Рита Браун - Fox Tracks

“I know, but the bear scent is overpowering.” Diana’s brown eyes nearly watered from the pungent signature of the bear. The younger “T” hounds patiently worked about a forty-foot area. These two litters, a year apart, were a new cross for Sister, who bred American foxhounds, a task she loved—but then if an animal had four feet Sister loved it, no matter what.

Tattoo was from the second litter, a youngster with a broad chest. He put his nose down, lifted it and uttered a little yelp.

His sister, Tootsie, joined him. She studied the scent. Her response was a clear signal.

“We got him!”

The other hounds moved toward the two young ones but they harbored some doubt.

Cora ran over, Diana by her side. “Tattoo isn’t smart about bears yet. Better make sure.”

A bit faster, Diana reached Tattoo and Tootsie first. She put her nose to the ground, inhaled deeply, her long nose warming the scent as it traveled to her brain.

“Yes!” she bellowed.

Cora seconded Diana’s cry. The whole pack flew behind them, singing as a choir.

Right behind his hounds, Shaker encouraged them with rounds of “Yip, yip.”

Betty could be momentarily glimpsed in her brown tweed bye-day jacket, as Tuesday hunts did not require a formal kit, then she disappeared down a slope. Being a saucy, confident fellow, the fox cut right toward her. He evidenced no fear of Betty or Outlaw. What’s one human and a horse?

“Tallyho!” Betty yelled.

The red fox lifted his head at her cry, picked up some speed, launching himself off the steep bank of the creek. Betty knew the best crossing was a good football-field’s length down the creek. No time for that.

“Outlaw, let’s do it.”

Without hesitation, the sturdy horse gathered himself at the bank’s edge to leap straight down about four feet. The cold water splashed up on Betty, some running into her boots. The footing—good, not rocky, as she’d looked for that—held up. They half walked, half swam in the deep spots to the creek’s other side, where an otter slide made getting out a whole lot easier than getting in.

“You are the best horse in the world.” An invigorated Betty patted him on the neck as both horse and rider tried to keep the fox in view.

“I know,” Outlaw replied.

In the field behind her, Sister galloped down to the easy crossing. A four-foot jump down into water could dislodge some riders, even strong ones like her. Not every horse in the field was as bold or handy as Outlaw.

Once on the other side of the creek, Sister stopped for a moment. Even with all the splashing behind her, she heard the hounds and kicked on. The easternmost forest of Old Paradise must have been where the glacier tired of pushing all that good topsoil down from Canada. Old rock outcroppings, some twenty feet high, appeared like a giant’s cast-aside dominoes. They didn’t seem to have evolved from the land but seemed to have simply been dumped in the spot. A few had shapes that could be mistaken for goblins. At least some of the horses thought so.

Kasmir Barbhaiya, a wealthy Indian gentleman who had moved to Virginia, proved his leg on this day when his extraordinarily beautiful Thoroughbred, a big fellow at seventeen hands, literally jumped sideways—all four feet off the ground. His leg never moved, his grip remained steady.

“It’s a monster!” the deep bay warned the horses behind him.

Naturally, a few believed him so they shied from the odd stone formations.

Three riders parted company from their mounts, who did not have the good grace to stand and wait for their riders to remount.

Two scared horses thundered by the other riders, causing human cries of “Loose horse!”

Sister heard them and thought to herself, Loose rider . Not that she herself hadn’t now and again provided entertainment for others over her long life by, for example, popping off, sliding face-first in mud, or taking a fence while her horse did not. The list could go on and on.

Sister’s mother told her when she was a little thing on a lead line that you don’t become a rider until you fall off at least seven times. Mother had seen many a spectacular crash, quietly proud that her daughter took it in stride: no excuses, no tears. Mrs. Oberbeck did not believe in raising wimps. She used to shout at Jane, “Leg. Leg, Janie!”

The two horses who’d dumped their riders came up, blowing hard, by Lafayette.

“You’ll not get by me, you field peons,” the talented gray snorted.

With that, Lafayette put on the afterburners, tears filling Sister’s eyes. He pulled away from the two runaway horses—neither Thoroughbreds—as though they had stalled in traffic.

Once he put enough distance between himself and the interlopers, Sister was able to get him back to a hand gallop, sixteen miles per hour.

The fox was giving them one hell of a run while the ground was becoming treacherous in spots. When they first started, the temperature was 30°F. It had since climbed to the low forties. Ice tinkled when they ran through a shallow puddle, and the ground was greasy in spots where one thought it would remain tight.

This is why, even in the summer, Sister worked on keeping her legs strong, riding fifteen minutes a day without stirrups, mostly at a trot. Even more than your seat, all you had in a situation like this was your leg. Leg. Leg. Leg.

Good she had it because the hounds streaming in front of her, in picture-perfect form, leapt over the narrow drainage ditch between Old Paradise and the westernmost border of Kasmir’s ever-expanding holdings. On the eastern side of this two-foot-deep drainage ditch were the remains of dry laid stone. This retaining wall for the land slipped toward the east, measured three feet high in some spots, while sunken in others. Sister leapt the ditch, and there was just enough land on the other side so that Lafayette could stop, gather himself, and pop straight up and over the wall.

Those straight pop-ups were harder to jump than a four-footer with an easy approach, at least Sister thought so as every filling in her teeth rattled when she dropped to the other side. She’d known when she sailed over that there’d been daylight between her bottom and the saddle.

Mother was right: leg , she thought, then laughed for the sheer joy of doing what she loved best.

On and on they flew, the sound of hoofbeats thrilling. Shaker rode well up with his hounds. Betty, feeling that water in her boots, on the right and Sybil, a swift-moving speck on the left, charged over undulating pasture. Sybil protected the road side, which fortunately carried little traffic, being a dirt state road. Depending on the state budget, stone would be put on the road about every three years. It never lasted long.

Sister heard gaining hoofbeats behind her. Turning for an instant, she saw that her field had diminished in number. Thank God for Bobby Franklin. As he passed them, he’d call back to his tail rider, the last person in his flight, to pick up the pieces.

Hounds disappeared over a swale. An old tobacco barn hove into view as Sister galloped down that incline, then up the other side. The hounds surrounded the old curing shed, some eagerly wiggling through spaces, logs deliberately built that way a century and a half ago. Other hounds found the open door and ran in.

Off his wonderful Hojo, who stood like a Life Guard’s horse, Shaker joined the hounds in the tobacco shed.

Betty stopped on the other side of the shed, but at a distance. If the fox emerged, she would not turn the fellow back toward the hounds. A good whipper-in has to know these things, it has to become instinct. The last thing Betty wanted to do was kill a fox. Give him plenty of time to get away if he bolted.