The Fox Hunt (10 page)

Stevie wanted to watch the owner unload his hounds, but it was time to unload their horses from the Pine Hollow vans and tack them up. The hunt began in just twenty minutes, and all the riders would be subject to an inspection before that. There wasn’t a minute to waste.

Tacking up their own horses wasn’t hard for The Saddle Club. They’d been doing that ever since their first days at Pine Hollow. Another thing they’d been doing since those first days was helping others, and that took longer. Once Topside had his tack on and Stevie was sure both she and her horse could withstand any inspection, she looked around to see who needed her help.

Nearby, May was having a little trouble with Luna. The pony didn’t like riding on a van and seemed to be
in a nasty mood. He wouldn’t let May tighten the girth.

May was about to give up and climb into the saddle anyway.

“Uh-uh,” Stevie said. “It’s got to be good and tight whenever you ride, but particularly on a ride like a hunt. If a saddle is loose, it can just slip upside down, and that always happens at the worst possible time, like when you’re going over a fence. If the saddle turns upside down, imagine what would happen to you!”

“Can you help me?” May asked.

“Don’t I always?” Stevie said. “That’s what friends are for. Besides, I’m stronger than you are.”

Stevie suggested that May hold Luna’s bridle and try to distract the pony with affection and pats while Stevie tended to the girth. She lifted up the skirt of the saddle and examined the buckle, estimating she’d want to move it two holes tighter. She listened to May chatter with the pony, and she watched the pony’s belly. One thing horses and ponies often did when they wanted to keep somebody from tightening a girth too much was to take a big breath of air and try to fool the human being. Stevie was not about to be fooled by a pony. She watched the movement in the horse’s chest and belly carefully. As soon as she saw him breathe out, she took hold of the leather and pulled. Three notches later, she was satisfied that the saddle was tight enough. Luna looked over his shoulder at
Stevie. She was sure she was getting a dirty look from the pony, but she was equally sure she hadn’t hurt him and that she’d made him much safer for May to ride. She gave May a boost into the saddle and led her out to the area in front of the stable where all the riders were collecting.

“Look at all the dogs!” May said excitedly. She began to climb down out of the saddle so she could play with them.

“Hounds,” Stevie said. “Remember? And they’re working animals, not pets. Max said we wouldn’t be allowed to pat them at all.”

“Oh, right,” May said, and she sounded very disappointed.

“I heard the trainer say something about how we could feed them their breakfast—after the hunt. Will that be okay?”

“It’ll have to be, huh?”

Stevie smiled. May was eager to be in on everything and to do everything right. She was really a great kid, and Stevie liked doing things with her. She was sort of like a little sister that Stevie had never had, and that made her a whole lot better than all the brothers she did have.

Stevie told May she was going to fetch Topside and she should wait for her there. The two of them could start out together in the hunt. May seemed to think that was a good idea.

Stevie had to walk through the place where the hounds were being held in order to get to Topside. Max was there, talking with the hounds’ owner, who seemed more than a little concerned about something. Although Stevie didn’t always listen to everything that was said to her, she almost never missed the opportunity to eavesdrop on something other people were saying to one another.

“Why are they making so much noise?” Max asked.

“Fox must have been right through here,” the owner said. “They’ve picked up a scent for sure, and they are ready to go. If they are this excited, the fox may be nearby. This may be a short hunt.”

Stevie couldn’t listen a whole lot longer without being too obvious about it, particularly after Max gave her a dirty look. She moved on and mounted Topside, hoping the hounds’ owner was wrong. She was looking forward to a good long hunt and a lot of fun while they did it.

Soon all the riders were gathered and ready for inspection. While Max looked them over, Mr. Baker gave final instructions. He introduced the hounds’ owner, a man named Chester, who would ride with them, and he introduced Chester to Lisa, the Junior Master, and Phil, the junior huntsman. Stevie was very excited for her friends and the honors they had, leading the hunt. There was a little twinge of envy this time that she didn’t get to play a starring role as
she had with the mock hunt, but it was okay and she knew it. This time, it was for real.

