The Hounds and the Fury (14 page)

CHAPTER 20

A
lthough his partner accused him of clutter, Uncle Yancy hotly denied this. Target collected possessions just sitting under a rosebush. Uncle Yancy believed his treasures had been carefully selected, not just picked up in collector’s mania.

True, he built little caches into which he stored the odd mouse part, chicken wing, or rabbit. He used to push corn, even fat millet heads, into his cache piles. Lately, though, he kept the grains in his den. For one thing, he couldn’t always find his caches under snow. He could hear mice two feet under snow. They’d burrow through if snows hadn’t packed down hard. There was plenty of oxygen for them. He’d hear those tiny claws, and he could pounce. But caches made no noise, so he’d learned to keep a grain bank account.

Since he had taken over the pattypan forge, storage space was ample. He’d lined his main sleeping quarters with grasses. He’d bedded down his storage chambers, although not as deep. Some foxes didn’t mind sleeping with frost in their dens. He did. That’s why he insulated his sleeping quarters.

The quiet pleased him. The only thing that didn’t please him was returning to find a glob of blood near his den. Human footprints clearly stood out in the snow. The blood carried an odd odor, so he didn’t touch it.

He’d returned from desultory hunting that morning. The two-mile trot down to the main house at After All had invigorated him. He’d intended to hunt, but Tedi had left out corn oil–soaked kibble behind her stable. He’d stuffed himself.

Sister would refill the special feed buckets Thursday night. One was tied to a tree perhaps a quarter of a mile from pattypan.

At eleven, his restorative sleep was interrupted by Aunt Netty.

“Wake up, you lazy ass.”
She pushed him with her dainty paw.
“Filthy, as always. Frozen blood by the den entrance. You are disgusting.”

He opened one eye.
“My precious.”

“Don’t precious me. I’d heard you took over pattypan. Knew you wouldn’t stay over there at the old Lorillard place. Boring over there. Besides”
—she paused, half closing her eyes to savor her imagined triumph—
“too far from me.”

Uncle Yancy, no fool, smiled. “
You’re right.”

“It’s beautiful here. I always wanted to live at pattypan, but the minks—well…”
She shook her head disapprovingly.

Minks, little weasels, possessed ferocity in inverse proportion to their size. They had run out the foxes who’d lived at pattypan years ago and then had bred more minks. Squabbles increased with the population. The younger minks left, heading west. Many now lived on Hangman’s Ridge, but they usually kept out of view. Others pushed on to Mill Ruins, where vigorous mouth battles with other animals, especially squirrels, were daily dramas. The older minks at pattypan flourished until they challenged Athena. Like most arguments, silly though it was, it illustrated the incompatibility of both parties. Furious, Athena systematically killed them until there wasn’t one old mink left.

Their celebrated courage couldn’t help them when death came from the skies. Fearing the younger minks might return, other burrowing animals still did not take over pattypan.

Uncle Yancy had hit it at the perfect time. Everyone else had settled in a den, young foxes usually establishing themselves in early November in central Virginia.

“I’m not far from a feed bucket, which is nice in bad weather.”
He hoped she wasn’t going to get pushy.

“See that you don’t get fat.”

“I’ve never been fat.”

“You’ve never been old. We’re getting on, Yancy. Which brings me to my point. I’m not breeding this year. Not just because of my age, but something tells me it will be a hard spring and summer. We must be wise about these things.”

Uncle Yancy, like most males, deferred to the female. They just knew. He asked, “
What about the younger girls? Charlene, Grace, Inky, Georgia?”

“Georgia will wait another year. For one thing, she’s not far from her mother, so if Inky should produce a litter, Georgia will help. I haven’t spoken to Inky. Charlene, in her prime, will chance it. As for Grace, haven’t talked to her either.”

“What about the deer and the squirrels? Have you talked to them?”

“Some will, some won’t; most are cutting back. Bitsy isn’t.”
She grimaced.

Uncle Yancy’s jaw dropped.
“Bitsy’s never laid an egg in her life.”

“That’s just it. She says she wants to do it, and furthermore she’s ensconced in Sister’s barn, so there’s plenty to eat. Can you stand it, husband? More screech owls. As it is she wakes the dead.”
She sniffed.
“Athena can’t even talk her out of it.”

