Crusader

by Max Brand

  Here a whisk in the air, like the flicker of a rapid wing, made Sparrow look up in time to see a flying shadow. He dodged at the last possible moment to avoid a large stone that whirred past his temple and crashed loudly against the side of the cave.

  Perhaps Sparrow was a little too excited by what he had seen. At any rate, he did not pause to ask questions, but he sent a charge of fine shot rattling in the direction from which the stone had come. He pumped the old shell out and a new shell into the barrel, at the same time calling out: “Don’t be a fool, kid! I’m a friend. I’ve come here to give you a tip that’ll . . . !”

  Something glimmered before his eyes. A flying stone clipped him on the side of the head.

  “All right,” said Sparrow, “I’ll make you wish that you was in purgatory for that, you rat! Where are you?”

  He crawled forward to a favorable position, the pump gun ready. But as he crouched there, guarding the darkness at the farther end of the cave from which the mischief had proceeded, he heard a grating sound, and the hole in the ground above him through which light descended upon the open space where the punching bag was affixed to the roof of the place, was covered with something which at once shut off all the light and left Sparrow in the deepest darkness.

  Filled with a sudden panic, he rushed for the mouth of the cave through which he had just entered. As he hurried, he heard the noise of the crashing fall of a great mass of stone. A scream tore its way up through the throat of Sparrow. It seemed impossible that there could be enough malignance in any mere thief to make him wish to bury another man alive, but that was what was being attempted. He heard out of the distance a peculiar snarling sound like a worried beast at work. He came in view of the mouth of the tunnel in time to see the fall of a second quantity of rock that nearly covered the entire mouth of the cave. With a yell, he sprang forward. He heard a deeper and a louder snarl, most beast-like, less human than before.

  Then, thrusting away one heavy stone with his hands, he worked his way out into the open day just as a larger and a longer slide began down the side of the ravine over his head.

  Sparrow made no pause. The new and highly prized pump gun was allowed to fall unregarded. He sprinted for safety across the rough floor of the ravine. Behind him came a great crashing. The earth quivered beneath his flying feet. Fragments and smaller pebbles flew about his ears. Then, flinging himself a stride or two up the farther side of the narrow gorge, he turned and looked back, sick with horror, upon that place which he had just left.

  Where the mouth of the narrow cave had been, there was now a raw pile of rock debris. Tons and tons of it, loosened from the loose boulders of the cliffside above, had rushed down into the gorge, and it would take a hundred men a hundred days to clear away the heap of the ruin. How long would it have taken poor Sparrow Roberts to dig his way out from such a trap?

  As he stared, with the perspiration oozing out beneath his armpits, and with his heart turning sick, something flashed in the sunshine on the farther side of the ravine, and a stone whipped like an arrow’s flight past his head.

  He picked it up with an exclamation of dismay. It was large enough to have dashed out his brains, and only the hand of a giant could have flung the missile so far and so straight across the ravine. Certainly if this were the man for whose capture he had employed Knut Rasmussen, he must warn Knut that it was apt to be a job that would occupy all the wits and the courage of half a dozen hunters rather than merely one. He must warn Knut of that. In the meantime, he had upon his hands the problem of saving his own hide. The stranger had attempted to bury him alive. Next he had tried to brain him from a distance. What the brute would do next could not be surmised, but, at any rate, Sparrow decided to return to the camp as fast as his best speed of foot could take him.

  BAITING THE WILD MAN

  Between that spot and the camp, there lay some eight miles of rough country, and Sparrow hit out and ran a stiff half mile for the beginning of the race and in order to shake off the pursuit, if a pursuit there should be. He was a great runner, was Sparrow. A few years before he had been able to run his mile well under four thirty, and his half far below two minutes. He had lost some of the edge from his speed, but he had gained, instead, an even greater ability across country, gained through his roadwork with Cyclone Ed Morgan. He was as proud of his running as Cyclone was proud of his durable jaw. After that first half mile, which he told himself was enough to drop far behind him any clumsy mountain-bred yokel, he settled to a swift, frictionless pace that ate up distance almost as easily as the lope of a wolf.