Chester stood in the middle of a circle of hounds, all on leashes that paired them together. “They’re called couples,” he reminded them. “Today, we have twelve and a half couples to hunt with. In case you need help with your math, that means twenty-five hounds.” The young riders laughed. “And these guys are raring to go. Are you ready?”

The young hunters all nodded. They were as ready as they were going to be.

“Then let’s be off.”

At these words, Max, who always seemed to have a way of surprising his young riders, did it again. He pulled a short brass horn out of a bag, raised it to his lips, and blew a very rapid one-note call. The riders didn’t know the name of it, but they all knew what it meant.

Chester released the hounds, and the hunt began.

“W
HAT
’
S THE MATTER
?” Stevie asked Chester when she saw the totally confused look on his face. The hunt had started just thirty seconds earlier, and already it seemed that something was amiss.

“It’s the hounds,” he said. “They should be following the scent, and Mr. Baker was sure it would head over to the east. Instead the hounds are running around in circles in the yard here, and they all look like they’re going crazy.”

That part was definitely true. Stevie and the other young riders had expected to take off with a bang, but it seemed that they were standing still with a bang—or at least with a howl—because that was the sound the hounds were making. They were dashing in and out among the legs of the horses, some of whom weren’t
very used to smaller creatures running around their legs, and some of whom were getting nervous about it. Stevie had already advised May to hold onto her reins very tightly. Luna was definitely jumpy. Topside was doing all right, but Starlight didn’t like all the activity at all. Fortunately, Carole was in complete control.

Then one of the hounds put his nose to the ground, took a few tentative steps forward, and began a new kind of bark altogether.

“He’s got something! It’s a find!” Chester announced. Stevie remembered that meant the hound had found the trail. At the new bark, all the other hounds looked up. Obviously, in hound-talk, the word was out that they were ready to go—and go they did—right into the barn!

“No way was there a fox in here!” Mr. Baker said indignantly.

“Something was,” Chester said, a little irritated with all the confusion.

However, since the hounds seemed so sure of themselves, there was nothing to do but to follow them. Lisa gave Diablo a little kick, and all the riders followed—right through the barn.

If a fox had been in the barn, it was clear that he didn’t stay there for long. In an instant, the hounds were through the barn, followed by forty riders on
horseback, and then they aimed straight for Mr. Baker’s house!

Twenty-five hounds raced up onto the front portico. Forty horses and riders stopped short of going up the steps. Twenty-five hounds traipsed the full length of the portico and dashed around the rear of the house. Forty horses and riders followed, not on the portico, of course, just along the edge, through Mr. Baker’s flower patch. Twenty-five hounds sped through the laundry yard under flapping white sheets. Forty horses and riders bolted right after them, unable to stop before running into the sheets. Five sets of very dirty sheets lay trampled in the muddy dirt of the laundry yard. Two laundry poles lay next to them.

“What’s going on here!” Mrs. Baker called out angrily.

“Nothing, dear,” Mr. Baker assured her. “It’s just a little—oh, well, I’ll help you later, okay?”

Nobody wanted to wait around to hear the answer to that. Nobody could, anyway. Before Mrs. Baker could gather her laundry and her wits for an appropriate retort, the hounds were off again—this time scurrying under the Baker children’s swing set and then right through the pumpkin patch next to it. Forty horses and riders made a mess of the few pumpkins still ripening. Mr. Baker’s face showed his distress. Chester’s face showed only confusion.

“Something’s definitely wrong,” he said to Max. Max didn’t have a chance to answer. The hounds were moving so fast, all any of the riders could do was follow them at breakneck speed.

Within seconds, twenty-five hounds and forty riders were on the road. The fox’s scent stopped dead at the roadside. The whippers-in, whose job it was to keep the hounds fanned out until they could pick up the scent again, began milling around the pack.

