Crusader

by Max Brand

  “Who are you?” asked Camden.

  The artist finished the next long-drawn note, and then broke off his music with regret. “I’m Steve Arnot.”

  “Arnot, you sing like a brayin’mule.”

  “Me?” gasped out the songster.

  “I’m tellin’ you.”

  “Why, damn your soul. . . .” Then he broke off and leaped up, stiffening as he saw what was coming, and then made a convulsive movement for his gun.

  He had not even a ghost of a chance. The flung end of the broken cudgel struck him on the shoulder, and the gun fell from his limp fingers. Then Camden reached him with a leap, as a lion springs on a bullock, and Arnot, after one fierce struggle, screamed like a man whose flesh the claws of a beast are tearing. Then he collapsed.

  “COME AND TAKE ME”

  Camden went off among the trees, and there he found an opening among the scrubby pines—an out guard, a far-flung outpost of the forest trees, still dwindling in the hot embrace of the desert, but yet existing, a testimony to those first settlers who had come to the place with ideals and had planted those trees when they might have been herding cattle.

  There Camden kicked together a bedding of pine needles, and he lay upon it face down, his head pillowed on the cushioning muscles of his arms, the rest of his body stretched at large in the heat of the sun. He slept long and well. It was the middle of the afternoon when something wakened him. He hardly knew what it was, but as warnings come to the sleeping beast, so they came to Camden. He sat suddenly erect.

  There was no fog in his brain. The effect of the debauch had been worn away by slumber—just as an animal will sleep away wounds, fatigue, sickness. So it was with Camden. He needed to have rest, to be close to the soil where nature took care of him. Other men wakened with dull eyes, clogged ears, only half conscious. His wakening was like the rousing of a wild wolf. He sat up, bristling, and looked around him. No stretching, no yawning. There was no time for luxuries like that, for in his sleep he had had an alarm. An eye had fallen upon him.

  A beast of prey might have learned by uncanny sharpness of hearing or by scent; Camden was guided by something almost as accurate and a thousand times more delicate—an extra sense that had roused him even from profound slumber to tell him that something living had been near him, a sense that gave him now a vague idea of the direction in which the peril stood.

  For a peril it must be. All beasts were his enemies, of course, and among men he had no friends. No human being could ever see the devil rise up in the depths of those cold amber eyes and approach him without a shudder of dread. That thing which had paralyzed Steve Arnot had paralyzed other men before him. It was something hard to define, yet easily recognizable.

  He stood up. All the lumbering clumsiness that had been noticeable about him before his sleep was gone now. He was light on his feet as a cat is light, and like a hunting cat’s was his stride, so silken smooth, so noiseless, so dainty, so terrible. He became a picture of swift grace, vanishing like a shadow into the thick of the copse.

  There he crouched in the first covert, and waited. Only a moment, but in that moment he was able to distinguish a dozen things—the noise of a squirrel’s teeth gnawing bark in the distance, the stir of the wind in the tip-tops of the tree, the creak of a far-off bough against another, and, closer at hand, something stirring in the brush.

  He faded back through the thicket. How could he move so fast through such a place and yet without a murmur of noise? It was a mystery. But he faded through a dense hedge as though it had been a wraith and came out on the farther side. He made a quick semicircle and found himself, at last, behind the disturbing presence. He came up just as it was slipping in behind a tree—thinking, it seemed, that he was still before it.

  Then Camden saw, and what he saw was a mere boy, a stripling with bare brown legs, a slingshot in his hands, mischief in his eyes, lurking and stealing through the little copse.

  His size did not make a great difference to Camden, any more than the size of a coyote keeps the grizzly from closing its paws over the back of the little beast—if he can catch it. But in Camden there was no doubt about catching. He could give the trained athlete a ten-yard start and catch him in fifty strides. It was only what he would do with the adventuring boy.

  He picked up a broken branch, that, flung as he could fling it, would drop the youngster. It might break a leg—or a few ribs, but it would teach the boy a lesson. Lessons were good things to learn, and the younger the better. So reasoned Camden. Still, something held him back. He could think of a better thing than force. Force, after all, is what animals use; a grizzly has force, for instance. But Camden was man, also, and had that thing which is given by Mother Nature for the infliction of pain upon others—a brain.

