Рита Браун - The Tell-Tale Horse

Ronnie feigned a falsetto. “What a big hairy-chested man you are.”

Xavier never could keep a straight face around his boyhood friend. “Hey, at least one of us is.”

“Remember when RayRay sprouted his first chest hair right between his pecs, and we threw him on the ground and yanked it out?” Ronnie laughed.

Xavier smiled as he swung up on Picasso, built to carry weight. “I think of RayRay every day.”

Over at the Harper trailer parked next to the Merriman trailer, Cabel and Ilona watched Vajay and Mandy chatting with Kasmir.

“He’s cool as a cuke.” Ilona noted Vajay’s demeanor. “You’d never know he was under suspicion of murder.”

“If I were Mandy, I’d—” Cabel stopped herself. “Look.”

Ben Sidell, on his trusty Nonni, had ridden up to the three and passed a few pleasantries. Since nothing seemed untoward, the girlfriends sighed in disappointment.

Sister pulled out her grandfather’s pocket watch. It was seven minutes to the first cast. “Seven minutes. I’ll go on over and say a few words, along with Walter. That will hurry up the laggards.”

Betty waited on the ground, holding Outlaw’s reins. Her job would be to open the doors to the party wagon and then swing up on her horse. She and Sybil took turns performing this duty.

Sister on Lafayette rode over to Walter on his wonderful Clemson.

“Good morning, Master.” He tipped his derby.

“Good morning, Master.” She touched her crop to her cap.

“What saint’s day?”

“A mess.” She smiled at the tall blond man whom she had grown to love. “Senan, an Irish abbot who died in 544; Felix of Dunwich, bishop of East Anglia, who died in 647. His task was to Christianize the East Angles, a work still in progress.” She paused, then added, “John of God, who founded the Hospitalers and lived from 1495 to 1550. There’s one more, but I forget.”

“I don’t know how you remember what you do.”

“I have a funny head for dates and numbers. Hey, it’s International Women’s Day.”

“I celebrate women every day,” he joked.

“Well, come on, let’s do the shake-and-howdy. I want to cast these hounds.”

Walter said nothing because she was always eager to get on terms with her fox. So they rode over, called the crowd together, guests were introduced, the field master was pointed out—Sister herself—Bobby was noted as hilltoppers’ master, and without further ado Sister turned to Shaker and called out, “Hounds, please.”

Betty flipped up the long latch, pulled open the aluminum door, and out bounded twenty couple of excited foxhounds.

“I’m ready!” Trinity announced to the world.

Cora disciplined her. “Will you kindly shut up.”

Trinity hung her head for a moment.

Asa simply said, “Youth.”

Diddy, Darby, Dreamboat, Dana, Delight, and Doughboy stood on their hind legs but they didn’t babble. Pookah and Pansy came out today, the excitement doubled in the first-year entry.

Calming, Shaker lowered his voice. “Steady now, relax.”

Showboat, Shaker’s horse, ears pricked forward, exhaled out of his nostrils as two downy woodpeckers flew out of the mill.

What in the devil are woodpeckers doing in there? Sister thought to herself.

Only they knew, but a stream of invective flew between the birds as they battled about something.

Shaker led the pack past the mill, the spray becoming a heavy mist, moistening faces, intensifying scent. A huge door allowed entry into the first floor, a small door with a small outdoor landing was at the second story, and a third wooden door opened over the very top of the waterwheel. If the wheel needed repairs, it was stopped and the workmen could use whichever door was closest.

Foxes had lived at the mill since it was built, but that didn’t mean they’d give you a run. There was no way to bolt them from the lair, but often the pack could get one fox returning home for a bracing go.

At the rear of the first flight, the Custis Hall girls rode through the mist and fog rising from the millrace.

“Fog creeps me out,” Val whispered.

“Because you got lost in it,” Felicity mentioned.

“So did everybody else,” Val whispered, a bit louder.

“Not everyone else, just us,” Tootie corrected her, as they rode over the bridge spanning the millrace.

They emerged from the fog and took a simple coop into the first large pasture off the farm road. Hounds, on hearing, “Lieu in,” the old Norman words in use for over a thousand years, fanned over the pasture, the dew thick and cool.

No fox scent rose up from the earth. They reached the back fence line, took the jump there, and moved into the woods.

For thirty minutes hounds worked, the field walking along: nothing. Then they came into an area called Shootrough, one hundred acres, that used to be really rough but which Walter had cleaned up and planted with millet, winter wheat, switchgrass, and South American maize at the edges. The ground nesters flocked in, as did the foxes.

Dana found the line first. “Red dog fox.”

Other hounds ran over, putting their noses down. Cora opened on the line, and in a flash the entire pack was flying through the wheat and millet, the long stems swishing, the slight westerly breeze bending and raising the thin stalks as well.

A stout timber jump led into true rough ground, covered in brambles, pigweed, and poke. A little path cut through that got them down to the creek, below where Sister thought the fox would jump in to foil scent. But he didn’t. He turned back, running right on the farm road by the north side of Shootrough. The entire field viewed him as they emerged on the road. Having a good head start on the hounds, he hadn’t yet considered evasive action.

As Lafayette thundered down the road, clods of red clay flying up behind him, Sister noticed ice crystals on the north side of the road just catching the sunlight as the sun rose high enough to reach them from the east.

The fox plunged into the woods on the right, a small patch off the farm road at the end of Shootrough, the larger woods being to the left. He ran over moss and through hollowed-out logs and then came back onto the road, where he ran right between Cabel and Ilona, who stopped and stayed put as did everyone else, once Cabel shouted, “Hold hard!”

Within minutes the pack ran through the horses.

Diddy stopped for one second, then ran on. When she came alongside Tinsel, she said, “I caught the scent again.”

“We all caught it,” Tinsel replied, nose to ground, wondering what had happened to Diddy’s wits.

“No, the perfume on Faye Spencer’s leg.”

“Nothing we can do about it now,” Tinsel rightly answered.

This time the big red dog fox did use the creek, running through it and climbing out a hundred yards upstream.

Hounds lost scent where he jumped in, but Cora took some hounds on one side and Asa kept the others on the takeoff side as they worked in both directions until finally Tinsel, again demonstrating her fine nose, hollered “Here.”

That fast they were all on again, threading through the woods as fast as they could, till they finally lost him at an outcropping of huge squared boulders, very strange-looking.

Gingerly, Trudy dropped down on the other side to see if there was a den—but nothing.

Once again the fox proved to all he had magic. Poof! He was gone, his scent with him.

CHAPTER 28

Shaker reined in, cast hounds in a wide net, but that yielded not a jot.

He noticed that the bit of wind died and a stillness muffled sound in the woods. He could hear horses breathing about half a football field from him but no birds flew, no deer appeared.