Then there was a howl, the sound the riders had come to know as the sign that the hounds had found something. It was on the other side of the road. Twenty-five hounds and forty riders crossed the road. The trail followed the edge of the road for a hundred yards or so, taking all the hounds and all the riders right over a sewer pipe, and then it stopped dead again.

“Let’s see if it picks up on the other side of the road,” Stevie suggested. Sure enough, there it was.

“T
HIS IS WEIRD
,” Chester said. “The scent doesn’t do this. The hounds don’t act this way. This behavior is not normal for hounds following the line of a real fox. Smells don’t leap across roads. Something’s fishy.”

Chester’s use of the phrase “real fox” struck Stevie as odd. She wanted to ask him what he meant, but as a junior whipper-in, it seemed presumptuous to question Chester. Meanwhile, the combination of the strange
behavior of the hounds, the weird trail of the scent, and the unexplained presence of the diAngelo’s Mercedes so early that morning were making Stevie very suspicious, and very unhappy. She was building up the nerve to question Chester when the hounds started yowling again, and they were off.

The hunt continued in just that strange way for another half an hour. Even though Chester, Max, and Mr. Baker kept saying that this was all very strange, the young riders were having a great time. This was very different from their usual trail ride, and somehow having the adults so confused made it all the more fun. That is, everybody was having fun except Stevie. She was getting a very bad feeling about it all.

“The hounds have the scent again!” Chester announced. This time the hounds raced like crazy in a straight line—very different from what had been going on. Twenty-five hounds dashed right along the edge of the road, followed by forty riders. Then they took a sharp right turn, directly into the parking lot where Stevie had seen Veronica’s Mercedes that morning. The only occupants parked there now were the trucks and trailers for the Emerson Circus. Stevie remembered that this was where the circus was going to perform in Cross County—unless, of course, twenty-five hounds led forty riders on a merry chase through the big top, wreaking as much damage there as they had in Mrs. Baker’s laundry yard. The hounds seemed to have
something else in mind, however. They dashed wildly up to a lamppost in the center of the lot, and they stopped, completely and totally.

“Are we to assume the fox climbed the lamppost?” Max asked, looking up. The tone of his voice indicated that the way Chester had trained his dogs left something to be desired.

“They just follow their noses, Mr. Regnery,” Chester said unapologetically. “Their noses tell them something stopped here.”

“If the fox went to ground here, we’ve got a new burrowing and digging tool that the construction industry is going to want to know about,” Mr. Baker said. He wasn’t thrilled with Chester’s hounds, either.

Stevie watched and listened. Her stomach turned with every word.

“Boy this fox
is
cleverer than you were!” Lisa whispered to her. Carole laughed. Stevie didn’t.

“It’s not a fox,” Stevie said, finally speaking her concern aloud.

“If it’s not a fox, what is it?” Carole asked.

“It’s my brothers, and Veronica,” Stevie said. “I don’t know what they’ve done, but it’s something. This whole thing just smells of trouble, and I’m the cause of it.”

“No way,” said Lisa. “They promised.”

Stevie looked at her sharply. “What do you mean, they promised?” she asked.

Carole gasped. Lisa realized what she’d done. She hadn’t meant to say anything about Stevie’s brothers. The words had just come out of her mouth before she’d even had a chance to finish thinking the thought, but maybe it wouldn’t matter now if Stevie knew. She hoped it wouldn’t anyway.

She gulped. “Carole and I were worried about them. We met them and asked them if they were plotting revenge.”

Stevie stared at her friends. “You talked to my conniving brothers?”

“Yes, we did,” Carole said. “We wanted to be sure they wouldn’t do anything to ruin the fox hunt. They said that they weren’t mad at you; you’d just been getting even with them. Lisa’s right. They promised they wouldn’t do anything. In fact, they were even interested to learn about the hunt. They asked us all kinds of questions.”