by Max Brand
“Like this,” Camden said calmly, and struck the poor fellow senseless at his feet.
It was an act of such horribly cold-blooded brutality that young Manners gasped. Harry Camden, however, turned on his heel as though he had brushed a gnat from the air—no more.
“Climb onto your hoss,” Camden ordered.
Manners, bewildered, but with the fire of hope in his eyes and the first taste of liberty to rejoice his heart, swung into the saddle. “Your own hoss . . . ,” he began.
But as he spoke, Camden raised a shrill, short whistle, thrice repeated, and out of the night came the rhythmic beat of galloping hoofs. A glimmering black monster of a horse drew up beside Camden. In another moment they were off together, and galloping hard for the open country.
A STRANGE REQUEST
Fanny was a queen of the range. There was no dash of Thoroughbred blood in her veins, but although she was pure mustang she was a throwback to that early type from which all American mustangs sprang—the purebred Barb and Arabian horses that many of the conquistadores brought to Mexico for the conquest. Slender-limbed, close-coupled, with eyes of a deer and grace of a cat, she could run like a racer and endure like iron. The pride of Ned Manners was in her, but although he loosed the reins and let her flash away across the hills from Twin Creeks, in two miles of running he found her breathing hard and some of the spring gone from her gallop; yet the black monster that ranged beside her was still flaunting along with his head high as though the work had been mere play to him.
At this Ned Manners marveled, but he marveled still more at the rider of the stallion. It was Crusader. There could be no doubt of that. In all the world there could not possibly be two animals with so many points in common. The rider, therefore, must be he who had stolen the famous stallion from Colonel Dinsmore and who then had chosen to imperil his own safety in order to liberate another man who was wrongfully accused of that crime. Here was a combination of virtue and of vice that appealed powerfully to the heart and to the brain of Ned.
So, as they rode, and as he found that his mare could not draw away from her traveling companion, he stole many a side glance at big Harry Camden. In sheer inches and pounds there was little to choose between them, but there was an air about Camden that suggested incredible power of hand. There was a lordly carelessness that young Manners, like any good hunter, had marked in the grizzly when no scent of man was near, a lion-like mastery of creation. Besides, he could not help remarking and remembering most vividly the singular ease with which the stranger had knocked down the guard. That guard was no fragile youngster, but a fellow of brain and brawn. Yet he had gone down like nothing. The more Manners regarded his companion the more he was assured that he had beside him a man in a million.
He watched, too, the fashion in which Camden managed the horse. Who was there in the countryside who had not heard much of the manners of the stallion? Who was there that did not know of his tigerish ferocity, his cruelty, his treacherous cunning, his unnatural love of blood? But behold! The great black stallion ranged along freely, with slack reins along his neck, with no saddle to brace and support his rider—rather as if the will of the man were its own will. Manners, knowing men and knowing horses, also, blinked at this sight, it was something, indeed, to remember. This was a story that would not be believed, beginning with that point when he would tell how with a whistle the stranger had conjured the stallion in out of the night.
A thousand questions rushed to his lips and were pressed back from them again. Something like a raised hand warned him not to speak, and speak he did not. As for the direction of their flight, this was established by the big stranger. They held on like a pair of arrows through the darkness, until, rounding over a hill, they saw the shack of Jake Manners in the hollow beneath them, and then Camden drew rein.
“Partner,” said Ned Manners, speaking very gently, “I been thinkin’ over what I could say to you. But doggone me if I find the right sort of words.”
The other turned a leonine head toward him, and Ned Manners felt more helplessly juvenile than ever before.
“That’s black Crusader,” Manners said humbly. “And you’re the gent that took him from Colonel Dinsmore. Ain’t that right?”
“That’s tolerable correct.”
“I figger that you know my name. Might I ask after yours?”
“I’m Harry Camden.”
It was a good deal of a shock to the other. He had been conning over the list of the celebrated men of the mountains, outlaws, scorners of danger, demigods in their heroic actions, but there had been none who exactly fitted with the description of the man beside him. This totally unknown name made him start.