  Just as the climbing of a long slope had brought out the perspiration on his body, and just as he was wondering what excuse he could make to the men in his camp because of the loss of the shotgun of which he had been so proud a few days before, he was struck a resounding thump in the middle of the back that pitched him forward upon his face, while the big, thick clod of earth that had landed on him crunched to bits and lay scattered about him.

  For a moment he was so stunned and so breathless that he lay flat, without a movement. Then he started to drag himself to his feet, only to feel something leap upon him from behind with a peculiar snarling sound like the noise of an angered beast. Sparrow was seized with hands of iron. He had been a wrestler in his younger day, and upon his body had sunk the burning grip of many a Herculean hand. But it seemed to Sparrow that he had never before been held with such power. Then a bit of dirty fur, like the pelt of a coyote, was wrapped around his head. Half smothered, half choked, he was lifted and carried to the verge of a bank, then cast into the air.

  As he fell, the fur slipped from his face. He had a glimpse of a rushing stream beneath him, and a tall, naked body standing on the bank, looking larger than human as Sparrow looked up to him. He had time for that glance only, then he crashed into the flooding water.

  He saw no more after that, for he was involved in a tumult of white water that shot him violently, head over heels, down a small cascade. Bruised, dazed, bewildered, it seemed to him that he heard a strong-lunged laughter ringing over him, mocking him in his fall. Perhaps this was the savage’s idea of a jest. But to Sparrow it was an excellent close call to death that he had so recently passed through.

  He staggered up the bank of the stream and looked down at himself, pouring water from every seam, cut in half a dozen places by the sharp rocks, and still this fiend in the form of a human being was not through with his work. Another big stone shot like a bullet across the water and glanced off the shoulder of Sparrow with force enough to make him yell with pain. Sparrow fled into the underbrush.

  The rest of his journey to the camp was a nightmare. Sometimes rocks whirred past his ears. Once he heard a noise overhead and thought that he saw a brown, naked body swing from the end of one great limb into another tree, far off, a feat of aerial courage that would have made a circus performer sick with envy—a feat so astonishing that Sparrow refused to believe his eyes. When at last he was hounded into the confines of the camp and fell exhausted in the house where Bert Kenny and Vince Munroe were playing cards, he could stammer forth to those heroes that he had been through hell, escorted by the devil himself!

  When Vince and Bert grasped arms and proffered to go forth and attack the foeman, he assured them that this dexterous fiend would slip through their hands and find a way to come at him. He preferred, by far, to have them with him in the camp in case the brown-skinned savage should attempt further pranks. The more opponents the creature had, the more chance there was of eventually overcoming him.

  But they were left undisturbed. It was not until the next morning that the cook found that a hundred weight of the choicest provisions had been stolen from the larder, and on a damp bit of ground near the kitchen door there was printed the sign of the big naked foot.

  The whole camp gathered to gaze on this sign, and Knut Rasmussen, when he arrived a little later, was brought to examine the track. This he did for no great length of time, but, after measuring the track carefully and
without the slightest mystery in his manner, he set about drumming up the neighborhood of the camp and hunting for further sign of the stranger of the forest. He was not long in unearthing what he wanted, and, with the afternoon of the next day, he was off on his long trail.

  They saw nothing more of Knut Rasmussen for three days. Then he came back to the camp, much altered. His fine pack was gone from between his shoulders. His cheerful air had disappeared. His clothes were in rags, as though during the interim he had been to the pole and back again. His face, moreover, was lean and pinched, as only hunger or anxiety, or both combined, can do.

  When he arrived, he asked for Sparrow. When he was told that Sparrow was not there, he shrugged his shoulders and sat down to wait. An hour later, when Roberts arrived, he was reached and forewarned on the way by Kenny. Still, when he came to the house, it was something of a shock to see the big trapper leap to his feet and thunder out a violent accusation that Sparrow had taken part in a plot against him—that they knew—that they all must have known—that the brown-skinned stranger was a demon and not a man.

