Wilderness Trek (1988) (15 page)

"No. Was she there?"

"Sure she was. All eyes. Jest as if she never seen you before. Sterl, she'd like you if it wasn't for Ormiston. Mebbe, she does anyhow. But she's scared of that geezer."

"Red, will that showdown with him ever come?"

"It'll come! Be shore you have eyes in the back of yore haid."

Leslie was at her morning chore of feeding her pets. Jack, the kookaburra, was jealous of new birds and Cocky squalled from the top of the wagon.

Sterl told her of his trip during the night and his report to Dann. "You go with the wagons," he concluded.

"Umpumm. I'm good for twenty-four hours."

"But I'd rather you'd take it easy whenever possible. You go with your Dad!"

"Are you my boss, Sterl Hazelton?" she retorted, rebelliously.

"Not yet. But considering the remote possibility of my becoming that--and your cantankerous disposition--don't you think it'd be a good idea to get some practice?"

Her smooth nut-brown face slowly grew suffused with a coursing red blood, and her wide eyes fell. She was tongue-tied. Her breast was swelling. And she fled, leaving her pets in noisy clamor.

They rode back to Dann. "Boss, something I forgot to tell you," said Sterl. "When you reach the river be sure to drive the cattle to either side of the trek for camp, because this mob are liable to stampede when they smell water."

At sunset that day Sterl sat astride King on the rim of the plateau, not far from where he had seen the valley by moonlight. Close at hand the front of the great mob of cattle, like a dust-clouded flood, was pouring wearily over the brink. As Sterl had hoped and predicted, they had ended the day's trek with something to spare. Down grade, in the night, with the dew falling, the beasts could plod and sway on until the scent of water energized them. And if they were at all like cattle of the western ranges they might stampede. Sterl had seen ten thousand buffalo pile into a river, to enact a spectacle he had never forgotten. If the mob and remuda had belonged solely to him he could not have taken their safety and well-being more to heart.

The cowboys rode together down the slope as red dusk mantled the scene. Then as night fell they drifted apart, yet within calling distance. Friday for once had ridden on a wagon. Larry was ahead, at the left of the mob, and Drake behind Sterl. The moon came up to lighten the shadows.

Down grade, through thick grass, dew laden, the mob labored and the trekkers followed. By midnight the slope had begun to level out. Kangaroos, wallabies, rabbits, emus were roused from their beds, to scamper away. King jumped out of his tracks more than once at the hiss of a snake. The tedium wore on Sterl. There was nothing to do but sit his saddle. King did not need direction or urge. He had become like a shepherd dog. Often Sterl fell alseep for a few moments. Two nights without rest or sleep reminded him of the Texas cattle trail when the rivers were up.

At daybreak, Sterl huddled in his saddle, half alseep, his eyes closed, his mind almost a blank. A yell from Red, however, the old Comanche war whoop, brought him erect and startled. Red was waving his sombrero and pointing toward the river--nearby, marked by a line of timber.

"Look, pard! Leslie ridin' down on us hell-bent for election! Larry's meetin' her."

Chapter
13

Leslie pulled Lady Jane to a halt beside Sterl. The horse was dripping water in little streams. Leslie was wet to her waist. Her eyes glowed dark with excitement.

"Girl, you didn't swim that river for fun?" demanded Sterl.

"Dad sent--me," panted Leslie.

"We couldn't cross. River too deep--with steep banks. Dad said we'd have a job. Stanley Dann's orders are to hold the mob on this side--to drove them that way--two miles up--where the banks are not so steep."

"Leslie, you should have met us five miles out, at least," rejoined Sterl, seriously. "These cattle are thirsty. They're tired and cross. If they smell water..."

"When they smell it," interrupted Red. "Rustle, Sterl. We gotta be quick. Come, Larry. We'll try to turn the leaders upstream."

Urging King into a gallop to the rear, Sterl, with Leslie racing beside him, yelled Dann's orders to the drovers in a warning voice.

Between the larger mob and Ormiston's there were four drovers, two on each side, far up the wide lane. The cattle still plodded along with heads down, as if every step would be their last. Sterl caught their odor. He rode over to the partners, with Drake and Leslie at his heels.

