Crusader

by Max Brand

  These people Camden saw, assured that they would not risk gunfire on him while fifty thousand dollars’ worth of horseflesh stood so near to him. Then he faced the swift charge of the big dog, not a gun in hand, but with only that long knife. He stood very still, a little crouched, and, as the beast leaped for his throat, he dropped to the side and stabbed up and in. The hound lived long enough to utter one death screech, cut short by death itself. Then it fell and rolled away down the slope, followed by a shower of stones.

  While the rest of the dogs raised their heads and slowed their pace before so terrible a foe that killed at a single touch, Camden leaped onto the black horse and was away—away with the ringing yells of the hunters pressing close behind him.

  Up the remainder of the slope he let the stallion work at ease, although the hunt closed behind him fast, every moment. He could hear them shouting, some to the dogs, picking them out by name and urging them to close, and some to one another. Particularly he distinguished the trumpet tones of young Charles Mervin, who seemed to have a commanding part in the chase, owing to his friendship with the much-respected colonel, and owing, also, to his demonstrated ability as a rider and a shot, to say nothing of the fineness of his horse, which enabled him to keep constantly in the front rank, or a little in the lead.

  He was at the top of the slope at last, however, and there lay before him a sheer descent—a gravel slide covered with broken rocks. They had tried to navigate that before, and it was dangerous work. The stallion, recognizing the place, tossed his head and snorted. But when the master threw himself off his back, black Crusader held back not for a single moment. He threw himself down the slope with braced legs. A small avalanche followed him. Great stones began to bound past him and behind. But when he struck the level far beneath, he leaped instantly to the side. A dozen boulders large enough to have dashed him to death sprang past. Camden, sore from a dozen bruises, was instantly on his back.

  Behind them came the dogs streaming. But even dogs could not run fast down such a perilous place as this. They went cautiously, and some of them, halfway down, paused to raise their heads and wail out their rage and their hatred. As for the men, not one ventured it. Two or three raised their guns, but the sheriff, furious though he might be, commanded them not to shoot. There were too many thousands of dollars tied up in the horse that Harry Camden rode.

  So, with a gesture of derision, Camden jogged black Crusader down the valley.

  CRUSADER SPEAKS

  He had something to contend with besides the speed of one band of horsemen, however. The wide-ranging voices of telegraph and telephone were calling on town after town along the plains and the hills to send forth their volunteers for the chase, and they responded willingly, as true Westerners will ever do for the chase of either man or beast.

  Rounding the Sugar Loaf of that range, Harry Camden came upon a rush of horsemen straight in his face. He had to double back and shake them off by going straight up the sheer side of Sugar Loaf for some distance. Then he half circled it and dropped to a lower and smoother level again, where there was better footing for Crusader. But that detour cost him much, and cost Crusader still more. In addition, when he reached the foot of Mount Baldy, whose head was ever streaked with snow in the crevasses, another party came pouring out at him. On this occasion, he had merely to turn Crusader and flee swiftly down Squaw Creek, but the run told heavily on the tired horse. Where Squaw Creek narrowed to a gully, he encountered another climbing party in that mountain throat.

  It was a desperate climb that took them out of the valley to the lip of the plateau above, and half an hour after they had gained it, there streamed into view those who had originally begun that wild day’s hunting—Colonel Dinsmore and the sheriff and Charles Mervin, with a dozen other of the best-mounted men in the county at their backs.

  It meant another hard run. Half exhausted as Crusader was, Camden dared not put him across the flat of the table-land. Instead, he drove the good horse at the rough country. There he dismounted. He himself led the way, and the horse, breathing through crimson, straining nostrils, followed through the brush, while the hounds yelled around them but dared not close, and the huntsmen cursed and raged far and farther behind.

  He shot two impudent dogs. That made the rest keep back, and in the mid-afternoon he could let Crusader lie down like a tired man and sleep, while he himself stood by to keep guard. There was an hour of quiet. The eye of the stallion was bright once more and his ears pricking; all the time, sweeping around the verge of the horizon, rang the distant calling of the hounds. Five hundred dogs were working those hills, and a small army of hunters, and every hour saw the entry of new bodies of riders into the fray.

  Camden listened as to an exquisite concert arranged in his behalf. The hunting yell of every dog he valued as a priceless thing of beauty. There were teeth ready for his flesh, a heart hungry for his destruction, and he folded his arms across his breast and listened with his amber eyes half closed and a strange, ugly smile.

  It was the golden time of the late afternoon when a pack winded him again and came crashing into the thicket where he was hiding. He rode out onto the rolling hills beneath, and, looking back, he knew the dogs as they came, the same pack that had roused him that morning—the pack behind which the sheriff and Dinsmore were riding.

  It seemed to Camden like a touch of fate that, out of so many bands, one should have come upon him so often. Perhaps a little touch of awe entered that wild heart of his. He gave Crusader his head. The stallion went off with a rush. That matchless lilt was back in his gallop after his rest, and, looking back at the tired pack, Camden smiled to see them falter and stagger under the pace.

  But they came again, like the gallant animals they were, keen for their work that lay before them in full view.