“Maybe you’ve heard of me?” asked Camden.
“Not before tonight.”
“And what you’ve heard tonight, if I was you, I’d start right in tryin’ to forget.”
There was no doubt concerning the thinly veiled threat in this speech, but Manners, although he flushed hotly, swallowed the implied insult.
“I’d like to tell Dad and my sister,” he said simply. “I’d like for them to know what you’ve done for me and what the name of the gent is that’s done it. I’ll be off to the hills tomorrow. With a good runnin’ start like this here, darned if they’ll ever catch me.”
This brought about an exclamation from Camden. “What call is they for you to keep on runnin’?” he asked tersely.
“Hoss stealin’,” said the young trapper and farmer, “ain’t particular popular around these parts.” He chuckled. With Fanny beneath him once more, and the dark of the night before his face, and the well-known mountains above him, he felt that he could never be caught. He even looked forward with a sort of grim anticipation to the ensuing struggle.
“Hoss stealin’?” echoed the other. “Who’ll lay that up to you?”
“Mostly everybody.”
“What hoss?”
“Why, Crusader, of course.”
“Crusader? Hell and fire, man, ain’t I got Crusader?”
“Who’ll know that?”
There was a little pause, and by the bended head of the big man young Ned Manners knew that he was deep in thought.
“They’ll know before the mornin’,” he said. “They’ll know dog-gone sure before mornin’!”
“How?” Manners asked, astonished.
“I’ll let ’em see me and the hoss together. I’ll let the sheriff see us together.”
“Good heavens, partner, and let ’em bag you?”
“I dunno if that follows on after the seein’.”
There was a grim note in this speech that forbade further questioning on the part of Ned. He could only gape at the other through the night. Here was a wealth of benevolence that took his breath.
“Camden,” he said at last, “damn my heart if you ain’t the whitest man that ever I met. And the squarest and the most. . . .”
“Talk,” Camden said crisply, “is cheap.”
“Tell me what I can do for you,” Ned asked enthusiastically. “Lemme have a chance to show you. . . .”
“Wait a minute. I’m figgerin’on something that’ll pay me back.”
Ned Manners waited, hushed, expectant, turning a hundred possibilities in his mind. This fellow was no fool. He had done this heroic thing and planned on still another act of self-sacrifice for the sake of a reward, of course. What could the thing be?
“You’re gonna go down yonder to your dad’s house?”
“Of course.”
“Go in and tell your sister to take a lamp and come and open the back door.”
“You want to talk to her? You want to tell her something?”
“I’ve told you what to tell her,” Camden answered, and turned his head away.
There was no mistaking this signal of dismissal. With his brain in a whirl of vain conjectures, Ned Manners rode down to his father’s house, threw the reins of Fanny, and hurried in. He found them gathered in the dining room, with young Charles Mervin rising to tak
e his leave. There was a general outcry at the sight of him, and then Ruth, clinging to him, crying:“Ned, you ain’t broke out of jail?”
“I was taken out,” he said in great excitement. “I was taken out and didn’t raise my hand. You might say I was taken out at the point of a gun. Now, Sis, you got to do something for me. Don’t ask no questions, because I can’t answer ’em. Take a lamp and go to the kitchen door and stand there with the door open.”
“Ned, what in the world . . . ?”
“I told you that questions wouldn’t do no good, and I mean it. Will you go along?”
There were two lamps in the room. One of these she raised without a word, because it was not the first time in her life that she had obeyed, without answer, a strange command. In her frontiersman life she had come to feel that men have the right to command. She gave one glance to her father. But he remained motionless. It was too staggeringly unusual for him to have a word to say on the subject. Then she went to the kitchen door and opened it slowly, expecting to see she knew not what. But there was nothing before her—only the thick black of the night. She shaded her eyes from the lamp. Now, away from its dazzling glow, she could make out the stars in the sky, the black line of the hills against them, and in the hollow, not far away, the form of a rider on a tall, shadowy figure of a horse. It startled her, that quiet form in the night. But now the stranger in the night turned away. The side view enabled her all the better to estimate the gigantic proportions of horse and man. They seemed to tower above the squat hills in the distance.