"We've orders from Dann. Cattle must be bunched and turned upstream. River deep. High banks. Get your drovers out from between."

Ormiston added a dark frown to his forbidding expression. "We don't have our mob mixing with Dann's."

"You can't help it," declared Sterl, curtly. "That's what you say, Mr. Cowboy. We will keep them separated."

"Hathaway, you have some sense, if this man hasn't," barked Sterl. "The cattle are parched. When they smell water they can't be held or turned. They'll stampede!"

Roland came galloping up, red-faced, sweating, calling on Ormiston to drove his mob to the east.

"Mind your own business," shouted Ormiston.

"You will like hell!" returned Sterl. "Rollie, ride through and warn Dann's drovers to rustle out of there. Back this way!"

Sterl wheeled King and was away like the wind. Leslie and Drake came along. Halfway round the bigger mob, Sterl waved the drovers on that side to ride up toward the front. They strung out after Drake. Soon Sterl, accompanied by Leslie, came up with Larry and Red.

"Stubborn as mules!" shouted Red.

"No wonder. But we've got to push them."

"Ormiston doesn't know cattle. He said he wouldn't let his mob mix with Dann's."

"This's gonna be about as funny as death for them drovers between!"

Sterl stood up in his stirrups to gaze across the mob. "They're riding out. The last two of Ormiston's men. But that fellow up front..."

"We cain't wait, pard," yelled Red, pulling his gun, "Leslie, keep back a little."

Then Red rode up to the herd, gun high over his head, to yell and shout. Larry took his cue and followed suit. Cedric and Drake, with the drovers farther back, let loose with guns and lungs.

The front of the great mob, like the sharp end of a wedge, roused, lunged, headed away from a direct line toward the river. That relieved Sterl exceedingly. The turn was not enough, but it had started. Cattle, like sheep, blindly follow the leaders. The trampling of many hoofs, the knocking of horns, the increase in hoarse bawling, indicated the start of the milling that Sterl was so keen to accomplish. Something like a current ran all the way back to the rear. Then he looked ahead. They had the apex of the mob quartering away from a direct line to the river. But the river took a bend to the eastward, and looked less than two miles away!

Suddenly from the far side of the herd sounded a trampling roar that drowned yells and gunshots. Sterl's piercing yell was a whisper in his ears. He had heard that kind of roar. Icy chills chased up his spine. Ormiston's mob was charging straight ahead to meet the milling front of that vast wedge of cattle!

Then Sterl espied the one drover trapped in the swiftly narrowing space. The man saw his peril, but made the mistake of dashing to the fore, hoping to get out of the closing gap. His calculation, however, did not allow for the curving front of the larger mob, and the speed of the smaller one. He was headed off, hemmed in. A moment later there was a terrific impact--a head-on collision of these two fronts. Sterl saw the white horse and its rider go down in a sea of horns, heads, dust. A rattling crash of Ormiston's mob, colliding with Dann's all down the line, drowned the trample of hoofs. Still, only the head of Dann's mob, and the far edge, appeared to be affected. A smashup like that did not necessarily mean a stampede. Sterl thought derisively of the bull-headed Ormiston. If the mob stampeded, he was the one who would suffer most. His branded cattle would be the first to tumble over the river embankment. It would serve him right, thought Sterl, but what a pity so many cattle must be drowned and trampled!

Then it came to him that Ormiston's mob, to windward, had caught the fatal scent. After three days of heat and dust, without a drink, they smelled the river and were off, hell-bent. Water. If they had the scent in their dry nostrils, Dann's herd would catch it soon.

But despite Sterl's readiness for the inevitable shock, when Dann's mob leaped into swift action and an appaling thunder boomed and the ground shook as if in earthquake, he screamed with all his might and never heard his own voice. Mushrooming yellow clouds of dust rolled back over the mob, moving as one animal, covering them, swallowing them up.

Sterl's quick eyes were the first to see that a spur of the herd had shot out below him, between him and the other riders, and swung wide in a swift, enveloping sweep. Red and Larry had gone on; but Leslie! They were cutting her off. Sterl had to get to her in quick time. With the thought, he had King racing down the line. Lady Jane was fast, Sterl had no fear that she could not outrun the wildest of cattle. But being a mare of great spirit she might act up at the crucial moment.

