Crusader

by Max Brand

  “They’ve just sent in the word, sir. Crusader. . . .”

  “I know it! Has been seen with a man on his back. . . .”

  “Has been seen in the paddock without any man near him. In the paddock with the blanket on his back!”

  The colonel staggered a little as he rounded the table on the run for the door.

  “Come on, Charlie!” he called. “Come on and let me see this affair before I go mad with it.”

  They hurried out together. It was all true. In a distant corner of the paddock, the light from many lanterns that the ’punchers had carried out glistened brightly over the great black body of Crusader. There he stood with his head down and a rear foot pointed, a very, very weary horse, indeed.

  “Look in here, sir!” called one of the men.

  The colonel and Mervin entered the box stall, and there was shown to them, by the lantern light, a message scrawled along the barn wall.

  Dere Colonel Dinsmore: You could of had them shoot me at Squaw Creek. You let me go free part because of Crusader and part because you liked the game. I don’t take no charity, so I’ve brought back Crusader. That makes us quits. Now you keep that hoss if you can.

  H.C.

  P.S. You are a square shooter.

  The colonel and Charles Mervin pored over this letter with bewilderment. It had been scrawled so raggedly that it was hard to read, and, once it had been made out, it was difficult to express the wonder and the concern that appeared in the face of the colonel. He passed out from the box stall again with Mervin.

  “Charlie,” he said as they stood together at the fence, looking at the perfect beauty of Crusader, “the point of this affair seems to be that this wild man, this Camden, is really a gentleman, after all!”

  This remark rather amused Charles Mervin. Indeed, it seemed to him such a rare response and so typical of the eccentric old colonel that he could not help repeating it the next day, when he went to call on pretty Ruth Manners.

  “An abysmal brute,” Charles Mervin said, “but the colonel sees a good sport in the workings of a beastly, superstitious brain.”

  “You’ve got no right to say that!” cried the girl.

  “Why not?”

  “Because,” she said, “I believe in him, too! And the colonel’s right.”

  She was so angry, and she looked up to him with such fire in her eyes that he stepped close with his arms thrown out in a little gesture. This was what Camden saw as he came around the trunk of the pine on the hill. He saw a gesture that, it seemed to him, promised that the girl, the next moment, would be caught into the arms of Mr. Charles Mervin. It struck Camden blind and dumb. He cast up a hand before his eyes so that he might not see this thing, and then, whirling, he raced away through the trees and down the hillside.

  In the hollow below he fell into a fit of brute passion. He caught up a young sapling and rent it up by the roots. He shattered its tough pole across a rock. He ripped the rock from its bed and smashed it to bits upon another.

  After that he set his face for the heights, and for twenty-four hours he never ceased his journey until he lay, at last, with a drawn face but with a savage fire in his amber eyes, on a fragrant bed of balsam boughs on a mountain’s side. The stars were coming. He watched them glimmering in the skies. Then he glanced deeper down into the valley. There were smaller, yellower stars scattered here and there, and every little golden spot of radiance meant a house and man. Camden started to his feet with a snarl and plunged deeper into the gloom of the woods.

  III

  CRUSADER TO BEAT FURY

  There was a change in the manner of Crusader. In the old days he had been as content with his paddock and his big box stall as a king in a kingdom. He could loiter in the stall when he wished, or he could go to the trough for the purest of pure well water, or he could stand under the big tree in a corner of the corral through the heat of the day. Always his eye was calm.

  Now there was a great difference. One would have thought him an exile from a happier place. In the night he rebelled against the box stall, and, when the door was locked upon him, he tried the stretch of the door itself with his hoofs and then tested the merits of the boards that walled him in with the same pile-driving blows. Twice the lock on the door was burst through and replaced. Then Crusader gave up the task of breaking a way out.

  Still he was not any happier, and all night he could be heard stirring up and down in the stall, twisting and turning gloomily, here and there, like a child that has been told it must sit on one chair and stay there. When, in the morning, he was turned out into the paddock again, he would walk restlessly up and down the fence, like a wild beast in a cage, staring far away toward the mountain, blue in the morning and the evening and brown in the full flare of the sun.