“Earplugs,”
he laughed.

“Not me. I want to hear the huntsman’s horn.”
She settled into the sweet grass.
“This really is beautiful. I could make this even better. Why don’t you go out and clean up that blood if you aren’t going to eat it?”

Uncle Yancy’s heart skipped a beat. How was he going to get out of this?
“When it comes to decorating, I lack your talent, but”
—he heaved a huge mock sigh—
“I’d bring in a shiny can and you’d be upset. Or I’d snore.”

“U-m-m,”
she hummed.
“Before I get comfortable I brought you a housewarming present.”

He stewed while she scooted out of the main entrance, returning with a lacquered mechanical pencil.
“Here.”

He pushed the deep burnt-orange pencil.
“It’s gorgeous.”

“Long hunt last night. Restless. Anyway, I wound up at the old Lorillard place. The graveyard enticed me. Lot of Lorillards there from way back, centuries back—and, you know, there was a fresh grave, covered in snow. I could smell the fresh earth underneath. We had that bit of a thaw. God knows, you can’t dig up frozen ground, so whoever dug the grave knew that much. Well, I started digging because I thought it might be a cache. Something we could use. But no, too deep. I did find this. Under the snow, on top of the packed earth.”

“Expensive.”

“Yes.”

“How deep do you think the cache is?”

“Three feet perhaps. The frost came back hard, so I could just get a whiff of meat.”

“Could have been the mountain lion. They’re around. They leave a big mound, and they mark boundaries with their caches.”

“I told you, the earth was packed. Not like a cache. Humans pack down that way.”
Aunt Netty, seated, was cross that he didn’t instantly agree with her.

“No Lorillards died.”
Uncle Yancy, like all the foxes, knew the events of humans in their hunting territory.

“Hadn’t thought of that.”

“Netty, this isn’t a good thing. It’s clever, too.”

“Well, it’s none of our affair.”
Drowsy, she closed her eyes.

He viewed his partner, instantly asleep.
“Damn. Double damn,”
he said under his breath.

Another fox of sorts considered the facts before her. Sister now knew Iffy was missing. The radio and television newscasters had asked anyone who had seen her to report it. The newscasters didn’t speculate on why she might be missing. That would come in the ensuing days.

She sat at Big Ray’s partner’s desk in the warm den and speculated plenty.

Finally, she called Ben Sidell. A yellow legal pad filled with scribbled notes testified to her attempts to put the pieces together.

“Sister, how are you?”

“Fine. Ben, here I am again coming out of left field. Allow me to make a suggestion. Exhume Angel Crump.”

“Who’s Angel Crump?”

“She was Garvey’s assistant since the earth began. She died last year, age eighty-four, of a heart attack. Garvey walked into her office and found her slumped over her desk.”

“Why do you want her exhumed?”

“She hated Iffy. In the best of circumstances they would have clashed—personality differences—but I have to wonder if Angel harbored suspicions. Maybe the animosity was based in fact.”

“Garvey hasn’t mentioned this.”

“Ask him if Angel ever accused Iffy of wrongdoing. And mind you, I don’t know what’s going on down there. Gray can’t tell me, but I hear the strain in his voice. Iffy’s missing. I’m not a genius, but I can put two and two together.”

“I appreciate your idea. Let me talk to Garvey first. If Angel did come to him with suspicions, then I’ll put the machinery in motion. As you know, if relatives oppose an exhumation it can take some time for the legal process to sort it out.”

“I know. And it’s just a hunch but perhaps Angel’s death proved quite convenient.”

She hung up the phone, cupped her chin in her hand, fiddled on the legal pad.

Golly batted at the pencil. She liked commandeering the desk because the dogs couldn’t get on it and because she could see everything Sister was doing.

Raleigh and Rooster stretched out on the leather couch. Rooster’s head rested on Raleigh’s flank. They were dead to the world.

“January 11. You know, Golly, no saint today? That’s particulary interesting. Odd.” She’d checked her
Oxford Dictionary of Saints.

“I’ll take the day, then.”
Golly stopped the pencil with both paws, held it to bite the eraser.

“Golly,” Sister laughed.

“There are cat saints.”
Golly managed an indignant stare as Sister wiggled the pencil from her grasp.
“Who do you think kept the mice out of Little Lord Jesus’ crib? A cat.”

