by Zane Grey
Turning toward camp and looking down, Sterl cupped his hands and loosed a wild and stentorian yell that pealed in echo from hill to hill, rolled afar, clapping along the ramparts, to die away. He waited long enough to see the drovers run out into an open space to look up. He waved his sombrero. The girls waved something white in return. Then Sterl ran down the hill, distancing the bare-footed black.
The drovers waited for him, as he slowed up, panting and hot. They faced him, fire-eyed and mute. Leslie was the first to move. She ran to meet him, her heart in her eyes. But Sterl saved his speech and his eyes for that gaunt, golden-bearded leader. The moment was so great that he heard his voice as a whisper.
“Sir…I…report…I sighted…the Kimberleys!”
Ten days down the stream from that unforgettable Paradise Oasis the trek came out of a bushland into more open plains where rocks and trees and washes were remarkable for their scarcity. The Kimberleys did not become nearer, but they appeared to tower higher. Sterl conceived the idea that the range was closer than he had calculated.
The trekkers had been reduced to a ration of meat and salt with one cup of tea and one cup of stewed fruit each day. They thrived and gathered strength upon it, but Sterl felt certain that the reaction came as much from the looming purple range, beckoning them on, mysterious, the promised land. The horses followed the wagons. The cattle were as tame as sheep. Many of them were pets and answered to names. Twenty-two hundred strong, the mob had improved since they struck good water, and every day calves were born, as well as colts. No smoke signals on the horizon.
One day Sterl rested a lame foot by leaving his saddle for Slyter’s driver seat. The mood that had come to him at Paradise Oasis not only had persisted, but it had clarified and possessed him. Slyter’s good wife lay asleep back under the canvas, her worn face betraying the trouble that her will and spirit hid while she was awake. Sterl talked to Slyter about the Kimberleys, the finding of suitable stations, the settling, and the plan for getting supplies at the seaports, all of which led up to what was in his mind—the future.
“Slyter, would it interest you to learn something about me?” asked Sterl.
“Indeed, it would, if you wish to tell,” returned the drover. “But, Sterl, you need never tell me anything.”
“Thanks, boss. It’s only that I’d feel freer and happier, if you knew,” rejoined Sterl, and then he told Slyter of the girl with whom he had been involved and of the man he had killed because he deserved killing; that, if he had remained at home, the risk he would have run was more gun play with the man’s relatives and friends. “In cattle towns of my West, it is nothing to kill a man. But one meeting always led to another. Red and I were glad to shake the bloody dust of the Texas trails for a new country. And we’ll never go back,” he concluded.
“After this awful trek, you can’t still like Australia?”
“I’m mad about it, Slyter. I’m a lover of the wild, of the color and beauty of the open. And Outback Australia is glorious.”
“You tell me this, your story, because of Leslie?”
“Yes, mostly. But if there had been no Leslie, probably I’d have told you anyhow.”
“She loves you.”
“Yes. And I love her, too. Only I have never told her that or the story you’ve just heard.”
“Sterl, I could ask little more of the future than to give my daughter to such a man as you, or Krehl. It seems I have known you both a lifetime. We have been through the fire together. As for you, young man, Australia will take you to its heart, and the past will be as if it had never been.”
“I see that, Slyter. I see, too, that you drovers are as big as your country. I’m happy and fortunate to be able to cast my lot with you.”
“Right, and here comes sharp-eyed Leslie. Sterl, I think I’ll get off and straddle a horse for a while. You drive and talk to Leslie.”
Almost before the heavy-footed drover was on the ground, Leslie was out of her saddle to throw him her bridle reins.
“How jolly!” she cried in gay voice, as she leaped to a seat beside Sterl. “Months, isn’t it, Sterl, since I rode beside you like this?”
“Yes, years, I think.”
“Oh, that long, long agony. But I’m forgetting it. Sterl, what were you talking to Dad about? Both of you so serious!”
“I was telling him what made me an outcast…drove me to Australia.”
“Outcast? Oh, Sterl! I always wondered. Red, too, was so strange. But I don’t care what you’ve ever been in the past. It’s what you are that made me….”
