Рита Браун - Full Cry

Dragon, although pushing up front, was subdued. He kept half a step behind Cora, off to her right. For her part, next time he challenged her, she’d kill him. She was the head bitch as well as the strike hound, and she was in no mood to put up with any more bad behavior.

They pushed through the field heading east, toward After All Farm.

“Not much.” Ardent caught a faint line. “It’s Comet.”

“Let’s follow it, Ardent. Might be all we’ll get today. If we’re lucky, it will heat up.” Cora trusted Ardent completely.

The hounds moved with Ardent as he turned northward. The scent warmed but remained faint until they crossed over the thin ice, breaking it, on a small feeder into Broad Creek.

“Better. Better,” Asa called, and hounds opened.

Bare in the winter light, old silky willows, some fourteen feet high, dotted the path of the stream. Lafayette picked his way through the trappy ground, took a hop over the stream, trotting after hounds who were moving steadily but not with speed.

For twenty minutes, hounds pursued this line until they wound up at the base of Hangman’s Ridge. Scent turned back along the edge of the farm road, heading back toward the peach orchard. Hounds took the half leap off the road, sunken with time and use, up into the peach orchard.

Betty, out in the open field on the left of the road, wondered if the fox might be close by. She was in a good spot to see him break cover.

Sybil, on the right, was at the edge of the peach orchard. Hounds moved through, baying stronger, moving at a faster trot. They cleared the orchard, crossed the grassy wide path separating the peach orchard from the apple orchard, then plunged into the apple orchard. They began a leisurely lope, Cora square on the line, but she no sooner reached the halfway point in the apple orchard than she turned a sharp left.

Betty intently, silently watched.

Shaker, on Showboat, followed. The scent was stronger now.

Comet, bright red, crossed the open field, glancing at Betty. He moved to the easternmost edge, jumped on the hog’s back jump and from there to the fence line. Balancing himself, he carefully walked northward for one hundred yards, jumped off the fence line on the far side, and slipped into the woods.

Tempting though it was to follow the fox and have her own personal hunt, Betty patiently waited for the lead hounds to appear. Three minutes later, they broke from the apple orchard. Four minutes later, the bulk of the pack pressed behind Cora, Dragon, and Dasher. Betty could now see Shaker cantering through the snowy lane between apple rows. As the lead hounds drew even with her, she turned Outlaw and kept with them about ten o’clock off of Cora’s twelve o’clock. The field, slushy in parts, demanded a tight seat.

Hounds, much lighter than a twelve-hundred-pound horse, easily negotiated the terrain. They climbed over the hog’s back, then stopped.

“Hold hard,” Sister commanded.

The field reined in behind her, a few bumps here and there, a few curses muttered under someone’s breath.

“I can’t find him. All I have is the scent on the hog’s back,” Ruthie, excellent nose, barked.

“Keep calm, Ruthie. Foxes don’t disappear into thin air much as they want us to think they do,” Diana reassured her.

The field fanned out to get a better look, Clay and Izzy together—unusual because Izzy usually rode in the back with her gal pals. Sam Lorillard kept well to the rear and couldn’t see a thing. Gray, too, couldn’t see anything in the middle of the people, but he thought it unwise to go too far out in the field for a look in case the hounds turned. Those people craning their necks could be standing right on scent, ruining it for hounds if enough of them tore up the snow and the earth underneath.

Hounds milled about for two or three minutes.

Ardent suggested they move along the fence line in both directions with a splinter group going ahead from the hog’s back in case the fox had managed to make a big leap of it.

“Have to be really big,” Delia mumbled.

“Who is to say he didn’t hitch a ride. Target once rode on Clytemnestra’s back,” Cora said. “That’s one story, anyway. None of us ever saw it, but he sure did lose us last season back in the apple orchard and we had him, had him fair and square.”

“We’d see tracks. We’d smell the vehicle.” Dragon had no time for speculation as he moved right along the fence line.

Tinsel, moving left along the fence line, eager, got a snootful of fox scent. “He’s here!”

Dragon, turning left in midair, raced to the young hound. “It’s Comet, all right.” Hounds opened, their voices a chorus of excitement.

Sister waited for Shaker to clear the hog’s back, then she took it as the field followed.

The scent line—a magic trail of pungent delight—curled just above the snow. The temperature, forty-two degrees now, allowed it to lift off, releasing the musky aroma.

The hounds passed through the woods as Sister found the old deer trail. Moving at speed, the dips and rises in the earth barely registered in Sister’s brain. Her only thought was to keep hounds in sight and not crowd Shaker, blowing as he rode, encouraging his pack.

A ravine cut crossways. The fox cleverly dipped down, using the rocks to foil his scent. He didn’t go all the way down into this steep cleft in the earth. Hounds overran the line, yelped with frustration, and then began the patient process of returning to where they first lost the scent to look again.

Darby surprised everyone by examining the first bunch of rocks, some large and smooth covering twelve square feet, little crevices packed with blue ice. He picked up the line, charging up out of the ravine. He was so intent on his task, he forgot to tell the others.

Ardent watched him, ran over to the rocks, checked it out, then he, too, picked up the line. “Here we are, buddies. Here we are.” He called up to Darby, “Wait for the pack, Darby. Can’t go off on your own like that, even when you’re right. Steady there, fellow.”

Darby slowed as Ardent caught up to him. Within seconds Dragon, Dasher, and the lead hounds drew alongside.

“Good work,” Cora praised him. “Smart to wait.”

Darby, grateful to Ardent for saving him a tongue-lashing from Cora, put his nose down, lifted his head, and let out a song of happiness.

Hounds ran back through the woods, back under the fence line while the field searched for the closest jump, then back through the large snowy field, back to the base of Hangman’s Ridge, where the fox disappeared. No scent. No anything. No tracks.

“This makes me crazy!” Tinsel wailed.

“He’s around,” Trident said with conviction.

Hounds milled about, confused. Diana noticed a thin trickle coming off the side of Hangman’s Ridge, a trickle spilling over black jagged rocks. Underneath that was a mass of elongated blue ice that looked like icicles had melted a little, then refroze, creating this imposing mass. The fox had gotten under the trickle, following it down, water washing scent away.

By the time she picked up his trail Diana knew Comet had put a half-mile ahead of her. But still, scent is scent. She opened. Hounds moved around the base of the ridge, moving southward and then turning west into the long floodplain that Soldier’s Road bisected.

The field became strung out, thanks to the footing, which had tired some horses more than their riders realized. They’d been pushing through the snow for an hour and a half now. Even Jennifer couldn’t keep them all together; Bobby Franklin soon overlapped the rear of the First Flight, which was their problem not his.