Wilderness Trek (1988) (2 page)

Roland evinced a calm speculation as to what manner of man this Yankee cowboy was. He accepted Sterl's invitation to have dinner with them, and invited them to go to a pub for a drink. Returning to their wagon, they found a fire blazing and the other teamsters busily loading the supplies. Spreading their canvas and blankets under the wagon, as they had done thousands of times, the cowboys turned in. Sterl slept infinitely sounder out in the open, on the hard ground, than he had for two months, on soft beds. Indeed, the sun was shining brightly when the cowboys awoke. Teamsters were leading horses out of the paddock; others were tying tarpaulins over the wagons. Jones addressed Red: "You have time for breakfast if you move as fast as you said you did in Texas."

Returning to the outfit, Sterl saw that they were about ready to start, two teams to a wagon. He had an appreciative eye for the powerful horses. He found a seat beside the driver, while Red propped himself up behind. Inquiry about Mr. Slyster elicited the information that the head drover had left at daylight in his light two-horse rig. Jones took up the reins and led the procession of drays and wagons out into the road.

Soon the town was left behind. A few farms and gardens lined the road for several miles. Then the yellow grass-centered road led into a jungle of green and gold and bronze. They had ten days or more to drive, mostly on a level road, said Jones, with good camp sites, plenty of water and grass, meat for the killing, mosquitoes in millions, and bad snakes.

"Bad snakes?" echoed Sterl, in dismay. He happened to be not over-afraid of snakes, and he had stepped on too many a rattler to jump out of his. boots, but the information was not welcome.

"Say, Rol, I heahed you," interposed Red, who feared neither man nor beast nor savage, but was in mortal terror of snakes. "Thet's orful bad news. What kind of snakes?"

Sterl sensed Jones's rising to the occasion. "Black and brown snakes most common, and grow to eight feet. Hit you hard and are not too poisonous. Tiger snakes mean and aggressive. If you hear a sharp hiss turn to stone right where you are. Death adders are the most dangerous. They are short, thick, sluggish beggers and rank poison. The pythons and boas are not so plentiful. But you meet them. They grow to twenty feet and can give you quite a hug."

"Aw, is thet all?" queried Red, who evidently was impressively scared, despite his natural skepticism.

The thick golden-green grass grew as high as the flanks of a horse; cabbage trees and a stunted brushy palm stood up conspicuously; and the gum trees, or eucalyptus, grew in profusion. Shell-barked and smooth, some of them resembled the bronze and opal sycamores of America, and others beeches and laurels. Here and there stood up a lofty spotted gum, branchless for a hundred feet, and then spreading great, curved limbs above the other trees to terminate in fine, thin-leaved, steely-green foliage.

As they penetrated inland, birds began to attract Sterl. A crow with a dismal and guttural caw took him back to the creek bottoms of Texas. Another crow, black with white spotted wings, Jones called Australia's commonest bird, the magpie. It appeared curious and friendly, and had a melodious note that grew upon Sterl. It was deep and rich--a lovely sound--cur-ra-wong--cur-ra-wong.

"See you like birds. So do I," said Jones to Sterl. "Australians ought to, for we have hundreds of wonderful kinds. The lyrebird in the bush can imitate any song or sound he hears. Leslie Slyter loves them. She knows where they stay, too. Perhaps she'll take you at daybreak to hear them."

Here Red Krehl pricked up his ears to attention. Anything in the world that could be relegated in the slightest to femininity, Red clasped to his breast.

Presently the road led out of the jungle into a big area of ground cleared of all except the largest trees. On a knoll stood a house made of corrugated iron. Jones called it a cattle station. Sterl looked for cattle in vain. Red said. "Shines out like a dollar in a fog."

Grass and brush densely covered the undulating hills. Sterl concluded that Australian cattle were equally browsers and grazers. The road wound to and fro between the hills, keeping to a level, eventually to enter thick bush again. Sterl made the acquaintance of flocks of colored parrots--galahs the driver called them--that flew swiftly as bullets across the road; and then a flock of white cockatoos that squawked in loud protest at the invasion of their domain. When they sailed above the wagon, wide wings spread, Sterl caught a faint tinge of yellow. When they crossed the first brook, a clear swift little stream that passed on gleaming and glancing under the wide-spreading foliage, a blue heron and a white crane took lumbering flight.