When she choked up, Sterl told her the story of his life and its fatality.
“How terrible! Was Nan very pretty?”
“Yes, but not so pretty as you, Les.”
“Oh! You are nice, unless you’re a liar! But that’s like Beryl. I take it back…did you love her very much?”
“I’m afraid so,” he said.
“I’m sorry. Oh, it is sad…what you have been through. No home, no friends! This far-away Australia…so hard and bitter. Love is a terrible thing.”
“Les, that gives me an idee, as Red would say,” Sterl spoke up. “Let’s get the best of this old terrible love.”
“Sterl, it can’t be done. I know.”
“Les, it can. Listen. All’s fair in love. You get hold of Red the very first chance tonight in camp. Tell him you can’t keep it secret any longer. That Beryl is dying of love of him. That she dreams of him, babbles in her sleep, calls out…‘Oh, Red, I’ll go on my knees to you…I will!’ That she begs for his kisses…that now we are nearing the end of this trek, she can’t live without him. All that, Les, and anything more you can make up.”
“Sterl Hazelton, I wouldn’t have to lie, as you’re coaxing me to. That is all absolutely true,” returned Leslie, somber golden fire in her eyes.
“You don’t say? That bad? Then all the better. Leslie, I’ll get hold of Beryl at the same time, and tell her what a state Red is in over her. I’ll lay it on thick. Will you do this for me?”
“Is it true? Does Red care that much?” Leslie queried doubtfully.
“Yes. I don’t think it’s possible to exaggerate Red’s love for that girl. But he feels he is a no-good cowboy, as he says. Red really comes from a fine old Texas family. He never had any schooling to speak of.”
“Sterl, are you sure it’s that, instead of Beryl’s affair with Ormiston?”
“No, I’m not,” returned Sterl, unable to lie under the piercing gaze of those hazel eyes. “That…what ever it was…mortally hurt Red. But he’s big…he’s splendid. If only we can do some drastic thing to throw them into each other’s arms. Les, I beg of you…help me.”
“You bet I’ll help you,” she flashed, suddenly sparkling. “It’s one glorious idea. We’ll carry it out, very soberly, as if the whole world depended upon it. But…but…Sterl….” Under the dark tan of her cheeks and temples a dusky scarlet waved up.
“But what?” he queried, apparently blind, and he changed the long reins from one hand to the other.
“But who is going to…to tell you…about me?” she faltered, hardly able to get it out.
“Oh, that? Well, darling, if you think it’s necessary, you can tell me yourself.”
She fell against him, quivering, her heavy eyelids closed, with tears welling from under them to stain her dark cheeks. Sterl’s conscience smote him. But he discovered a happiness deeper and sweeter than any he had ever known. Then he wrapped his long arm round her and drew her close.
At this juncture Mrs. Slyter’s voice came to them mildly. “I’ve been listening to some very interesting conversations.”
“Oh…Mum,” faltered Leslie aghast, starting up.
But Sterl held her all the closer. Presently he said: “Well, then…Mum…we have your blessing, or you would have interrupted long ago.”
“Bless you, indeed. It makes me happy. Why, you young people have kept Slyter and me alive. All’s well that ends well! If we only get somewhere!”
>
“We are. Look at that purple range. Not so many days away. I hope you approve of our plan for Beryl and Red.”
“Plan? I didn’t hear it. But, assuredly, I’d approve of anything to cure that lovesick couple.”
Every camp along the stream appeared to grow more beautiful and pleasant. Flowers and blossoming trees, birds and falling water, a sickle moon that blanched a track upon the pool, the song of late thrush and magpie, and the almost complete departure of the mood of nature which had seemed inimical to the trek, here struck Sterl anew with the revivifying current which sang along his nerves. He had contrived to get Red and the girls out away from camp along the stream, and here, at a murmuring waterfall, he put his arm around Beryl and led her away from their companions.
“Beryl, I want to talk to you,” he said simply, and pressed her slim form to him.
“Yes?” she murmured wonderingly, and Sterl saw her glance down at his encircling arm, and then up at him.
