Crusader

by Max Brand

  So Mervin, with a final glance of grief and rage at his conqueror, rose and left the room. The colonel had pointed out a chair that Camden took. Two hundred pounds of brawn and bone, he gave an impression of far greater size. He seemed a giant. His clothes, perhaps, helped toward that impression. They were primitive things. A flap of skin sewed roughly together served as moccasins. His trousers were frayed through at the knees. Undressed deerskin made his jacket. He carried no gun. There was only a long sheath knife at his belt, cased in a homemade scabbard of horsehide. His hat was a battered piece of old felt, faded from its original black to green. From under its short brim a brown, big-featured face and bright, steady eyes looked out at the colonel.

  “Camden,” said the colonel, “before I’m through talking, you will understand how greatly it would be to my disinterest to plan such an attack on you . . . to say nothing of what a man of honor would feel about such a matter.”

  Camden made a gesture that dismissed the entire story of the attack that had been planned against him. “Honest men,” he said, “are like black foxes. You can tell ’em by a look. I wouldn’t be here, Colonel, if I had any sort of a doubt about you.”

  At this, the colonel sighed with relief. “It’s about Crusader,” he said at last.

  “You still got him,” said the big man, snapping out the words. “That fence of yours is hard for me to beat. But I’ll figger out a way, pretty soon.”

  “Perhaps,” said the colonel, “you will not have to plan. I want to ask you, in the first place, if you think that with you on his back any horse in this country could beat Crusader on a cross-country ride?”

  Camden smiled. “That ain’t worth talkin’ about,” he declared. “I got no money to put up . . . otherwise, I’d make a bet. I mean, if I was on the real Crusader . . . not the skinny old black hoss that you got in your corral.”

  “Take Crusader with you,” said the colonel bluntly. “Handle him as you please. Get him in shape. You still have five weeks. In the meantime, I’ll enter his name in the Jericho Mountain race. Camden, will you ride him in that for me?”

  “And afterward?” Camden asked sharply.

  “Why, afterward . . . ,” the voice of the colonel trailed away. It was what he had known must come into their discussion.

  “I’ve arranged matters with the sheriff,” he said. “You are now a citizen in good standing in the community, Camden. The law has no hold on you. I thought that, considering this small service, you might be willing to handle Crusader and ride him in the race for me. For that, plus a considerable sum of money, of course.”

  Camden shook his head. “The law don’t bother me none,” he observed. “It’s sort of a game to play with it, Colonel. What gents have done for me was never none too gentle. What the law has done for me ain’t been none too gentle, either.” He thrust out his great craglike jaw as he spoke. “I don’t ask no favors,” said Camden. “I don’t give none. I got no regrets about what I’ve done. I got no regrets about what others have done to me. It’s a fight, and I like fightin’. I was made for it, and I was trained for it. And I ain’t got the worst of the game yet. Now, what we’re talkin’ about is Crusader. I ride him in this race and win it for . . . you!” He put a solemn accent on the last word. “Me and Crusader walk around and get used to one another again,” he continued. “And when we’re pretty friendly, then I got to bring him back to your corral and put him up there? Colonel, I dunno that I ’d better try it. I might do my best to get that hoss back into your corral, but it might be too hard for me to do it. Colonel, you been square with me, and I want to be square with you. Don’t ask too much out of me.”

  It was perhaps the longest speech that Harry Camden had made before in his entire life; certainly never again, thereafter, did he say so much consecutively. Even the colonel was astonished.

  “Crusader’s disposition has changed,” he said. “Do you think that you could still handle him?”

  “I figger that I could, maybe,” said the big man.

  “Suppose we go out and see.”

  They left the house and went to the forty-acre run; the colonel unlocked the gate, and they entered. Before the first lock had been snapped behind them, a rush and a whir of hoofs sounded in their ears.

  “Crusader’s got my scent,” Camden announced as the colonel shrank away for safety and even laid a hand on the rail of the fence to climb out of the enclosure.

