The Hounds and the Fury (11 page)

CHAPTER 16

T
he freezing and thawing, and a few days of mid-forties temperatures, made parking at Orchard Hill unwise. The nights stayed cold. The farm road leading in was too narrow to handle the volume of trailers, and there was no way to park in the fields, which would be frozen at first cast but possibly a muck hole when hounds returned.

Two hours before casting hounds, Sister put a message on the huntline number that everyone should park at Chapel Cross. The membership knew to check in. They were glad they did, because the area around the tiny church had been plowed.

Masters must be mindful of landowners, sextons, and other kindly people who call in useful information. Each year the hunt club made a nice donation to Chapel Cross, and she herself always gave the sexton one hundred dollars at Christmas. It helped that she liked everyone there, so it never seemed a chore to make the rounds.

Adolfo Vega, the sexton, was grateful for the cash and for the straw and manure that the members carried to his mulch pile. Adolfo prided himself on the gardens around the white clapboard church. He credited the manure for some of the result.

Any members not properly cleaning up after their horses faced a stiff fine, accompanied by a reprimand from the master. The reprimand was worse than the seventy-five dollars. Sister bided no disturbing of landowners who were friends of hunting.

Walter arrived an hour early to direct parking so no one would get stuck. The parking lot, not huge, called for maneuvering. Clemson, his older tried-and-true hunter, stayed on the trailer, happily munching from his hay bag while Walter, in his Wellies, got everyone squared away.

Sister and Shaker liked to park the party wagon slightly distant from the rest of the trailers. The hounds, obedient but curious, could be tempted to investigate someone’s tack room if the door was open once they were out of the party wagon. Trinity evidenced a streak of kleptomania. In the bustle to mount up, someone usually forgot to latch a trailer door.

Today, the party wagon parked behind the chapel in front of the tidy churchyard, snow banked up against gray tombstones. Adolfo, knowing Sister’s habits, carefully plowed out a circle on the north side, sheltered from the winds because of a double line of blue spruce trees. Little snow had melted, although it was packed down, so Adolfo, without realizing it, had plowed off the gravel path back there over dormant grass and had plowed over a den entrance. Foxes prudently dig more than one way in or out of a den. Even so, the medium-sized red dog fox who lived there was irate at having to clean out the snow to clear his entrance.

Shaker parked right over the entrance. Given the shade back there, he didn’t see it.

When the hounds bounded out of the party wagon, Ardent wiggled under the trailer.

“Fox.”

Before the others could join him, Shaker, thinking the older hound was having a silly moment, called him away. And Ardent, who deserved his appellation, crawled out. No point in getting into trouble before the hunt even began.

It mystified the hound that Shaker couldn’t smell the den; it was potent, even with the sun barely nudging the horizon.

Noting his mournful face, Cora predicted,
“Don’t fret, Ardent. By the time we come back here he’ll smell it, and you’ll be golden.”

“I forget how bad their noses are.”
Ardent fell in with the others as they walked down the gravel road, heading south and east to Orchard Hill.

The brisk air tingled in nostrils, on cheeks. Those who had slipped toe warmers into their boots had reason to be grateful. The mercury hung at thirty-one degrees but would surely rise to the mid-forties. The day, overcast, promised good hunting.

The fields and farm roads would require vigilance, for the surface would loosen with the rise in temperature, but underneath the soil would stay tight. Streaks of snow where the sun couldn’t reach looked like icing. In other places the snow had drifted so much it hadn’t melted down. But the general lay of the land was packed-down snow, with some bald patches due to earlier winds, all covered with heavy sparkling frost.

Puffs of condensation escaped horses’ nostrils, peoples’ mouths, and hounds’ mouths. A bit of steam lifted off horses’ hindquarters, but not much, not yet.

Sister loved mornings like this. Canada geese, many of which stayed throughout the winter, flew overhead, honking flight directions, their V formation later imitated by fighter pilots. Rabbit tracks were encased in the frozen snow and mud along with raccoon and possum tracks. Deer tracks crisscrossed meadows.