The great horse broke into a long-striding gallop; in another moment it was lost among the shadows of the trees. Then she turned and came back into the dining room with a face white with excitement.
The first question came from her brother. “What did he say?” he cried. “What did he say, Sis?”
“Who?” she asked.
“Cam . . . I mean, him . . . I mean . . . good heavens, Sis, didn’t you see anyone?”
“Nobody,” she answered. “I saw a rider on a big black hoss. I couldn’t make out much about him, except that he was big. But he didn’t say a word. He just turned his hoss away and rode off.”
Ned Manners gaped at her. “I dunno what it is,” he said slowly. “Dog-gone me if it ain’t queer. Maybe . . . maybe his head is a little wrong. Maybe . . . he’s a bit crazy.”
“Who?” they clamored in a chorus.
“The squarest gent that ever lived,” Ned said, and said no more.
PURSUIT
The picture in the yellow glow of the lamplight had filled the brain and filled the heart of Harry Camden. Yet there had come a moment, quickly, when he could gaze no more, but hurried away on Crusader. On the rim of the first hill he turned and looked back. The door had been closed, and the light and the girl were gone. But not gone from his memory.
As for the work that lay before him, it seemed a trifle now. He went straight back to Twin Creeks. On the edge of town he met a youngster, whistling down the road, and, in spite of the late hour, driving a pair of cows before him.
“Hello, son!” called Camden.
The boy called back to him cheerily.
“Where’s the sheriff’s house?” asked Camden.
“He ain’t there, most likely. Something’s wrong. Or have you just come in to help run down the gent that busted into the jail?”
“I’ve come to give the sheriff some news.”
“Some say that he ain’t gonna start on the trail till the mornin’. That’s his house over yonder. The big one with the tower-lookin’thing on the side of it.”
Toward the house with the “tower-lookin’” steeple Camden went, where he dismounted, left Crusader in the street with the perfect assurance that the savage monster would let no other man approach it, and rapped at the front door of the building.
It was opened by a little wisp of an old woman, her back deformed by long, hard labor.
“Is the sheriff home?”
“He’s here. Step right in, young man. He’s havin’ a bite before he gets into the saddle. They ain’t no rest for. . . .”
“Send him out here,” interrupted Camden. “I got some news for him. Send him right out here. I got some news that he’ll be mighty surprised to hear.”
She blinked at him and then hastened down the hall, up which the heavy stride of a big man presently advanced, and a tall, thin-faced man appeared, working his sombrero deep down upon his head and wriggling his hands into gloves.
“Well, stranger?” he said at the door.
“Close the door,” said Camden, “and come along out here. I got to say something that ain’t to be overheard by nobody.”
The sheriff favored him with a sharp scrutiny that was rendered in vain by the blanketing dark, thicker to the sheriff because he had just come out from brightest lamplight. He strode out onto the verandah and slammed the door behind him. “I’ll give you thirty seconds,” he said sharply. “I got no time for gossip. . . .”
A gun squinted in the starlight before him.
“Gimme them thirty seconds, with your hands right up in the air,” said Harry Camden.
The sheriff made his hands fight their way up into the air, inch by inch, while he ground his teeth. He was a fighting man, this honest sheriff, but although he had faced death many a time for the sake of duty, something told him now that he was in a place where it would be foolish to take extra risks.
“What’ll you have?” he asked sourly.
“My name’s Harry Camden,” said the latter. “I’m the gent that busted into the jail and took out Ned Manners.”
“I’ll have your hide for it,” the sheriff said gravely. “You can lay to that, Harry Camden.”
The fury of Camden burst out into words. “Sheriff,” he said, “you’re talkin’ foolish. If it’s a game between you and me, you’ll be wishin’ you was dead before you ever heard my name. Look yonder into the street.”
