Рита Браун - The Hounds And The Fury

“Do talk to them. Use all that deadly charm.” Sister joked gratefully. “I’m not upset with them.”

“I know that. It’s Mr. Ego.”

“We seem to have a few of those.” Sister cut her eyes toward Jason, resplendent in a hacking jacket made expressly for him by Le Cheval in Kentucky so it fit perfectly.

“Peacock.”

“M-m-m,” Sister touched Cindy’s arm. “Thank you many times over for everything. I always feel better when I see you or talk to you.”

“Go on.” Cindy smiled at her.

Sister saw that hounds were ready and everyone was mounted except for Ronnie Haslip, usually one of the first up. He’d dropped his crop and dismounted, and was swinging up again.

To give Ronnie one extra second, Sister quietly said to Walter, facing her, “You ride tail today. Do you mind?”

“Not at all.”

“Take Jason with you. If he wants to learn, then he can learn service first.”

“Ah.” Walter sighed, but he didn’t argue.

How could he? She was right. The look on Jason’s face was not one of a man being honored by a position of responsibility. It was that of a spoiled person who wants to ride right up in the master’s pocket.

Millions he might have, but Sister was damned if she’d be bought. She had kept Crawford in line for ten years, succeeding in getting him elected president—a good place for him in many ways. The boob ball, which is how she thought of the hunt ball, had put an end to all. Bobby Franklin, who had resigned his presidency, submitted to an emergency general election. Bobby, a good leader, had accepted with grace, tabling his ideas of a long vacation this coming summer. Betty was thrilled. Vacations bored her to tears.

There they were. Frost heavy on the ground. The sun kissing the horizon. Puffs curling from horses’ nostrils, hounds eager.

The horrid cow, Clytemnestra, and her equally enormous offspring, Orestes, had been bribed and barricaded in two stout stalls in the small cattle barn. Sweet mash liberally laced with decent bourbon contented the holy horror, who had gleefully smashed fences and chased people in times past.

Given the heavy frost, the mercury still below freezing, Shaker walked hounds up the slow rise to the two ponds, one at a lower level than the other, a long pipe and small waterwheel between them. Cindy had added the waterwheel in the early fall. Formerly the water had cascaded from the pipe in the upper pond to the lower pond. Now the pipe fed directly onto the wheel, whose sound as it turned was one our ancestors had heard for centuries untold, one lost now to the roar of turbines and internal combustion engines.

Those who had never before heard the mating of gears, the slap of the paddles, the sound of the water rising and falling off the paddles discovered the peacefulness of it. Those who had ridden at Mill Ruins had heard it before in deeper register.

The cascade produced a spray of droplets, arching out over the pond and turning to thousands of rainbows as the sun rose high enough to send a long, slanting ray to the wheel.

The moving water crystallized at pond’s edge here and there, but until frosts stayed hard and deep for many days the ponds wouldn’t freeze.

Grace, the beautiful resident red fox, returned before sunrise to her den behind the stable. Given the wealth of treats, especially the hard candies that Cindy put out for her, Grace had lost her motivation to hunt afar. Occasionally she provided a bracing run. Today wasn’t the day.

Grace glanced up and back. A blanket of thick clouds massed on the mountaintops. In front of her, the east, the sky was crystal clear. Very interesting. Very tricky.

Hounds picked up Grace’s scent at the waterwheel. The beautiful red liked fishing, a hobby she’d taught to Inky. The two girlfriends would sit at pond’s edge for hours watching the goldfish, big suckers. Every now and then, Grace would grab one or Inky would. The squirming fish sometimes gained its life by flopping right out of their paws and back into the pond. Occasionally they were successful and enjoyed sushi.

Today, a tall male heron, motionless, stood on the far side of the upper pond. With a jaundiced eye he watched the hounds. He wasn’t going to budge unless someone approached him. He was here first. Furthermore, he was hungry. He tilted his head, and an orange flash caught his eye. Fast as lightning he uncoiled his snakey neck and plunged his long, narrow, terrifying beak through the thin ice at pond’s edge into the water, pulling out an extremely healthy fish.

“Wow.” Diddy’s soft brown eyes widened.

“He’s an old crank,” Ardent jibbed.

“Sure can fish, though,” Asa whispered, since Shaker was within earshot.

Grace’s scent lingered enough for hounds to feather, the rhythm of their tails seemingly connected to the intensity of the scent.

Moving upward away from the ponds, hounds reached a higher meadow, where for fifteen minutes the sun warmed the remains of the snow, bare patches of slicked-down pasture also visible.

About a half mile away rested an old schoolhouse by the farm road. Aunt Netty had once lived there until Uncle Yancy filled the den up. Their former addresses littered three fixtures.

Cindy hadn’t noticed, since she hadn’t been riding her property in the cold, but a huge, leggy, red dog fox, Iggy, had recently taken up residence. The lure was not only the abundant supply of mice, moles, rabbits, and grain tidbits but Grace. He meant to have her. At this point, she was coy. Another week, and she might be in season. He was patient. She wouldn’t be so coy then. As it was, she maintained warm conversations with him.

Hounds walked up the pasture and jumped over the fence line, trotting down into the woods where an old springhouse still stood.

Most of the old farms kept their springhouses because they remained useful.

Human reasoning would predict that a fox moving down into the woods, coursing through a narrow creek, and going through the springhouse would produce no scent because the springhouse water would be that much colder, which it was.

However, foxhunting rarely follows the book. Expect the unexpected. Perhaps this is why foxhunting prepares people for life.

Dana, second year, gaining confidence, flanked the pack. She lifted her head, and a tantalizing odor wafted into her nostrils. She moved in that direction, going away from the main body of the pack. As Sybil was on the other side of the creek, deep covert between her and Dana, the whipper-in didn’t notice.

“I have something,” she spoke once but clearly.

“I’ll check,” Cora told the others as Dasher pushed up to take the place of strike hound. “She might be right.”

“Gets too far from the rest of us,” Asa noted.

“Shaker will think she’s a skirter.” Ardent seconded Asa’s concern, for both dog hounds thought Dana showed promise.

Skirters don’t stay in good packs for long.

Cora reached Dana and put her own educated nose to the ground. “Bobcat.”

“Can we chase him?” Dana wanted to be right.

“Sure can. Bobcat and mountain lions count. But here’s the thing, Dana. If we pick up good fox scent, we have to leave off and go to the fox.”

“Over here,” Cora called, and the others honored her.

The pack roared alongside the creek.

Sybil couldn’t keep up through the underbrush. Wisely, she pulled farther west to a cleared path so she could run parallel. Familiar with the country, she knew the places where she could cut back to get closer to hounds.

Sister at first thought hounds were on a gray running in tight circles. She, too, couldn’t follow closely, given the rough terrain.