  Out of the hills they swept into badly broken ground. Here the dogs gained, as a matter of course, but no matter what the dogs did, so long as the riders lost ground. Through broken ground, he knew that he could rest Crusader while the other horses were punished by their masters to keep up with the pace. Through the jumble of tiny ravines, little spring-flood gulches, brambles and thickets, close-woven mats of second-growth timber intermixed with vines. Camden kept on his way on foot, and the stallion swept along behind him.

  A full mile of that work left Harry Camden with lungs wheezing and throat dry and choked with the dust that he had inhaled. He came out on the farther side with a comfortable sense that he had won again. He leaped onto the back of the stallion once more. They were flogging their horses behind him; those poor nags would come out into the open, beaten and staggering with weariness, groggy from the fierce pace, but Crusader would be merely breathing in comfort.

  A narrow valley lay before him, and down this he turned the great horse at a moderate gallop—a moderate gallop for Crusader—a wild race for many a short-legged cow pony. But as he swung away around the first bend of the valley, he saw that they had tricked him at last. In that group of followers, there were some who knew this district—all strange to him—like a book. They had taken advantage of that knowledge. Cutting to the side, some of them had avoided the broken ground altogether and ranged easily into the lead, then broken into the valley lower down and were sweeping back to cut him off. The chosen men were here: old Dinsmore—his hat lost, his white hair blown by the evening wind that was rising—young Charles Mervin, the sheriff, and two others who were strangers to Camden.

  He pressed ahead at a keenly maintained pace. They rushed behind him with shouts. Then pack and horsemen broke out from the thicket at his side, and the two currents, joining, came like a roar of waves behind him, horses snorting with fatigue and under the spur, dogs yelling, open-mouthed, wild for the kill and reeling with weariness, and the men, cheering one another hoarsely. They had not covered the ground over which black Crusader had fled this day. They had not covered the half of it. Besides, it is always easier to hunt than it is to be hunted. But still there was something left in the great stallio
n. If his muscles were weak, his heart was still strong, and that supported him until, rounding out behind the shoulder of a hill straight before them, came a full half dozen of furious riders. They must have been waiting there, fatigued by their work of the day, chatting and resting until they began their journey home through the cool of the dusk. Now they had the enemy given into their hands, and their wild shout of victory passed down the valley and spatted against the wall of the gorge like the spat of a gigantic hand.

  Even the wild courage of Camden was daunted for the moment, but in an instant his heart returned, and then he felt Crusader weaken beneath him. The fighting soul of the great stallion could hardly stand up beneath that new discouragement. Camden, drawing his revolver, remembered that it was loaded with six shots, and that there were only six men before him.

  That was the first furious impulse. Then, realizing that against certain daylight odds it is the purest folly to contend, he looked about him to see if by any miraculous chance, there might be another loophole for escape. There seemed none. He looked forward at six comparatively fresh men on six hard-running horses. He glanced behind him to the sheriff’s own posse, exhausted, indeed, by the hunt that had lasted all the day but, being composed of chosen men, ready for anything—ready to keep on hunting through all the night, if need be. To his left, to fence him in, the wall of the cañon was flat and steep as a raised hand. On his right, Squaw Creek foamed and raged like a mad thing.

  But Squaw Creek was his only chance, and, although he shuddered when he viewed the white-streaked rush of the stream, he scanned it more closely. If he were to find any escape, it must be from this direction. But the stream was too wide, by far, to be jumped, even by such a mighty fencer as black Crusader, and, as for swimming the current, there seemed force enough in the flying water to tear the clothes from a man’s body.

  Camden made those observations and those reflections in the first quick glance. Then, farther up the stream, he saw not a hope, to be sure, but a wild chance such as desperate men and hunted beasts may take. Here, far out across the river, was a small rocky island, a few scant rods across, and beyond this another water gap to the farther shore. Camden made up his mind at once, and, swinging Crusader to the right, he drove the stallion straight toward the jump.

  There was no doubt that the big horse understood at once what was expected. The ears of Crusader flagged; the life went out of his gallop. He had lost all heart, and, without his best effort, he could never hope to clear that first long leap across the stream. So Camden, swinging low along the neck of the horse, like a jockey lifting a mount down the stretch in a race, called loudly on Crusader, and called again. The ears of the great horse pricked, and his gallop grew strong, and his head lifted a little as the head of a brave horse should.

  All of this was seen by Colonel Dinsmore and young Charles Mervin, and they understood before the others. For to the cowpunchers the change of direction in the fugitive’s flight meant little or nothing except an aberration of the mind. But the Colonel and Mervin were from hunting country, and they guessed the mind of Camden the moment he turned the head of Crusader. Mervin pulled the rifle out of the holster that ran along the side of his saddle, prepared to shoot. It was the colonel who knocked away his hand.

  “If the wild devil can do that with Crusader half dead under him, by heavens, Charles, he deserves to have the horse and to keep him,” said the colonel.

  The sheriff had gone mightily excited as he saw this prize at last within his grip. He called an order that sent three men to the right to cut in close to the river, in case Harry Camden should attempt, desperately, to double back along the margin of the water. Then he shouted to the others and led them forward to close.

