Crusader

by Max Brand

  “When he saw you comin’, Nan. You was all he could see. Poor boy, he’s wild over you, Nan. Ain’t it sort of pathetic?”

  “I’ve spent these days and days,” Nan said, “fair shiv-erin’ in the woods because I thought he might be near me. And it was only this!”

  She laughed again, but poor Camden, listening and quivering under these repeated strokes, stole down from his place and across the camp to where Cyclone Ed Morgan and Sparrow were in close conversation.

  “I’ve tried my best,” Cyclone Ed Morgan said within the hearing of young Camden. “And it ain’t good enough. I’m slipping, Sparrow. Used to be I didn’t think nothin’ except to knock the block off of every gent that stood in front of me. I used to want to put my fist right through Bert’s body. But lately I ain’t had no ambition. Just get to thinkin’ of the way Jen looks at me with her head cocked a little to one side, and darned if the punch don’t come home and soak me on the point of the jaw. I’m no good, Sparrow. I’m about done for. Besides, I don’t care for the game no more. I used to want to be famous that way. Now I been talkin’ to Jen about a farmer’s life out in her country, and we both figger it would be pretty good. Y’understand I ain’t quittin’ on you, Sparrow . . . I’ll go right along through with this here game and fight it out for you. But I ’d rather cut my share of it, if you can manage it. I got only one more good scrap in me, and that’s to clean up on that skunk that jumped out of the brush at me and slammed me that way!”

  “That,” exclaimed Sparrow, “is about the only other fight that I want you to have!” He turned and faced the man of the forest and saw the black thunder on his brow.

  “What’s wrong, Camden?” he asked.

  “Womenfolks,” Camden said darkly. “I guess they’s too many women in this camp.”

  Once again Sparrow beamed. But this, in fact, was too good to be true.

  “Women?” he said. “I wish they was all in kitchens, and no kitchen nearer to us than Chicago!” He added: “Take it easy, son. I’ll have things fixed up around here the way you like ’em.”

  Ten minutes later, he was on his way to Juniper, and in Juniper he went straight to the office of Colonel Joshua Nichols. The colonel was very busy, selling land to an Eastern investor, but he was never too busy to talk about the great fight that was making the names of Juniper and Nichols famous. Sparrow Roberts, as was his custom, dropped his bomb in the first ten seconds and gave the colonel the rest of the interview in which to recuperate.

  “Colonel,” he said, “Ed Morgan is slippin’, and, if he does the fightin’ ag’in’ Pierre Lacoste, the fight’ll make you and Juniper a joke that’ll never be stopped.”

  At this, the colonel blinked. He was only mildly interested in prize fights, having seen too much fighting of a more serious kind himself—having both seen it and taken part in it. Therefore, he regarded Sparrow with a mere sigh of disappointment until the other idea struck home in his brain—that a poor fight would make him and his town ridiculous. At this he leaped from his chair and exploded in such a burst of mixed Mexican and English cursing as even hardy Sparrow Roberts had never heard before.

  “If that fight is a fizzle,” said the colonel wildly, in concluding his speech, “I’ll have you rode out of town on a rail, Roberts, and the clothes you have on’ll be tar and feathers. Damn my eyes if it won’t!”

  Hearing was believing for Sparrow. He was infinitely glad that he had had this little chat with the colonel before the fiasco took place. He was gladder still that no fiasco, perhaps, would occur.

  “Look here,” he said, “there’s only one way to fix this thing up. I’ve got the way to do it, and to give Juniper the finest ring fight that it ever saw. But I got to have your backing.”

  “You got my backing,” said the colonel hotly. “And what did I get you and your man they call Cyclone out here for if it wasn’t to fight the damned Frenchman?”

  “Cyclone,” said Sparrow Roberts, “will never lick one side of Lacoste. Not one side, old-timer. He’s slippin’.”

  “What the devil is makin’ him slip?” roared the colonel, beating upon the table with his hand.

  “A wife,” said Sparrow.

  At this, the colonel choked, stared again, and then sighed in something like pity. “That’s right,” he muttered. “I forgot that the young fool stepped out and got married. I forgot all about that. I suppose his wife is makin’trouble for him at home?”

