Crusader

by Max Brand

  These things he knew. He did not know enough to waste his life over a book. He did not know so little that he needed to sleep away the cold winter as the wise grizzly was forced to do. His intelligence lay in between these two. His intelligence, such as it was, seemed to Camden perfect and efficient. If someone had told him that there were other possibilities in his nature, he would only have assured the informant that he had all he wished. Nothing more could be desired.

  On this morning he idled in the pool for half an hour. A quarter of that time in the snow water would have frozen another man, but the thickly muscled body of Camden, warmed with exercise, defied the chill of the stream. Then he went out to the bank and climbed a tree, after a squirrel—not in the hope of catching it, but for the sake of the exercise that would warm him. He was dry and panting when he reached the ground again. Then he put on his clothes, but, as he put them on, he touched his back with his hand and made a long pause. There were little ridges along the soft skin, the manifold scars of the whips. He had touched them a thousand times as they formed and healed, and he knew all that patterning. Now he was content to study them and think—not of those who had laid the torture upon him; that was not at all in his brain—but he thought of all the cities of men and of all the lonely dwellers in the mountains. Any of these were his prey. If a grizzly could make havoc, what could a man do?

  The time had come.

  The rest of that day he spent oiling and cleaning his guns, crooning a soft, monotonous tune over them—a song that no man could ever have taught him. Then he ate a light supper; only fools eat heavily when they have far to journey the next day. After this, he went to sleep before the twilight had barely gathered. He slept solidly until the dawn. A draught of cold water was his breakfast. Then, in the red of the morning, he set out.

  CAMDEN STRIKES

  There are ways and ways of travel through the mountains. Some go with a pair of pack mules, ponderous Dutch ovens, sacks of canned goods, a guide to show the way, a companion for company, a servant to do the work, with tents, bedding—yes, a great wagon drawn by four horses is not enough to contain all the camp equipment that some people need. They travel in the morning. The whole afternoon is required for the pitching of the camp and the preparation of the evening meal! They turn themselves into an army. There are others who venture forth with only moderate equipment packed behind the saddle and in the saddlebags of their riding horse. They take along, perhaps, only a little flour, salt, baking powder, a coffee pot and frying pan, and a little bacon and a few other details dictated by the personal tastes of the rider. Few will venture upon a long journey with smaller provisions. As for Harry Camden, he set forth with a cartridge belt half filled with bullets, a .45 caliber Colt revolver in the holster at his right hip, and a little salt in a pouch. His tent was his skin, his baggage train was his brain. He wanted for nothing. He had no particular direction to travel when he started. Of course, he would have liked to get back to the same town at which the outrage had been practiced upon him. But this was far back in the plains. A grizzly bear likes to stay near rough country; so do foxes and wolves. So did Camden.

  He came out, at last, over a long headland of timbered hills thrust like a spur into the rolling cow country. From the end of that spur, lying flat on his belly, resting, his arms folded, his chin resting upon his arms, he stared out over the landscape. He was consumed with hunger, but hunger did not make him impatient; it simply brought his wits to a keener edge.

  Camden had covered two hundred miles of rough mountains in four days, and he was still capable of greater efforts. But, nonetheless, that tremendous march had worn him down. He had lost ten pounds, and his body was dried to sheer muscle and bone. His cheeks were hollow; his eyes were sunken a little in his head. His belt was drawn to an absurdly small circle. However, a lean wolf runs farther and faster than a fat one, and its teeth are as sharp and its bite as powerful. Camden lay half the afternoon on that high point, studying the landscape. He was in no haste. He needed to study the country. He had been there before; now he charted it again, little by little, in his brain.

  A river swerved down among the hills, reached green plains, and wound away into a yellow-gray desert. Low hills flanked it upon either side. Farther east the plains ran on to the mists of the horizon; south was the great desert; north lay the taller mountains out of which he had descended. The ranch houses were spotted beneath him, drawn close together by the great distance.

  In the coming of dusk, a lobo gave deep tongue from a far-off hilltop, a coyote answered with a quavering yell, then Camden went down to find his evening meal. The wind held due east, so he marched straight against it. Twice he passed clusters of cattle, but they grazed in the open and tossed their horns at him, and he gave them a comfortably wide berth, for a range cow that will run from a mounted man is as apt as not to take after a man on foot. When the centaur splits into two parts, the range bull fears neither half. When they scented Camden as he ranged at his swift, shambling trot across the country, their heads went a little higher and their eyes flashed a little wilder in token that they scented in him man and something more awful than man, if there be a creature more awful.

  He jogged on. Indians run as he ran, frictionlessly, ceaselessly—the Indian runners who never cease their trot across the sunburned uplands of Mexico until they have covered their hundred miles or more. So went Camden, his head high, his body light with hunger, and the God-given consciousness of might breathing in him.

  Due ahead of him, in the face of the wind, he glimpsed a snaky tail whisked in the dusk behind a boulder. Camden stopped running and began to stalk with long gliding strides. At the corner of the great boulder he stood, breathless as a shadow, and peered around it.