She felt a warm wind current as they approached the turn into Orchard Hill. Just as quickly she passed through it. Today, January 7, was the feast day of Raymund of Pennafort, who lived to near one hundred, going to his heavenly reward in 1275. Raymund, from Catalonia, had become a Dominican: a dog of God—or watchdog of God, if one prefers. The two words
dominus
and
canis
had merged together. Raymund believed in reconciling heretics, Jews and Moors.

With husband and son both named Raymond, Sister had always thought January 7 was a lucky day. The embracing temperament certainly applied to her husband in a more earthy fashion, but it truly applied to her son emotionally. His impulse had been to include, to find what was good about a person, to build bridges.

Those thoughts flitted across her mind until finally they reached a narrow covert, snaking along a tiny creek that fed into a much larger one. Ice crystals stood out in pretty clumps along the farm road.

“Lieu in there,” Shaker called. Then he blew “Draw the covert,” one long note followed by two short sharp ones.

Hounds dashed into the covert. Colder in there than out on the field, they nonetheless had the advantage of being sheltered from the light breeze swooping down from the northwest.

Trudy worked alongside Cora, her hero. Not as fast as the older strike hound, Trudy absorbed all of Cora’s knowledge. She wasn’t slow, but Cora could pull ahead of all the hounds in the pack save Dragon, her nemesis. Rabbit scent curled up. The bitter odor of dried berries and bent-over pokeweed also was apparent.

The sun, now clear of the horizon, cast long scarlet shadows. The hounds worked through the narrow covert to where the little creek fed into the big one.

“To the left,” Shaker called out, and the whole pack wheeled as one, working the left side of the fast-moving creek.

Tootie, Val, Felicity, and Pamela rode at the back of first flight. The custom for centuries had been for children, young people, and grooms to ride in the rear. On days when fields were quite small, Sister invited the girls forward. On the children’s hunt, adults followed children.

The reasons for this were sound. Young people could observe those in front who had earned their colors. Those members knew the territory, respected hounds, and nine times out of ten were strong riders. Watching how they approached a tricky fence, negotiated a drop, dealt with an obstacle whose approach had been poached, churned up like cake frosting, taught the youngsters. Being nimble, they could more easily dismount and mount up than many older members. If someone dropped a crop or needed a hand, the young were expected to supply it. Also, if there was damage to a fence or to anything else, they weren’t expected to repair it, but they were expected to remember. The person doing the damage was to report it immediately to the field master, even during a hunt, so long as they didn’t disturb hounds. But the young provided a backup in case the offending rider did not. In their defense, sometimes so many people hit a fence that no one was a culprit. Still, all should ’fess up.

The other thing about having young people ride in the rear was that everyone in front had also performed these services, watched the experienced riders, prayed for the moment when they, too, would be one of them: the hunt’s colors proudly worn on their collars, hunt bottoms sewn on their frock coats.

Hunting was a chain stretching back thousands of years. Tootie, Val, Felicity, and Pamela profited from the wisdom of the ages.

Tootie, fond of history, particularly responded. She never felt alone when she hunted. Ghosts rode with her.

Walking behind her hounds, still searching, Sister noted she’d seen no deer hunters. This was the last day of deer season, which could be as frightening as the first. Harvest had been good this season, many hunters reaching their bag limits. Anyone out today was most likely from the city. Not one orange cap or jacket flashed human presence.

A hunter needed a good memory for the seventy-three firearm regulations in the state of Virginia. Adding to the burden was the fact that each county also had specific regulations.

Hunting generated income. First, the state raked it in from the licenses, and then if the sheriff or animal control officer cited a hunter for a violation, there was that tasty fine, which was dumped into the county coffers. Without hunters of all stripes, states would go bankrupt.

Usually Sister could focus on the hounds, but when the going was slow, her mind wandered a bit.

She woke up, though, as Dasher opened, followed by Diana and Tinsel. They had picked up a line along the large creek bed.

Betty, on the right side of the large creek, loped along on Magellan and cleared a large tree trunk, keeping hounds well in sight.

Sybil, on the left, paralleled an old cart road, its ruts frozen. She passed a stack of pallets used during apple picking. A packing shed in serviceable condition sat near the pallets. The apple orchard covered the lands to the west, rising upward for fifty acres on the west side of the creek.