  He conned the matter for a moment to himself, the flame in those amber eyes, but he made up his mind swiftly, always, and he determined quickly now. He merely slid from his hiding place and stood behind the boy, making himself still. To make oneself still, the very thought must be controlled, for thought is electric and springs great gaps to give warnings—such warnings as Camden had received a moment before. He knew all about such matters. He could make himself so still that a fawn would come up and nibble his hand. He could make himself so still that even a mother grizzly would come to examine him—downwind!

  So he stilled himself now. The boy, crouching behind a tree and peering forth on either side with nervous little movements of his head like a pecking bird, studied what lay before him and squinted through the brush until a shadow began to fall across them—not a thing that he could see, but upon his mind—a shadow that was cold dread.

  Camden, making himself still, saw and understood the cessation of the boy’s eager peering movements, the quiet that came upon him, the stiffening of this young body, and then—how clearly Camden heard it—his quickening breath.

  The horror grew. The youthful hunter stood erect now, his hands clenched at his sides. Behind him stood—what? A snake coiled to strike? A great bear with paw ready to batter the life from him at a blow?

  Still the terror grew. The boy could not turn his head, dared not turn it. Camden, observing, drew in his own breath noiselessly, drinking that horror like a precious wine. But the bare drawing of his breath seemed enough to break the spell. The boy whirled about with a scream and struck out—even a cornered rat will fight!

  The rubber of the slingshot cut across the face of Camden. That face was iron and scarcely felt the blow. Across the mouth, too, and there he felt it. His thick arm shot out, his great hand fastened on the nape of the boy’s neck. He was a sturdy, well-compacted boy, but Camden held him at arm’s length, as though he had been a bird.

  “You . . . brat!” he snarled out. He threw all the fury of his nature into the expression of a face that was formidable even in repose, but now became terrific.

  The boy cast an arm before his eyes to shut out the vision, and shrieked again. Then Camden flung him away. He landed in some stiff brush, crashed through it as though hurled from a great engine, tumbled to his feet, and raced away.

  After that Camden sat down to think the matter over. It was a small adventure, but, what there was of it, perfect and satisfying. He felt, on that afterthought, that he could not have improved upon what he had done. All was well. He tasted the thing from beginning to end with relish.

  Meanwhile, as a jack rabbit streaks away from the cry of the hounds, so the boy raced for the nearest house, which happened, naturally enough, to be the hotel. On the verandah of the hotel, still naturally enough, he found a dozen men gathered around the form of Steve Arnot. They had carried him here and had bedded him down. The doctor felt that it would not be well to move him again until night, for he was badly battered. A leg was broken—a rib was bashed in—and, above all, he had received a mental shock that was much worse than any physical injuries. To that ready audience, the boy told his story.

  What he had to tell he hardly knew, except that a horror had been upon him. The m
en sensed it, as dogs sense that a wolf has been near one of their mates. They gathered the horror from his eyes and were ready to believe anything when he screamed to them:“Help! Help!”

  “What’s wrong, kid?” they growled out at him.

  “Camden!” he gasped out.

  Their eyes sought the prostrate form of Arnot who had groaned even in his delirium at the sound of that dreadful name.

  “What’s Camden tried to do to you?”

  “He tried . . . to kill me!”

  They looked to one another. When the blackest fury comes over men, they are not noisy. Such was the silence of this group. They found out where Camden had last been seen, then they acted, as though they had received orders from one commander. They climbed on their horses, unlimbered their guns, and looked to their ropes, and then started for the place.

  They found Harry Camden seated with his back against a tree. He had heard them coming. He had guessed that danger was in their arrival, but, being innocent, he decided to brave them out. What he had done today seemed to him only strictly virtuous. Steve Arnot deserved all that had come to him for being a public nuisance. As for the boy, had a hair of his head been injured, saving for a few scratches in the brush? Besides, it was upon danger that the big man fed daily. He sought it wherever he could find it.