  The mighty hand of Camden fell upon his shoulder and drew him back. “There ain’t nothin’ to fear,” said the man of the mountains. “Crusader won’t do you any harm. He won’t see nothin’ but me.” With this, he stepped boldly forward and met the charge of the black monster.

  There was only enough starlight for the colonel to see what followed, but that starlight was enough. He watched Crusader dance and plunge and frolic around Camden. He saw the great stallion rear as though he would beat the man into the ground, but his fore hoofs descended gently. He saw the horse frolic like a dog that cannot show its joy except with its teeth on its master’s hand.

  When at last Crusader came to a pause, his head held high, the arch was back in his long neck and his eyes were glittering again. Magic had transformed him. Camden came slowly forward, with the horse following at his heels.

  “It is a marvelous thing,” said the colonel, with all of his heart in his voice. “It is a very great thing, my friend. Will you tell me how you managed it?”

  “By never usin’ a whip,” Camden said. “And by lookin’ at him the same way that you look at a man. When you look at a man, you figger on what is goin’on behind his eyes. When most folks look at a hoss, they don’t figger on nothin’ except how he’s actin’ . . . what he’s doin’with his heels . . . his head, and all that. But a hoss has got a mind. A hoss has got a soul. If they’s a heaven, Colonel, and I can get there, it’ll be on Crusader’s back. If they’s a hell and I land there, Crusader, he’d come rarin’ and tearin’ down to hell and take me plumb out. That’s about the way of it.”

  The colonel, although he was a hardheaded man, saw and watched and believed even those extravagant words. “In fact,” he said, “Crusader is your horse, Camden. I’ve paid money for him. But you’ve made him know his master.” He sighed bitterly. “I’ve never been able to touch that horse, Camden, unless at least two men were holding him.”

  “Colonel,” said the wild man, “you can’t hold no hoss like this with a rope. But you could walk around him and lay a hand on him where you pleased.”

  “Do you mean that?”

  “I mean just that.”

  The colonel gathered his courage like a robe about him. He advanced. He stretched out a tentative hand. Crusader snorted and tossed his head. “He’d tear my arm off,” breathed the colonel, stepping back.

  “He won’t touch you,” insisted Camden. “Try him.” He added to the horse a brief word—or perhaps it was a mere wordless murmur. At any rate, it made Crusader stand like a rock.

  The colonel with fear and delight in his soul touched that fine head fairly between the nose and ran his fingers lightly down to the velvet of the muzzle. Crusader did not stir, nor did he move when the colonel slipped his hand down the silken neck of the stallion.

  “Camden,” he said, “if my heart were big enough to do such a thing, I ’d give this horse to you. Because it’s to you that he belongs. But I’ll do something else, which is as generous as I can be. If you’ll ride him in the Jericho race, I’ll lend him to you for six months. If you win the race, you can have him for a year.”

  “And then?” asked Camden.

  “Then we’ll see.”

  There was a pause, during which Camden stared through the dim light at the face of the colonel.

  “He’s your hoss,” he said. “And I ’d go to hell and back for the sake of ridin’him only one day.”

  CAMDEN’S RESOLVE

  The whole force of the big Dinsmore ranch stood about to see the famous Harry Camden ride famous Crusader away from the corral, but they
were disappointed. He did not even mount the stallion. When the gate was unlocked, Camden entered and came out with Crusader behind him. Straight across the plains toward the mountains walked Camden, and just behind him jogged Crusader, his flanks a series of highlights and shadows, so deep were the hollows between his ribs.

  Those who hunted for sensations followed the wild man across the plain for some time, until Harry Camden turned back on the riders and drew a long Winchester from the holster that ran diagonally down the blanket which he used in lieu of a saddle on the great horse. The view of that rifle served instead of a harangue. The followers observed, noted, and departed with haste.

