Crusader

by Max Brand

  So thousands and thousands began to stream into Juniper. The hotels were gorged. The houses of the town charged what price they pleased for the guests they were willing to pile on their verandahs or even in their yards. Tents were thrown up. Juniper began to look like an army camp—a very disorganized one.

  There was only one thing to think about—the fight. There was only one thing to do—wait for the sound of the opening gong.

  Now and again the colonel called in Sparrow to learn how matters were progressing with his newest protégé. On these occasions Sparrow was rarely cheerful.

  “Lacoste is too good,” he would say. “I went down and saw him work the other day. They let me right in and give me a ringside seat. They didn’t care what I saw or how much I saw. Why? Because they knew that Lacoste has so damned much to show that I couldn’t get it all if I tried with four eyes, instead of with two. And they’re right. No trick about Lacoste. He doesn’t need ’em. He never moves faster than he has to when he wants to beat the other guy to the punch. He never steps back except far enough to make the other guy miss him by a hair. He works on a narrow margin, that bird, but he’s sure of himself. I ’d rather try to chase a ghost than Lacoste. I never saw anything like it.”

  “But can he hit?” the colonel asked one day.

  Sparrow threw both hands into the air. “Can a fish swim?” he countered. “Can a bird fly? Can Lacoste hit? He’s a thunderbolt. You put your coin on that baby, because he ain’t never gonna be stopped . . . not till he’s an old man.”

  At this, the colonel went back to the camp of Pierre Lacoste. It seemed very simple, when one saw the famous Pierre in action. He stepped about the ring smoothly, without show, blocking the punches of his sparring partners, ducking or dodging their punches by so close a margin that he always seemed a little lucky to have escaped, and punching in return just hard enough to stop their rushes or to straighten them out when they were inclined to work too much inside.

  He liked the open work, standing at long range, plying with both hands to head and body. That was the type of boxing that appealed to Pierre Lacoste, just as it appealed to every follower of the game. But, at long range or at short, he was the perfect master of himself and his opponent, no matter who that opponent might be.

  The colonel watched Lacoste long enough to wonder what there was to him. Then he asked a famous boxing critic on a Manhattan paper—one who had traveled across the continent to report the training period as well as the fight itself.

  “This baby is under wraps,” said the boxing critic, without shifting his eyes from the moving form of Pierre Lacoste. “But ain’t he a sweet thing to watch? Did you see him sift that right cross through? Look at them feet work across the canvas. Like he had wheels under him. Where did he learn to punch, and where does he get it? He ain’t a middleweight! He’s the champion heavyweight of the world!”

  Such was the rhapsody that the colonel had to listen to after he asked his question. Then he went out and about his other business. He only delayed long enough to try to place a bet on Lacoste. But he failed. The odds were three and a half to one in favor of the Frenchman and rising every minute.

  Sparrow returned to the camp. But here he gave only a summary inspection to the work of Ed Morgan. It was all a bluff now. Ed Morgan had agreed to go along with his training up to the day of the fight, and then to disappear or feign illness, so that his place could be taken in the ring at the last moment by a substitute. It was with the substitute that the trainer spent his long hours of work.

  Up among the mountains, a half hour’s walk from the Morgan camp, he had established the headquarters of the man from the forest. There was a scene of such activity as Sparrow had never known before. For two hours in the center of the day, Camden slept. But the rest of the time, from morning until night, he was feverishly busy with his gloves, or shadowboxing, or practicing footwork—that difficult mystery of the prize ring—how to advance smoothly, swiftly, easily, and yet with the body well planted on both feet at all times for the delivery of punches. But how terribly much there was to learn!

  To begin with, there was such a matter as that of the straight left. Sparrow worked over his pupil steadily, patiently, but at last in despair, for there was no possibility of teaching the man of the woods that punch. All of its beauties were demonstrated by Sparrow. In vain he vowed that there never was a good fighter who did not have a good left. In vain he swore that the straight left was to boxing, what the foundation stones are to a house. It is the punch that erects a wall against the attacks of the foe. It is the opening wedge through which finishing punches may be slipped. It should be delivered with the head and shoulders and hip and heel and knee all on one straight line, true driving, the whole body stiffening behind the blow. These are the things that the straight left can be and should be, but to teach it to Camden was impossible. After struggling for a time, Sparrow gave it up. For when the other hit, there was always a natural hook at the end of every punch. His wrist and fist snapped up or sideways or down as the case might be, and that whiplash finish marked every blow that he used.

