Рита Браун - The Hunt Ball

“How smart.”

“Coco Chanel beat me to it.” He smiled broadly. “Only she sewed hers, little gold chains, on the inside of the jackets, allowing them to show. I buried mine inside the lining.” He waited a moment. “Which reminds me. When will Al be buried?”

“Rachel is sending his body to his family in San Antonio. They’ll have the service there.”

“What about here?” His eyes misted. “I miss him. I especially liked eating lunch at the faculty table because Al could be funny.” He paused. “We visited Rachel right after Al’s death but, really, I don’t know what to do. Should my wife and I go over more often or leave Rachel alone?”

“Rachel advised me that she would prefer something after Christmas vacation.” Charlotte felt so sorry for the young widow and mother. “She’s exhausted at having to go through this and plan the family funeral. Of course, she wants it to be special when we have a service. And she doesn’t want it before the holidays. As for stopping by regularly, Rachel, like anyone who has suffered a shock, needs support.”

“You’re right.” He changed the subject. “So the coroner is finished with the autopsy?”

“Yes, but I didn’t ask for details, obviously.”

Charlotte rose and this time Bill rose with her.

He held out his hand. “I apologize for losing my temper.”

“Apology accepted. As for losing your temper, I think I would, too.”

“No, you wouldn’t. You’re cool under pressure. I admire that. We all do,” he finished as she clasped his hand. “I’m glad you told me the scuttlebutt. It would have been far worse to hear it from someone else. And I will not walk into the dressing room.” He released her hand. “God only knows what else will come up. This tragedy has let the genie out of the bottle.”

“Emotional upheavals bring all kinds of debris to the surface, but we’ll get through it.”

That afternoon the temperature began to drop. Indian summer crept away in the fading sunlight. Sister and Shaker rode up to Hangman’s Ridge as they were working Keepsake and HoJo. It was their last set of horses who hadn’t hunted Saturday. They’d ridden Lafayette, Aztec, and Showboat earlier.

Neither one especially liked Hangman’s Ridge, but it was high so the sunlight lingered longer there, the meadowlands below already nestled in darkening shadows.

After twenty minutes of cantering and trotting along the wide expanse they turned for home, traveling the farm road, which was the way they had ridden up.

“Boss.”

“What?”

“Mind if we walk down the narrow trail? There’s enough light. I didn’t clean it up before hunt season like I should have. I made a halfhearted pass at it in August. If we go down that way I’ll see how much there is to do.”

“Get Walter to organize a work party. Or I will. We’ve got a lot of territory to clean up and panel at Little Dalby.” She cited a new fixture, a beauty of two thousand acres that backed up on Beveridge Hundred, an old fixture.

“Who convinced the new people, the Widemans, that they needed us?” He smiled.

“Marty Howard.”

“She did?”

“She designed their gardens as well as giving them some ideas about creating allées of sugar maples, an unusual choice, but I’m interested to see how it turns out. She also mentioned the living brush fences at Montpelier, and I guess that set them off. Marty let it be known that if a hunt crosses your land your property values rise, and think of the statement it would make if the fences were brush. She selected English boxwoods. Can you imagine the cost?”

“Good girl, our Marty.”

“She is, isn’t she? Crawford’s been bugging me to come along when I feed the foxes. Says he wants to learn more about the quarry.”

“Can’t stand him.” Shaker said this with little emotion as it was an old topic. “I know he’s important to the hunt, I know he’s underwriting the hunt ball, but I just think he’s an ass. And I don’t like the way he looks at Lorraine. He even said to me that Lorraine was hot. I wanted to smash his face. I don’t like that kind of talk.”

“She’s a beautiful woman. All men look at Lorraine.”

“Not the way he does.” Shaker closed his lips tight.

“He has strayed off the reservation. I can understand how you feel, but I don’t think Crawford would be stupid enough to cross you or Marty. He’s learned his lesson.”

The trail wasn’t as bad as they thought it might be.

“Wonder if that old den is in use again.”

“The one just above the wildflower meadow? I don’t know. Let’s see.” She was always eager to keep tabs on her foxes, with whom she felt a spiritual affinity.

“The young ones left their home dens around the beginning of November. We might have a new tenant.”

“We used to have a wonderful running fox that lived there six years back.”

He started to say that with the deer season upon them and coyote mating season firing up, the leaves brittle on the ground, releasing a pleasing but pungent odor, the next few weeks would be difficult for hunting, but she knew that. Shaker and Sister felt every nuance of their environment.

They slowed; the old den was on their right. With some of the underbrush now leafless, the den could be clearly seen. A clever location, it afforded good privacy, had many entrances and exits, and was less than two hundred yards from a clear, fast-moving feeder stream to Broad Creek. The wildflower field to the west was nice enough from a fox’s point of view, but the hayfields to the east, the hay rolled and stacked alongside the edge of the fertile field, provided field mice, rabbits, and voles lovely places to make their homes. It was a convenience store for foxes.

Shaker noticed the clump first. “What the hell?” He quickly dismounted as Sister held HoJo’s reins.

“I can’t really see in there. What is it?”

He picked up a piece of cloak. “Zorro.”

C H A P T E R 1 5

The front moving through kicked up gusts of twenty knots, not enough to knock one down but enough to cut through a thin jacket. The cold was settling in along with the night.

Athena and Bitsy sat in the branches of a scrubby pine. Their luminous eyes observed everything. Both birds kept their backs to the wind.

Young Georgia, Inky’s half-grown vixen daughter, huddled in the back reaches of her many-chambered den. She listened to the commotion at the wide entrance. This particular den, like an old pre–Revolutionary War home, had undergone many improvements over time. Hearing Sister’s voice reassured Georgia that she had a friend out there among the other humans, but she loathed the fuss at her main entrance.

Given the grade of the topography, Ben Sidel couldn’t set up tripod lights. Ty held a powerful beam, as did Gray Lorillard. Shaker was also pressed into service. Ben wanted foxhunters with him on this task. The only person he brought out from the department was Ty Banks, who had a real feel for police work.

Sister, on her hands and knees with Ben, pointed out the scraps of material.

Ben, wearing plastic gloves, carefully teased out long pieces of light wool, although most of the cloak, which Shaker first pulled out, was intact.

Shaker shone his flashlight right onto the spot.

“The cub has been working at it,” Sister replied.

“It looks like the fox was pulling it in.”

“She was. See.” She pointed to triangular holes at the edge of the cloak, the lining torn, the chain just showing. “This will make wonderful bedding.”

“Then why are other parts of the cloak outside the den?” Ben, like most foxhunters, knew precious little about their quarry.

In Ben’s defense, he was new to the sport, but the majority of foxhunters do not study foxes. They listen to hearsay or read an article here and there. The only way to learn about foxes is to observe them, to live by them, although reading about them doesn’t hurt.