Рита Браун - Hounded To Death

People usually didn’t talk in the field, for Sister just wouldn’t have it, but a bit of chat on the way to the first cast wasn’t the greatest of sins.

Mitch Fisher rode behind Tedi and Edward Bancroft. They asked him if he wanted to move ahead of them but he declined. The Bancrofts most always were right behind Sister. Beautifully mounted, they had been riding together for over fifty years, and few people could ride harder or better. As this was the first time at Skidby, Mitch’s desire to be in the forefront was understandable. He, too, had labored over his turnout, surprising everyone by wearing a bow tie with his tweed. Nothing against it, and the regimental colors looked good on him—which, of course, he knew.

A half mile from the house, away from the paddocks where Mitch and Lutrell’s yearlings were frolicking, Shaker cast hounds into a light moist west wind.

Sister felt the slight change in the air. Clouds would be rolling in within the hour. Her bones proved far more reliable than the Weather Channel.

A crease in the land hid a small creek surrounded by dense brush with wild roses entwined throughout and a few large hickories and oaks on either side. Good covert to start.

“Lieu in there,” Shaker called out, then blew the notes to reinforce the message.

In dashed the pack of twenty-four couple hounds, including Giorgio, who hopped up and down like a kangaroo.

“Will you keep your paws on the ground?” Trudy admonished the handsome young dog hound.

As Trudy was a third-year hound, Giorgio put his nose down, trying to do right.

Betty on the left and Sybil on the right noticed, along with Shaker, that sterns began to wave just a wee bit. Soon the sterns moved like a rudder in current.

“Red!” Dreamboat called out.

As this hound was only in his second year, Cora checked it.

Asa came over, put his nose down, then lifted his head along with Cora and the curtain was raised.

Rickyroo’s ears swept forward, for he spied the healthy, glistening, red dog fox scoot out from the point of the covert.

Sister, knowing to trust a true hunting horse, followed Rickyroo’s gaze and let out a deep “Tally ho!”

Shaker, down near the fold of the land, couldn’t see the point, but if the master gave a holler, he knew it was good. On the other hand, field members in their excitement had been known to tally-ho cats, squirrels, and the occasional groundhog.

As hounds, at the moment of viewing, were not behind their fox, Sister was correct in calling out. If they’d had their noses down, on the line, she would have kept quiet. Never bring up a hound’s head.

Diana, on hearing her master’s voice, knew they’d burst their fox clean out of the covert. “Come on. Step on it.”

The whole pack sang as one, the ancient sound bouncing back off the ridges toward the west.

In the field, shoulders snapped back, heels dropped down, and reins were picked up a bit if slack. Chins up, eyes forward, and they were off.

The red, although not accustomed to being hunted by a pack, was mature. He’d eluded larger animals before. This time he had to outwit a number of them but, confident in his abilities, he scorched straight up from the point of the covert, across the pasture, and then turned eastward, winds blowing his scent away from hound noses.

This ruse bought him only a few seconds’ time, for the dew held what scent there was on his pads. As the pack whirled five hundred yards behind him, catching his line again, he realized he’d better get out of the open, so he turned on the afterburners and, like a Formula One Ferrari, he zoomed for the woods.

A new zigzag jump in the wire tensile fence line was the only way into the woods. The gate was a half mile away, so Bobby Franklin and his posse of Hilltoppers burnt the wind getting there. There were times when Bobby and second flight ran harder and faster than first.

Betty had already cleared the zigzag as she pushed up to her ten-o’clock position. Sybil had negotiated a coop down in the corner of the fence, so she was also out front. Shaker cleared the fence next, and Sister was cleanly over one minute later.

The red ran a tight circle in a patch of running cedar. That fouled his scent briefly but the older hounds knew this trick, so they cast themselves on all sides of the large patch to find out where he’d come out.

“Here,” Ardent called.

“Devil take them!” the fox said, as he ran straight for the deeper creek, a thirty-foot expanse. He launched off a fifteen-foot bank, hit the water, and swam to the other side. Then he ran alongside the creek, turned, and swam back across, blowing through heavy covert thanks to the fact that he was smaller than the hounds. He was heading back to his den, and if they closed again he knew where he could drop them—or hoped so, anyway.

Hounds barreled to the spot where the fox jumped into the creek and everyone except Giorgio flew over that bank without a second’s hesitation. They went under, came back up, and swam for the opposite bank.

“That’s scary,” the young entry wailed.

“Come on, you weenie. Either you’re a foxhound or you’re a cur!” taunted Pickens, second year and feeling full of himself.

Shaker came up to the spot first. He trotted along the bank to find a better place to jump in, dropping only six feet instead of fifteen. The water splashed up but his boots didn’t fill. Kilowatt, water halfway up his legs, surged forward, and Shaker clambered out on the other side. That, too, was a bit steep but a huntsman always tries to stay with his forward hounds. Of course, in Jefferson Hunt territory, there were times when Jesus Christ himself couldn’t have ridden with the forward hounds.

The pack picked up the red’s line, right to where he’d jumped back into the creek. As hounds hit the water again, Sister came up to the creek.

She reined in Rickyroo, sat, and watched hounds swim back.

Giorgio came up to her. “I don’t like the water.”

“Young’un, go to them.” She spoke to him with warmth.

The sound of her voice instantly made him feel better, and since the pack was now swimming back across he could meet them on this side. So he rushed down to the place where they’d emerge. The most tantalizing odor curled into his lovely black nose.

“He came out here!” Giorgio said and damned if he didn’t run the line through the heavy underbrush, pushing forward, heedless of the thorns.

Diddy and Delight, right out of the water and immediately behind Diana, said to each other, “Shit, there’ll be no living with him now.”

The three girls hurried to the place where Giorgio opened. They opened too, and as hounds came out of the water, some not even bothering to shake, they ran up to Giorgio. Tillie, the slight yellow spotted hound Mo Schneider bred, was right in there doing yeoman’s work.

Shaker, riding back out of the creek, figured out there was no way through the covert.

“Huntsmen!” he bellowed.

The riders on the trail backed into the woods, not easy in some places, so Shaker could pass through with their horses’ heads facing him, not their hindquarters. One lash from those hind hooves could break a huntsman’s leg if it found its target. It could also hurt the huntsman’s horse, and good huntsmen’s horses aren’t easily found and made. It takes special boldness to negotiate all the obstacles first and to hear the horn blowing over those sensitive equine ears.

Shaker flew through and then Sister came behind. Each field member fell into line as the rider before came back out onto the trail. This maneuver, so important to foxhunting, is rarely well executed, today being no exception. A hapless rider, not able to hold his horse, shot out right in front of the master.