  It was a grave waste of his time and effort and space, but Camden could not be cured. That was his one great defect. Everything else he learned with amazing speed. Footwork was his easiest problem, because, on his feet, he moved with a natural and frictionless adroitness. He learned something about boxing—an immense lot for a period of a mere six weeks of training—but still it was not enough. Yet Sparrow watched him develop in blocking and ducking and dodging from day to day until the time came, before the end, when Sparrow himself, swift though he was with his fists, could not make an impression upon the defense of his client.

  “Still it ain’t good enough!” Sparrow would say. “If I had another month . . . if I had another month. Oh, kid, if I had another month or two to put you into shape, I ’d stack you ag’in’ the best in the land! But it don’t make no difference, for you still got a fighting chance.”

  To these remarks, Camden made no replies. Criticism could not discourage him, it seemed. While he worked at his training, he had a grim and dogged look as of a purpose far away that will be striven for endlessly, perhaps hopelessly.

  Sparrow, watching him, knew that he was thinking of the girl. Not that he ever mentioned her. Her name was not once on his lips. Indeed, during all of those six weeks, he rarely spoke. Sometimes, as Sparrow labored over him, cursed him hysterically, praised, blamed, scorned, mocked and honored him, he went the whole day without speaking in reply. Only his amber eyes made acknowledgment, and the speed with which his hands and his feet moved. Hit straight he could not, but God had given him a natural hook, which is the next best thing.

  So the day came for the fight; the hour came for the fight. In the dressing quarters that the colonel had erected near his natural amphitheater, Sparrow sat beside the man on whom his hopes were centered, while, through the big amphitheater he heard a sudden, sullen roar from the crowd.

  He knew what it meant. Already half cooked in the heat of the afternoon sun, the crowd had been maddened by the sudden sting of disappointment when it heard that, after all, one of the pair that so many of them had come literally thousands of miles to see had disappeared, or at least was unable to step into the ring.

  A hurried step, a beat on the door, and there stood the colonel, white of face, before them.

  “For heaven’s sake, get your man out here!” he shouted to Sparrow. “They’ve nearly mobbed me. They want blood, that crowd. I’ve had the announcer tell ’em that they can have their money back if they don’t like the show that we put on. But they won’t listen. They’re in there bellowin’ like steers. They’ll plumb raise the devil with me and all Juniper if. . . .”

  Sparrow was usually a mild little man, particularly when he stood before a millionaire, but his temper was set on a hair-trigger on this day of days. He yelled at the colonel:“You long-legged tramp, get out! I ain’t to be bothered. I’ll bring my lad up to the mark. Now shut up and get out!” />
  The colonel got.

  “Now, kid,” said Sparrow, “you’re in there to make your coin and get a name for yourself and then go out and collect a wife. You’ll fight for yourself. But you’re gonna fight for me, too! After you climb into that ring, I’m gonna bet money . . . real money, kid . . . that you last the whole fifteen rounds even if you got the great Lacoste in the same ring.”

  Camden said not a word, but he sighed a little and rose from his chair. For a moment the trainer stared at that lean brown face with a speechless anxiety.

  “They’re gonna yell. They’re gonna rave when they see you . . . because you look sort of skinny . . . particular at a distance where they can’t see the way you’re put together and the make of your muscles. But don’t listen. They ain’t nothin’in the world for you. They ain’t nothin’ you’re gonna fear . . . nothin’ but my voice out of the corner tellin’you what to do!”