They came into a wide valley, rich in wavy grass, and studded with bunches of cattle and horses. "Ha! Some hosses," quoth Red. As Jones slowed up along a bank higher than the wagon bed, Sterl heard solid thumping thuds, then a swish of grass, and Red's stentorian, "WHOOPEE!"

He wheeled in time to see three great, strange, furry animals leaping clear over the wagon. They had long ears and enormous tails. He recognized them in the middle of their prodigious leap, but could not remember their names. They cleared the road, to bound away as if on springs.

"Whoa!" yelled Red. "What'n'll was thet?... Did you see what I see? Lord! there ain't no such critters!"

"Kangaroos," said the teamster. "And that biggest one is an old man roo all right."

"Oh, what a sight!" exclaimed Sterl. "Kangaroos--of course... One of them almost red. Jones, it struck me they sprang off their tails."

"Kangaroos do use their tails. Wait till you get smacked with one."

The trio of queer beasts stopped some hundred rods off and sat up to gaze at the wagon.

"Air they good to eat?" queried the practical Red.

"We like kangaroo meat when we can't get beef or turkey or fowl. But that isn't often."

"What's that?" shouted Sterl, suddenly, espying a small gray animal hopping across the road.

"Wallaby. A small species of kangaroo."

More interesting miles, that seemed swift, brought them to an open flat crossed by a stream bordered with full-foliaged yellow-blossoming trees, which Jones called wattles. Jones made a halt there to rest and water the horses, and to let the other wagons catch up. Red began to make friends with the other teamsters, always an easy task for the friendly, loquacious cowboy. They appeared to belong to a larger, brawnier type than the American outdoor men, and certainly were different from the lean, lithe, narrow-hipped cowboy. They build a fire and set about making tea, "boiling the billy," Jones called it. Sterl sampled the beverage and being strange even to American tea he said: "Now I savvy why you English are so strong."

"I should smile," drawled Red, making a wry face. "I shore could ride days on thet drink."

Under a huge gum tree, in another green valley, on the bank of a creek, Jones drove into a cleared space and called a halt for camp.

"Wal, Rol, what air there for me an' my pard to do?" queried the genial Red.

"That depends. What can you Yankees do?" replied Jones, simply, as if really asking for information.

Red cocked a blazing blue eye at the teamster and drawled: "Wal, it'd take a lot less time if you'd ask what we cain't do. Outside of possessin' all the cowboy traits such as ridin', ropin', shootin', we can hunt, butcher, cook, bake sourdough biscuits an' cake, shoe hosses, mend saddle cinches, plait ropes, chop wood, build fires in wet weather, bandage wounds an' mend broken bones, smoke, drink, play poker, an' fight."

"You forgot one thing, I've observed, Red, and that is--you can talk," replied Jones, still sober-faced as a judge.

"Yeah?... But fun aside, what ought we do?"

"Anything you can lay a hand to," answered the driver, cheerily.

One by one the other wagons rolled up. These teamsters were efficient and long used to camp tasks. The one who evidently was cook knew his business. "Easy when you have everything," he said to Sterl. "But when we get out on trek, with nothing but meat and tea, and damper, then no cook is good."

After supper Sterl got out his rifle and, loading it, strolled away from camp along the edge of the creek. The sun was setting gold, lighting the shiny-barked gums and burnishing the long green leaves. He came upon a giant tree fern where high over his head the graceful lacy leaves dropped down. The great gum was by far the most magnificent tree Sterl had ever seen. It stood over two hundred feet high, with no branches for half that distance; then they spread wide, as large in themselves as ordinary trees. The color was a pale green--with round pieces of red-brown bark sloughing off.

All at once Sterl's keen eye caught the movement of something. It was a small, round, furry animal, gray in color, with blunt head and tiny ears. It was clinging to a branch, peering comically down at him, afraid. Then Sterl espied another one, farther up, another far out on the same branch, and at last a fourth, swinging upon a swaying tip. Sterl yelled lustily for Red and Jones.