This was the first time that Sterl had ever extended King. Fleet? He was like the wind. Fortunately Leslie saw him coming, and then saw the spur of cattle. She did not lose her head. Quick as a flash she jerked Lady Jane away from that frightful, oncoming rush of hoofs, heads, horns. Plunging under the surprise and pain of the spurs, Lady Jane leaped like an arrow from a bow.

At this juncture King caught up with her. Sterl pointed to Leslie's stirrups. She was quick to grasp his meaning--to slip her feet almost out, and ride on her toes, so that in case Sterl saw fit he could lift her out of the saddle. Sterl's terror left him. The girl could ride and she could be trusted.

Sterl urged King to the fore again, with the object of turning the leaders of that spur to the right. The black, magnificent in action, drove right to the front. A lean, rangy steer, red-eyed and wild, led that mutiny. Sterl drew and fired. The great steer plunged, to plow the earth. The others overran him, leaped and swerved. Larry and Red came up with flaming guns. The drovers behind were lost in dust. The three turned that spur back and in less than a quarter of a mile the mutineers had joined the main mob. To the left, scarcely farther than that, Sterl saw the timber belt and the shining river. It was wide, and the opposite bank looked steep and high. Farther upstream, it appeared to slope gradually. As the mob was headed quarteringly up the river there was some hope that a major catastrophe had been averted. All that could possibly be done by Sterl and his comrades and the drovers sweeping from behind, had been accomplished--and it was a good job that saved thousands of cattle.

Sterl, never forgetting Leslie, gazed back to espy her trotting Lady Jane at a goodly distance behind. Red was riding ahead toward a ridge under which the stampede was rolling. Sterl, and all the others, joined him on this vantage point.

Just under the watchers swept a mighty torrent of beef, indistinct through the streaming dust. Following that flood forward, Sterl's sight came to the front of the mob. It swept on, swallowing up the green, headed for the bend of the river!

The vanguard rolled out of sight, to reappear in splitting around trees, to plunge over the bank in one long cascade that hit the water with a tremendous splash. The bank had a drop of twenty feet. There ensued a threshing melee. The foremost had no chance to rise under the shock of following lines. But presently out of the spouting, muddy splashes heads of swimming cattle appeared. They milled around in bewilderment while the ghastly downpour of heavy bodies continued. Some struck out for the opposite shore. The roar lessened in volume, changed into another sound--the long-drawn bawl of frenzied cattle.

The imperturbable Red was the first to recover. He lighted a cigarette.

"Not too bad! Gawd A'mighty shore is on Stanley Dann's side! I wouldn't have given a handful of Mexican pesos for thet herd. An' la an' behold heah they air, most of them, swimmin' acrost, wadin' out."

"Men," ejaculated Drake, "a bridge of cattle saved our mob!"

"Yes! And that bridge was Ormiston's! He wasn't going to let his mob mix with Dann's!"

"Haw! Haw!" rolled out Red in caustic mirth, "Wal, fellers, Ormiston's cattle got the start! An' am I tickled!"

Again Sterl surveyed the river. "Let me have Larry, Red and Cedric. There's a good many crazy cattle swimming downstream. And in the middle there's an unholy mess milling around. We'll turn them upstream. Some of them are going to drown, Drake. You see that. Take the rest of the men and rustle up to where the cattle can wade out."

"Fellers, I see Ormiston's outfit up there," interposed Red, pointing his cigarette. "Trailin' up his mob! I'd like to heah him when he sees thet animal bridge of cattle wearin' his brand."

Presently Sterl found a ravine that opened at the edge of the water. "Leslie, this will be work. Won't you go back to camp?"

"Of course, if you say so. But mayn't I help? Sterl, you are always trying to save me from--from everything. I want to 'take my medicine,' as Red calls it."

"Righto," declared Sterl, heartily. "You've got more sense than I have. And I've more sentiment than you."

"So you say, cowboy."

They reached the river where the ravine ended level with the water. "Load your guns, boys," advised Sterl, suiting action to words. "Shooting in front of a steer or cow will save swimming your horses."