  Meanwhile, black Crusader was gathering speed with every long bound that carried him down the slopes toward the margin of the stream. There was an eight-foot face of ragged stone, walling off the water at that point. But this gave all the better clearance for the jump, and, if Crusader winced when he first saw the peril and understood the mind of his rider, he gathered himself again desperately, and went at his work with a will.

  There was no doubt about the destination of Camden now. Every man in both posses could tell what he planned. Already it was almost too late to check the fearful impetus of the big horse without rolling him into the stream. The ’punchers, drawing rein hard, fell into hopeless confusion, shouting vain protests about they knew not what, and staring at the horror to be. Then they saw Crusader plunge to the verge of the rock. They saw him rear. They saw him spurn lightly the edge of the bank and shoot away into the air. With the gap beneath him and the shooting white-streaked waters there so far below, he seemed to have taken wings and flung himself at the sky. The last of the golden setting sun flared along his wet sides, and his mane tossed up like the crest of a warrior, and the white foam flew back from his champed bit.

  “Lord heavens!” cried the colonel, clutching the shoulder of Charles Mervin. “His ears are up . . . d’you mind that? He’s dying like a brave horse, Charles!”

  Charles Mervin, however, had clapped the back of his hand across his eyes and bowed his head to escape the sight of the thing to come, until he was rudely wrenched by the hand of the colonel, and the colonel’s voice cried sharp and small at his ear:“He’s over!”

  It was announced by the wild uproar of the cow-punchers, too, and there Mervin saw horse and man, looking even more gigantic, leaping across the little island that half blocked the course of Squaw Creek. Once more Crusader soared into the air. They saw him strike heavily on the farthermost bank—they saw him slip far down the bank toward the curling, screaming waters—and then they saw the rider whip off the back of the horse and draw mightily at the bridle until Crusader, gathering himself, came staggering off the edge of the bank and away across country, head down, knees feeble, and his master running lightly before him, and the stallion following like an obedient dog.

  The colonel and Mervin, who knew the horse so well, stared at one another incredulously. Even the cow waddies, with their rifles out and an easy shot before them, settled not a single gun butt into the steadying hollow of a shoulder. But they looked back to the colonel and read in his face that he did not want the robber harmed.

  Still they watched and stared and said not a word to one another. The fugitive ran up the hills beyond the stream. He turned a little west. In another moment, on a top ridge, cleanly outlined against the red west, he stood and stared back at the others. It was a perfect rifle shot, but not a man raised his weapon. Not a man so much as spoke.

  Black Crusader spoke the last word on the day of that historic hunt, as, indeed, was his right. No matter how exhausted he might be, he arched his crest before he disappeared, and raised his head, and presently his neigh, like a strong bugle call, rang back to them. Then horse and master dipped out of sight beyond the hill.

  THE THOROUGHBRED IS RETURNED

  It was a day of marvels to the men who rode in that chase. They returned wearily to their homes, and the colonel astonished Charles Mervin by actually showing a sort of high-hearted good nature as he made the journey back. But young Mervin dared not press him with questions or express surprise, because there was a great deal about the colonel that frightened Mervin nearly out of his wits.

  It was during a late supper that the colonel disclosed the secret of his happiness.

  “It was the way he ran and the way he jumped,” said the colonel. “They called him a sullen dog and a quitter on the tracks. I wish to heaven that they could have seen him work today with a real rider. It’s all he’s needed . . . not a withered little runt of a fellow with no heart in him . . . like Joe Tracy. But a real man . . . a man’s man! What do you think he weighs . . . this man-breaking, horse-charming, wild young devil?”

  “Harry Camden?”

  “Yes. Who else answers to that description?”

  “Over two hundred pounds, I should say.”

  “Two-thirty, my lad, I say two-thirty, at the least. Crusader c
arried two hundred and thirty pounds over hill and dale, kept it up all day, and wound up his work by putting on wings and hopping himself and his rider over Squaw Creek as lightly as a sparrow. He was like a bird, wasn’t he, Charlie?”

  “He was, sir.”

  “And that rascal standing on the top of the hill and throwing me back a neigh to mock me . . . Charlie, I almost loved the horse for his impudence, eh?”

  Charles Mervin could not exactly see the joy in the loss of a fifty-thousand-dollar horse in such short order. But before he could make an answer, and while the colonel’s words were hardly more than spoken, there came ringing through the night and through the colonel’s house a trumpet call that was very like that same neigh that had been blown back to them, early in the sunset time, from the ridge of the hill.

  It made them both start. It brought the colonel out of his chair. “Listen!” he said.

  “It couldn’t be,” said Charles Mervin, growing a little pale. “That devil wouldn’t dare to come back to your house with his mischief.”

  “He’s come back to murder me,” breathed the colonel, “because I led the chase during so much of today. Call the servants together. Where did that sound seem to come from . . . ?”

  Here there was a hurried entrance of the butler. “In the paddock, sir . . . ,” he began, stammering with eagerness and excitement.

  “What’s wrong?” barked out the colonel. “Call everyone in the house together and tell them to bring arms. Call in the men from the bunkhouse . . . there’s a devil of a. . . .”