Рита Браун: Let Sleeping Dogs Lie

Oakside’s neighbors, new people, were not country people. Like most new people, especially those moving from cities or suburbs, their property lines seemed inviolate to them. This is deeply unrealistic but it was best folks learn this lesson in a gentle manner. That didn’t necessarily mean Sister would someday be able to hunt that land but it did mean that hounds can’t read. You can post all the NO TRESPASSING signs you want, won’t do a bit of good to four-legged hounds with a snoutful of scent.

Walking back, the group came up to the old, now unused Saddlebred barn. The Johnsons had their hunting barn up by the house. The five-stall Saddlebred barn, built decades ago by an owner of these lovely horses, rested farther away and had been let go by an interim owner. The abandonment gave it a sorrowful air.

As she rode by, Sister noticed glowing skulls with red eyes pushing up from the ground, red paint on the sides of the barn reading, Murder, Help, I’m Being Held a Prisoner, plus a mannequin hanging from the rafters.

Maria and Sonia, with Nate’s help, had created a haunted barn as a fund-raiser for the pony club last year. A haunted barn it remained.

“Those darn skulls get me. It’s the damned red eyes,” Sister remarked to Maria.

“Scared the devil out of the kids.” Maria laughed.

Walking behind Sister, Phil Chetwynd teased Maria, “If you ever have a big fight with Nate, we’ll know where to look.”

Mercer, next to Phil, chirped, “I don’t know, Phil, I’d worry more about you. Taking all those road trips.”

Phil grinned. “Truthfully, I think sometimes my wife is glad to get rid of me.”

“Hear! Hear!” Sister called out and people laughed, most especially Phil.

Once back at Roughneck Farm, a forty-five-minute drive from Oakside, hounds were carefully checked for barbed-wire cuts, sore pads, anything unusual.

Betty and Tootie untacked horses to clean them as Sister and Shaker checked, then fed hounds.

The Master and huntsman watched the boys eat. The boys ate first, then the girls. Shaker figured if any of the girls were going into heat early the scent would linger and might cause a ruckus among the boys. And the boys always knew before humans had a sign. Of course, given that all had just hunted together without a hint of someone coming into season early, hounds were safe but Shaker stuck to his program. Sister rarely interfered. Her philosophy was if you have a good huntsman who doesn’t drink, run women, or is cruel to horses, leave him or her alone.

Shaker hadn’t gone to Kentucky. Sometimes he’d go along to away meets but mostly he didn’t want to be far from his hounds. He did enjoy riding with other huntsmen and had struck up a friendship with Glen Westmoreland at Woodford as well as Danny Kerr, huntsman at Camargo Hunt, another rousing Kentucky hunt. Shaker enjoyed talking shop. Most huntsmen did, especially as they were few in number, 162 in North America, give or take one or two depending on circumstances.

“Dreamboat, this was your day. It was the best day you ever had,” Sister called to the racy-looking hound as he enjoyed his food, drizzled with corn oil for the taste and also the shine it put on the coats.

“Funny, isn’t it?” Shaker smiled, for he liked the hound so much. “He really did me proud.”

“I love this pack. It’s taken a lifetime of breeding and work and I’ve always loved my hounds, but Shaker, I think this is the steadiest, hardest-working pack I’ve ever had and of course, much of the credit belongs to you and our whippers-in.”

“No shortcuts.” Shaker appreciated the compliment and she knew it.

The two of them had spent many an hour poring over bloodlines and performance. They also attended other hunts, singling out the special hounds there. The research never ended, the study, the planning, and they never wanted it to.

Sister’s cell phone beeped. She fished it out of her barn jacket, as she’d already taken off her good hunt coat. Peering down, she read a text:

“Call me. O.J.”

“Excuse me a minute.” She walked back into the tidy office and called Kentucky.

“Hey.”

“Sister, Alan and Meg notified the authorities as you would think they would. So Benny Glitters’s tomb has been opened with, oh, I don’t know what you call them, forensic people, I guess were there. Anyway, they found an entire human skeleton. Found the watch chain, no other jewelry. Bones and a watch.”

“What about the dog?”

“Buried with the human skeleton. No one can say for sure but it looks like the skeleton of a little terrier, you know, like a Norwich. The snout wasn’t long enough to be a Jack Russell. Oh, the human skeleton is male.”

“I’ll be damned. Did they find anything else?”

“Well, Benny Glitters.”

“Yes. Remind me again about Benny Glitters.”

“The owner, Captain Brown, of Walnut Hall before L.V.” Like most people, O.J. called Mr. Harkness by his first initials, as though he were still alive. “Brown was a very successful Thoroughbred horseman.”

“Right.”

“Before he died, he’d bred Benny Glitters. Everyone thought this would be the next great one. It surely looked like it. Well, Captain Brown died in 1894. The year Benny was eligible to race, he was sold along with the farm to L.V. L.V. was a harness-racing man but he wouldn’t have minded winning the Derby. Anyway, Benny started out brilliantly, winning everything and then just fizzled. No one knows why. He was sound. L.V. retired him, hoping he might prove useful as a stud. But then Lela, L.V.’s one daughter, he had two, fell in love with Benny, who was sweet. He became her favorite horse. She foxhunted him and when he died in 1921, she created a memorial. Benny is the only Thoroughbred buried in that graveyard, placed a little off to the side, under the trees.”

“She must have loved him very much.”

“It’s a wonderful story. The Chetwynds, your Chetwynds, did a lot of business in Kentucky, as you said. Old Thomas Chetwynd and L.V. were pals, according to Meg. Kindred spirits perhaps. Thomas had the big slate covering the tomb made, cut, engraved, and brought it out from Virginia to here. I guess there are a lot of slate quarries in central Virginia.”

“Yes. We hunt a fixture with an abandoned quarry on it. A seam of land running under a few counties, kind of like your limestone, I guess.”

“Anyway, that’s how Benny came to rest. The first Standardbred buried in what we all now know as the cemetery was Notelet, who died in 1917, and of course by then L.V. was gone. He died in 1915.”

“I don’t suppose anyone has an idea who it was down there with Benny,” said Sister, her interest piqued, inflamed really.

“No. It surely seems to be murder. You don’t just reopen a grave and stick someone and their dog in it.”

“True enough and it couldn’t have been a robbery. No one would leave a gold watch.”

“Meg said police took the watch with them after looking it over carefully at the site. No initials on it but a horsehead is engraved on the back. So I suspect whoever was down there was in the business.”

“Or an inveterate gambler,” speculated Sister.

“Didn’t think of that.”

“No good will come of this. I don’t care how long someone has been entombed, when you disturb them, troubles follow.” Sister shivered for a second as she felt the old evil of the deed.

“I wonder if troubles will follow finding and moving Richard the Third.” O.J., an avid reader and history buff, had followed that recent news story with great interest. The bones of the former English king—killed in 1485 in the Battle of Bosworth Field—were found under a parking lot.

“In one way or another it will, but I’m sure the British are equal to it. My worry is this is our problem. Well, I certainly hope it doesn’t bring trouble to Meg and Alan, or others that we know.”