  He was fingering his knife before the end of this speech came, and then Sparrow had all that he could do to subdue the woodsman. He reiterated his offer of a thousand dollars. But Knut Rasmussen replied with a growl and faded away into the woods, swearing that he would find his own way and his own day for dealing with the savage and that, when that time came, the other could wish that he had never been born.

  So much for the coming and the going of the famous Rasmussen. But there remained the mystery. That very day it invaded the camp again, and, almost under the very eyes of the men, it stole two pairs of the best gloves and a fifty-pound dumbbell with which Cyclone Ed Morgan was very fond of exercising.

  Cyclone stormed furiously in the camp after this small tragedy. He had come up from the town to occupy his quarters, which had been newly built for him in the camp. These quarters consisted of a little cottage rudely thrown together, but comfortable enough for camping out. With Jenny, the wife of Ed, came Jenny’s best friend, Nan Pearson, to keep Jen company in such a large circle of men only.

  In five minutes Nan had the heads of all the men in the place whirling. She was not like Jenny. Jenny was pretty and no more. But Nan was pretty and then there was something stirred into the prettiness, a touch of a new seasoning, a spice of difference, a manner and a way of which the mountain men knew nothing and of which the boxers from far off Manhattan knew even less. She was not beautiful. But she had beautiful ways with her. If her mouth in itself was not lovely, her manner of smiling was enchantment itself. Her eyes were neither the largest nor the deepest in the world, but her way of looking at people steadily, frankly, gently, unsettled the inwards of a man decidedly.

  Bert Kenny, when he first saw her, went off for a long walk. He came back looking gloomy and thoughtful. That afternoon, when Vince Munroe paid attentions to Nan, Kenny found means of crossing the path of the other, and after a playful scuff or two they went at it hammer and tongs. Vince had rapped a few hard ones to the wind of Bert, and Bert had jarred the jaw of Munroe, when Sparrow came into view and ripped the pair apart.

  Afterward, he consulted with Cyclone Ed. “Ed, old kid,” he said, “your wife is all to the good. She’s the candy. But. . . .”

  “Look here,” said Cyclone carefully. “If you aim to take a crack at Jen behind her back while you pretend to. . . .”

  “Shut up, kid. Don’t try to read my mind. What I want to tell you is that Jen may be all to the good, but one woman is enough in pretty near any camp. It looks like two is more’n enough in this one. Ain’t there something that ought to be done back in Nan’s own home? Don’t the cows need milkin’, or some such thing?”

  “Look here,” said Cyclone. “Loosen up and tell me what’s wrong?”

  “Bert and Vince have been tryin’ to tear each other to bits. And before long, if she keeps on lookin’around her the way she does, I’ll begin to want to fight for her! She’s got a way with her, that kid has.”

  “She’s straight as a string,” the prize fighter said hotly.

  “Sure she is,” murmured Sparrow. “But she’s poison. She’ll kill this camp, I tell you.”

  “If she’s poison,” growled out Cyclone, “why don’t you use her to kill off the wild man? Then we could have some peace.”

  At this, Sparrow leaped up with a shout. He remained poised upon one foot, alarmed, his eyes blinking as he strove to make the thought fast before it could be forgotten and fly away from him.

  “By the heavens,” he said, “you ought to get out of the fightin’game, kid. You know too much. You got too many fine fancy ideas. Use that poison on the wild man? Well, I dunno. I dunno! What sort of a trap could I use?”

  “I dunno what you mean,” answered the fighter, blinking.

  “Bah!” Sparrow said, his eyes glittering more keenly than ever. “You dunno what I mean? The devil, man, the whole idea come out of your head, but you. . . .”

  He turned on his heel and went away to find Nan.