  This was not all, for the finest of hay and the choicest of oats no longer appealed to Crusader. He grew thin. His coat had lost its luster. His ribs were visible all up and down his sides; the long muscles could be seen the length of his neck.

  “He needs room,” said Colonel Dinsmore, and, at great expense, he had a forty-acre stretch of good pasture fenced to a height that even Crusader could not jump. But even with this ample range for exercise and diversion, Crusader improved no more. In fact, he seemed to be declining more than ever, for all day long he was trotting or galloping or restlessly walking up and down the fence that barred him from the mountains.

  The colonel sent for the wisest man in horseflesh to be found in the whole range of the mountains. It was Jack Murran, who came on his bay stallion, Fury. The colonel went out with him, and they leaned together against the fence and peered through at Crusader.

  “There,” said the colonel, “is a fortune in horseflesh thrown away. What can I do to cheer up the rascal, Murran? You know the story. He’s breaking his heart to get back to Harry Camden. How can I cheer him up?”

  “Give him company,” Murran responded.

  “I’ve tried to. He does his best to kill the horses . . . he pays no attention to the mares, and they’re so afraid of him that they daren’t go near.”

  “That’s the trouble,” said Murran, “with a hoss like that. All nerves and fire. Wear themselves out. Damn it, man, what good is a horse of that size for real use?”

  He gave his long scimitar-like mustaches a pull and stared at Dinsmore out of eyes that were a faded blue—sun faded, one might have said, from looking across the hot, shimmering face of the desert. As for the colonel, he could hardly believe his ears. He had been so accustomed to looking upon Crusader as the very greatest horse in the world that to hear his actual worth questioned shocked him. He felt that there must be a jest behind all this. But Murran was famous for a lack of humor.

  “Tell me,” he said, “what would you say that Crusader is good for, if anything, Mister Murran?”

  “For winning races on a track that’s shaved off smooth. For sprintin’, he would do. But in this here country. . . .” He waved a hand toward the distant mountains, as though to call upon them to be a witness to the justice of his remarks.

  “In this country?” prompted the colonel.

  “I’d hitch him to a plow,” said the curt Murran. “That’s where he’d do the most good. That’s where you could use the beef and the bone that he’s got on him. Doggone me if I see any other way!” He went on to explain: “Suppose that you was to want a good cuttin’ hoss that could foller a calf through a herd, dodgin’ like a cat. Would those long legs of his be any good? He’d tie ’em into a knot, tryin’to keep up with the calf.”

  “I admit,” the serious colonel said, “that Crusader would not be a very effective mount for the ordinary cowpuncher, granting even that the waddie could learn to ride and handle him. But there are other uses for a horse in this country.”

  “To go a distance,” said Murran, “who’d want a hoss like that? He’s got to have his water when he’s thirsty. He’s got to be groomed up fine as silk. And he’s got to have that every day.”

  The colonel shook his
head. “Environment is everything,” he replied. “Crusader has been raised like a millionaire’s child. That doesn’t mean that he couldn’t get on as a beggar. Give him his chance and you’d see him learnin’all the tricks just as any cow pony has learned them.”

  At this, Murran merely grunted. “Look yonder at Fury,” he said, and pointed.

  The colonel regarded the beautiful bay stallion with a tolerant eye. “Fury is a nice trick,” he said. “For a child’s pony, he’d do very well.”

  “A child’s pony,” echoed Murran, with wrath gathering in his face and in his eye.

  “He’s not an inch above fifteen hands, is he?” asked the colonel, still unable to control a smile.

  “Size ain’t what counts,” Murran shot back, looking down approvingly over his own form, which was certainly far from Herculean. “Size ain’t more’n half of it, partner. The way things is put together inside and out is what makes the difference. Look at that hoss, I say. Ain’t he in shape?”

  “As if he were in training,” admitted the colonel. “Not too fine and not too fat. Just right, I should say.”