  There lay a great range bull. His flanks, silken with good feeding and sheathed with glorious strength, were scarred by the wounds of a dozen combats with his kind in which he had emerged victorious and proved himself a king of the hills. Now, his head proudly reared, he was resting after the heat of the day and staring across at the herd that was his.

  At Camden’s right hip hung the gun. At his left hip was the knife. He drew it now—a long, ponderous blade, whetted razor-sharp. On this he fastened his grip; it was his favorite weapon—the fang with which he preferred to kill. With that in his hand, he shouted. For where is the danger in slaying a prostrate foe? And where is the glory?

  The bull lurched to its feet. Not until it was firm on all four, but before it could wheel, the man leaped. He touched his hand to the sleek hips, he vaulted onto the back, and drove the knife home to the haft. The bull dropped with a single groan and over him stood Camden, exultant.

  By the river he built his fire. There he spitted the meat on a stick and turned it in the blaze, while the long yellow lights floated on the stream. There he feasted. There, too, he curled himself up and slept a full hour. After that, he wakened, drank, and went on his way again.

  The mountains were black in the west. He was in that gently rolling country upon which he had looked from the height that afternoon, and now he felt a sharp need—a horse beneath him. His mount was far south in the hotel stable; he had not paused for the horse when he began his retreat, his brain clouded with pain and his back raw from the whips. In the rough mountains he could get on very well without the help of another animal to carry him, but in this open country it was a different matter. He needed wings beneath him if he were to be safe in his depredations here, and, to begin with, what choicer blow could he strike against his world of rivals then to take the finest horse from this range?

  Where should he find the finest horse? The richest man would have the best mounts, and the richest man would have the largest house. That largest house, framed about with wide-flung outlying buildings, he had well marked from the look-out place that day. Toward it he directed his path now, sweeping over the miles with his matchless stride.

  The place lay in a broad hollow through which the river ran with a wide, hushed current. Camden crossed the brid
ge, passed the house, went through the maze of hay and straw stacks, barns, sheds, corrals, on a ceaseless hunt. In a five-acre paddock he found what he wanted. There could be no doubt.

  A big barn adjoined the paddock, but only one door from the barn opened into it, and that door communicated with a large, roomy box stall. The paddock was empty, but through the open door of the stall Camden looked in, and among the dark shadows he saw a darker form, purest black from head to heels, without a white hair to mar, and where the starlight passed through a gaping crack in the wall the silk flanks of the monster glistened. Two great bright eyes looked forth at Camden.

  Then, with a snort, the horse burst through the door and rushed across the paddock. There he stood, quivering with excitement and fear, sixteen hands and two inches of magnificent horseflesh, muscled like Goliath, but tapering symmetrically to slender legs and round, black hoofs. By the great arch of his neck, by the courage of his eye, by the mighty swell of his haunches, and the flare of his nostrils, he was to be known—a stallion, a king of horses.

  Camden squatted in the shadow near the fence and observed. He did not need more than a glance to tell him that this was what he wanted. The loss of this animal would drive the owner half mad with vexation and grief. Therefore, it was just good enough to bear the cumbersome weight of Harry Camden. Now, in the starlight, he went on to read the features of the animal, one by one, as it danced back and forth through the corral, sometimes approaching him fiercely as though to beat him into the earth—then warned by his scent—man and more than man.

  When he had looked his fill, Camden went to the barn. From the box stall he passed into another room, filled with equipment for a horse. There were little pad saddles that might have been used to exercise the monster stallion. There were bridles of a dozen makes. There were larger, heavier saddles. There were cruel bits, with all manner of Spanish inventions to bring a jaw-crushing leverage against the mouth of a refractory animal. Plainly the black horse was not a lamb.

  But what Harry Camden took was a lariat, a plain bridle with a straight bit, a surcingle, and a blanket. In the corner of the corral he noosed the big horse with the rope. At least the animal was rope broken, for at the touch of the hemp it stopped short on braced legs. Then Camden went up the rope to the head of the monster. It sounds simple—as a matter of fact, it took half an hour to get to the head of the horse. But once there, Camden seemed in no haste whatever. He spent another hour talking to the stallion and stroking its nose. Then he slid the blanket on its back and cinched up the surcingle. The black horse stood as patiently as a family horse could ever have done waiting for a mistress to mount. After that, Camden slipped himself on the back of the great stallion. At the first grip of his knees and the touch of the reins in his hands, he knew that even his fondest hopes were surpassed. He had twice as much horse beneath him as he had expected!

  The great animal trembled and tossed its head. The voice of the rider, murmuring and low, subdued it. He loosed the reins a trifle, and the big horse took a few steps forward, perfectly in control. Then chance struck against Camden. For an owl, sweeping low, had swooped after a scurrying rabbit, and the rabbit had streaked for the shelter of the fence and the barn.

  Just under the nose of the stallion darted a streak of white, and, when it threw up its nose, shadowy wings beat about its head with a soft whishing. Then rabbit and owl were gone. In the farther corner of the corral the steel talons of the owl crunched home in the body of the fugitive and soared away. In the meantime, maddened with fear, the stallion neighed and broke for the first shelter—his box stall.

