Crusader

by Max Brand

  “You can’t take the stuff and then try to pay for it later,” insisted the sheriff. “It ain’t the law. A gent has to be willing to sell what he owns before you can out and buy it. And then pay your own price!”

  “But Camden usually pays three times as much as it’s worth.”

  “I dunno . . . I dunno,” said the sheriff, frowning and shrugging his shoulders in a manner that very plainly indicated that he was tired of this conversation, or at least a good deal embarrassed by the direction that it was now taking. “The outstandin’ fact is that young Harry Camden has made a pile of trouble. Folks don’t feel safe ridin’ through the mountains. That big devil might jump on ’em. Look at him, ridin’ right into this here town and stickin’ me up . . . right on this here porch, right. . . .” He choked with fury. “Yonder into them bushes he chucked the guns that he took from me.” The sheriff drew out a long Colt .45. “And I says to myself then and I says to myself now that someday this here Colt will have a chance to talk right back to him, and say what it’s got on its mind!”

  “These various thefts,” suggested the colonel, “might be compromised, I presume?”

  “How d’you mean?”

  “If people thought that Camden would pay back the value of any actual claims that they might have against him. . . .”

  “I dunno,” said the sheriff. “I never heard it put that way.”

  “How many?” asked the colonel. “How many actual complaints have been lodged against Camden by people who . . . ?”

  “Complaints? I hear ’em near every day.”

  “They want him jailed?”

  “Sure. I don’t have to ask. He’s a crook, ain’t he?”

  The colonel sighed. It was a difficult proposition to persuade the sheriff. Suddenly he said: “Sheriff Younger, there is preeminently only one thing in which you are interested.”

  “I dunno till you tell me what.”

  “The maintenance of the dignity of the law, sir.”

  “Sure, sure. Speakin’ by and large, that’s the thing.”

  “This affair of Camden in Twin Creeks . . . that is what troubles you most?”

  “I dunno that I ’d say that.”

  “Surely,” said the colonel, “you would hold no malice against this fellow Camden because he liberated from jail a man who was in danger because he was accused of a crime that Camden himself had committed? And if he came to hold you up on this very porch, wasn’t it to assure you that the guilt belonged on his own head and not on that of young Manners?”

  “Looked at that way,” said the sheriff more gently, “there’s something in what you say. About him busting into the jail . . . or what he done to me . . . I guess that I ain’t aimin’ to hold that ag’in’ him! Not at all. If the gents that have got claims ag’in’ him would give them up . . . he could go free, for all of me.”

  It was a huge concession, and the colonel instantly took it up.

  “I will pay every cent,” he said, “of every claim that is made against Camden by any and all. You may publish that. Let people bring their charge and their proof to you, and I’ll pay every cent of it without too much debate on the subject.”

  It staggered the sheriff. He sat for a moment as one dazed. Then he turned his head and examined the features of the colonel cautiously, as though fearing that the offer might be qualified with a smile. But there was no qualification. The colonel was perfectly serious.

  “I dunno that I understand,” muttered the sheriff. “He swiped your horse and now. . . .”

  “He brought back Crusader. Will you do what I ask?”

  After all, the sheriff was as generous a man as ever lived. He swore violently a few times. Then he shook hands with the colonel and vowed, with just as much additional profanity, that he would be glad to do as much as he could to give Camden another chance.

  That was the reason that, the next day, a singular notice appeared in the Twin Creeks News. In a week it brought in merely half a dozen applications for relief. All these were trifling sums. The others who had been plundered by Camden seemed to be willing to let the matter drop, or perhaps they had been so generously repaid in kind that they would have welcomed another visit from the thief. All of those who made application received instantly the cash they demanded from the hand of the editor of the Twin Creeks News who asked them, in return, to renounce all legal claims against the criminal who was then at large. It was done.

  The criminal record of Harry Camden was so securely purged that there remained against him only the voice of the colonel himself and the sheriff, and the sheriff and the colonel chose to hold their peace.