The fox kept straight as an arrow, but he was well ahead of hounds. He’d been courting, and having been unsuccessful in his designs had turned north, which meant he headed back toward Chapel Cross, where the tertiary gravel roads formed a perfect cross.

The field galloped through the western orchards and passed into the wide hay field with the one-hundred-thirty-year-old sugar maple of epic proportions in the middle.

The fox veered further north, picking up speed. The field, sweating now, cheeks flushed, cleared coops, rail fences, and a line of brambles entwining a disintegrating three-board fence. On they ran, hounds in full cry, ground beginning to soften in spots, for they’d been out an hour.

The fields, frost shining gold as the sun rose ever upward, rolled onward. The Blue Ridge Mountains provided a spectacular backdrop, the ice on deciduous trees and on pines flaming in the climbing sunlight.

“What the hell!”
Dreamboat cursed as an eight-point buck shot right past him.

However, hounds smelled no hunters.

As they ran on and on, scent intensifying along with their cry, Sister and the field noticed deer moving past them or cutting at angles. No deer ran away from the direction of the hounds. If anything, they were running to the hounds. Four miles past Chapel Cross, galloping flat out, they thundered into Paradise.

Bobby Franklin, leading the hilltoppers, pulled up on a high hill for a moment. He’d fallen behind because the old gates, rusting on the hinges, had taken some doing to open. The youngsters in the back of the hilltoppers dismounted to open the gates. This was done in twos so no one would be alone at a gate, everyone rushing off, their horse eager to join them.

Bobby heard Shaker’s horn, piercing. He saw his wife flying across an open meadow with Sybil on the left. The hounds, tightly together, dashed over the meadow. Shaker next hove into view. He was followed by Sister on Rickyroo, his long stride eating up the ground. Behind Sister the field strung out, some already succumbing to the pace. The four Custis Hall girls were passing those who faltered or were pulling up, which was their right to do.

Just before Bobby squeezed his horse, a big fellow, something told him to wait.

More deer appeared, then a black and tan hound, followed by another and another. They looked like black jellybeans tossed over icing. To their credit, they weren’t chasing the deer. A few had their noses down, but others had come up on the line that Dasher, Cora, Diana, and the others were following. The black and tans had been running backward on the line.

Within a minute they smashed smack into the pack.

“Pay them no mind!”
Cora ordered.

“Cur dogs!”
Dragon yelled to the young ones.

“Be damned if I’m a cur dog, sir.”
A black and tan snarled at Dragon, who snarled back.

Shaker, coming up hard, tucked his horn into his coat between the first and second buttons. Clear and loud, he commanded, “Ware riot!”

“Don’t worry,”
Diana said, her nose down.

“Who are they?”
Young Delight, baffled, yelped.

“Deerhounds. Pay them no mind,”
Ardent counseled.

One black and tan, reversing herself to join the Jefferson hounds and run in the right direction, replied,
“We’re foxhounds. We’re out here with a human who is a perfect fool.”

Dana, littermate to Delight, was about to reply, but the scent grew stronger. She stretched out, pushing off with her powerful loins supplying smooth power.

One by one, the black and tans reversed to fall into the tricolor pack. All the voices sang a crescendo of happiness that echoed off the mountains.

Sister now came up. Without faltering, she pushed Rickyroo on. “Jesus H. Christ on a raft.”

“Yeah, but isn’t the sound great?”
Rickyroo flicked his ears back, then forward.

She laughed out loud because she loved him, because the pace was searing, the sound divine, the situation unique.

Just as Bobby moved out again, Jason Woods, perfectly turned out, galloped toward Betty. Hounds had turned toward him, so he pulled up, reversing with them.

Jason’s Kilowatt, though beautiful, was no match for Magellan, who pulled alongside, then sped by him. Jason labored to keep up.

Crawford appeared, hanging onto Czpaka for dear life. Marty, a better rider than her husband, rode on his right as a whipper-in, a position she had no burning desire to fulfill.

Crawford blew into his reed horn. A thin note escaped. Within seconds the doubled pack blasted right by him, as did Shaker, then Sister, then the field.