The sheriff stared in the bidden direction, and then made out the magnificent form of a great black horse. “It’s Crusader, and you’ve rode him into Twin Creeks!”
“I’ll ride him out again,” the other assured him. “Look me over, Sheriff, so’s you’ll know me the next time you see me. But Ned Manners is innocent . . . y’understand?”
“Innocent or not,” said the sheriff furiously, “he’s busted jail, and he’ll come back and answer for that.”
There was a little pause, and during it he heard the heavy breathing of the big man before him.
“I’m gonna do nothin’ now,” said the stranger at length, “but if you lay a hand on young Manners, you’ll hear from me ag’in, Sheriff, and you’ll hear pronto. Now keep them hands stiff up ’n the air.”
While the sheriff obeyed, Harry Camden went through his clothes. From beneath the armpits of the sheriff he extracted one pair of hidden weapons. From holsters he took two more. He threw them all far off into the brush.
“Now,” he said, “I guess we’ve talked long enough to begin to know each other. So long, Younger!”
“Camden,” said the sheriff, “maybe you’ve done a pile in your life, but you ain’t never done a thing that was more fool than this here one. You can lay to that. You’ll have the daylight let through you inside of a week . . . or else you’ll get ten years in prison to think these here things over. Take my advice. Ride the devil out of Crusader, because he can’t take you too far away from me to be safe!”
The last of this was spoken to Camden as he vaulted onto the back of the horse. A moment later the disappearing stallion was partly obscured by a sudden cloud of dust while the sheriff thundered an alarm call.
Yet Camden was in no haste. He was so desperately keen for action, now, that he lingered close to the town, until he heard the rushing of hoofs as the pursuers swept out of it. They were dividing and spurring up either valley of the two creeks. For his own part, he kept to the high rough ground in between and let Crusader work his way without haste.
Straight on until the gray o
f the morning he journeyed. Then, on a far distant upland, he loosed Crusader, tightened his own belt, and went to sleep. It was noon when he wakened, with a deep, bell-like baying far away in the air. Sometimes it died as the wind died; sometimes it increased in the wind and blew strongly to him. But there was no haste. They were long miles and miles away. Far down the valley there was no sign of them.
Every moment that Crusader could use grazing and resting was very much worthwhile. So Camden went to the spot where he had cached the remainder of the side of bacon. Who could eat plain strips of bacon, half roasted above a small fire? Harry Camden, at least, was one who could not only eat it but enjoy every mouthful of it.
He was half through that hasty meal when he saw the stallion coming toward him. Close and closer the deep-throated hounds were making their music. There could be no doubt at what target they were aimed, and the stallion seemed to know it, for he began to dance impatiently, tossing his head, and looking first down the valley, then toward his master.
Camden, however, continued to munch his half raw, half burned meat. When it was finished, he tossed the remnant of the side of bacon into the brush after he had rubbed it upon the hoofs of the horse. For the strong smell of the salt meat might kill the scent of the stallion. At least it would make the work of the dogs more difficult. After that, he went to a trickling little rill of spring water and drank, and still drank as the rout of hounds burst into view a scant quarter of a mile away and gave huge tongue at the sight of him.
There were fifty dogs. The whole countryside had contributed a dog here and a dog there to the good work. There were wise mongrels useful to solve trail problems and also useful to close and fight heroically. There were long-eared bloodhounds. There were gaunt-bellied wolfhounds, fast as the wind, tireless on the trail. If only their noses had been equal to the speed and to their sight.
These things Camden surveyed and took note of carefully while he tossed the blanket on the stallion and drew up the cinch. Ten seconds of work, but the pack was already closing with a rush. A great wolfhound, out-speeding the rest by many yards, came hurtling far in the lead, a scarred and savage veteran, useful on many a trail, strong as a wolf, wicked in fight as a bear. He came fast, silent, slavering with eagerness for the kill. Just at that moment the hunters themselves came into view, half a dozen of the leaders on the finest horses, with the sheriff at their head and, beside the sheriff, the aristocratic forms of Colonel Dinsmore himself and young Charles Mervin.