Рита Браун: Out Of Hounds

“Sugar looks fine.”

Counting, he stopped and smiled. “She is.”

“She really is beautiful, but pretty is as pretty does,” Skiff repeated the old horseman’s phrase; truer words were never spoken.

“Funny, isn’t it? How money impresses most people?”

“Yes, but in your figuring remember Showoff probably gets at least seven hundred fifty dollars a month board, plus money for trailering to shows if the owner doesn’t have a trailer. Then the client pays for shoeing, probably directly to the farrier. If there are special foods, he or she will pick that cost up. The annual shots, etc. So there is money coming in for board and whatever else is needed. I expect the trainer is paid directly by the student, horse owner for lessons, plus her base salary, plus her living. So add the cost of electricity and heat to the house, which I expect is the small clapboard house in the rear there just visible.”

“Okay, so maybe he has to crack a one hundred and fifty thousand dollar nut. If he has it, why not? Think of the hay dealers, the truck dealers, the workmen, etc. Money is useless sitting still. And if he sells a horse, good.”

“I still think it’s crazy,” Skiff, a New Hampshire girl and tight with the buck, said.

“I wouldn’t do it but you only live once. Why do we think a so-called purposeful life is the way? If someone wants to spend their life showing off, what is it to me so long as he doesn’t harm anyone? I don’t know that I have a purposeful life but I like what I do, I pay my bills, and I get to foxhunt. If I had graduated Harvard, wound up in D.C. like my brother, would I have a better life? No. I’d have more money. My brother now is the happiest I have ever seen him.”

She smiled. “He is a kind man.”

“Mom taught us manners as well as the usual. Plus we still have Aunt Dan to keep us on the straight and narrow.”

“You know, Sam, I wouldn’t use straight and narrow. Aunt Dan lived large.”

They laughed again then Sam thought a moment. “What did you think of Parker Bell?”

“He did his job.”

“That doesn’t answer the question.”

“I’m glad you didn’t go to Harvard law school.” She then answered, “I didn’t like him. I couldn’t tell you why.”

Sam grunted low, “Me, neither.”

CHAPTER 6

February 11, 2020 Tuesday

Shelby County, Kentucky, blessed with good soil, sat east of Louisville by twenty-five miles. Abutting Shelby County was Oldham County. Long Run–Woodford Hunt territory and wonderful territory it was, as long as it could last, for Louisville fast encroached on surrounding counties.

Jane Winegardner, MFH, of old Woodford now merged with Long Run, sat on a hill. As Sister Jane was one of her oldest friends and she was younger than Sister, she was known as O.J., the Other Jane.

At this moment the Other Jane felt her sixty-odd years, for the wind, nine miles per hour, blew from the west to the east. The Ohio River divided Indiana from Kentucky. Even thirty miles away, the touch of water filled that wind. The Ohio was a mile wide between Louisville and Indiana. With the mercury sitting at 38°F one’s pores tightened, the skin glowed. Who needed a face-lift?

The hard-riding master chose to flank the hounds today. Much as she loved running and jumping, sometimes as a tune-up, a master ought to sit and watch, moving from good view to good view. In this way she or he could judge how well the pack was working together, how good the communication was between huntsman, staff, and hounds. Since hounds could not carry a cellphone or walkie-talkie, there had to be that invisible thread that marks a person with the horn from a person truly hunting hounds. Fortunately, the huntsman, Spencer Allen, truly hunted hounds.

Many packs, especially those crisscrossed by highways where formerly the roads were dirt, used walkie-talkies. Sister Jane, thanks to the vastness of her territory for an East Coast hunt, refused this prop for her whippers-in and huntsman. If you hunted with Jefferson Hunt you hunted as was done in the seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth, and most of the twentieth century. You used your five senses.

The great maw of Louisville added to the dangers of hunting. All those paved highways, all the new people, lots and lots of new people, innocent of country ways, demanded constant communication between staff. One couldn’t trust a new person to slow if he or she observed hounds hunting. Then, too, there needed to be a road whip equipped with a radar screen that showed the tracking collars of the hounds. This allowed the driver to speed, and he did speed, to the spot where it looked like hounds would cross one of these hateful highways. Also, the road whip could hear the communication between huntsman and his staff. In this manner hounds were saved from accidents. Of course, the quarry could care less and many a clever fox and sharp-witted coyote learned to use the roads.

O.J. had seen a mother coyote teach her young how to cross the highway, to look both ways, to shrink back if needed, to surge across when safe.

One does not hunt dumb animals. The dumb animals are the ones on two feet.

So she sat, fingers tingling despite good gloves, to behold the pack, surging across a wide lower pasture, the coyote well in front, seemingly unstressed. Her keen eye noted which hounds were forward, who was in the middle, who was tailing.

Like any good master or good huntsman, O.J. knew your pack is made in the middle. A brilliant hound is a thrill but it’s the good soldiers that keep it right. Then, too, it’s easy for a huntsman to draft from the rear, but hell to draft from the front. Yet if your forward hounds are so fast they pull away, you now have two packs, so it must be done. She hated that, of course. Sister Jane could never do it. She’d keep the speedsters in the kennel, pay for their food herself, but eventually breed to a hound a step slower. Sister never wanted to blunt drive. Her deep love for hounds was both a strength and a weakness. She simply could not draft a speedster or a senior citizen. She and O.J. would talk for hours about hounds, hunting, management of territory, shifts in quarry. They could empty a room, so they only spoke of such things when together with staff from other hunts. Foxhunting is a blinding passion like skiing, surfing, you name it. Logic gets in the way of the emotional release, and release it is. You have not a second to consider the cares of the day. If you do you will soon be entertaining others with an involuntary dismount.

O.J. liked what she saw. Yes, a few hounds were now tailing, they were older and would probably be retired this year, but they had not fallen so far behind as to be a big worry. The big worry was that the damned coyote was heading straight for a busy road.

Watching, heart beating a bit faster, she saw the road whip. She could almost hear him banging on the side of the truck to alert the forward hounds not to cross. Sometimes they obeyed and sometimes not. A burning hot scent can’t be denied.

At the last minute the large gray fellow cut hard right, dropped into a narrow creekbed, high sides, to run in the water then leap out and head back away from the road. Sure enough the pack, stymied at the creekbed, did slide down but the damage to scent was done.

After about a two-hour stop-and-start run, O.J. hoped her huntsman, Spencer Allen, would lift. He could cast back, for one often picks up another line, but best to ride back toward the east, away from those roads. Not that there weren’t other roads on the return but none quite so heavily traveled.

As she turned her mare, Blossom, the wind picked up a bit, hitting her right between the shoulder blades. Kentucky lacks the heavy forests in this part of the state that cover Virginia.