“The ninth?”
“I don't have my calendar in front of me but I think it is the ninth. Anyway, it's always the second Wednesday in the month.”
“Right. I'll be there.” Crawford cherished being a member of the board of governors. “Watched the weather report?”
“No. I think I'll trust my senses,” she said.
“Ought to be a good day. Overcast. Cool. Ought to be a real Jefferson Hunt day.” He was dying to pry her decision out of her.
“Crawford, you have deeply offended me. Your treatment of Doug was despicable.” She decided it was better to let him have it than hold in her anger. Besides, he was too dense to know how angry she really was. “You did right in calling me to apologize but I know how badly you want to be joint-master. I'm not fooled. I don't think you are truly repentant. You had best apologize to Doug and if you don't really think about what you've done, if you don't understand, if you do it again, I will throw you out of this club so fast you won't know what hit youâand don't think you can buy off the board of governors. Good night.”
Agitated, unable to go directly to sleep, Sister picked up Washington's diary.
The acquisition of his own pack in 1768 provoked him to keep track of its progress.
She read entries, enjoying his economy of language and his abbreviations, old spellings.
“Went huntg being joined by Mrs. Washington in her excellent scarlet habit along with Mr. Peake, Wm Triplet and Harrison Manley. Rode Blueskin. Billy on Chinklin.
“After a chace of five hours dogs were worsted. Billy sorely tried.”
Billy Lee was Washington's huntsman, carrying a large French hunting horn on his back. The two men cherished a friendship and the general visited the stables and kennel each morning and again in the evening.
She read six pages, her eye resting on this entry: “Hunted a black fox twenty miles. He returns to his den fresh. Seventh time on this jet fox. Billy has given up declaring this black fox came from The Nether World. He swears he will never hunt him again.”
She finally fell asleep, the diary on her chest, to dream of riding with George Washington, M.F.H.
CHAPTER 34
The weatherman had lied. A thin band of pale pink deepened to salmon, then scarlet, over frost-covered fields, washing them in dawn's hope. The rim of the sun peeped over the horizon illuminating maples, oaks, hickories, black gums, sycamores, beeches, black birches, dogwoods, willows, all the great varieties of the deciduous trees of the piedmont, garbed in rich colors.
This would be a perfect early November day, crisp, clear, leaves still on the trees, pumpkins still being plucked in a few southern-exposure fields, drying cornstalks tied in stocks in other fields. Acorn, walnuts, chinquapins, beechnuts dropped, rat-a-tat, onto fields, outbuildings, cars.
Diana, Dasher, and Dragon, bursting with excitement, stood outside the kennel. The experienced hounds slept soundly inside, not even lifting their heads when the three litter mates walked through the magnetic flap door. The tin roof on the equipment shed shone with the coating of frost. A light breeze from the northwest rustled the leaves.
“I hope this is a good day,”
Diana whispered.
“Me, too,”
Dasher echoed.
“I'll be leading the pack. Of course it will be a good day,”
Dragon bragged.
“You can't be the strike hound. You don't know enough. Stay behind Cora.”
Piqued by his egotistical brother, Dasher grumbled.
“Cora's too slow.”
“No, she's not. She doesn't pop into fifth gear until she's sure. You just run flat out with your mouth running, too. If you overrun scent, you don't know it until it's too late, Dragon. I'd think by now you would have learned your lesson.”
Turning his well-proportioned head to face his brother, Dragon replied,
“The snake could have bitten anybody. It just happened to bite me.”
“Target knew a sucker when he saw one.”
Dasher longed for the day when he would see the flashy bold red.
“And Reynard saw him do it to you, which means all the foxes know you for what you are.”
“Dachshund.”
Dragon threw the worst insult he could think of at his brother.
“At least that's a hound. You've got the brain of a Jack Russell,”
Dasher replied with gleeful malice.
Dragon bared his fangs.
“Chill.”
Diana bared her own formidable fangs. “
If you two get in a fight, you'll sit right here in the kennel. Neither one of you is thinking too clearly. If you can't get along, then shut up.”
“He started it.”
Dragon pouted.
“Did not.”