Sister listened to these determined meows, then burst out laughing.

CHAPTER 21

R
iding down from their stable, Tedi and Edward heard the mighty rumble of the Chevy Duramax 6600 before they reached their covered bridge.

Sister and Shaker, double-checking the hound list by the trailer, also heard it.

“He wouldn’t.” Sister held the clipboard to her chest as large snowflakes began to fall. Even though Jason had apologized profusely, she thought he’d allow some time to pass for emotions to cool.

“Only one engine sounds like that.” Shaker was as surprised as Sister.

The small field assembled this Thursday morning turned their heads. The girls from Custis Hall, Bunny Taliaferro, Henry Xavier, Ronnie Haslip, Lorraine Rasmussen, and Bobby Franklin glanced at one another.

Betty Franklin walked around the trailer as her husband tightened his horse’s girth. “Do you hear what I hear?”

“I do.” Bobby frowned, a snowflake falling on his nose.

“The man must be out of his mind.”

“Arrogant.” Bobby clipped down his words. “But he did express his regrets. Sister made sure we all knew that.”

Sybil, who had ridden down ahead of her parents in order to help with hounds, leaned down to Sister. “Would you like Dad to throw him off?”

“No. Landowners can’t refuse a hunt member the right to hunt their land with the hunt. A landowner can refuse the hunt but not an individual. This isn’t to say it doesn’t happen, but it’s counter to proper practice. It’s the master’s responsibility to send a member home. The problem really gets ugly if you have a weak master.”

“Why can’t a landowner refuse permission?” Sybil, intent on being a good whipper-in, didn’t pay too much attention to MFHA policies not related to actual hunting.

“Because that member’s dues built jumps on the landowner’s land. And because every time someone gets into a spat it would affect who hunts where. Eventually you’d see fields of two people until one of them pissed off the other.” Sister pulled off her old gloves, cut off at the fingertips, to put on white string riding gloves. “Let’s say you and I had a fight. A big one. One would assume you wouldn’t come on my farm to hunt. You’d steer clear of that fixture because it makes life easier for everyone. But some people like being the center of attention. That kind of person would show up.” She shrugged as Jason’s rig came into view.

Sister mounted Aztec, ready to go and eager to prove to Rickyroo how good he was. He would tell all back at the barn. As the youngest hunter in the barn Aztec endured a lot of ribbing.

All the horses were keen to see how Matador would pan out. He was in work but had yet to hunt, since Sister didn’t want to hunt a new horse on bad ground. This pleased Lafayette, Keepsake, Rickyroo, and Aztec because it showed how much she trusted them.

Tedi and Edward clattered through the covered bridge and rode over to Sister.

Tedi raised an eyebrow.

Edward, a gentleman, quietly said, “Would you like me to go over there with you?”

“All clear,” she replied. “As you know, he apologized to me. I’ll give him credit for that.” Looking up into her old friend’s gray eyes, she shrugged. “You know how I think.”

He smiled. “I do.”

Tedi smiled as well, keeping her peace.

Sister gathered the small group to her. “Good morning.”

“Good morning, Master,” came the reply, the same as it had been for centuries.

“As we have such a small field today, I would like to invite the Custis Hall girls to ride up front. Also, they are being allowed to come out weekdays with us if they each write a paper for their environmental studies class. Perhaps if they have questions after the hunt, you would answer them.”

Tootie on Iota, Val on Moneybags, and Felicity on Parson all glowed. To ride behind the master was a singular honor.

Walter rode next to Jason in the rear.

It was truly dawning on Jason that he hadn’t just offended Sister and Shaker; he’d pissed off the whole club.

Dragon, impatient, drifted toward Nola’s and Peppermint’s graves.

“Dragon,” Betty reprimanded him in a low tone.

“Bother,”
he sassed, but he did rejoin the pack.

Sister and Shaker discussed the first cast the night before a hunt and reviewed it in the morning, often changing it when they reached the fixture, since winds and temperature might change.

The temperature had bounced up four degrees to thirty-four degrees Fahrenheit. After All was subject to the same northwest winds as Roughneck Farm. As the day wore on, the mercury might rise or fall, depending on whether a front was scudding in from the northwest, bringing a taste of Canada with it. While Sister checked thermometers and the Weather Channel, ultimately she relied on her bones.