  When the week had ended and the colonel and the sheriff decided that there would be no future applications, Dinsmore went into his room at his ranch and wrote out an announcement in large letters on a stiff piece of cardboard. It read as follows:

  Harry Camden:

  If you will trust yourself to an interview with me, you will find me any night after tonight, and beginning with tonight . . . Tuesday . . . alone in my room, unarmed. I shall be very glad to see you when you choose and will vouch for it that you will learn of matters which will be greatly to your satisfaction.

  Robert Oliver Dinsmore

  This he carried to the corral fence and tacked it securely to the outer side of a post. Charles Mervin read the sign first and came hurrying into the house.

  “Colonel,” he said, “do you mean to tell me that you would trust yourself in the hands of that murderous villain . . . alone . . . and actually unarmed?”

  “I mean exactly that,” said the colonel, who disliked explanations, and he refused to make further comment. He went to the open air and walked up and down to cool off and adjust his thoughts to this astonishing situation. He had only one desire, and that was to preserve the life of his friend.

  PROTECTING THE COLONEL

  Certain recollections decided Charles Mervin that it would be folly for him to await the coming of the big man and to try to check the onslaught of Harry Camden. Better, far better, to gather to his aid some man of known talent as a fighter and of unquestioned courage. The two of them, working together, might be able really to protect the rancher.

  The person he sought out in the bunkhouse was Dan Johnson, long, freckled, silent, mighty of hand, and deadly with a gun. Dan Johnson listened to the strange story without saying a word, because words were never current coin with the big Swede. But when the story was ended, Dan Johnson took up his sombrero, clamped it hard on his head, girded his guns around his waist—for Dan was a true two-gun man—and then accompanied Charles Mervin to the house.

  He agreed implicitly with Mervin that the only thing to do was to sit quietly near the room of the rancher and wait until the man from the mountains came. Then they would strike him down.

  “Which it looks like settin’ a trap for a lobo,” stated Dan Johnson. “It looks sort of sneakin’work.”

  “What is he?” asked Mervin. “Very much worse than a wolf, in fact. Is he not?”

  Dan Johnson was forced to agree. “After all,” he said, “he’s outlawed. We’re safe.”

  “No longer outlawed,” Mervin answered gloomily. “He was brought back inside the law today, because the colonel paid all his debts. And he persuaded the sheriff to drop his grudge. He’s back inside the law.”

  “Suppose we drop him, then?”

  “If we find him sneaking into the house? No jury in the country would ever find us guilty for that.”

  They sat down in the garden, close under the side of a strong hedge, commanding from their position the little balcony on which the two windows of the colonel’s room opened. There seemed no reasonable doubt that the man from the mountains would approach the house from this direction, and, coming at them across the open lawn, they would be able to challenge him, and then pick him off as they chose.

  It was careful work, however. They had to deal with one who carried with him the brain of a man and the sense equipment of an animal. Therefore, they coul
d not drowse at their post. They had to sweep the lawn constantly and anxiously. They had to watch the road that twisted in a dim white course over the distant hill and into the next valley.

  “The colonel believes that Camden is watching the horse pretty closely,” said Mervin at last. “You would think that he was confident that Camden came down every night to see the horse.”

  “Maybe he does,” murmured Dan Johnson.

  “What?” exclaimed the other. “Comes down here to the ranch and risks his neck to see the horse?”

  “We’ve found the print of his foot four times,” said Dan. “Twice it was bare, and, by the size of it, I guess that it was Camden’s, all right. Then, over by the watering trough, we seen what looked like the print of a pretty rough-made moccasin. I guess that was Camden again.”

  “You didn’t tell the colonel?”

  “What good would it do?”

  “He’d double the guards on Crusader. Do you think that he can afford to lose that horse, Johnson?”

