Wilderness Trek (1988) (9 page)

Miss Dann gave Sterl a stinging slap on his cheek. Then she drew back, gasping, as if realizing to what limit her temper had let her. With red burning out the white of her face, she ran toward her wagon. Ormiston wheeled to three waiting men, evidently his drovers, and stormed away with them, violently gesticulating.

Sterl watched them intently for a moment, then turned away toward Slyter's camp. Stanley Dann called him to wait, but Sterl hurried on. Red did not catch up with him until he had almost reached the tent. Then both discovered that Stanley Dann, Slyter and Leslie had followed them.

"Hazelton, don't run away from me when I call you," complained Dann, as he caught up.

"I'm sorry, boss. I lost my temper."

"Then you fooled me, because I thought you deliberately invited a quarrel with Ormiston."

"Oh, he couldn't rouse my temper. It was Miss Beryl. I shouldn't have spoken as I did to her."

They found seats on a log; except Leslie, who significantly stood close to Sterl, her youthful face grave, her hazel eyes, darkly dilated, fastened upon him.

"Les, you better run over to Mum," said Slyter.

"Not much, Dad. If Beryl is going to share the fights, and everything else, I am too."

"Good-o, Leslie," declared Dann, heartily.

"You stay here. I'm going to need all the championship possible... Hazelton, you spoke right from the shoulder. Man to man! I can't understand why Ormiston stood it. What concerns me is this. Have you any justification for the serious insinuations and open accusations you visited upon Ormiston?"

"Boss, they're all a matter of instinct. I've been years on the frontier. I have met hundreds of bad men. I have had to suspect some of them, outguess them, be too quick for them--or get shot myself. Ormiston might have fooled me for awhile, if it had not been for the accident of his kicking Friday. But not for long! He's playing a deep game--what, I can't figure out--yet."

"Hazelton, you impress me," pondered the leader. "I had only one feeling. You were opposing him in my interest. It seems incredible--what you insinuated about him. Yet you might possess some insight denied to me and my partners. This trek looms appallingly. That does not change me--frighten me in the least. But now I begin to see opposition, intrigue, perhaps treachery, blood and death."

"Boss, you can be sure of all of them," rejoined Sterl, earnestly. "And you can be as sure that my opposition to Ormiston is on your behalf."

Dann nodded his shaggy golden mane like a sleepy lion.

"Krehl, suppose you give me your view, unbiased by your friend's," he said, presently.

"Well, boss, when Ormiston rushed me like a bull, I wouldn't have risked my precious right hand on his mug, like Sterl did. I'd jest have bored him, had a coupla drinks of red likker, an' forgot all about him. We say Ormiston is no good. You give him the benefit of the doubt, an' leave it to me an' Sterl to find him out."

"Reason, intelligence, courage," boomed the drover. "These I respect above all other qualities. You have my consent. Go slow. Be sure. That's all I ask. Slyter, can you add anything to that?"

"No, Stanley. That says all."

"Yes, and nothing shall deter us... Hazelton, I was surprised and sorry indeed at the way Beryl took Ormiston's part. She is a headstrong, passionate child. Beryl has been pleading with me to make the trek by way of the Gulf."

Silent acceptance of that statement attested to its significance. Red dropped his gaze to the ground, and Sterl saw his lean brown hand clutch until the knuckles shone white.

"Not that it influences me in the least," continued Dann, rising.

Slyter arose also, shaking his head. "As if droving a mob of eight thousand cattle wasn't enough!"

Leslie walked a few steps with him, then returned.

"Dog-gone you, cain't you leave me an' Sterl alone atall?" complained Red, but a child could see that he did not mean that.

Leslie looked from him to Sterl with troubled, grateful eyes.

"Boys," she said, breathing hard, "if Beryl is in it, so am I. And she is! She's on Ash Ormiston's side. He has been making love to her all along. Besides I know her. She had all the boys at home in love with her. She likes it. Cedric, that boy today. He came on this trek solely, because of Beryl. Ormiston--Oh, he is two-faced! Neither her father nor my Dad can see that."

"Wal, my dear, we can see it," returned Red, persuasively. "I'm not as all-fired stuck on Beryl as I was, at thet. But let's give her a chance."

"Sterl...won't you see me...later?" implored Leslie. "I know you've been angry with me for days. I deserve it. I'm sorry. I told Red to tell you I'd been a cat. Sterl, I couldn't bear to have you despise me longer."

"Leslie, how silly! I never despised you!" replied Sterl, with a smile. "I'll come to see you later."

A light illumined her troubled face. She wheeled to bound away like a deer.

"Pard, shore you see how it is with Leslie?" queried Red.

"I'm afraid I do," reluctantly admitted Sterl.

"Red, what's Ormiston's game?"

"Easy to say, far as the girls air concerned. Shore, he didn't mean marriage with her. But he might with Beryl. If Dann gets to the Kimberleys with half his cattle he'll be rich, an' richer pronto."

"It's a cinch he'll never end this trek with us."

"I've a hunch he doesn't mean to."