  AT IT, HAMMER AND TONGS

  Pierre Lacoste was making a speech, and, under cover of that speech, Sparrow and Harry Camden entered the amphitheater, where thousands of men, their faces black with anger, were muttering like a storm, and looking for something on which they could wreak their vengeance for this disappointment. Surely a prize fight had never been planned in a stranger setting, with the huge mountains—blue and brown in the distance—and far away the muffled booming of the “shells” where the miners were still busily at work. For the treasure hunters could not pause even for the sake of seeing the matchless Pierre Lacoste in action.

  Lacoste told the hushed and respectful audience in badly broken English, with many bows and gestures, that he was covered with sorrow for their disappointment, that, if there were a fraud, he, at least, was no party to it, and that to show his good will and fulfill the terms of his engagement, he was willing to fight any man in the crowd, regardless of weight, instead of the substitute who, it was said, the colonel had prepared to take the place of Cyclone Ed Morgan.

  This speech brought a furor of applause and many yells that “Frenchy” was all right. In the midst of that racket, Sparrow slipped into the ring and with him went Harry Camden. There was a little pause.

  “Stand up and toss off that bathrobe,” Sparrow said with a snarl. “Let ’em see the worst of it right away, damn ’em!”

  The man from the wilderness obeyed. There had been a little silence upon the entrance of the substitute, but the crowd needed only one glance to convince itself that here was a rank imposture. Here was a boy, with a boy’s slender body—sun-browned although it was. Yonder stood Pierre Lacoste, short, stocky, but looking speed, every inch of him, and with long arms of a reach equal to a heavyweight’s. The contrast was too great. They saw Pierre Lacoste flash one keen appraising glance at his foe to be, and then look down at the floor and shake his head dubiously, as though silently protesting against that imposture. This was enough to loose the floodgates of the wrath of the mob. They leaped up and roared their fury. Then they came in a great wave with hands brandished. The colonel, who stood in a corner of the ring, nervously chewing a long cigar, nearly swallowed a portion of it that he now bit off, and turned a sickly yellow. It was Sparrow who rose to meet the onslaught. He rose not with words, but with a thing more eloquent than words. In his hands, swung high above his head, was a thick bunch of greenbacks.

  There grew around him enough curious silence to give him a chance to yell:“I’m this bird’s backer! I’ll go two thousand in cold cash . . . my own money . . . that he stays the whole fifteen rounds with Lacoste. Who’ll take me on that? Who’ll take me, boys?”

  Money talks. It has a deep, strong voice of its own. The ugly earnest face of Sparrow carried conviction. The offer was repeated. It passed on in a counter wave that washed out most of the noise in its path, and left Sparrow shouting furiously.

  “Who’ll take me? Who’ll put up or shut up, here?”

  A man rose. “That’s a good bluff, son. I’ll give you three to one that your kid don’t stay the fifteen rounds. Lacoste’ll eat him up!”

  Other voices broke in, protesting. They wanted some of the easy money. What were odds of three to one, when they were willing to give five and six? And bets were suddenly placed, right and left. After that, the crowd was half willing to settle back, suspicious still, cursing the colonel under its breath, ready to see a cheat, but, nonetheless, very interested to see whether Sparrow Roberts would lose his money and how soon.

  “Five hundred to you, Lacoste, if you knock him cockeyed in five rounds!”

  Lacoste turned and smiled. There was only one interruption of that smile. Lacoste was a modest man, as modest as he was brave and skillful. But to oppose a boy to him—that was really too much.

  “Roberts, you dog, you’ve ruined me!” the colonel snarled out at the ear of Sparrow.

  “Shut up,” groaned Sparrow, growing a little sick at heart as he compared the Frenchman with his own untried boxer. “I’ve put my own coin into this. Let’s see what comes out of it.”

  The referee was in the ring now. He was a gray-haired ex-pugilist, his face still wearing a battered, lopsided look, but his eyes were bright and intelligent. He laid a hand on the shoulder of each of the two fighters and bowed above them, for he was a strapping six-footer and more. He seemed to be muttering instructions, but what he was saying was:“Boys, is this here on the level?”

  “So help me God, sir!” cried honest Lacoste.

  “Well?” the referee said to Camden.

  The latter said not a word; he merely fixed his amber, dull eyes on those of Lacoste.