  They paused, ranged in a loose semicircle before him, like hounds before a grizzly at bay.

  “He thinks that we’re scared to tackle him,” said Doc Lambert.

  A growl answered him, and, feeling the backing of the others, he called:“Hey, you . . . Camden!”

  The big man yawned in their faces and made no other reply except to shut his strong white teeth with a click.

  “You . . . Camden! We’ve come to give you a runnin’ chance! Come out of that there brush and we’ll give you a twenty-yards start on the hosses to get back to the hotel. If you make it . . . you got an hour to get out of town. If you don’t make it. . . .”

  “Shut up, Doc,” cut in Josh Williams. “He don’t get no runnin’ chance. We’ve had enough of that devil. We’ve had too damned much.” Josh Williams was the father of the boy in the case, and, having seen the expression on the face of his son, he was ready to kill. The others, however, were not yet worked up to such a point. They proffered the big man another chance. Then he spoke.

  “You want me? Then come and take me!” With that, he stepped forth from the shelter of the trees and began to walk toward the hotel, slowly.

  They trooped their horses after him, but no man spoke, no man moved a hand. There was something too formidable about that light-footed bulk—that terribly soft-stepping monster of a man. He seemed capable of leaping at them like a mountain lion. They held their distance until Josh Williams, with a shout as though at a roundup, whirled the noose of his rope and spurred forward.

  THE HORSEWHIPPING

  Camden slid to the side without turning his head. The noose dropped against his shoulder, and then, as Josh Williams went past, Camden plucked him from his horse. The others saw Josh Williams double up; they heard his scream of agony; they saw him pitch face downward upon the ground. His had been the fate of many advance guards. But now the rest of the men came in one resistless whirl. One rope was dodged, and two. The third gripped Camden about the shoulders. He shot the noose over his head with a shrug of those same shoulders and a wave of the arms. A fourth rope landed while his arms were high. A fifth fell. Suddenly he was swathed from head to foot and lay helpless on the ground.

  Two men picked up poor Josh Williams and carried him, groaning, to the hotel. Three riders dragged Camden at the end of the ropes not toward the hotel, but toward the trees. They wanted to be alone, instinctively, for the work that was coming.

  Doc Lambert, a just man, a good citizen, took charge. He sat down beside the helpless captive.

  “What’d you do to the kid?” he asked. “What call did you have to do anything to him?”

  Camden did not answer. He merely looked into the face of Doc Lambert with his amber eyes, and Doc shivered.

  “Will you talk?” asked Doc.

  There was no response.

  A blind fury came over the others. They had seen the result of one bit of this man’s handicap after it was finished. A moment before they had seen him at work on Josh Williams, their familiar, their friend. When they looked down at him, they encountered the blank eyes of a beast. It was too much. All humanity was suddenly stripped from them, and they became as beasts.

  They tied Camden to a limb of a tree, suspended by both arms. They tore the shirt from his back. Three men took quirts with long, cutting lashes, like miniature black snakes, and these they whirled at Camden. Those lashes, in their practiced hands, could slice through the skin of a mule. They sliced through the skin of Camden. They raised long white welts. They sliced through the welts.

  They would never have done such a thing to any other man; not one of them would have been capable of such brutality. But they were not one. They were a mob, and a mob is either divine or demoniac. This mob was possessed of the devil. No matter if blood flowed; it was not a man they tortured, but a beast, so the cruel little whips still played and with every stroke they shouted:“Will you talk now?”

  They got no answer. Then Doc Lambert—this was after a long, long time—walked around in front of the victim and looked at his face. What he saw turned him as white as a sheet. He cried suddenly—“That’s enough, boys!”—and with his knife he slashed the two ropes. They were good ropes, perfectly fit for working cattle, well tested and tried. A cow waddie loves his own rope that his hand is familiar with. But when Camden fell inert from the limb of the tree, they forgot the damage to the ropes. They looked first at one another, seeking for consolation and getting none, for each was remembering that this was not an animal, after all, but a fellow human being.