  “How did he get that way?” asked Murran. “I’ve been takin’ a trip on him. He’s had his shot of work every day. Work that’d about kill most hosses. But nothin’ to Fury. And today I’ve rode him forty mile to this here place . . . and I’ll ride him forty mile back ag’in, if I have to. And when he steps out tomorrow morning, he’ll have his head just as high as he’s got it now. Well, Colonel, could you say that much for your Crusader?”

  With this, he grinned very broadly at the good colonel, who said gravely: “I rather think Crusader would hold up. He’s no more of a show horse than he is a work horse, you know.”

  Murran flushed a little and then snapped his calloused fingers.“Talkin’,” he said,“would never decide it.”

  “As for a test,” the colonel responded, “I should be very happy to make one, if Crusader were in good condition, and if there were anyone who could handle him.”

  “How about that ex-jockey . . . that Tracy?”

  The colonel smiled a little sadly. “Tracy is afraid to come within speaking distance of the horse,” he admitted.

  “There you are!” exclaimed Murran. “High-headed fool . . . excuse me for statin’ the facts, Colonel . . . but that’s what he is . . . too many nerves. All on the surface. Can’t stand nothin’. Won’t stand nothin’!”

  The temper of the colonel had been put under a severe strain during this interview, and now his nerves snapped. But he held himself under a stiff control. “I really wish,” he said, “that Crusader could have a chance to justify his existence . . . in your eyes. I suppose the other people hereabouts think of him very much as you do?”

  Murran nodded. “A pretty fine picture hoss. A fine racer, of course. We know what his record is on the track. But we’ve seen these Thoroughbreds worked out before in endurance races. Take ’em across country, up and down, hot and cold, rough trail, poor feed . . . and they can’t stand the gaff.”

  At this, the colonel cleared his throat and frowned. “I’ve heard somethin’ about that,” he said. “I know that some foolish men have sent out their fine horses . . . their best, even . . . and entered them in endurance tests here. They have put their horses into weather they were not accustomed to, terrain unfamiliar to them, different water, different food, and then expected them to do well.”

  “I’ve heard ’em talk the same way . . . after their hosses was beat,” said Murran. “By my way of thinkin’, a good hoss is a good hoss, come bad luck or good. He’ll work his way out, and that’s all there is to it! What’s weather or food or water to Fury?”

  He pointed triumphantly to the bay stallion, then he made a gesture implying some scorn toward the black in the corral—the lofty form of Crusader. But he had gone quite a bit too far. The colonel had endured a great deal more than he could stand, and now his temper got the best of him, although he was still able to smile.

  “Murran,” he said, “I should like to know what you would consider a conclusive proof of a horse’s real ability.”

  “They ain’t more’n one,” said the other. “That’s the Jericho race.”

  Even the colonel was taken a little aback by this. For the race over Mount Jericho, which took place every third year and was due to be run within six weeks, was a six-hundred-mile grind through terrible mountains and burning deserts, beginning and ending with the crossing of Mount Jericho itself, a terrible mountain that even a goat would have shunned. In that famous race, scores of the finest horses in the West were entered. Arabians were brought from across the seas to attempt the winning. But in the end, it was always some Western horse, built up with the blood of Thoroughbreds or Arabs, perhaps, but always with a liberal cross of the old Spanish mustang, that won—some hardy animal that was accustomed to the terrific mountain trails, the withering heat of the desert, the blighting winds that comb the bare rocks above timberline.

  “Is Fury,” asked the colonel, “entered in that race?”

  “He is,” Murran stated.

  “Do you ride him?”

  “Nobody else, sir!”

  A thought had been born in the brain of the colonel, and his eye glinted with it. “Do you think, Murran, that Fury could beat Crusader in such a race?”

  At this, Murran laughed frankly and openly. “Two like him! He’d beat two like Crusader!”

  “That is easily said. . . .”