  “I think he wants to hypnotize me, monsieur,” murmured the Frenchman.

  The referee stepped back. They were in their corners—Lacoste methodically pawing at the resin, Camden standing idly, his hands dangling at his side. The gong sounded. Lacoste leaped to the center of the ring, and a wail of rage and mirth rose as Camden did not stir.

  “Go at him!” barked Sparrow.

  Camden went with a leap that cut the noise short, and, as he leaped, he was met in the air with a straight left that traveled as true and hard as a rifle ball. It knocked Camden flat on his back on the canvas with a thudding spat that sounded over the entire amphitheater. The groan of sympathy and derision began again—to be cut short once more as Camden, like a rubber ball, leaped to his feet and closed.

  It all happened so quickly—that engagement and disengagement—that most of the spectators did not know what was happening. But those close to the ring saw several things of importance. The first was that Lacoste landed three heavy, short punches as the brown-bodied youngster stepped in, and yet those punches to head and body did not seem to jar the supple frame of the unknown. They saw, moreover, that, when they closed, the younger man caught Lacoste with a left arm behind his back and hugged him. Only an instant, but Lacoste turned white and gasped. Then he tugged himself free and danced away, but with his hands low—looking as if he had fought ten rounds already.

  The wise ones looked at one another in amaze. “The kid has something!” they agreed.

  “Not much,” was the instant answer, for as Camden followed up, he was met with a volley of long-range punches that literally lifted him and drove him before them. Here was a man who boxed with a speed that would have blinded even Vince Munroe, and who struck with a power that made the sledge-hammer blows of Kenny seem like love taps.

  Camden sprang back from the deadly shower and shook his head vigorously to clear it.

  “He’s got enough!” yelled someone. “He’s showing yellow like a. . . .”

  Here the brown man whipped in again, and Lacoste, striking with both hands, carelessly, left himself wide open. Camden struck. It was not much of a blow. He seemed to reach out casually and drop his gloved right hand on the point of Lacoste’s jaw with a little flick of the wrist at the end of the punch. But the results were amazing. As though a pile driver had descended upon his head, Pierre Lacoste sank to the floor and sat there, gazing through a stupid mist at his foe, while Sparrow, from his
corner, began a wild song and dance lost in the deafening uproar of the crowd.

  This was unbelievable! And here was the referee, with a startled face, tolling forth the seconds. “Six . . . seven . . . eight. . . .”The stricken man gathered his feet beneath him. “Nine!” He was resting on his hands. “Ten!” He was on his feet.

  Swaying, like one drunk, his gloved hands extended automatically before him, obviously blinded, stupid from that terrible blow. And Camden? In that precious moment, he stood back with his hands at his sides, the screaming voice of Sparrow drowned by the bellowing of the mob. Once he stepped toward Pierre Lacoste and raised a hand to strike, but as Lacoste staggered away, the conqueror shook his head and dropped his gloves to his sides, as though unwilling to take such an advantage. Here he looked to Sparrow for definite instruction. Sparrow was black in the face with furious anxiety.

  “Kill Lacoste! Get him!” he shrieked.

  Camden went in to win. It was too late now, however. The brain of Pierre Lacoste had cleared sufficiently for him to block a shower of blows and fall into a clinch. A moment later the bell rang for the end of the round, and they went back to their corners with the amphitheater in a bedlam.

  Sparrow made no effort to use a towel to fan his man, for Camden was not even breathing. Instead, the trainer gripped his pupil by both shoulders.

  “You fool!” he yelled. “Soak that bird and put him away. D’you think he’d back up if he had you going?”

  He clambered down out of the ring as the bell sounded for the second round.

  White, drawn face, and staring eyes of anxiety followed Pierre Lacoste as the latter, dripping with water, stepped out for the second round. But it was instantly plain that his brain had by now cleared entirely from the shock of that stunning blow. Yet he had his lesson. He danced around Harry Camden at long range, whipping in accurately timed punches, never taking a chance, or, when he had to close, tying up the arms of the other with wonderful skill.