  Camden went on for the mountains. Crusader was lean and weak with leanness. The journey through the foothills was most exhausting, but Camden knew what he wanted, and he pressed relentlessly forward until he had climbed above the first range, and then journeyed laboriously on to the second. On the farther side of the crest he found the place. It was a narrow plateau, perhaps half a mile wide and eight or ten miles in length. It was fenced away from sheep and cattle or even the deer by the precipitous rocky slopes on either side. To be sure, the mountain sheep, those irresistible climbers, loved that airy pasture and were often near it, but they did not come in sufficient numbers to deplete its stores seriously. The bunch grass, that finest of all food for cattle, grew thick on this upland. The sun had cured it as well, and better than the finest haymakers in the world could have done. It was sweet to the tooth of Crusader.

  There he ate his fill morning, noon, and night, and, when he cared for water, there was a rill that tumbled down from the eastern height and pooled itself in a little crystal lake at one end of the plateau. He had exercise, too, even during those days of the up-building of his strength. He was ridden at a gentle pace up and down the plateau with the weight of Harry Camden on his back, first walking, then trotting, then cantering, but, inside of a week, Camden let him gallop.

  Another week and a third ended, before he was willing to loose the reins on Crusader, but, as the third week terminated, he would sometimes cry aloud to the big black stallion and send him winging over the rolling surface at breakneck speed. It was not running, it was flying, and the horse loved it as much as a man.

  Once a week Colonel Dinsmore traveled up into the foothills, and Camden brought the great stallion down. Every week, as he saw the changes in the big animal, the colonel marveled. The first seven days worked a great transformation. By the end of the first fortnight—the original and natural strength of Crusader showed through his shining coat, and the big ropy muscles working plainly.

  “I am going back to bet against the field,” Colonel Dinsmore said. “And the field is growing every moment, Camden. The entry fee is raised to a hundred dollars for every horse, and there are over sixty entries. Think of it, Camden! They have Thoroughbreds from England and from France. They have Arabs, Kentucky-bred. They have an Arabian mare that has been shipped all the way from the desert of Arabia. They have mustangs of the pure hell-fire breed. There are a few mongrels of the range . . . crosses of unknown blood, but every one a horse of tried endurance. Every one of them is being worked across the mountains now. They are growing used to the rocks and the steep places. There is only one devil that worries me, Camden. You are a big fellow . . . and Crusader is a big horse. Won’t your own weight kill you? The best climbers ought in reason to be the small tough horses with the very light riders. What will Crusader do among the rocks?”

  Camden opened his lips to speak, but apparently he decided that argument or illustration was useless. He merely stated a calm conviction:“Crusader will not be beaten,” he said, and there let the matter rest.

  After all, it is much easier to put faith in miracles than in common sense. There is in every man a desire to believe in the impossible. So it was with the colonel. He stared at the giant, formed a question in his mind, and then decided that it would be well enough to let matters stand unexamined. If this strange fellow, this child of nature, this unexplained mystery among men, was certain that he could win the race with Crusader, by all means let the thought be cherished in him. So felt the colonel, and, half an hour afterward, he was started for his ranch again.

  He was gone some time before Harry Camden remembered that he had not yet asked a most important question concerning the course over which the race was to be run. For rocks and for mountains he would answer for the big stallion. But he must know the nature of that wide stretch of desert south of Jericho Mountain over which they must pass. If it were firm ground, let the heat and the distance be what it might, the confidence of Camden would not alter. But if it were soft sand, that was very different. For, in that case, Crusader must be given work in the same footing. He must be trained to plod patiently through sand, fetlock-deep, and learn the art of desert travel. For it is an art, and a horse that attempts to fight his way through will exhaust his strength quickly, whereas the horse that goes delicately, putting down the hoof flat and without a drive, gets on famously well. Camden had seen mustangs cross the desert sands with almost the ease of camels. This was the question for the answer to which he hastened after the colonel. He blanketed Crusader again, leaped onto his back, and presently was coursing down the side of the long mountain in pursuit.

  The colonel, however, must have taken advantage of the fine spirits of his horse and loosed the reins on it, for it was nowhere to be seen, although Camden could see plainly the sign of its trail along the slope. He prepared himself for a longer chase, therefore, and he had just drawn back Crusader to a swinging, effortless long gallop, when he saw another rider had cut in and followed the same course.