  “Worse’n that,” said Sparrow.

  “How d’you mean?”

  “I’ve known unhappy marriages to be the makin’of a man. Wife so dog-gone mean at home that she’d keep him out workin’ late, just for the sake of something to do besides listen to the clack of her tongue. But this here girl, this Jen . . . why, she can’t do nothin’ but hang around and fold her hands and tell me how doggone wonderful her husband is. A woman like that, she sort of melts the heart out of a man and puts a lot of soft soap inside his ribs instead of beef and iron. Eh?”

  At this the colonel grinned. “I’ve done my share of foolish things in my life,” he said. “But I never seen the day when I was fool enough to marry. But the main thing here, Roberts, is to get hold of a way of putting pepper into young Ed Morgan. And how can that be done?”

  “Put a new man in his place.”

  “Eh? After we’ve advertised him as the . . . what do they call it? The typical fighting American, against the brilliant Frenchman, and all that sort of thing? After all, d’you mean to say that we’re to get somebody else? I’ve spent thousands of dollars. Damned if I ain’t seen the name of Cyclone Morgan so many times that I got half a mind to go give him a good lickin’ myself.”

  Sparrow grinned. “We’ll get all of our crowd here, right enough. But when the last minute comes, we’ll tell ’em that Cyclone Ed Morgan has sprained an ankle, or some gag like that, and then we’ll put another man inside the ropes. You foller me, Colonel?”

  “They’ll shoot us full of holes and take their money back,” said the colonel tersely. “I know these Western folks, young man.”

  “We’ll offer ’em their money back,” said Sparrow. “But after they’ve seen the fight that I got to offer ’em, they won’t want no money.”

  “You mean,” said the colonel, “that you got somebody that can lick Lacoste?” His eyes lighted.

  Sparrow, however, merely grinned and shook his head. “Nobody’s beatin’ Lacoste,” he said. “Besides, they’s only fifteen rounds to catch Lacoste, and that ain’t enough. No, there never was a chance that anybody could beat Lacoste. He’s lightning, and, when he strikes, something’s got to go down. I’ve seen him work. Ed Morgan would’ve been chopped meat for that baby.”

  “Why in the devil, then, would you have them fight?”

  “Because there’s nobody better on the market today.”

  “You swore to me that Cyclone Ed Morgan would give Lacoste the fight of his fightin’life.”

  “Sure I did, and I told you true. But there ain’t nobody that’s ever give Lacoste a fight. He’s always stepped around the fastest of ’em as if they was tied to a tree. And he’s always soaked the hardest of ’em so hard that they didn’t come to for half an hour. He’s a fightin’ fool, this here Lacoste. You write that down, old-timer. They ain’t nobody cleanin’up on him.”

  This information the colonel absorbed, scratching his chin the while. “Well,” he said at last, “how d’you know that this new man will be better than Ed Morgan?”

  “Why, Colonel, you won’t have to take my word for it. I want you to come out and see ’em mix . . . the night before the fight is due with Lacoste. Or you can come out and see ’em mix now, or see one of the boys out at the camp put on the gloves with my new man.”

  “What’s the new man’s name?”

  “He calls himself Camden.”

  “How old is he?”

  “I dunno. Maybe seventeen. Maybe eighteen.”

  “And fight Lacoste at that age?”

  “Wait till you see him
work, Colonel.”

  It did not take much to rouse the curiosity of the colonel. He was thoroughly excited now, and he joined Sparrow straightway on the trip to the camp of Cyclone Morgan. They talked little on the way, the colonel from expectancy, and Sparrow busy with his own thoughts. So they reached the camp and hurried out into the clearing. The cook met them.

  “Where’s Camden?” cried Sparrow.

  “Gone,” said the cook.

  FACING THE JOB OF FIGHTING

  To such a blow as this, poor Sparrow Roberts could make no reply for a moment except to thrust out his head like a chicken and gape at the cook. Then:“Gone?” he echoed.

  “Gone out into the woods,” said the cook. “He said that, if you wanted him, all you needed to do was to holler and you’d have him back quick enough.”

  “Holler what?” Roberts asked angrily.

  “He didn’t say. What I think . . . this bird, he’ll never show up again.”

