Wilderness Trek (1988) Read Online Free Page A

Sterl, and offered what he had taken the precaution to get from his pack. At the exchange Sterl caught a good look at the native's hands, to find them surprisingly supple and shapely. He next caught a strong body odor, which was unpleasant.
    "Sit down, chief," said Sterl, making appropriate signs. The black man, folding his long legs under him, appeared to sit on them. A cigar Sterl had given him was evidently a new one on the native. But as Sterl was smoking one, he quickly caught on. Sterl, adopting the method cowboys always used when plains Indians visited the campfires, manifested a silent dignity. The black man was old--no one could have told how old. There was gray in his shaggy locks, and his visage was a map of lines that portrayed the havoc of elemental strife. Sterl divined thought and feeling in this savage, and he felt intensely curious.
    Jones left the other teamsters, to come over and speak to the native.
    "Any black fella close us?" he asked. "Might be," was the terse reply.
    "Me watchem smokes all alonga bush."
    But the aborigine returned silence to that remark. Presently he arose and stalked away in the gloom.
    "Queer duck," said Red, reflectively.
    "He sure interested me," replied Sterl. "All except the smell of him. Rol, do all these blacks smell that bad?"
    "Some worse, some not at all. It's something they grease themselves with."
    On the fifth day, they reached the blue hills that had beckoned to Sterl. The wagon road wound into a region of numerous creeks and fertile valleys where parrots and parakeets abounded. They passed by one station that day and through one little sleepy hamlet of a few houses and a store, with outlying paddocks where Sterl espied some fine horses. Camp that night offered a new experience to the cowboys. The cook was out of beef, and Jones took them hunting. They did not have to go far to find kangaroo, or shoot often. The meat had a flavour that Sterl thought would grow on him, and Red avowed it was equal to porterhouse steak or buffalo rump.
    Two noons later Jones drove out of the jungle to the edge of a long slope that afforded a view of Slyter's valley.
    "That road goes on to Downsville," said Jones, pointing, "a good few miles. This road leads to Slyter's station. Water and grass for a reasonable sized mob of cattle. But Bing has big ideas."
    Presently Slyter's gray-walled, tin-roofed house came into sight, picturesquely located on a green bench with a background of huge eucalyptus trees, and half hidden in a bower of golden wattle. The hills on each side spread wider and wider, to where the valley opened into the range, and numberless cattle dotted the grassy land.
    Along the brook, farther down, bare-poled fences of corrals came into sight, and then a long, low, log barn, with a roof of earth and green grass and yellow flowers, instead of the ugly galvanized iron.
    "Home!" sang out Jones. "Eight days' drive! Not so bad. If we just didn't have that impossible trek to face!"
    "Wal, Rollie Tewkesbury Jones!" declared Red, gayly. "You air human after all. Fust time I've heahed you croak."
    Sterl leaped down to stretch his cramped legs. Red called for him to pick out a camp site up from the low ground a little, while he helped the teamsters unhitch. Sterl walked on, intending to find a place for the tent under those yellow-blooming wattles. He heard rapid footfalls coming from somewhere. As he passed the corner of the barn, his face turned the other way, trying to locate whoever was running, someone collided violently with him, almost upsetting him.
    He turned to see that this individual had been knocked almost flat. He thought that it was a boy because of the boots and blue pants. But a cloud of chestnut hair, tossed aside, disclosed the tanned face and flashing, hazel eyes of a girl. She raised herself, hands propped on the ground, to lean back and look up at him. Spots of red came into her clear cheeks. Lips of the same hue curled in a smile, disclosing even, white teeth.
    "Oh,