"Look, Red! Jones, what are those queer little animals?"

"Koala bears," said the teamster, "Queensland bush is alive with them."

"Pard, pass me yore gun," said Red.

"Ump-umm, you bloodthirsty cowboy!... They look tame."

"They are tame," rejoined Jones. "Friendly little fellows. Leslie has some for pets."

Night made the campfire pleasant. The teamsters, through for the day, sat around smoking and talking. Campfires in Australia seemed to have the same cheer, the same opal hearts and flying sparks, the same drawing together of kindred spirits, that they had on the ranges of America. But the great Southern Cross, an aloof and marvelous constellation, proved to Sterl that he was an exile. A dismal chorus of wild barks sounded from the darkness.

"Dingoes," said a teamster.

"Dingoes. Haw! Haw!" laughed Red, "Another funny one."

"Wild dogs. They overrun Australia. Hunt in packs. When hungry, which is often, they're dangerous."

"Listen," said Sterl. "Isn't that a dismal sound? Not a yelp in it. Nor any of that long, wailing sharp cry of the coyote which we range riders love so well."

"A little too cool tonight to be bothered with mosquitoes," remarked Jones. "We'll run into some farther outback. They can bite through two pair of socks."

"Gee!" said Red. "But thet's nothin' atall, Rol. We have muskeeters in Texas--wal, I heahed about one cowboy who was alone when a flock of em' flew down on him. Smoke an' fire didn't help none. By golly, he had to crawl under a copper kettle thet the cook had. Wal, the sons-of-guns bored through the kettle. The cowboy took his gun an' rivited their bills on the inside. An' damn me if them skeeters didn't fly away with the kettle!"

Red's listeners remained mute under the onslaught of that story, no doubt beginning a reversal of serious acceptance of all the cowboy said. Sterl followed Red toward their tent.

The crackling of fire without awoke him. Dark, moving shadows on the yellow tent wall told that the teamsters were stirring.

He parted the tent flaps and went out to find it dark as pitch beyond the blazing fires, air cold, stars like great white lanterns through the branches, active teamsters whistling as they hitched up the teams, fragrance of ham and tea wafting strong.

"Morning, Hazelton," was Jones's cheery greeting. "Was just going to yell that cowboy call, 'Come and get it!'... We'll have a good early start." Sterl could not recall when he had faced a day with such exuberance.

A long gradual ascent through thick bush offered no view, but the melodious carol of magpies, the squall of the cockatoos, the sweet songs of thrush, were worth the early rising. Topping a long ascent Jones drove out of the bush into the open. "Kangaroo Flat," said the teamster. "Thirty miles. Good road. We'll camp at the other end tonight."

"Aw, thet's fine... Holy Mackeli, pard, air you seein' what I see?" exclaimed Red.

Sterl was indeed, and quite speechless. A soft hazed valley, so long that the far end appeared lost in purple vagueness, stretched out beneath them, like a sea burnished with golden fire. It was so fresh, so pure, so marvelously vivid in sunrise tones! The enchanted distances struck Sterl anew. Australia was prodigal with its endless leagues. As the sun came up above the low bushland a wave of flame stirred the long grass and spread on and on. The cool air blew sweet and odorous into his face, reminding him of the purple sage uplands of Utah.

Down on a level again their view was restricted to space near at hand. A band of dingoes gave them a parting chorus where the bush met the flat. Rabbits began to scurry through the short gray-green grass and run ahead along the road, and they increased in numbers until there appeared to be thousands.

"One of Australia's great pests," said Jones.

"Yeah? Wal, in thet case I gotta take some pegs," replied Red, and he proceeded to raise the small caliber rifle and to shoot at running targets. This little rifle and full store of cartridges had been gifts from Sterl. Red did not hit any of the rabbits. Deadly with a handgun, as were so many cowboys, he shot only indifferently well with a rifle. Sterl's unerring aim, however, applied to both weapons.

Kangaroos made their appearance, sticking their heads out of the grass, long ears erect, standing at gaze watching the wagon go by, or hopping along ahead with their' awkward yet easy gait. In some places they slowed the trotting team to a walk.