by Max Brand
“Camden,” said the colonel, “what on earth has happened, my young friend? What has gone wrong?”Then he added, with an attempt at lightheartedness that only made the agony of the young man more acute: “Cheer up, Camden. We all have our blue days and our hard knocks.”
Camden swallowed hard. It was difficult—it was very difficult. His whole nature cried out with a single voice and bade him destroy that detestable enemy, Peter Loring. But he kept himself firmly back. After the race, that would all be very well. But to repay brave and generous young Manners for the foolish and kind thing that he had done, he must make Crusader win and pay back to Ned a great sum of money for that small amount that he had invested in it, all in the blind confidence that the man whom he considered so great could not fail to win.
RUTH ENCOURAGES CAMDEN
He went downstairs again, at the last, wondering how he could face the townsfolk, even the children. Yes, the boys and girls worst of all, for they would not scruple to scream after him the ugly things that had been suggested by his conduct of that day.
He found where Manners was lying and tapped at the door, which was presently opened by the girl herself. “I thought,” he said, “that I ’d like to see Ned and have a word with him.” He added: “If you think it wouldn’t do no harm. . . .”
“He don’t want . . . ,” began the girl impulsively. Then, as she saw a look of horror flash into his brown eyes—the steady, amber eyes of a brute—she flushed in sympathy. “What I mean to say is that the doctor has given orders. Very few are to see him until he gets a little better.”
He shrank from her. Again she was amazed. It had not seemed possible that so burly and huge a man should have such tender sensibilities, but he perceived the very first hint of her meaning, and now he was crushed by it. All at once, as he skulked down the hall, she was overwhelmed by impulse and ran suddenly after him and caught at his hand.
He paused and turned his white, strained face back to her.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, “for everything that I’ve said. I know that there’s got to be some explanation. I know that you aren’t a coward, Harry Camden.” Then she fled back to the room. As she flashed through the door, she had an impression of Camden standing exactly as she had left him, in mid-stride, arrested like a statue. She whipped the door shut behind her and leaned against it, smiling, breathless, her heart racing she knew not why. Then she heard a very slow, immensely ponderous stride come back up the hall. She could trace its slow progress by the creaking of the flooring beneath it. It paused outside the door against which she leaned. There was then audible to the straining ears of the girl a long, heavy sigh. Then the creaking of the floor began again and diminished into the distance. But after that she knew, as plainly as if he had told her, that Harry Camden loved her.
But Harry Camden, poor devil, was beginning a week of the cruelest torment that any man on earth ever endured. It was not Loring, it seemed. He did not appear in the matter at all. But, having started the ball rolling by his exposing of the giant, the entire town, or rather, all the young hotheads and bullies in it, set upon Camden and began baiting him. He could not appear without receiving a volley of abuse. They thought of clever insults, and then cast themselves in his way in a public place in order to speak them. But to it he returned not a word. He went every day as early as possible to the stallion and stayed with him, exercising him through the meadows at the foot of Mount Jericho, according to the rules of the race that required that the horse should be conditioned in that fashion, under the eyes of competent judges. This was a provision wisely inserted, in order that no horse that was out of condition might be allowed to compete in the struggle, which had cost the life of more than one fine animal before this.
It was Crusader who pulled Camden through. Otherwise, he could never have endured a tithe of what he had to suffer, but the great horse was a comrade to him. There could be no insults from the stallion. There was always sure to be only the lifted head and the shining eye to greet the coming of the real master of Crusader’s soul. That companionship kept the very heart of the man from going sour with grief and with weakness and with shame.
If he lay awake at nights, conjuring up again the vision of the arch-devil, Loring, then the thought of Crusader brought him sleep again.
Yet it was a changed Camden who sat on the back of Crusader on the day when the five-hundred-mile race began. His face was hollowed and seamed, and his eyes were sunken. However, the crowd saw nothing. Crowds never do, and of all the sixty-five horses that danced and pranced at the post upon that day, there was a shout of applause for every single horse, and there was a small cheer for every rider with the exception, sole and single, of Harry Camden. He felt it bitterly.
