Рита Браун - The Hounds And The Fury

Tootie, behind Sister, sat back as she’d seen the old foxhunters do. This was no time for a pretty position. She moved her leg forward of the girth for extra insurance.

Once in the fast-moving water, Aztec picked his way over the large stones. He scrambled out on the opposite side, where ice crystals coated the bank. The deer trail climbing at a forty-five-degree angle was manageable. With care, master and horse achieved the top.

One by one the riders climbed up over the bank, but each horse brought down a bit of earth until the last rider, Lorraine, with Bobby leading her, struggled through the worst footing.

When she had made it, Bobby whispered, “Well done.”

Lorraine was learning. The encouragement brought a big smile to her face.

The straight-running coyote took no evasive action but just turned on more speed. While a fox is preferable, coyote is legitimate game.

A warm wind current, a rising tunnel of air, caressed Sister’s face. Five big strides, and she was once again in crisp air. Now even she could catch snippets of scent: oily, heavy, lacking the sharp musky fox odor, which when one grows accustomed to it is almost pleasant.

A simple coop lay ahead, the base half covered by snow blown against it.

Aztec thought about it for one moment, heard, “Go on,” and did just that. He trusted Sister. She trusted him.

Hounds, running hard, barreled through abandoned pastures and across rutted farm roads, ever straight, ever eastwards. The pastures, snow covered, rolled on. As the whole pack moved farther along, the land became better tended.

After a half hour of slipping here and there, sleet stinging, Sister and the field galloped onto the old Lorillard land.

Hounds headed right for the family plot, which, like most graveyards predating the Revolution, was squared off and protected by a two-foot stone fence, each stone dry-set by hand in the 1750s. Occasionally patched, the stone bore testimony to endurance and beauty even as the graveyard contents announced the fleetingness of life.

Hounds, bearing down on the graveyard, could not see over the fence. Shaker saw it first, then Sister and the field.

Uncle Yancy and a large dog coyote were snarling at one another.

Shaker blew the horn. The coyote still threatened Yancy, but the fox, knowing there was no time to make a run for it, climbed the pin oak in the graveyard.

Folks swear that only gray foxes climb, but reds can do it. Sister had seen it before and wasn’t surprised to see it now. But she was surprised to see the coyote pause for a moment and dig down again, then decide he’d better run on.

Coyotes usually run only as fast as needed. This one underestimated Dragon’s speed. Dragon came alongside, snarled, and bumped him. That fast the coyote turned, sank his fangs into the hound, and leaped sideways to avoid Cora, who was a split second behind Dragon. He then put on the afterburners. The pack had been running hard for a half hour. Besides, they’d been out for another forty-five minutes above that. Fresh, the coyote had the advantage, but the Jefferson Hunt hounds possessed unquenchable drive. They snapped close to his heels. He charged up a slope, crossed a meadow where soil was poor, dropped down the embankment on the eastern side, and disappeared into a large jagged rock outcropping. The pack gathered in front of the narrow opening between two huge boulders.

Shaker dismounted, blew “Gone to ground,” and quickly remounted.

He wanted to pull the pack out of there because all manner of larger predators found the rocks with fissures and small caves very attractive.

Tootie, Val, and Felicity, burning hot, welcomed the ice bits on their cheeks. Their core body heat hadn’t begun to cool.

Uncle Yancy posed in the pin oak on a lower branch, which was nevertheless too high for hounds to yank him down by his lovely brush, quite in contrast to Aunt Netty’s pathetic little tail.

“Close call,” he cheerfully called down as the pack came near.

“What are you doing all the way over here?” Asa wondered.

“Netty brought me a beautiful pencil, so I came to see if there’s more. Dead human, pretty fresh in a shallow grave. That’s why the coyote was digging here. Well, ‘I was here first,’ I says to him, and he says, ‘Bug off, Pipsqueak.’ If you all hadn’t come along when you did, I might have got the worst of that fight.”

Dragon, bleeding all over the snow, limped along.

Shaker stopped before reaching the graveyard and called back to Sister. “We’d better put him in Sam’s woodshed. I’ll come back for him. Don’t want him to walk all the way back to the trailers.”

“Shaker, maybe there’s a better way.” She motioned to Betty, who rode in closer. “Betty, call Sam on your cell phone. See if he’ll leave for a minute and load up Dragon in his truck.”

“He can’t lift him.” Betty reached inside her coat for her phone.

“Right.” Sister nodded, for she’d momentarily forgotten Sam’s wound. “Call Gray. Maybe he can slip away. If not, we’ll have to ride back, then drive back. I hate to leave him for long.”

“Okay.” Betty punched in Gray’s number as Sister gave it to her.

As Betty filled in Gray, the field watched Uncle Yancy, about one hundred yards away, talk to the hounds who sat underneath the tree.

“This place is full of dead humans. Why would the coyote dig one up?” Diddy asked.

Ardent sometimes forgot how young the last “D” litter was. “They bury six feet down so we can’t smell the body. This grave has to be less than that. Peculiar. Humans are fastidious about planting their dead.”

“Go on over there. Even with the snow and sleet, you’ll get a whiff,” Uncle Yancy suggested.

“No. You’ll back down and run off,” Dasher said.

“Ha! What do you take me for?” Uncle Yancy replied.

Diddy and Ardent walked over as Shaker rode up, followed by Sister.

“He’s right. I can get a whiff.” Diddy closed her eyes for a moment.

“Coyote helped. He clawed out six inches or more. Ground’s not as cold here; the graveyard is sheltered from the wind. It’s a lovely spot.”

Shaker dismounted and walked to the pin oak. “Uncle Yancy, you should know better than to pick a fight with a coyote.”

“I was here first.” Uncle Yancy refused to recognize Shaker’s point.

Betty raised her voice so Sister could hear, for she had walked to the other side of the graveyard just in case hounds took a notion. “He’ll be here in twenty minutes, tops.”

“Thank heavens,” Sister sighed. The sleet was now mixed in with more ice bits.

Shaker reached Diddy and Ardent. The pack followed. He stared at the small hole in the ground. He couldn’t smell what they smelled, but he could see where the snow had been pulled away, where the ground was freshly disturbed. He scuffed that area with the toe of his boot. “Sister, something’s in here.”

The weather was worsening steadily. Sister asked Tedi to take the field. She handed Aztec’s reins to Tootie to lead back.

“Shaker, I’ll stay with Dragon. Let’s put him in the woodshed out of the weather. You load up and get on home before the roads really get ugly. Gray can drive Dragon and me to Marty Shulman at the vet clinic. We’ll get Dragon stitched up and fill him with antibiotics.”

Ice rattled against the worn tombstones like clear BBs.

“All right.” He knew her plan was wise.

“Betty, call Ben Sidell. Tell him he needs to come out here.”

“I could stay with you. Val can lead Outlaw back.”

“You need to be with the hounds. You and Sybil. Go on, now.”

Jason rode up and touched his cap with his crop. “Ma’am, I would be privileged to stay. If you find some thread and a needle, I can stitch him up.”