  MOUNTED ON THE WIND

  The door of that stall was low, but Camden avoided the peril by swinging along the side of the stallion, with only his right leg hooked over the back of the horse. So he was shot into the close comfort of the box stall. Before he could straighten out the frightened horse and get it through the door again, voices of three men hurried toward him, and the crossing lights of two lanterns.

  “That was Crusader. I know his voice,” said one. “I knew they’d be after him. If you see anything, we’ll shoot now and ask questions afterward. He’s worth the lives of a dozen horse-stealing curs!”

  Camden did not pause. Under such conditions, it was folly to delay. Given certain circumstances, he would not have hesitated to face three men, but like any wild thing he preferred, always, to retreat before overwhelming numbers. Here was his retreat at hand—a ladder ran straight up the side of the stallion’s box stall and through a trap door, probably leading into a loft above.

  At least Camden was ready to try it, and, when he tried, he found it exactly as he had expected. In a moment more he was crouched in the hay, listening to their voices as they hurried to and fro. One fired a gun. Other men came hurrying. They looked into the stall first of all.

  “Here he is!” shouted the first speaker. “They’ve put a surcingle on him and a bridle. They have him ready for the run! Who could have fixed him up like this? Nobody but Tracy! Somebody find me Tracy! Bring me Joe Tracy. The rest of you scatter and hunt for some sign of a trail.”

  Camden, in the hayloft, grinned to himself. Presently another voice sounded.

  “By the heavens, Colonel Dinsmore, it wasn’t me! Where would I take Crusader to if I should steal him? Besides, would I or anybody else try to ride that black devil with nothin’ but a surcingle? I leave it to you, Colonel Dinsmore.”

  After that thin, wailing voice of protestation, the voice of the colonel sounded exceedingly deep and bass.

  “There’s something in that, Tracy. Yet, who, but you, could have managed to handle him enough to get the surcingle on?”

  Joe Tracy must have been stunned by this idea. He could make no answer whatever for a moment, and before he could find a word, there was a burst of clamor in the corral, and two men came running to announce that blood had been found in the corner of the corral—only a few drops, but certainly it was blood. The stallion was unhurt. Find a man recently cut and bleeding, and they would have the thief.

  Camden had seen the owl strike the rabbit, and he smiled again with infinite enjoyment. He felt an almost irresistible desire to see the colonel; it proved resistless, indeed, and, lifting the trap door a small crack, he stared down at the animated scene below.

  He beheld a tall, white-headed, white-mustached and bearded man of the true “Kentucky Colonel” type. He was a lean, angular person with enough dignity to have fitted forth a whole dozen of judges. He bore his person with a military erectness; his habitual expression was a frown that he wore not because he was at all stern, but because he felt that it gave him an imposing appearance. The only cruel things he had ever done in his life and the only unjust things had been executed in a hopeless effort to live up to the sternness of that face.

  As a matter of fact, he was a simple soul with a heart of gold—a nature veritably flowing with the milk of human kindness. But Camden could not discover this with a glance. His schooling of experience had taught him to perceive all the faults and the brutalities of his fellow men; it had not schooled him in the ready understanding of their virtues. So he beheld the colonel as a grim fellow, and he hated him accordingly with all his heart. If Crusader had not already been attractive to him, he would have stolen the horse anyway for the sake of breaking the heart of the colonel. It seemed, from what he learned now, that the colonel could hardly have survived the blow, so deep was his affection for the big stallion.

  The colonel had sent twenty men scurrying in a wide circle around the corral, cutting eagerly for sign, some on horseback, some on foot. Lanterns flashed everywhere. Little glints and gleams of light broke through the crevices of the barn walls and startled across the eyes of Camden. He paid no attention to these things. The turmoil he had raised gave him a warm sense of satisfaction; his heart was more fixed than ever on the great black stallion at whose head now stood a withered little man of thirty who looked a full fifteen years older. That was Joe Tracy. He was soothing the big animal with little m
utterings. The colonel and a dapper youth who had just entered the stall spoke well above this quieting undertone.

  “I hoped to wait until morning before you saw Crusader,” the colonel was saying. “But even by lamplight there’s enough of him to be worth looking at. Here he is, Mister Mervin. He speaks for himself.”

  Mr. Mervin stood back a little. “A sad thing,” he said at last, “that such a horse should be off the turf.”

  “His damnable disposition,” said the colonel. “No one but Tracy can back the brute. No one but Tracy can come near him. That’s why I picked him up dirt-cheap. They couldn’t get Tracy from me. Any other person would have had to pay fifty thousand for that horse, even to use him as a stud only. But what good would he be without Tracy?”

  Camden, in his covert, grinned.

  “So,” continued the colonel, “I bid him in for a mere twenty thousand. Dirt-cheap, I say.”

  “Dirt-cheap, indeed,” said Mervin. “I remember him in the Derby. Kentucky never saw a finer horse than Crusader, sir.”

  “I dare say,” said the colonel, forgetting his frown of dignity and smiling like a child. “I dare say that Kentucky has not. No Thoroughbred ever walked on four better legs. He’ll raise the standard of the horseflesh on my ranch, I presume.”