Рита Браун - Full Cry

“Shaker, Betty, Sybil, and I are grateful that so many of you have turned out, looking as though you’ve stepped out of a Snaffles’ drawing, on this cold day. The footing will be dicey, but you’ve ridden through worse.

“Tedi and Edward invite us all to breakfast at the main house after the hunt. Do remember to thank them for continuing the wonderful tradition of New Year’s Hunt here at After All Farm.

“Let’s see what the fox has in store for us.” She looked to Shaker, cap in hand. “Hounds, please.”

He clapped his cap on his head, tails down (for he was staff). Whistling to the pack, he turned along Snake Creek, which flowed under the covered bridge.

Huntsman and hounds rode up the rise, passed the gravesite of Nola Bancroft, Tedi and Edward’s daughter, who had perished in her twenties. She was buried alongside her favorite mount, Peppermint, who, by contrast, lived to thirty-four. This peaceful setting, bound by a stonewall, seemed especially poignant covered in the snow.

Betty, first whipper-in, rode on the left at ten o’clock. Sybil, second whipper-in, rode at two o’clock. The side on which they rode did not reflect their status so much as it reflected where Shaker wanted them on that particular day at the particular fixture. He usually put Betty on the left though.

Sam Lorillard and Gray also rode out today. How exciting to have Gray back in the field. Crawford had requested Sam to ride as a groom, and Sister had given permission.

The edges of Snake Creek were encrusted with ice, offering scant scent unless a fox had just trotted over. Shaker moved along the low ridge parallel to the creek. An eastern meadow about a quarter of a mile down the bridle path held promise of scent. The sun, despite being hidden behind the clouds, might have warmed the eastern meadows and slopes.

Once into the meadow, a large expanse of white beckoned.

Delia advised her friends, “Take care, especially on the meadow’s edge. Our best chance is there because the rabbits will have come out on the edge of the wood and meadows. All foxes like rabbits. Our other chance for scent today is if we get into a cutover cornfield. Fox will come in for the gleanings.”

Asa, also wise in his years, agreed. “Indeed, and foxes will be hungry. I think we’ll have a pretty good day.”

Trudy, in the middle of the pack and still learning the ropes in her second year, inquired, “But Shaker’s been complaining about the temperature and the snow. He says snow doesn’t hold scent.”

“Shaker is a human, honey. His nose is only good to perch spectacles on. If there’s even a whiff of fox, we’ll find it.” Asa’s voice resonated with such confidence that Trudy put her nose down and went to work.

The hounds diligently worked the meadow for twenty minutes, moving forward, ever forward, but to no avail.

Trudy’s, Trident’s, Tinsel’s, and Trinity’s brows all furrowed.

Delia encouraged them. “Nobody said it would be easy today, but be patient. I promise you: the foxes have been out and about.” She said “out and about” with the Tidewater region’s long “o.”

“Yes, ma’am,” the T’s responded.

Cora, as strike hound, moved ten yards ahead. Her mind raced. She’d picked up an old trail, but discarded it. No point yapping about a fading line. Her knowledge and nose were so good Cora could tell when a line would pay off, when it would heat up. She never opened unless she had a good line. Some hounds blabbed if they even imagined fox scent. Those hounds were not found in the Jefferson Hunt pack. Cora couldn’t abide a hound that boo-hooed every time it caught a little scent.

“Mmm.” She wagged her stern.

Dragon noticed. He hurried right over, but dared not push Cora. She’d lay him out right there in front of everybody, and then she’d get him again on the way home in the party wagon. He tempered his aggressiveness. Now he, too, felt his nostrils fill with the faint but intensifying scent of gray dog fox.

Diana trotted up, swinging the pack with her as she intently watched Cora. She could bank on Cora, her mentor.

The hounds, excited but still mute, moved faster, their sterns moving faster as well.

Sister checked her girth.

“Ah, ha, I knew it!” Cora triumphantly said. “A suitor.”

She and the others usually recognized the scent of the fox they chased, but this was a stranger, a gray fox courting a little early, but then foxes display their own logic. The common wisdom is that grays begin mating in mid-January, reds at the end of January. But Cora remembered a time when grays mated in mid-December. Just why, she didn’t know. No great storms followed, which could have boxed them up, nor a drought, which would have affected the food supply then and later. All these events could affect mating.

Perhaps this gray simply fell in love.

Whatever, the scent warmed up.

“Showtime!” Cora spoke.

Dragon spoke, then Asa and Delia. Diana steadied the T’s when she, too, sang out and told them to just stick with the pack, stick together.

The whole pack opened. A chill ran down Sister’s spine; Lafayette’s too, his beautiful gray head turned as he watched the hounds.

Those members with a hangover knew they’d need to hang on: when the pack opened like that, they were about to fly.

A thin strip of woods separated the eastern meadow from a plowed cornfield, the stubble visible through the windblown patches. A slight slope rested on the far side of the cornfield. The hounds had gotten away so fast they were already there.

Sister and Lafayette sped to catch them. She tried to stay about twenty yards behind Shaker, depending on the territory. She didn’t want to crowd the pack, but she wanted members to see the hounds work. To Sister, that was the whole reason to hunt: hound work!

The footing in the cornfield kept horses lurching as the furrows had frozen, buried under the snow.

All were glad once that was behind them. A simple three-foot coop rested in the fence line between the cornfield and the hayfield. The bottom half of the coop, where snow piled up, was white.

“Whoopee.” Lafayette pricked his ears forward as he leapt over.

Lafayette so loved jumping and hunting that Sister rarely had to squeeze her legs.

Everyone cleared the coop.

Hounds could hear their claws crack the thin crust of ice on the snow. In a few places they’d sink in to their elbows, throw snow around, and keep going, paying no heed.

Within minutes, the pack clambered over another coop, rushing into a pine stand, part of Edward’s timber operation. The scent grew stronger.

The silence, noticeable in the pines, only accentuated the music of the hounds. As the field moved in, a few boughs, shaken by the thunder of hooves, dusted the riders underneath with snow.

Sam Lorillard felt a handful slide down his neck.

Crawford tried to push up front, but Czpaka wasn’t that fast a horse. Crawford hated being in the middle of the pack, and he really hated seeing Walter Lungrun shoot past him on Rocketman.

Jennifer Franklin and Sari Rasmussen giggled as the dustings from the trees covered their faces. Both girls loved hunting, their only complaint being that not enough boys their own age foxhunted.

On and on the hounds roared, turning sharply left, negotiating a fallen tree, then charging through the pines northward, emerging onto the sunken farm road, three feet down, the road used to service an old stone barn in the eighteenth century. The building’s crumbling walls remained. The field abruptly pulled up as hounds tumbled pell-mell over one another to get inside the ruins.