  TWO MEN DOWN

  Poor Nan Pearson had nothing to warn her. She was taken in quite easily. In the first place, when she learned that Sparrow was the brains behind so important a person as Jenny’s husband, she was quite willing to believe everything that he said, upon all matters, as the Gospel itself speaking. He showed her a scrap of weed, a peculiar little plant that he said he had found near the camp, and he wanted her to hunt for more of it, combing the woods carefully for the prize. As for its use, he had an old recipe given to him by his mother’s distant aunt, a wise and venerable woman, which was of the greatest power in case a man. . . .

  Poor Nan Pearson drank in this wild tale with her eyes as wide as they could stare. In the end, she smiled and nodded and took reverently the bit of withered weed in her hands. She was ready to spend all the time that was at her disposal for the sake of locating the strange plant. She would do her best, and she would do even more than her best.

  So Sparrow watched her go away, coiling the long pigtail of her hair about her head. For Nan was only sixteen. As she reached the edge of the clearing, she turned back to him and thanked him for having shown so much confidence in her and for having given her the only sample of the rare herb that he possessed. Such was the setting of the trap and the baiting of it.

  Then Sparrow waited. He had a tingling dread of what was to come. In the meantime, he decided that the best method was to wait quietly and watch for the developments. Those developments came quickly enough.

  The poison, as he called it, having been turned loose in the air, could not fail to begin to kill. First of all, he heard Nan come running hastily into the camp. Kenny and Munroe vied as to who should be the first man to follow her. They rushed like two bulls, side-by-side, and so they came to a spot in the woods where they found a saddle of venison wrapped in the entire deerskin and packed about with fragrant leaves and with cool moss and bound up neatly with stringers and running vines.

  This strange find they carried hastily back into the camp, and all observed it with much wonder and with the greatest admiration. That admiration grew as they ate the rich venison steaks that their cook prepared. All wondered how on earth a deer could have been found in a region that had been so thoroughly hunted over as this? Who could have been the hunter? How could he have chanced to bring his prize to such a place as this? Why had it been abandoned there? It was a puzzle, surely.

  No one guessed the true explanation except Mr. Sparrow Roberts, and he very wisely said not a word. He waited for the working of time, and, when on the very next day Nan Pearson stumbled over a great skin of a grizzly bear rolled up in her path, the camp began to wake up to the fact that something most peculiar was in the air.

  It was the skin of a monster grizzly, newly killed. When they carried it down to Juniper to have it taken care of and cured as a good skin should be, it was at once recognized by certain markings and by its yellow color as the pelt of a famous cattle killer, an old king of the
range.

  But how had it come so near the camp?

  Now Bert Kenny blurted out what was probably the truth. “It’s that same Indian . . . that loafer that sneaks around through the trees. You bet that’s who it is. He’s been seein’ Nan Pearson while she’s working to get at that fool weed you want, Sparrow. And this is his way of making her presents, I guess. Nan, you better stick close to the camp for a couple of days.”

  But Nan did not stick close to the camp. She protested with shudders and with such emphasis of stamped feet that it made her tremble—the mere thought of encountering such a strange monster—that his bringing of presents to her was a perfectly ridiculous thing, and yet she saw no reason why she should not go forth—armed, of course.

  Munroe and Kenny, very serious, picked out a light .32-caliber revolver for her use. And she could use it! But Sparrow, watching her sally forth, was immensely amused. The idea that such a slim slip of a girl should seriously confront that brown-skinned tiger of the woods for a single moment, was absurd to him. He was hardly less amused when he saw Kenny and Munroe begin to escort her forth on her walks.

  She, however, seemed not at all amused by the attendance of Cyclone Ed Morgan’s sparring partners. One might have thought that she loved the silent wilderness and all of its monsters, human or beast. But Sparrow, who looked and understood a little of what might be going on in her mind, smiled complacently. This was taking time, but it was working out just as he would have it.

  Cyclone Ed Morgan was doing his best with the gloves every day, but he was greatly changed. He had grown serious; he had grown sober. He no longer rushed to the fray with the carefree abandon of a child leaping down into a swimming pool. He advanced sourly and grimly to the fight. His was now flesh of another sort, and not lightly to be risked and battered.