Рита Браун - Outfoxed

She put her arm around his neck. “Don’t worry about it. I remember the good times. Like the Thanksgiving hunt when Junior was ten and he viewed. He stood in his stirrups and was so excited he couldn’t speak. His pony took off and he fell flat on his back, got up, and finally said, “Holloa.”

“Tough little brat. Like his momma.” He watched Crawford pull in with his brand-new Dodge dually pulling his brand-new aluminum four-horse trailer with every convenience known to man or beast. “Can’t believe that man is showing his face.”

“Better his face than his ass.”

Staff, mounted, surrounded the hounds. Sister rode through the trailers, welcoming people. Her presence made them move along a bit faster. Georgia Vann had forgotten her hair net. She bounded from trailer to trailer until she found a woman carrying an extra.

Finally, everyone was up.

Lafayette remarked to Oreo, carrying Bobby, “On time. A bleeding miracle.”

“O-o-o,” Oreo grunted. “He’s put on more weight.”

“Might want to loosen your horse’s girth,” a rider said.

“Might want to loosen his,” Betty called out as she sat by the hounds.

“I want everyone to know that I’m above all this,” Bobby joked, glad that people were willing to let his daughters work out their own problems. He felt a little extrasensitive today so the joking made him feel better. People weren’t laughing behind his back but he noticed that few would talk to Crawford or stand near him as Sister addressed them.

“Happy Thanksgiving. Thank you all for coming out and we hope the foxes will come out also. As you know, we lost a faithful supporter, a generous man, and one of my best friends. I hope Peter Wheeler, young again and strong, is mounted on Benny, his big chestnut, and they’re both looking down at us, wishing us well.” She paused a moment. “Huntsman.”

His cap in his hand, he nodded to the master. Putting his cap on his head, he asked the hounds, “Ready, children?”

“Yes!” they spoke in unison.

“Come along, then.” He quietly encouraged them, turning his horse toward the top of Whiskey Ridge for the scenic first cast.

“Jennifer.” Sister motioned for the girl to ride up. “Keep an eye on Crawford, will you? Talk to me after the hunt.”

“Yes, Master.” Jennifer pulled back, waiting for a few first-flight members to pass her. Then she fell in behind Crawford and Martha. She wasn’t sure what Sister wanted but she was pleased to be given a special mission. At least Sister liked her and trusted her with responsibility.

The top of Whiskey Ridge was rounder then Hangman’s Ridge off in the distance, the giant black oak stark against the silvery rising mists. The sides of Whiskey Ridge feathered and softened down to the creek bed, a small valley on the west side. The grade was even smoother on the east side; the Hessian River was visible across the rolling terrain, a cauldron of mist hanging over the snaking river.

Frost silvered each blade of grass, each leaf, the exposed roots of the old trees.

Shaker, voice low but filled with excitement, leaned down. “He’s out there. Get ’im. Get ’im.”

“Yay!” The hounds dashed away from the huntsman. Noses to the ground, sterns upright, they wanted a smashing Thanksgiving hunt.

Down on the east side of the ridge Uncle Yancy picked up a trot. He heard hounds above him and felt no need to provide them with a chase. He recalled seeing Patsy out before dawn, so just to be sure he swerved from a direct path to his den, crossed Patsy’s scent, and then scampered the half mile to his cozy home.

Up on the ridge Sister hung back about fifty yards from her hounds. Since she wasn’t sure what direction they’d finally take she sat tight.

Dasher’s tail looked like a clock pendulum, back and forth. Finally, he spoke. “Check this out.”

Cora and Diana came over. “Faint but good. Let’s see where it leads.”

Within minutes the hounds coursed down the eastern slope of the ridge, reached the grassy bottom streaking across the well-maintained hay fields, a beautiful sight for the field to behold, since the pack was running well together, Cora in the lead, Diana securely in the middle.

Although the grade was gentle, one rider, frantically clutching her martingale, flipped ass over teakettle when the martingale snapped. Georgia Vann, on mop-up duty, stopped to make certain the lady was breathing.

“All right?”

“Yes.”

“Do you want to push on?”

“I think I’ll go back to the trailer. I hate to ride without a martingale.” She led her horse back up the hill and the poor fellow was severely disappointed—all his friends galloping toward the Hessian River in the distance.

At the end of the expansive hay field, a narrow row of trees bordering a sunken farm road presented an interesting obstacle. The old stone fence on the other side of the towering lindens was only two and a half feet high but the drop on the other side would scare the bejesus out of a few people.

“Yee-haw!” Lafayette snorted, sailing over. He loved a drop jump because he was in the air so long. Horse hang time was how he thought of it.

Sister kept her center of gravity right over Lafayette’s center. They landed in the soft earth of the lane, then scrambled up the small embankment on the other side into a field planted with winter wheat. She skirted the field, hearing the screams behind her of those who made the drop and those who didn’t. She turned her head just in time to see Lottie Fisher pop out of her tack and wind up hugging her horse’s neck. It was funny although at that precise moment Lottie didn’t think so.

The hounds moved faster now as scent became stronger. They reached the place where Uncle Yancy had crossed Patsy’s scent. Milling about for a few minutes Dragon bellowed.

Not trusting him, Cora hurried next to him before he could take off. She put her nose down. “It’s good. Let’s go.”

They turned at a right angle, heading northeast now into the pine plantation owned by the Fishers. Paths were wide, easy to maneuver. At the end of the twenty-year-old loblolly pines, they hopped over an upright in an old fence line. Sister had built that jump with Ray Senior using sturdy locust trees felled in a storm. Fifteen years later the jump stood strong.

Everyone made it over the upright. Three strides from that another jump faced them as they moved into a cornfield, stalks uncut. This simple jump of truck tires suspended on a cable gave half the field a problem and they had to wait for Bobby Franklin and the hilltoppers to go through the gate. Once through they bade Bobby good-bye, hurrying to catch up with the field, now at the far end of the cornfield, pushing into a second cornfield separated by an expensive, impressive zigzag or snake fence. Sister and Lafayette arched over the point where two sides crossed together. They landed smack in the standing corn. She ran down a row, hounds in front of her and to the side of her now in full cry. They’d picked up Patsy. She was running about a quarter of a mile ahead and being shadowed by St. Just. St. Just, unbeknownst to him, was being shadowed by Athena.

At the end of this cornfield a fence bordered a rocky creek. It, too, was a zigzag. Sister jumped that and one stride later clattered across the creek with inviting low banks. On the other side the hounds turned west. They ran, then lost the scent.

Patsy dashed into the creek, ran two hundred yards, then crossed back into the cornfield by tiptoeing across a log fallen over the farm road. She figured this would keep her scent high and she was right.

Even when Cora figured out where the red vixen had exited the creek she couldn’t get high enough to smell the top of the downed sycamore.