  “Damn what you think!” groaned Roberts, and he turned a face purple with humiliation and with anger upon the colonel. “The hound has done me,” he said. “He gave me his word.”

  The colonel was a little amused. “Take a try for him,” he said. “Go out and give him a call . . . the way he left word.”

  “Does he think I’m a fool?” cried poor Roberts. “Well, I’ve got to try him.”

  He and the colonel passed across the clearing and into the forest that extended down the mountainside. There, among the pines, Sparrow strained his throat with a long haloo!

  He listened, then shouted again, and again listened. But there was utterly no response except, from the camp, a distant roll of laughter. Sparrow raged with a wild temper.

  “He’s made a fool of me,” he said to the colonel. “This Camden . . . I’ll have his heart before I’m through with him.”

  This burst came from his lips as, rounding a turn in the path, they came unexpectedly upon the form of Camden himself, dressed now like any other civilized mountaineer, roughly but comfortably. Then he stopped short.

  “Well?” he said, his anger still hardly more than swallowed in the greatness of his surprise.

  “You called,” Camden said laconically.

  “Is this the man?” murmured the colonel.

  “It is. This is the man. But wait till you’ve seen him work. He don’t look much right now, but when he starts movin’. . . .”

  “A damned queer pair of eyes,” murmured Joshua Nichols. “I’d hate to meet him after dark. Damned if I wouldn’t.”

  “We’ll go right back to the camp,” said Sparrow. “You’ll see what he. . . .”

  “I dunno that we need to do that,” the colonel said, very thoughtful as he watched the other. “I dunno that we need to do that,” he repeated. “I’d take your word that young gent could do . . . about anything.”

  Although certainly the outlines of the form of Camden were not peculiarly formidable, there was a certain dignity in his manner, and his eyes had an uncanny manner of resting straight upon the eyes of another and never moving.

  “You’re satisfied?” murmured Sparrow.

  “Yes. It’ll be a fight . . . while he lasts. He’ll be a tiger till he’s knocked out.”

  “Colonel, that’s it.”

  So the colonel left and went back to Juniper. Behind him, Sparrow remained with Camden in the darkening woods.

  “Pal,” said the trainer, “the way it looks to me, you’re hating the whole job around here. You want to be loose and free to get back to the woods. But if you got back to ’em, what would you have? Tell me, old-timer, what the thing is that you want most in the world?”

  “Nothing,” said the other harshly, “except to be alone!”

  Sparrow grinned and cocked his small head upon one side. “That’s what you think now,” he said, “while you’re sour on that girl. But down deep, Camden, what you want is her. Am I right?”

  There was silence for an answer.

  “Well,” said Sparrow,“you let me see what you can do.”

  He passed on into the camp, and in the shack of Cyclone Ed Morgan he found Jenny and Nan Pearson busy, cooking supper. He took Nan out under the open sky.

  “Nan,” he said, “what’s the thing you want most in the world?”

  She answered quietly, smiling up to him in a whimsical way. “Happiness.”

  “Sure.” He chuckled. “That’s a pretty good all-round answer, but, getting down to particulars, what d’you want that’ll make you happy?”

  Over this she pondered, but only for a moment. “Something to make Dad settle down.”

  “That’ll make him happy, eh? What’s he do now?”

  “He traps . . . he and Lew trap. They don’t make much money that way, you see, and, not making money, he isn’t able to do much for me, and that makes him unhappy, and, being unhappy, he can’t work very well at the trapping. You see it works around in a circle. It all starts with being unhappy.”

  “Of course,” murmured Sparrow. “It all starts with that. A fellow can do anything, if he’s happy about it. This Camden, if he was happy and had his heart in it . . . he might have a chance even with. . . .” He paused.

  “I don’t like him!” said the girl with a little shudder.

  “Why not?”

  “Because he’s so fierce. I saw him fight. It was like . . . an animal fighting.”

  Sparrow broke in:“What does your dad want to do in the line of settling down?”

  “He’s always wanted a farm. But that takes money.”

  “How much?”

  “I’ve heard him say that he needs ten thousand dollars, to really start right.”

  “Ten thousand! He wants to start pretty fine, Nan. Suppose he had that ten thousand. What would you do for it?”