There he sat on the back of mighty Crusader and felt the greatness of his horse beneath him, and the warmth of the sun was welcome upon his shoulders. The clear air allowed his eye to pass up the great slope of Mount Jericho and detect every shrub to the very top. Here was a day, indeed, for the race.
There were literally thousands gathered at the start around the long, long line of the horses, and to each rider came separate friends, and eager admirers came in groups. Perhaps the largest number was gathered about the Arabs, and especially the chestnut, Ali. But there was a crowd, also, around Jack Murran’s bay stallion, Fury. Even around Crusader, in spite of what they might think of the horse’s rider, there was a continual group.
“If he only had another man up in his saddle, I ’d double the bet that I put on him . . . but since Camden showed yaller, I wish that I hadn’t put up a cent.”
That was one of a hundred speeches that Camden heard and took care not to show upon his impassive face. For this must be endured as all else had been endured. The race was still to be run. But afterward? When he thought of what might come afterward, his heart swelled, and a sort of sweet pain came into his throat.
But here came someone to him at last. It was Colonel Dinsmore himself. He did not come near. He stood at a little distance. His face was as expressionless as stone as he bade Camden have good luck and take care of the stallion. But never since the day of the shaming of Camden had the colonel once looked fairly into his eyes, as though he feared lest such a glance would waken all that was savage in his nature and make him tell the giant all that he was in his mind about him.
The colonel was gone, and now, picking her way quickly, into the very circle where the big black stallion stood, came a girl in white, very pretty, very trim, although the blurring eyes of Harry Camden refused to allow him to distinguish her features. She came straight on to him. He felt his hand taken by slim, cool fingers. He heard the voice of Ruth Manners come clear and strong.
“Good luck, Harry Camden,”—and then, more softly—“I’m mighty sorry. I know everything will be set right. I know it!”
THE RACE IS ON
The crack of the starter’s gun left Harry Camden sitting stupidly in the saddle, staring at the place where the girl had stood. Then he was roused by a loud laughter.
“Damned if he ain’t gone to sleep!”
“Nope . . . he’s only cryin’!”
For tears, in fact, had rolled into the eyes of Harry Camden, and the sun glittered on them. Then he tossed the reins, and Crusader was away. The first mile was brisk running. It was always fast work. The tradition of the race was that the first mile should be well run out so that the spectators could see the lot off to a spectacular start. After that, they could pick their own pace, of course, and do exactly as they wished.
In that first mile, Camden tried the foot of the others in the contest and found it good. He passed all except three—three fine Thoroughbreds like Crusader, which, on account of the better start they had received, were well away in the lead. But outside of the Thoroughbreds, there was nothing to mention in the same breath at the end of the sprinted mile. For nothing that moves upon four feet can live with the Thoroughbred over a mile. The brilliant antelope, even, is left far, far behind. All other horses—the
Arabians, the half-bloods, the mustangs—were left ridiculously far behind. However, that first wild mile was only the glass of wine that started the feast. The real work was still to do, and there was plenty of it—plenty of it.
It was like a whole army campaign contrasted with a battle; such was this cross-country run compared with an ordinary race. Five hundred miles of desert and mountain. Five hundred miles of spongy desert sand and of impossible rocks and cliffs among the mountains.
Camden had studied the whole matter out very carefully with Colonel Dinsmore as they sat beside the map. Every depression, every hollow on the course showed in that map, and they had decided between them what way Crusader must run. It was a beautiful problem, that course, for the shortest route was, of course, straight across the Jericho desert, and so, in the far distance, two hundred and fifty miles away, to circle the Corimba Peak and start back again. But, unfortunately, that straight line carried a rider over the worst of the mountains and through the deepest and the finest sand. Therefore, the whole task was to establish, first of all, just what going would be best for one’s mount. The little, active horses were apt to select the straight line, because they would rather use up strength on obstacles than on great distance. The leggy, fragile animals, and mostly the Thoroughbreds and the nearly Thoroughbred horses that were entered in the race, took a wide sweep across the Corimba foothills and so added immensely to their mileage, but they found, in the long run, that it paid them to avoid the terrible friction of a more direct re-passage of the Corimba Mountains.