  Murran was in possession of millions that far exceeded even the great wealth of the colonel. Copper and cattle told the tale of his success. Moreover, in his own way, he was just as proud of the horse breeding that had produced Fury as the colonel could be proud of the great Crusader himself. He grew a bit red in the face as he snapped out:“I’m willing to talk any way you say, sir! Five thousand that Fury beats Crusader. But who the devil will ride your hoss?”

  “I’ll attend to that. That’s my risk.”

  “I’ll give you odds, Colonel. Ten thousand to five.”

  “I never take odds in such propositions. Ten thousand, even, if you will.”

  “I hate to do this, Colonel,” said Murran. But his pale blue eyes were shining.

  “Naturally,” said Dinsmore. “But an idea is an idea, and we have to suffer for them.”

  He called to a dapper young man who had just come out from the house toward the corral. “Charlie Mervin! Come here, will you? I want you to shake hands with Mister Murran. You are to witness that we have just wagered ten thousand apiece on the Jericho Mountain race. Crusader to beat Fury.”

  “But, Colonel,” gasped the young Mervin, hurrying up, “who’s to ride Crusader?”

  “One man,” said the colonel, “or no one.”

  THE CARDBOARD NOTICE

  There was no doubt that the colonel regretted his bet ten minutes after it was made. He was heard to walk up and down in his room for a long time that night, before he went to bed. The next morning, early, he rode briskly to the town of Twin Creeks.

  In Twin Creeks, he went straight to the house of Sheriff Tom Younger, that man of wisdom and of might.

  “Sheriff,” he said, “I see you are in health.”

  “You never seen me no other way,” the sheriff assured him. “What might be wrong with you, Colonel Dinsmore?”

  “Nothing. I’ve come to ask you a question.”

  “Set down and rest your feet, Colonel. What might it be?”

  They sat down on the verandah of the old house, about which the huge cottonwoods made a semblance of coolness.

  “I’ve come to talk about Harry Camden.”

  “It ain’t the best thing I’d pick for talkin’,” Younger observed.

  “I know that. What I wish to know is . . . exactly what is there against Harry Camden?”

  “You ask that?” shouted the sheriff. “Why, man, ain’t it Harry Camden that stole Crusader?”

  “He did,” admitted the colonel, “but you know that Crusader is back in his corral.”


  “Because we made it so hot for the hound that he had to bring back your hoss!”

  “Now, Sheriff, that’s hardly logical. He proved that he could run away from everything in the countryside while he was on the back of Crusader.”

  “Him? Not at all! It was luck that saved him the day that he was hunted through the hills.”

  The colonel had not come to argue in this fashion, so he remained discreetly silent for the moment. Then he went on quietly: “That’s the capital charge against him, then, the stealing of Crusader?”

  “That? The devil, man . . . I should say not. Ain’t it Harry Camden that come in and tried to wreck Twin Creeks?”

  “When was that?”

  The sheriff groaned at the mere recollection. “That jail was my pride,” he said. “There never was a man that broke out or bought his way out. I had steel bars that I could trust. I had guards that I could trust. Then along comes this here Harry Camden. He makes a fool out of the best guard that ever stood over the jail. He busted in, he took out young Ned Manners, and he got clean away with him. Maybe you ain’t heard about that more’n a dozen times?” he added sourly. “The boys’ll never forget it, nor let me forget it. I ain’t been able to mention the jail for months for fear of bein’ laughed at.”

  “And yet,” said the rancher, “the man whom Camden took out of the jail was innocent of any crime. He could never be put back into the prison, could he?”

  “That ain’t the point. We ain’t talkin’ about young Manners. We’re talkin’ about this Camden. He’s guilty as the devil, partner!”

  “And what else besides breaking into the jail?”

  “A nacheral born thief. He’s swiped stuff from twenty men!”

  “I understand about that. When he needs ammunition, he rides to the nearest ranch and takes what he wants, but doesn’t he always pay for it in his own way? If he takes food today, he comes down from the hills next week with a load of venison that will feed the whole ranch for three days. Isn’t that the way he works it?”