  Presently, in fact, he saw the horse and rider looming ahead of him, with the sun flashing on the sweating flanks of the animal. He recognized the horse at once. It was the fine mare of Charles Mervin, a beautiful brown mare with a white-stockinged left fore leg and another white-stockinged right hind leg. By that mark alone he could have recognized the animal, but, even without those marks, he felt that he would have known the rider. It was Mervin himself, and of all men in the world he was least welcome to the eye of Harry Camden, for this was the most ardent suitor of Ruth Manners; this was he who, as Camden had reason to believe, was the favored lover of the girl. Even now Mervin was changing the direction of his mare and turning her toward that point of the compass where the Manners’house lay.

  It seemed odd to Camden. Here was a man from the household of Dinsmore who had ridden in the colonel’s direction far up into the mountains; and yet he had not accompanied Dinsmore. Certainly he must have known that the colonel was riding, and where. Why, then, had Mervin chosen to go alone? Why was he not returning now in the company of the colonel? What had brought Mervin here among the highlands?

  To see Crusader. There seemed no other object. Why, then, had he wished to see the stallion in secret, and spy upon the big horse from a distance?

  Any one of these questions would have caused Camden to follow the other. He swung away from the trail of Dinsmore and followed close on the trail of Mervin, keeping just out of sight, with always one range of hills between him and the other. They dipped out of the higher and steeper hills. They came into rolling ground in the dusk of the day, and at last, as he had surmised, Mervin came through the evening to the little hollow in which the Manners’house stood.

  He reined Crusader into a clump of trees and stared gloomily down at the little shack; it brought back to him with a bitter vividness two great moments in his life—the happiest and the most tragic. Then the door of the house opened, and Mervin came out with the girl. Neither her father nor her brother was with them. It was another small touch that deepened the surety of Camden. For why should she wish to walk with young Mervin alone through the dusk of the day unless she loved him? So, with a swelling heart, Camden watched them walking up the hill. He feared, for a moment, that they were bound for the trees where he sat with Crusader, but they turned past him and strolled by so near that he could well nigh make out their faces
through the shadows. All that they said was perfectly clear. They were talking of what most people in that district had in their minds most vividly at this time—the Jericho race.

  “Ned has been to Twin Creeks to hear the talk,” said the voice of Ruth. “Everyone is talking about the two Arabs . . . Ali and Musa. Have you seen them?”

  “They may do well enough across the flat,” Mervin said authoritatively. “But they’ll never last in the mountains. That’s where they’ll fail. Is Ned betting?”

  “Of course! Every man is. You can guess whom he picked out?”

  “I can’t imagine.”

  “Crusader!”

  “Ah?” said the other. “It looks as though he’ll have the most backing . . . at least from people around here. They’ve heard so much about him. But I don’t think he’ll ever start.”

  “Why not?”

  “No one but Camden can ride him.”

  “Why shouldn’t Camden ride him?”

  “Too heavy, for one thing. But aside from that, he’ll never get into the saddle to ride that race.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s very simple. You know that all the horses and all the riders have to be in Jericho for a week before the race. That’s arranged this year so that the crowds can look them over and make their choices, of course. Well, Ruth, can you imagine Camden living among other men for a whole week . . . among rough fellows such as will be in Jericho? He’ll have a fistfight the first day and a gunfight the second, and, when the race begins, he’ll be resting in jail. Sheriff Younger has sworn that if Camden so much as raises a hand, he’ll take no further chances, but lock him up. And you can’t blame the sheriff, can you?”

  At this, she paused and faced Mervin. “You hate him, don’t you?” she asked.

  “Camden? Certainly not!”

  “Well,” she said, after a pause during which Camden hungered to hear her speak in his defense, “I suppose that you’re right. He’s nothing but a wild man. I suppose he’d kill a man with no more thought than most people would kill a chicken. Did you ever notice his eyes?”