  Johnson lighted a cigarette. “He’s guarded enough. That fence is enough, and they’s enough padlocks on the gate to break the heart of any crook that ever tries to get through ’em. No, sir, Camden ain’t gonna sashay into that there corral and get away with the hoss. Not unless he had half an hour to cut his way through the fence and a plumb silent saw to do the work for him. Then he might take a chance to get Crusader out, but, just the same, he’s been able to get in to the hoss. I guess half a dozen times he’s been in to see him. That’s why Crusader is dyin’on his feet.”

  Mervin started. “You think that he’s poisoning the horse? Do you think that, Johnson?”

  Johnson shook his head. “Seems,” he said, “like it would please you a lot to have him turn out the worst skunk in the world. Well, sir, that ain’t what I mean. Maybe he’s bad, but I dunno that he’s bad enough to kill a helpless hoss like Crusader. What I mean is that about the time when Crusader begins to get used to things in the corral and the stall, and about the time that he begins to walk up and down the fence a little bit less, and take a pile more notice of his chuck, along comes Camden again, and the next morning we find old Crusader out there in the corral, starin’ at the mountains and neighin’ at the hawks over his head, and bustin’ his heart to get through that fence and away!”

  To this Mervin listened, greatly impressed. “A very queer fellow,” he said.

  “If he could act like other folks,” declared Dan Johnson, “there wouldn’t be none better than this here Camden. You take it, by and large, it was pretty square of him to bring back Crusader after the colonel done him that good turn on the trail.”

  “I fail to see the point,” Mervin objected stiffly. “He owed his life to the generosity of the colonel . . . the absurd generosity of the colonel, I think that I may call it. Naturally even the wildest man would wish to make some sort of a return. He could hardly have done otherwise.”

  At this, Dan Johnson smiled through the darkness. “Look here, Mister Mervin,” he said, “I figger what the rest of the boys figger . . . that you got a reason for wanting to see this Camden put out of the way.”

  “I?” cried Mervin in the strongest protest. “By no means! What on earth could the fellow mean to me?”

  “It’s only hearsay,” said the cowpuncher, and offered no more.

  “Tell me what you’re driving at,” Mervin insisted. “I’d like to know . . . no matter whether or not there’s anything in it . . . and, of course, there can’t be.”

  “Of course,” said the cowpuncher, “there ain’t anything in it, but the boys have got to talk, you know. There ain’t very much else to do, Mister Mervin. What they say, I don’t mind tellin’, is that you see a good deal of pretty Ruth Manners. Which everybody else would like to, too, if they had the time.”

  “A lovely girl,” admitted Charles Mervin at once. “But what on earth have my calls on Miss Manners to do with this brute, this cave man, Harry Camden?”

  “Why,” murmured Dan Johnson, with some embarrassment, and straining his eyes toward the other through the darkness of the night, “they say that Harry Camden is sort of interested in the same place, and that maybe you’d like to have him out of the way to get clearer sailin’. I’ve blurted it all out. There’s what folks say. I guess that there ain’t nothin’ in it.”

  Mr. Charles Mervin felt very much like the ugly lady of the story who refused to have any mirrors in her house but could not help seeing herself in the water one day as she leaned to drink from the still waters of the pool. So it was with Mervin. He had been telling himself in such a convincing manner that he desired only the protection of the good rancher that he had almost persuaded himself that he had no ulterior motive whatever. Now, being brought up short and checked with the facts of the case, he could not help wincing. For he saw himself and the condition of his mind too clearly. He had never admitted before this moment, really, that he loved Ruth Manners. She had been merely a pretty picture that remained a vast deal of the time in his mind. But now she was something more. He could not avoid seeing that what the cowpunchers rumored among themselves was the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. He loved Ruth Manners. He dreaded the rivalry of that wild man, that singular will-o’-the-wisp, Harry Camden. How fortunate it would be if he could brush the thought of Camden from the mind of the girl forever—with a bullet!

  He recovered from the brown study into which he had fallen. He looked to the cowpuncher. “Of course,” said Mervin, “this is a very serious thing. Of course, there’s nothing in it.”