As for the black stallion, Camden had determined to avoid the very highest mountains and, yet, to keep close in, thus enabling him to avoid throwing away too many extra miles. That was not all the planning that he had done. He had worked out a thousand small schemes, figuring adroitly just how far it was best to take the stallion every day, and at what a rate he should proceed, and how that rate should be varied, lest the stallion grew stale to the work, and what effect too much food had on him, and when and where it was best to feed him, and on how much water he could make a march. These were some of the questions that merely began the doubts and the self-catechism of Harry Camden. But his labors were well rewarded.
Never once did he push the great horse, and yet as they crossed the desert and reached the foothills of the Corimba Mountains, the leaders were first a desert-bred mustang, a beautiful and hardy piece of horseflesh, then an Arab mare brought from Arabia specially for this contest, and third was the big stallion, Crusader. Beyond a shadow of a doubt, he had endured the desert going better than the other two. They looked at him sourly, the riders of those two horses, watching him move along with splendid ease and precision, never pressed, never urged by his master, but at the walk covering more ground than the average horse covers with a dog-trot.
“We’ll get you when we hit the mountains,” they assured Camden, and he listened and nodded and said not a word in reply. He had no use for speech until a certain day came, and then he would care to speak to one man only. Ah, if only that moment should be but five minutes hence.
Then, as they were laboring up through the foothills, a very strange thing happened, for a horse that had not ever been in sight an hour before, pressed up suddenly among them. It went straight on by them all, keeping up a smart trot. It was Peter Loring, riding erect in the saddle on a beautiful brown mare, marked with white. He gave Camden, as he went by, not so much as a haloo, but he said to the others: “Gentlemen, I hope you are not all of a feather up here.”
The others growled after he had gone by, and they followed him with glances as black as the looks that they had given to Camden a little before.
He himself, on the stallion, did not attempt to pick up the difference between him and the flying mare at once. But he increased the pace of big Crusader, and, in the gray of the next morning, which was when he usually began his march of the day, he had sight, once more, of the two white stockings of the horse.
Twice that day the mare was out of sight. Twice she came back again. So they rounded the Corimba Mountains, and came down gradually into the white heat of the desert again.
There are degrees of heat, even on the desert. There is the cool north wind that brings a breath of relief, and there is also the burning south that shrivels whatever it touches. It was the south wind that blew now. It caught the horses and the riders weak from the labor and the nerve strain of that arduous crossing of the mountains. And it wrecked their nerves. They rode on through a smother of blown sand that sifted into the clothes and next to the skin of the riders and that kept the horses snooting to clear their nostrils of the grit.
Provisions had grown low in the scanty food packs of the men. The oats that they carried for their horses were exhausted. There was only the desert grass to keep them and the widely separated tanks and springs for water, all, however, well charted on the maps that they carried.
Here horses began to lag terribly behind. The whole body of horses had come over the mountains in a bunch, each pushing on resolutely behind the others, all afraid of being distanced, and, striking the desert below, the weak ones went to the wall at once and were forced to turn back toward the green foothills, glad to be out of the ruck.
That noon, Crusader forged to the lead. To his right, a mile away, was the glimmering form of the brown mare with that light and expert horseman, Loring, in the saddle. Then the brown mare was lost in the rolling ground, and Crusader went on alone—in the lead.
It was no grave satisfaction to big Harry Camden. He felt that he had the race in his lap. He was confident that none of those horses, once put to the rear, could ever pass him again. So he let Crusader go on at a walk, steadily, without pressing that willing worker, only soothing him, now and again, with the touch of his hand or his voice when the big animal began to grow nervous with the strain of the work.