  Camden stumbled to his feet, but the agony had numbed every limb or, perhaps, the loss of blood had told on him. He stumbled. The arms that he cast out to break the fall were numbed to the shoulders by the long strain of hanging from the limb. They crumpled under him, and he lurched heavily upon his face.

  He struggled to get up, but fell heavily on that lacerated back while the others shuddered with instinctive sympathy. Then, seeing his face, they understood what Doc Lambert had done, for it was a colorless countenance, the teeth locked over a hundred groans, the eyes glaring, and such a contorted expression as a man might wear in the midst of a raging fire.

  “That’ll teach you . . . ,” someone began to say. But every head was turned toward the speaker, and he subsided.

  Doc Lambert approached the fallen victim. His voice shook like that of a nervous child. “Camden,” he said, “we went too far. We forgot . . . we . . . we want to do what we can for you. . . .”

  There was no answer, and Lambert stepped back as though he had been struck.

  “Leave him alone . . . leave him be,” someone said.

  They took that unsatisfactory advice. They herded back toward the hotel in a close cluster, no one speaking until they reached the hotel.

  Then a voice among them said: “We forgot that we was a dozen to one . . . and no matter what Camden did, he fought man to man, always. And the kid . . . where was the kid hurt?”

  This was reason coming a long distance to lag behind passion. They scattered at once, not singly, but in pairs.

  “You stay by me, Jerry, till he’s out in the country, or . . . out of the way. We ain’t heard the last of this here thing . . . not by a damn’sight.”

  So they made their bonds between them to stand by one another until the peril had passed, not realizing for a moment the nature of him with whom they had to deal. For he had harbored not the slightest malice against one of them, as individuals. Only, in his heart of hearts, a great rage was born that would be long in dying, for it embraced a hatred of the whole race, of his human brothers.

  He lay among the trees until the night came. Then his strength recovered, and he started on a long march for
the uplands. He would strike back—of that the world could rest assured—but he would not strike until his strength clothed him perfectly again. There was no blind rashness, no reckless impetuosity, in the composition of Camden.

  Between dusk and morning he covered thirty miles and reached the cool uplands and the forests that clothed them. In the morning light he blew off the heads of three squirrels, shooting them out of the branches of trees. Another would have been proud of that feat, but Camden was not proud, no more than any beast of prey that kills to eat. He roasted the kill and ate it, half raw. Then he slept.

  So for a fortnight he lived. The wounds on his back closed with marvelous speed, and his strength returned to him. He moved to a richer upland. There he spent another fortnight, and after that he was his old self, or more than his old self, perhaps. For hatred is like any other passion—it gives strength.

  In that month he did not see a human voice, he did not think, it might be said, a human thought. In the future, he told himself blindly, there lay a great revenge, but he did not brood upon it. For the present, he was contented if he could live and regain his power, live and regain his pride. For pride is part of the strength of any man, of any beast. So it was with Camden. What the men of the plains had done to him had been painful to the body, but to the spirit it had been a living death.

  So he waited until all was well within him. On a morning, when the sun grew hot, he went down the creek to a point at which it pitched over a cliff and broadened below the cascade into a series of still waters, miniature lakes. In one of these, where the roar of the cascade was softened and dulled in the distance and because the ravine had made an elbow turn below the falls, he plunged for a swim, having stripped off his clothes.

  To swim for the sake of swimming was one of his dearest pleasures. In that element which was not his own, he felt his powers as he felt them in no other surrounding. With a single stroke of his arms and thrust of his legs to make his body leap through the water, to dive from the bank and feel the ripples close around his toes, to slide up to the surface again on the farther side of the pool and, looking back, discover that where he had dived the water was already calm, to swim a great distance under the surface, until his lungs were nearly bursting, to clutch at the arrow-like fish as they darted beneath him, to float on his face and mark the gold of the sun on the sandy bottom, furrowed across with tiny ripple shadows, to float on his back and watch the way of the breeze among the trees—all of these were an exquisite pleasure to him. No other man could feel them in the same degree, for no other man was so nearly beast. No beast could feel them, for no other beast was so much a man.