  “To see Dad happy . . . and Lew happy and doing something worthwhile? Oh, I’d do about anything!” cried the girl.

  “Maybe you think so. Maybe you think so now. But just how much would you do? Would you marry a guy that could give you that much?”

  She looked up at him, frightened, and blushing.

  “Not me,” said Sparrow, grinning, “I ain’t that way. But I know a guy that is. He likes you.”

  “Is he rich?” asked the girl, frowning.

  “Not a cent! But if he knew he could have you for ten thousand, maybe he’d get rich. He’d try it, anyway. Nan, would you marry a man that brought you ten thousand in cash? Would you give me your word?”

  “Somebody that I didn’t. . . .”

  “You’d get to like him, wouldn’t you, if his money made your folks happy?”

  Tears came into her eyes. “Of course. I would marry him.”

  “That’s your promise?”

  “That’s my promise.”

  “Shake on it, Nan.”

  They shook hands, he eagerly, and she with a sort of excited resignation.

  Straight back to gloomy Camden he went. “Well, kid,” he began, “it’s fixed up. First place . . . you know what sort of a job you got ahead of you?”

  “Fighting,” Camden said sullenly. “For you.”

  “And Pierre Lacoste is the man. If you beat him, Camden, your work with me is done. You’re free.”

  “Bring me to him!” cried the other with a savage enthusiasm.

  “And get you chopped to bits? Camden, you’re strong and you’re fast. Right now you could beat even a gent like Ed Morgan. But you couldn’t stand up to Pierre Lacoste for a round. That means three minutes. That fight comes in six weeks. Can I teach you to take a little care of yourself in six weeks?”

  “Maybe you can. This Lacoste . . . is he such a great man?”

  “He’s a burnin’ fire, kid. He’s made up of steel and fire. That’s him!” He added: “And if you can learn enough to beat Lacoste . . . mind you, to knock him out . . . to lick him cold . . . Camden, I’d give you ten thousand dollars, and set you free from the contract . . . if you was darned enough fool to want to be free.”

  “A fool?” mutt
ered Camden.

  “Because, with me running things, that ten thousand would be just the beginning. I ’d make you rich in a year, boy. And now lemme tell you what ten thousand dollars means. It means Nan Pearson.”

  “Could she be bought for that much money?” asked Camden, wondering. “I didn’t know she could be bought.”

  Sparrow was staggered. For an instant he hesitated between shouting and laughter. Then he changed his mind and settled to the problem before him. This boy was utterly without experience of people. He knew nothing. Anything could be made of him.

  “Everybody has a price, I guess,” said Sparrow. “This girl . . . she’s mighty cheap at that price.”

  “Why don’t everybody come to buy her, then?” asked Camden.

  “They ain’t in on the secret. But I tell you, Camden, if you had ten thousand dollars, you could walk right up to her now and count out the money and walk away with her for your wife.”

  He said it with such utter conviction that Camden made no instant return, but remained for a moment dreaming upon distant spaces.

  At last he said slowly:“I’ll fight this Pierre Lacoste. If I must beat him, I’ll beat him. If I must kill him, I’ll kill him.”

  “Damned if I don’t think that you almost would!” exclaimed Sparrow.“Half this game is believin’in yourself.”

  CAN LACOSTE HIT?

  Pierre Lacoste arrived in Juniper for the great bout only two weeks before it was scheduled. Two weeks was enough for the great Pierre, who was always in a very fair condition. He needed a little severe exercise, a few runs on the road, a little boxing, and then he was ready for a contest of any length. To gratify the public, he established his training quarters in the town of Juniper itself, and opened his camp to the people, free. From the instant of his arrival, it was plain that he would be the popular favorite as well as the favorite with the betting public.

  As for Cyclone Ed Morgan, working industriously, plodding in his camp in the mountains, only handfuls of visitors went out to him from time to time. They watched him go through his paces. They observed him struggling around the ring with Bert Kenny or Vincent Munroe, and they shook their heads. Here was no good specimen to uphold the United States against the Frenchman. Yet thousands of people, who had not a chance to observe the two in action, clung to their belief that Cyclone would win, for the very ample good reason that it was unpatriotic to dream for a moment that any foreigner could beat an American.