“Did too.”
“I'll grab you by the ruff, throw you down, and sit on you! Now leave it. I mean it.”
The brothers respected their sister even if they did not respect each other. Snarling under his breath, Dragon pranced back into the kennel.
Dasher sat down next to Diana. They both stared at the sun, clear of the horizon now.
“About time for Shaker and Doug,”
Diana remarked.
“Lights on at Doug's.”
He lifted his black nose, sniffing the wind.
“Deer.”
“Strong. Just watch. If Dragon can't get up a fox, he'll go off again. I know it.”
She thought a moment.
“But I have to give him credit. He really doesn't go off on deer. He just finds another fox. He's so hardheaded.”
Dasher stood up as Doug emerged from his cottage.
“Cubbing was one thing, Sis, but opening hunt, all those people looking at us . . .”
“Shaker won't take any hound he doesn't think can handle it.”
“Can't believe he's taking Dragon.”
“He's been good the last two cub hunts and he's handsome. People like to look at handsome hounds.”
She heard the front door of the kennel open as Doug entered.
“Let's go back in.”
On the far side of Hangman's Ridge, the western corner where the fence line divides the woods from the fields, Target preened in his den. The purpose of opening hunt was for all creatures to see and admire him. He had to admit that he had never looked better nor had Charlene, although her brush was a tad thin.
His children, finally in their own dens, had their marching orders. Yesterday morning he told Reynard to stay over by Whiskey Ridge, since his largest son might let his ego interfere with prudent judgment. He couched this in terms of saving himself for Thanksgiving hunt, when Reynard could be the star. He'd discussed the day with Butch, who agreed not to mislead hounds. This would be a day for the reds to shine.
“Wonder why Butch was so cooperative?”
Charlene was suspicious.
Target puffed out his white chest.
“Can't cut the mustard.”
“The original plan was we'd share the day. We'd start and they'd finish.”
“He was glad to bow out, my dear. He's lazy as sin and probably, although he wouldn't admit it, he knows he's not in our league. He'll have other hunts.”
“M-m-m,”
was all Charlene said.
Aunt Netty, Uncle Yancy, Charlie, Grace, and Patsy each knew the plan. Within a half hour they'd leave home to go to their various destinations.
The plan was for Target to start the day. A cornfield was in the bottomland on Sister Jane's side of Hangman's Ridge.
Shaker would surely cast there. It was easy and a mere quarter mile from the top of the ridge, where the field would gather. Target would trot out the back side of the corn so everyone could see him; then he'd run around the base of the ridge leading them north-northeast. He'd jump over the coop that Fontaine had smashed so again everyone could admire him. After two miles he'd drop into the creek and slip into Aunt Netty's den; one opening was in the creek bed. Aunt Netty would cross onto the other side of the creek after she walked over the last fifty yards of Target's tracks. She would veer into the creek, making certain to walk across the large fallen tree. The hounds would go to the tree trunk and not the den. As soon as Aunt Netty was sure they'd picked up her scent she was to run through the woods into the meadows on the back side. Her run would be about two and a half miles, since Netty was the fastest fox around. The tricky part would be stopping short of Soldier Road, doubling back on her own tracks, then heading back toward Hangman's Ridge in a large loop. She would only double on her own tracks for two hundred yards, maybe three hundred, depending on how fast the hounds were behind her. At the abandoned moonshine still she would jump into the burrow in the middle of the still and Grace, almost as fast as Netty, would take over. Being young, Grace was only to run a half mile back into the cornfield where the cast was first made. Then Uncle Yancy, deep in experience, would fly out of the field, up, straight up the ridge and straight to the hanging tree. He'd wait a bit, then run down the ridge on the other side, stopping at the tree line if the hounds were too close. A lovely old gopher hole was right at the fence post and Yancy had connected it underground to the base of a walnut. Yancy, shrewd, had so many entrances and exits, some almost impossible to see, that he could sit in there with three hundred hounds outside. They'd never figure it all out.