Sterl gave Red a searching gaze, comprehending, and indicative of swiftly revolving thoughts. "We're up against the deepest, hardest game we ever struck. Listen, let's try a trick that has worked before. Tip off Slyter and Stanley Dann that you and I will pretend to quarrel--fall out--and you'll drink and hobnob with Ormiston's drivers, in order to spy on Ormiston."

"Thet'll queer me with Beryl. Not thet I care about it now."

"No, it'll make a hero out of you, if through this you save her father."

"Dog-gone!" ejaculated Red, his face lighting. "You always could outfigger me. Settled, pard, an' the cards air stacked. Tomorrow night you an' me will have a helluva fight, savvy? Only be careful where an' how you sock me."

"Righto. There's Friday. Red, I'm going to try to make that black understand our game."

"Go ahaid. Another good idee. I'll tell Slyter, an' then talk to Leslie a bit."

Friday and Sterl stood on the brink of the river. "Friday, you sit down alonga me," said Sterl. "Me bad here. Trouble," he went on, touching his forehead. With a map drawn in the sand, in the argot which Friday understood, he set forth the difference of opinion regarding routes to the Kimberleys.

"Me savvy," replied the black, and tracing the gulf-line on the sand he shook his head vehemently, then tracing a line along the big river and across the big land he nodded just as vehemently.

"Good, Friday," rejoined Sterl, strongly stirred. "You know country up alonga here?"

The aborigine shook his head. "Might be black fella tellum."

"Friday get black fella tell?"

"Might be. Some black fella good--some bad."

"Some white fella bad," went on Sterl, intensely. "Ormiston bad. Him wanta go this way. No good. Him make some white fella afraid. Savvy, Friday?"

The native nodded. He encouraged Sterl greatly. If he understood, then it did not matter that he could talk only a little.

"Ormiston bad along missy," continued Sterl. "Alonga big boss missy, too. Friday, watchum all time. Me watchum all time. Savvy, Friday?"

The aborigine nodded his black head instantly, with the mien of an Indian chief damning an enemy to destruction. "Friday savvy. Friday watchum. Friday no afraid!"

Sterl forgot to call for Leslie, but when she stole upon him it was certain that she had not forgotten, and that with the moonlight on her rippling hair, and sweet grave face, she was lovely.

"I waited and waited, but you didn't come," she said, taking his arm and leaning on him.

"Leslie, the talk I just had with Friday would make anyone forget. I'm sorry."

He looked down upon her with stirring of his pulse. In another year Leslie would be a beautiful woman, and irresistible.

"You've forgiven me?"

"Really, Leslie, I didn't have anything to forgive."

"Oh, but I think you had. I don't know what was the matter with me that day. Or now, for that matter. Today has been a little too much for your cowgirl. Red told me about cowgirls. Oh, he's the finest, strangest boy I ever knew. I adore him, Sterl."

"Well, I'm not so sure I'll allow you to adore Red," rejoined Sterl. "And see here, Leslie, now that we've made up, and you're my charge on this trek..."

"How did you guess I longed for that?" she interposed frankly.

"I didn't. But as you seemed upset this afternoon and put such store on my friendship, why I decided to sort of boss you."

"I need it. Since we got to this camp, and I saw Ormiston again--I'm just scared out of my wits. Silly of me!"

"Well, outside of Ormiston, I reckon there's plenty to be scared about. Ormiston, though--you needn't fear him personally, any more. Keep out of his way. Always ride within sight of us. Never lose sight of me in a jam or any kind. Don't go to Dann's camp unless with us or your dad."

"Dad would take me, and forget me. Sterl, won't you please let me be with you often like this? I couldn't have slept tonight if you hadn't."

"Yes, you can be with me all you want," promised Sterl, helpless in the current. "But Red and I must go to bed early. Remember I have to ride herd after two o'clock. That means you're slated for bed right now."

"Oh, you darling," she cried, happily, and kissing him soundly she ran toward her 41 wagon.

Chapter
8

Slyter wanted to keep his mob of cattle intact, so that it would not be lost in the larger mob. It was inevitable, Sterl told him, that sooner or later there would be only one mob. All the cattle except Woolcott's were unbranded.

Stanley Dann had foreseen this contingency, and his idea was to count the stock of each partner, as accurately as possible, and when they arrived at their destination let him take his percentage.

Discussion of this detail was held at the end of the next day's trek, in a widening part of the valley, where the stream formed a large pool. Ormiston objected to the idea of percentage; and when Stanley Dann put it to a vote, Red Krehl sided with Ormiston.

"Red Krehl, I'm ashamed of you," Leslie burst out, when Red approached the Slyter campfire that night.

"You air. Wal, thet's turrible," drawled Red' in a voice which would have angered anyone.

"I saw you, after we halted today. You were with Ormiston's drovers. Very jolly! And after that conference at Dann's you were basking in Beryl's smiles. She has won you over for Ormiston."

"Les, you're a sweet kid, but kinda hothaided an' dotty."

"I'm nothing of the kind."

"Me an' Sterl don't agree on some things."

"Oh, you've been drinking. Drink changes men. I ran from Ormiston when he'd been drinking."