Рита Браун - The Hounds And The Fury

With husband and son both named Raymond, Sister had always thought January 7 was a lucky day. The embracing temperament certainly applied to her husband in a more earthy fashion, but it truly applied to her son emotionally. His impulse had been to include, to find what was good about a person, to build bridges.

Those thoughts flitted across her mind until finally they reached a narrow covert, snaking along a tiny creek that fed into a much larger one. Ice crystals stood out in pretty clumps along the farm road.

“Lieu in there,” Shaker called. Then he blew “Draw the covert,” one long note followed by two short sharp ones.

Hounds dashed into the covert. Colder in there than out on the field, they nonetheless had the advantage of being sheltered from the light breeze swooping down from the northwest.

Trudy worked alongside Cora, her hero. Not as fast as the older strike hound, Trudy absorbed all of Cora’s knowledge. She wasn’t slow, but Cora could pull ahead of all the hounds in the pack save Dragon, her nemesis. Rabbit scent curled up. The bitter odor of dried berries and bent-over pokeweed also was apparent.

The sun, now clear of the horizon, cast long scarlet shadows. The hounds worked through the narrow covert to where the little creek fed into the big one.

“To the left,” Shaker called out, and the whole pack wheeled as one, working the left side of the fast-moving creek.

Tootie, Val, Felicity, and Pamela rode at the back of first flight. The custom for centuries had been for children, young people, and grooms to ride in the rear. On days when fields were quite small, Sister invited the girls forward. On the children’s hunt, adults followed children.

The reasons for this were sound. Young people could observe those in front who had earned their colors. Those members knew the territory, respected hounds, and nine times out of ten were strong riders. Watching how they approached a tricky fence, negotiated a drop, dealt with an obstacle whose approach had been poached, churned up like cake frosting, taught the youngsters. Being nimble, they could more easily dismount and mount up than many older members. If someone dropped a crop or needed a hand, the young were expected to supply it. Also, if there was damage to a fence or to anything else, they weren’t expected to repair it, but they were expected to remember. The person doing the damage was to report it immediately to the field master, even during a hunt, so long as they didn’t disturb hounds. But the young provided a backup in case the offending rider did not. In their defense, sometimes so many people hit a fence that no one was a culprit. Still, all should ’fess up.

The other thing about having young people ride in the rear was that everyone in front had also performed these services, watched the experienced riders, prayed for the moment when they, too, would be one of them: the hunt’s colors proudly worn on their collars, hunt bottoms sewn on their frock coats.

Hunting was a chain stretching back thousands of years. Tootie, Val, Felicity, and Pamela profited from the wisdom of the ages.

Tootie, fond of history, particularly responded. She never felt alone when she hunted. Ghosts rode with her.

Walking behind her hounds, still searching, Sister noted she’d seen no deer hunters. This was the last day of deer season, which could be as frightening as the first. Harvest had been good this season, many hunters reaching their bag limits. Anyone out today was most likely from the city. Not one orange cap or jacket flashed human presence.

A hunter needed a good memory for the seventy-three firearm regulations in the state of Virginia. Adding to the burden was the fact that each county also had specific regulations.

Hunting generated income. First, the state raked it in from the licenses, and then if the sheriff or animal control officer cited a hunter for a violation, there was that tasty fine, which was dumped into the county coffers. Without hunters of all stripes, states would go bankrupt.

Usually Sister could focus on the hounds, but when the going was slow, her mind wandered a bit.

She woke up, though, as Dasher opened, followed by Diana and Tinsel. They had picked up a line along the large creek bed.

Betty, on the right side of the large creek, loped along on Magellan and cleared a large tree trunk, keeping hounds well in sight.

Sybil, on the left, paralleled an old cart road, its ruts frozen. She passed a stack of pallets used during apple picking. A packing shed in serviceable condition sat near the pallets. The apple orchard covered the lands to the west, rising upward for fifty acres on the west side of the creek.

The fox kept straight as an arrow, but he was well ahead of hounds. He’d been courting, and having been unsuccessful in his designs had turned north, which meant he headed back toward Chapel Cross, where the tertiary gravel roads formed a perfect cross.

The field galloped through the western orchards and passed into the wide hay field with the one-hundred-thirty-year-old sugar maple of epic proportions in the middle.

The fox veered further north, picking up speed. The field, sweating now, cheeks flushed, cleared coops, rail fences, and a line of brambles entwining a disintegrating three-board fence. On they ran, hounds in full cry, ground beginning to soften in spots, for they’d been out an hour.

The fields, frost shining gold as the sun rose ever upward, rolled onward. The Blue Ridge Mountains provided a spectacular backdrop, the ice on deciduous trees and on pines flaming in the climbing sunlight.

“What the hell!” Dreamboat cursed as an eight-point buck shot right past him.

However, hounds smelled no hunters.

As they ran on and on, scent intensifying along with their cry, Sister and the field noticed deer moving past them or cutting at angles. No deer ran away from the direction of the hounds. If anything, they were running to the hounds. Four miles past Chapel Cross, galloping flat out, they thundered into Paradise.

Bobby Franklin, leading the hilltoppers, pulled up on a high hill for a moment. He’d fallen behind because the old gates, rusting on the hinges, had taken some doing to open. The youngsters in the back of the hilltoppers dismounted to open the gates. This was done in twos so no one would be alone at a gate, everyone rushing off, their horse eager to join them.

Bobby heard Shaker’s horn, piercing. He saw his wife flying across an open meadow with Sybil on the left. The hounds, tightly together, dashed over the meadow. Shaker next hove into view. He was followed by Sister on Rickyroo, his long stride eating up the ground. Behind Sister the field strung out, some already succumbing to the pace. The four Custis Hall girls were passing those who faltered or were pulling up, which was their right to do.

Just before Bobby squeezed his horse, a big fellow, something told him to wait.

More deer appeared, then a black and tan hound, followed by another and another. They looked like black jellybeans tossed over icing. To their credit, they weren’t chasing the deer. A few had their noses down, but others had come up on the line that Dasher, Cora, Diana, and the others were following. The black and tans had been running backward on the line.

Within a minute they smashed smack into the pack.

“Pay them no mind!” Cora ordered.

“Cur dogs!” Dragon yelled to the young ones.

“Be damned if I’m a cur dog, sir.” A black and tan snarled at Dragon, who snarled back.

Shaker, coming up hard, tucked his horn into his coat between the first and second buttons. Clear and loud, he commanded, “Ware riot!”

“Don’t worry,” Diana said, her nose down.

“Who are they?” Young Delight, baffled, yelped.