Cora ignored Dragon, pushing by his side in the pale gray light.

At the stone wall around the graveyard, Dragon stopped. The pack put their noses down even though Shaker had yet to cast them.

The huntsman wisely worked with his hounds instead of insisting they stick to his program, which was to move into the woods and hunt east.

Tight pawprints were visible, now beginning to be covered by the lazy flakes falling on Nola’s grave.

Doughboy, a second-year entry who had been a little slower to catch on than his littermates, leaped over the low wall, nose to the pawprints.

At Nola’s grave, he said,
“Charlene.”

In an instant, all the hounds opened, jumping into the little graveyard, then out the other side. Apart from being exciting for the humans, finding the line was a confidence builder for tricolor Doughboy.

Betty stayed parallel on the eastern side of the creek.

Sybil had faded off to the left, though she was still in sight on the undulating snow-covered pasture.

Charlene, shopping, had been walking along the creek heading back to her den when she heard the pack. Given the conditions, she didn’t dally hitting full speed.

The hounds moved faster as Charlene’s scent grew stronger.

Only the fox understands scent. Humans try to intellectualize it. They conduct experiments with barometers, moisture in the air, time of day, season, and moon phase. Hounds smell it and know what to do with it, but only the fox knows the good days, the bad days, and the in-between days.

This was a good day, so Charlene hurried on, her distinctive odor lifting up slightly.

Charlene, only a half mile from her den, ran up a fallen tree trunk, then dropped down. Lichens, running cedar, and other plants useful in foiling scent were covered with snow. She had to rely on speed today as well as using whatever obstacles presented themselves. Being forty-five pounds lighter than the hounds worked to her advantage.

She sped through the woods, the wide bridle path serving her well. Hearing hounds come closer, Charlene darted to a gopher hole, paused for a split second, then flew onward.

Trident reached the gopher hole just as the disturbed but slothful animal popped his head out.

“Beg pardon.”
Trident sat down on his haunches.

“Leave him,”
Diana ordered the second-year entry.
“Just an old gopher.”

As the hounds moved away from him the gopher remarked,
“I am not old. I just look old, and I’ve got rodent teeth. I can make a hole in you if I want to!”

Delia, older, solid as a rock, was bringing up the rear just as the gopher revealed his long teeth.
“Terrified,”
she laughed as she zoomed by him.

“Hateful canines.”
The gopher watched the humans fly by, then added,
“Another useless species.”

As Charlene ran the snow turned into sleet. Although the temperature rose four more degrees, the rain felt colder than the snow.

Sister was glad she’d put rubber reins on Aztec’s bridle. Strictly speaking, since she used a snaffle bit, she should have had lace reins but those rules had been formulated for hunting over the English countryside. The Virginia countryside was much wilder than most of England, the weather much more harsh, with great temperature swings between summer and winter. Some allowances needed to be made, and Sister, a stickler for tradition, knew when to make them.

The hanging tails on her hunt cap sprayed sleet.

Charlene scrambled over a snow-dappled stone fence. She dropped down as the land sank into a long wide plateau, six feet above the feeder creek into Broad Creek, aptly named. She ducked into her den under a mighty walnut tree.

Hounds put her to ground, but they didn’t bay in triumph, for Dragon raised his head and moved off toward the creek just as Shaker leaped over the stone fence.

“Coyote!”
Dragon bellowed for them to follow the scorching, heavy scent.

Hounds flew straight as an arrow, launching off the bank down into Broad Creek.

Sister trotted downstream to look for a better crossing. A narrow deer trail snaked down the bank at a forty-five-degree angle. It would be slippery, but it was still better than jumping down five feet into a rock-bottomed creek.

Tootie, behind Sister, sat back as she’d seen the old foxhunters do. This was no time for a pretty position. She moved her leg forward of the girth for extra insurance.

Once in the fast-moving water, Aztec picked his way over the large stones. He scrambled out on the opposite side, where ice crystals coated the bank. The deer trail climbing at a forty-five-degree angle was manageable. With care, master and horse achieved the top.

One by one the riders climbed up over the bank, but each horse brought down a bit of earth until the last rider, Lorraine, with Bobby leading her, struggled through the worst footing.