That night they camped at the foot of that huge, shapeless mass—Jericho Mountain. It had been hard to climb the farther and smoother side even with fresh horses at the beginning of the contest. This far more sheer slope, with a weary horse beneath the saddle, was sure to be a heartbreaker.
But they found excellent bunch grass and a clear spring, so that they fared well enough, and, before darkness had thickened, he counted here and there across the hollows a dozen sparks of light—the fires that the other contestants had kindled as soon as they arrived at their last camping place.
The last camping place it would surely be, for Crusader, as the big man knew, could make the remaining distance on the morrow, weary though he might be.
In the first glimmer of the gray morning, he was riding again, letting Crusader trudge on up the slope. To the left, to the right, here and there, he made out other forms of horsemen, plodding through the dawn, but he had no fear. They were desperate. By the nodding, lowered heads of the horses he knew that they would have to pause time and again before the upper crest was reached.
But Crusader held upon his way undaunted. His ribs stood out, now, and his neck was growing lean, but he still carried his head well up. If some of the spring had gone out of his step, it was hardly noticeable. There was still ample strength in him to defeat any of the others who rode against him. Ample, indeed.
For, as the sun reddened the eastern rim of the horizon, and the rose bold and clear, he saw the competitors already falling back behind him, drawing together in a closer group, and then straggling in a long, drawn-out bunch. All falling back—no, yonder came one past the right flank of the others. From the top of a hill, Camden on Crusader saw the stranger drifting rapidly to the fore. Some cowpuncher making his last desperate bid on a failing horse? That must be it.
He plodded on for half an hour, and then he heard the crunching of gravel under hoofs behind him. He turned with a shock and a start in the saddle. There, behind him, he saw none other than Loring riding rapidly up at a dog-trot, for here the ground shelved into a level plateau.
On came Loring, and the brown mare beneath him seemed to go almost gaily. Certainly her ea
rs were pricked sharply, and, if she were blackened with sweat, it was not the sweat of exhaustion. Up and up came the lighter rider, and then, miracle of all miracles, he began to pass Crusader!
AN ATTEMPT ON CAMDEN’S LIFE
Camden could not believe his eyes, but when he stared again at the mare, it was true. Marvelous, indeed, was the condition of the mare for one that had covered that five-hundred-mile cross-country race. Her ribs were a trifle gaunted, to be sure, but not more than was to be expected. Her head was carried lightly and high. She stepped firmly, lifted her feet well up. One might almost have thought that she was beginning the race, instead of starting the last long grind of the final day’s march. With a chilling touch of gloom, Camden prefigured Crusader beaten. Crusader beaten, and all the nameless sacrifices that he had made were made in vain. The money of poor Ned Manners was gone. Beautiful Ruth Manners, whose courage and whose fine heart had made her come to him and give him one Godspeed in the hostile silence or the derision of the crowd—Ruth Manners would be struck down by the same club of defeat!
All of this was in the dread of Camden. He looked at Loring. The rider, to be sure, showed no more wear than his horse. His thin face was not attenuated, and a constant snarl was on his lips. Never had he seemed more wolfish, never more bitter and cruel. He sneered as he went by, and then pointed to the top of the slope far ahead and high above, with other summits rolling back and back beyond it—surely a heartbreaking prospect. But not a word was spoken as they passed each other, like ships by night. Only a glare of hatred and of rage, then they went on.
Still the mare was forging to the front. Camden, with his heart turned to lead, tried to comprehend, but it was incomprehensible. There was nothing to be made of it. Light though the weight was which rested in the saddle of Sally Ann, and skillful though the rider might be, yet there was a great voice in Camden that told him that, even with such a handicap, she could never have beaten Crusader. However, there was no use dwelling on possibilities. Here was an actual fact. She was pulling ahead, little by little, up the grueling slope of the mountain, picking her way lightly and neatly.