate everything from dirt and grass and seeds and fruit to all living creatures, including his own species.
The black man was a hunter, no doubt a descendant of the greatest hunters that ever lived, the cavemen. He made his own weapons, very few in number, and these he carried. The gins and lubras were the beasts of burden.
Friday told Sterl that the people caught live fish underwater with their hands. Sterl saw these black men at Dann’s camp swim underwater, and drag down ducks beneath the surface, and stay under so long that Sterl feared they were drowned. He saw them mash up ants’ nests, made of leaves stuck together, and devour with a relish a mess of ants. He saw them eat every last vestige of a bullock, meat, entrails, and even pound up the horns. He found lubras and children out on the plain, digging for roots, herbs, lizards, eggs, and one of their reptile luxuries, the goanna.
Red Krehl called the natives a lousy bunch. They roused no sentiment whatsoever in him. One morning Red accompanied Sterl and Leslie, with the inseparable Friday, on a visit to the aborigines. They came upon two blacks, both mature men, tall and lean, who fastened ghoulish eyes upon Leslie’s supple and brown bare legs, and then shifted their black gaze to the cowboy’s red head. One of the natives held a most striking posture which certainly produced an effect. He stood on one lean, long leg, leaning on his spear, while his other leg was bent at right angles, with his foot flat against the inside of his thigh. He stood at ease.