“I’m terribly fond of you, Beryl.”
“I am of you, too, Sterl.”
“We’ve been thrown through hell together. It’ll be grand to look back at some day. Very much too close now.”
“You and…and Red will be leaving us to become wanderers again…seeking adventure…? I wish I were a man.”
“Who told you we’d be doing that?”
“Red.”
They paused beside a rock, upon which Sterl lifted Beryl to a seat, and he leaned against it to face her. The moon shone upon her fair head and lighted the dark, proud eyes. He took her slim hands in his, to feel the callous little palms and the rough fingers, and all that he sensed welled up from his heart, making it difficult for him to speak.
“So that geezer has been hurting you again? Dog-gone him! Beryl, I’m going to double-cross him, give him away.”
“You mean betray him? Don’t, Sterl. I…I wasn’t badly hurt to hear you would leave us. I…I always expected….” Here her soft voice failed.
Sterl was utterly unable to carry out his plan to make her suffer a little more before he made her happy. Red, with that incredible jealousy of a lover, might still want to do so in proud reprisal for the many slights and insults she had visited upon him. But Sterl saw her clearly as she sat there in the moonlight, saw through the transparent shell to her heart—as well as the beauty the sun and the privation and the tragedy could not destroy. She was the lovelier for those haunted eyes and dark little face and the thin hands that plucked at him.
“Umpumm. We’re not…leaving,” he said, making a break so that his voice would lend him courage. “I wouldn’t leave Leslie and….”
“Oh, Sterl! Then…then…?”
“Yes, then! And Red would never leave me. For why? Well, I’ll tell you, but you mustn’t tell him very soon.” Here Sterl related again for the third time that day the story of his exile.
“How very wonderful of Red! Oh, he is wonderful! Sterl, you have suffered. I always felt it. But this Aussie lass will never be like Nan. She will make up for all you’ve lost.”
“That I know…and Beryl, I’d be happier than I ever was, if only you and Red….”
“If only he could see!” she interrupted passionately. “If only he were not so hard! If only he could forgive and forget Ormiston…what I…what…he….”
Sterl grasped her slim shoulders and drew her down until her face was close and her wide eyes dilated in the moonlight.
“Hush! Don’t say that…don’t ever think of that again!” he said sternly. “Forget it! That is absolutely the only obstacle between you. Red feels it. The jealous fool in his bad hours thinks you regret…I won’t say it, Beryl Dann. And for Red’s sake and yours, and ours…Les’s and mine, who love you both…forget. Forget! Because Red Krehl worships the ground you walk upon. He has loved you from the first. Oh, yes, even while you flouted him one moment and were sweet another. Don’t I know? For months…years on this terrible trek, I have been with him…I have seen him suffer. I’ve heard him in his delirium…in his dreams. Beryl…Beryl…always Beryl! Beside my love for that little flirt of the past…Nan…even beside this bigger, finer love I have for Leslie, why his is this blazing sun we know so well, compared to that wisp of a moon there, or one of these pale stars. I swear to you that this is true, Beryl. I swear that you can overcome his queer obsession. Don’t grieve another single hour. Don’t let him hurt you. Don’t believe in his indifference. Break down his armor. Oh, child, a woman can, you know. You don’t have to be brazen. You don’t need to fall into his arms, although that might be a last card. The past is dead, Beryl. This will be a new life for us four. It looks bright to me. Why…why, Beryl….”
She slid off the rock into his arms, blind, weeping, torn asunder, her slender hands clutching him. “No…more,” she sobbed. “You break…my heart…with bliss. I…I had…despaired…. Twice I have…nearly died. I knew…the next time…. But this…this will save me. Oh, Sterl, my friend! I will…obey you. Tell me what to do.”
“Well…stand up if you can,” replied Sterl huskily, as he put her down and supported her. “Stop crying. You can cry all night after we go back. Red mustn’t know. Don’t betray me, Beryl. He’s proud…why, as proud as you. I think the thing for you to do is to be this…this sweet new self, without the old sadness. Loving…irresistible! Oh, you know a woman’s wiles. You used to practice them, when you didn’t care a damn. Now it’s love, Beryl…and life or death. Choose life, Beryl…. I see Red and Leslie coming. We’ll walk ahead. See that you compose yourself. Wipe your tears away. How sweet and lovely you are, Beryl! If I didn’t love Leslie, really I’d be fighting my only friend over you. So terrible is beauty. There! Why, you’re smiling. That is just fine.”