About one hundred yards from that point, Patsy was to lead the field back to Sister's house. The interesting part about this section of the run was that hounds and horses would have been moving along, in some places at speed, for a good five miles. That ought to separate the wheat from the chaff. But this section would test the intelligence of the hounds. They'd be charged up. They'd lose the scent. Uncle Yancy had asked a skunk friend to spray about ten yards from his fence post entrance. That would confuse hounds. Skunk scent would cover fox scent and just about any other scent. So the hounds would need to cast themselves, searching for the line. Even if a few managed to push through the stinging skunk scent to the fence post entrance, they couldn't do much about it. Digging wouldn't bring them much, plus the entrance would be covered in skunk scent, too. Yancy made sure of that.
It might take the pack ten to fifteen minutes to pick up the new line thanks to the little traps he had laid for them. This would be quite a test. It would help him understand how good the pack was this year. After all, even though Americans no longer hunted to kill, a fox couldn't be too careful and the American foxhound was blindingly fast, much faster than the English foxhound. What if Shaker blew them back and the hounds didn't return to him? That damned young hound chasing Target got his comeuppance but what if he'd been on one of the young foxes? They might not have been so clever. It was one thing to be born bright; experience still counted for much.
He was pleased with the battle plan that they'd all worked on. It would thin out the ranks of all the creatures, especially the humans.
He expected many a good laugh as the woods and fields became littered with humans taking an involuntary dismount.
Patsy, a bright red, would show herself at Sister's front door and then disappear. A large earth had been dug under Sister's front porch. Even if the hounds could get under the porch, they'd wreck the boxwoods and Shaker would have to call them off.
The reds, for years, had been digging earths all around the house and the outbuildings and down by the strong running creek at the bottom of the back field.
They liked to observe the hounds and the staff. One needed to study one's quarry.
Over at Butch's den, the whole family had gathered.
“Why did you agree to that? Why give the reds all the fun?”
Comet was furious.
“I said we wouldn't interfere with their program.”
Butch licked his front paw.
“I didn't say we couldn't go out and watch. Besides, there's a whole hunt season before us. Who knows, we might need Target's cooperation.”
“Let the reds do all the work. We can learn this pack from them,”
their mother advised.
“But you've known this hunt forever,”
Comet whined.
“What's to learn? We should be out there.”
“Box of rocks.”
Butch cuffed his son.
“Hounds grow old and die. Young ones take their place. The pack changes like seasons. Sister Jane can breed for more speed, too. And never underestimate a hound. They're intelligent. Not as intelligent as we are but intelligent. Climb a tree where the coop is, the smashed coop. You can see the pack coming from the cornfield across the pastures over the coop and into the woods. We'll find out how fast they find, if Cora is still the strike hound and if Archie is still the anchor.”
“You go. I'm going to Netty's den,”
he mouthed off.
“Let's see how they work in water but if I feel like it, maybe I'll just mislead all of them.”
“You do and you'll be one dead fox,”
Buster spat.
“Not only will the reds not help you if needs be, I won't either.”
“The reds are a bunch of snots.”
“Hey, I didn't say I liked them. But there are times when we need one another. You do as I say!”
Inky, silent, would do as her father told her. She was anxious to see how Diana did on her big day. She hoped her friend would be impressive because she'd heard that hounds could get drafted out. They weren't always bad hounds but they didn't fit in with that pack. She liked Diana and was very grateful for the hound's help. She didn't tell anyone. She knew better.
The grays left their den, the distance to the cornfield and pasture being about a mile and a half.
“Dad,”
Inky whispered as they reached a large rock outcropping,
“when's the last time a fox died?”
“Hunting?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Six years ago an old red, Herschel, got shingles. Gave the hounds a heck of a chase and then when he reached his den he sat on the outside of it. He knew he had to die, you see, so he chose a swift death. He was a brave fox, Herschel, and he didn't deserve to get shingles. For a red, I liked him fine.”
A huge shape overhead startled them, so silent was the approach. Athena, the two-foot owl, was returning to her nest after a successful night.
“You'll miss opening hunt,”
Comet called up to her.
She circled them and said in a low chortle,
“To ride well is the mark of a gentleman. To ride too well is the mark of a misspent life.”
Then she vanished as silently as she'd appeared.