  “Sure,” said the good-natured companion. “I’m just telling you. Leave it go at that.”

  They became silent again, as they watched a lantern carried from the bunkhouse toward the corral, the immense, shadowy legs of the carrier swaying dimly across the fences and the barns as he strode like a giant. Then the lantern was swallowed in the black mouth of a barn. From the belly of the barn it cast forth only an occasional ray or sparkle. All the rest was darkness. In the darkness nothing lived, nothing stirred, except an occasional whispering of the wind in the big oak tree that grew on the farther side of the hedge and extended its strong branches across the place where they sat. They held their breath and waited.

  “Could he get up to the house from the far side of the hedge?” Mervin asked of his companion in a sudden whisper.

  “No chance of that. He’d have to get across the hedge before he could come at the house, I guess.”

  “Johnson!”

  “Well?”

  “Look sharp!”

  “D’you hear something?”

  “I feel something.”

  “What you mean?”

  “There’s a danger near us, Johnson. I can feel the chill of it in my bones.”

  “The devil, Mister Mervin,” said the other sharply. “What could there be that’s wrong? Just look around you. There ain’t a thing.” He added: “I guess you been thinkin’ about this till you got all wrought up and. . . .” Here, as he raised his head toward the tree, his voice ended in a gasp. He had no chance or time to cry out. There was only a brief gurgling sound that formed vaguely from the hollow of his throat.

  Mervin glanced sharply up in the same direction, and he had scant time to glimpse a body descending from the limb of the tree that arched above them. The form struck Dan Johnson and crumpled the big cow-puncher against the ground as if he were a figure of brittle paper.

  Mervin himself had barely time to snatch the revolver from his pocket, but he did not have time to press the trigger with his finger before the form of the assailant lifted himself from the helpless body of Johnson. Then there was revealed to the terrified Mervin no wild beast, but a thing in the shape of a man that sprang at him from all fours, like a very beast, indeed.

  A hand whose fingers threatened to crush the bones of his wrist first fastened upon him, and the gun fell to the ground. Then a fist that struck, as a club strikes, landed with full force across the side of his jaw, and darkness dropped h
eavily across his brain.

  When he recovered, he was dangling in mid-air, with the brightness of the stars swimming dizzily above his eyes. A moment later he had recovered enough of his senses to know that he was being carried through the balcony window and into the room of the rancher. Then he was caught by the nape of the neck, and thrust forward at arm’s length by the big man who had captured him. Before him sat the colonel himself, staring wildly at this odd scene.

  “I came along trustin’ to your word, Colonel,” said the deep rumbling voice of Harry Camden. “And this is part of what I found waitin’to murder me!”

  CAMDEN TO RIDE CRUSADER

  The surprise, the grief, the fury of the colonel made him half rise from his chair and then fall back into it. After this, he fastened his glance upon the white face of young Mervin and saw a great blue and red lump forming on the side of his jaw. Certainly that youth had received at least a partial punishment to reward him for his ill doing.

  “Mervin,” he said at last, “I am trying to believe that this thing is a dream. Do you mean to say that you attacked Camden when he came to the house upon my public and special invitation?”

  “It was for the sake of your own safety, Colonel,” stammered Mervin. “If Camden will stop choking me. . . .”

  He was released, and sank into a chair where he fumbled at his throat and lay back breathing hard. He had received a shock far more severe mentally than physically.

  “We were afraid, sir,” he said at last, “that this man would do you some harm.”

  “Camden,” said the colonel, turning his back on Mervin, “I hope you will believe me when I tell you that I had nothing to do with this . . . unhappy affair?”

  The big man nodded. “There ain’t any harm done,” he said. “Let him run along and keep away from me, though. It sort of works me up, Colonel, to look at him.”

  “Mervin,” the colonel said coldly, “I cannot help thinking that Mister Camden is very generous . . . and gives you very good advice. I’ll talk with you later about this affair.”