Thus Sterl, talking swiftly, eloquently, saying he knew not what, led Beryl back to camp, to find her the woman he had sought to inflame and inspire, star-eyed, wearing a tranquil mask through which love shone. He left her at the campfire and rushed away to be alone. He watched the thin disc of moon go down, and, justifying his duplicity if it were such, he achieved serenity and gladness.
Day after day the purple range loomed closer. It was a lodestone, a fulfillment. If the drovers were starved, they did not feel it. Every day the richness of the land magnified. The days were hot, and the nights grew cold. This last condition they attributed to the proximity of the mountain range.
And one day the eagle-eyed scouts saw that the stream they had followed for so long was presently going to join another, which from its course they judged would be a river. That green and gold line disappeared around the northern end of the range. Beyond this river line the land began to slope toward the foothills, losing their blue haze of distance for the gray of grass and the green of bush.
The next day, the leader of the drovers, for once actuated by haste, made for the junction of stream and river. The point seemed a magnet. Blue smoke rose about the big trees. Smoke that was different from the dread smoke signals that had haunted them on the trek. It must come from aboriginals, but was not hostile. Friendly aborigines could communicate to Friday where the drovers had come. But those beautiful mountain domes, widely separated, aloof from each other in purple majesty, could belong only to the Kimberleys.
“Boss, plenty smoke dere. I ben tinket no black fella,” said Friday to Sterl.
With that tremendous information Sterl rode ahead to tell Dann. The possibility of meeting white men again seemed something only second to the end of the trek, to have crossed the Never Never, to ride down into a lovely land of milk and honey.
Sterl told the leader.
“Aye, my boy, I guessed that,” he beamed. “We have fought the good fight. With His guidance! Look around you, Sterl. Richest, finest land I ever saw!”
Sterl had looked around, and he did so again. A great wedge of range pointed at the junction of the two streams. It widened and extended back as far as the eye could see. Dann drove on, and Slyter gained from behind. At length, horses and mob made for the shallow, sparkling stream, dra
nk their fill, to climb up the wooded bank and out to the grassy level. Here the young drovers left them to gallop ahead and join the wagons. Excited and intense, all the trekkers gazed ahead. They saw teams grazing and huge wagons.
“Ha! A road…a ford!” boomed Dann, and pointed with long arm. He had, indeed, come to a road that sloped down under the giant trees to the shallow stream. His followers all saw, but none could believe their eyes. A road? In the land of the Never Never? But they had traversed that unknown and terrible void.
A shrill shout preceded the action of three white men coming out in the open, halting to stare. They pointed. They gesticulated. They gazed from one to another, plainly nonplused. They saw Dann’s wagons, the women on the driver’s seats, the mounted drovers, the big band of horses, the great mob, and they were as astonished as the drovers were enraptured. Then the campers ran to meet the trekkers. Dann halted his four horses, and Slyter stopped beside him. The mounted drovers lined up, a lean, ragged crew, with Leslie conspicuous among them, unmistakably a girl, bronzed, and beautiful.
“Good day, cobbers!” boomed Dann, his voice singularly deep.
“Who may you be?” replied one of the three, a stalwart man with clean-shaven, rugged face and keen, intelligent eyes. He addressed Dann, but these eyes enveloped the group.
“Are those mountains the Kimberleys?” asked Dann intensely.
“Yes. The eastern Kimberleys. Drover, you can’t be Stanley Dann?”
“It really seems I can’t be. But I am!” declared Dann.
“Great Scott! What good news, if true! Dann was lost two years and more ago, according to reports at Darwin.”
“Lost, yes, though not to life and use. Two years!”
“If you are Dann, it has taken you two years and five months to get here!”
“God above!” cried Dann incredulously.