When she had made it, Bobby whispered, “Well done.”

Lorraine was learning. The encouragement brought a big smile to her face.

The straight-running coyote took no evasive action but just turned on more speed. While a fox is preferable, coyote is legitimate game.

A warm wind current, a rising tunnel of air, caressed Sister’s face. Five big strides, and she was once again in crisp air. Now even she could catch snippets of scent: oily, heavy, lacking the sharp musky fox odor, which when one grows accustomed to it is almost pleasant.

A simple coop lay ahead, the base half covered by snow blown against it.

Aztec thought about it for one moment, heard, “Go on,” and did just that. He trusted Sister. She trusted him.

Hounds, running hard, barreled through abandoned pastures and across rutted farm roads, ever straight, ever eastwards. The pastures, snow covered, rolled on. As the whole pack moved farther along, the land became better tended.

After a half hour of slipping here and there, sleet stinging, Sister and the field galloped onto the old Lorillard land.

Hounds headed right for the family plot, which, like most graveyards predating the Revolution, was squared off and protected by a two-foot stone fence, each stone dry-set by hand in the 1750s. Occasionally patched, the stone bore testimony to endurance and beauty even as the graveyard contents announced the fleetingness of life.

Hounds, bearing down on the graveyard, could not see over the fence. Shaker saw it first, then Sister and the field.

Uncle Yancy and a large dog coyote were snarling at one another.

Shaker blew the horn. The coyote still threatened Yancy, but the fox, knowing there was no time to make a run for it, climbed the pin oak in the graveyard.

Folks swear that only gray foxes climb, but reds can do it. Sister had seen it before and wasn’t surprised to see it now. But she was surprised to see the coyote pause for a moment and dig down again, then decide he’d better run on.

Coyotes usually run only as fast as needed. This one underestimated Dragon’s speed. Dragon came alongside, snarled, and bumped him. That fast the coyote turned, sank his fangs into the hound, and leaped sideways to avoid Cora, who was a split second behind Dragon. He then put on the afterburners. The pack had been running hard for a half hour. Besides, they’d been out for another forty-five minutes above that. Fresh, the coyote had the advantage, but the Jefferson Hunt hounds possessed unquenchable drive. They snapped close to his heels. He charged up a slope, crossed a meadow where soil was poor, dropped down the embankment on the eastern side, and disappeared into a large jagged rock outcropping. The pack gathered in front of the narrow opening between two huge boulders.

Shaker dismounted, blew “Gone to ground,” and quickly remounted.

He wanted to pull the pack out of there because all manner of larger predators found the rocks with fissures and small caves very attractive.

Tootie, Val, and Felicity, burning hot, welcomed the ice bits on their cheeks. Their core body heat hadn’t begun to cool.

Uncle Yancy posed in the pin oak on a lower branch, which was nevertheless too high for hounds to yank him down by his lovely brush, quite in contrast to Aunt Netty’s pathetic little tail.

“Close call,”
he cheerfully called down as the pack came near.

“What are you doing all the way over here?”
Asa wondered.

“Netty brought me a beautiful pencil, so I came to see if there’s more. Dead human, pretty fresh in a shallow grave. That’s why the coyote was digging here. Well, ‘I was here first,’ I says to him, and he says, ‘Bug off, Pipsqueak.’ If you all hadn’t come along when you did, I might have got the worst of that fight.”

Dragon, bleeding all over the snow, limped along.

Shaker stopped before reaching the graveyard and called back to Sister. “We’d better put him in Sam’s woodshed. I’ll come back for him. Don’t want him to walk all the way back to the trailers.”

“Shaker, maybe there’s a better way.” She motioned to Betty, who rode in closer. “Betty, call Sam on your cell phone. See if he’ll leave for a minute and load up Dragon in his truck.”

“He can’t lift him.” Betty reached inside her coat for her phone.

“Right.” Sister nodded, for she’d momentarily forgotten Sam’s wound. “Call Gray. Maybe he can slip away. If not, we’ll have to ride back, then drive back. I hate to leave him for long.”

“Okay.” Betty punched in Gray’s number as Sister gave it to her.

As Betty filled in Gray, the field watched Uncle Yancy, about one hundred yards away, talk to the hounds who sat underneath the tree.