Hotspur

CHAPTER 21

Aunt Netty, cross with Uncle Yancy, trotted over to Target’s den. The last quarter of the moon, a thin melon slice in the Prussian blue sky, pulsated with feeble light.

Target, a hefty eight pounds if he was an ounce, sat near the main entrance. His mate, Charlene, was eating blackberries curling over the fence line near the edge of the woods about a quarter of a mile from the den. Just beyond that fence, rolling pastures swept up to the farm road and then on to the kennels.

Their three cubs this year, half grown, had left early to set up homes around Wheeler’s Mill. Roughneck Farm, After All, and Foxglove, filled with reds and grays, were reaching the saturation point. Target and Charlene knew that the old, nasty red who had lived underneath the mill had succumbed to old age. The place needed foxes, and it was better to get their cubs established early before the reds farther south got the bright idea to move in.

Plentiful game meant the young ones would be fine for food. Also, Walter Lungrun occasionally put out dog food supplemented with liquid wormer as well as tasty bits of sweet feed. The molasses flavor was delicious.

“Netty, you’ve got on your mad face.” Target laughed at his sister.

“Yancy’s in one of his hoarding moods. He’s burying dead crickets, which is the dumbest thing. Chicken, rabbit pieces, yes. But crickets? That run on the first day of cubbing has affected his mind.”

“I thought it was being married to you,” Target wryly said.

“What a pathetic attempt at humor. I wouldn’t be sitting here laughing. Tuesday, Sister will take out more puppies and she’ll have Dragon in the pack. He wasn’t with them Saturday or Yancy would be a goner for sure.”

“Sister ought to draft out that hound. He’s too fast. He’ll ruin the pack.” Target knew for a pack of hounds to be good they should run together. Dragon pushed ahead too far.

“It’s his second year. She’ll give him the year to see if he improves. And you know she loves his blood, lot of Piedmont blood in her D line.” Piedmont Fox Hounds, founded in northern Virginia in 1840, was the oldest organized hunt in America.

Henry Hudson brought hounds with him when he discovered the river that now bears his name. American settlers hunted with hounds almost from the founding of the first surviving colony in 1607. But Piedmont was the first hunt organized in the modern sense, and those who wore its colors, old gold, could be forgiven a bit of swagger.

“He’s an arrogant hound,” Netty said.

“I got my revenge last year when I lured him into a copperhead.”

“He’ll never forget it, which is why I’m here. To remind you that Tuesday, Sister will cast hounds this way and Dragon will be with them. I’d stay in my den if I were you.”

“Ha! I’ll break his neck yet.”

“Unless he breaks yours. He’s fast, Target, and he’s seventy pounds of hard muscle to your eight. He can snap your neck in a split second if he bumps you and rolls you. He has that kind of drive.”

“Netty,” Target said, incensed, standing up. “I’m almost as fast as you are.”

She wanted to say, “but not as smart.” Instead, she cajoled him. “True enough. I’m just giving you a heads-up. The whole pack is faster, and if Bitsy hadn’t been around it really would have been a near thing for Yancy, the damned fool.”

“Wonder why Sister is breeding for more speed? They’re already fast enough and I must commend her and them for their nose. Boy, she has really improved the way they track a scent.” Target mentioned the ability of a hound to scent.

“She has, and let’s not forget, we’ve had more moisture this year. That’s going to help them, too. We’d better be on our paws. I know neither Sister nor Shaker wants to kill any of us, but accidents happen.”

“If I have to die I’d rather die that way than from mange.” Target flicked his tail. Netty’s infernal and constant advice irritated him.

“Wouldn’t we all. Here’s to old age! But take your medicine. Sister spends good money on that stuff and now she’s putting it on dog kibble instead of stuffing it inside dead chickens. It’s easier to get at.”

“I do eat the damned stuff, Netty!”

Before he could cuss her out and tell her to stop mothering him, Athena, talons spread, swooped over them. “Hoo hoo hoo.” She laughed as they both flattened. She turned and landed on the lowest limb of the slippery elm. “Good evening.”

“Athena, you scared the wits out of me,” Netty grumbled as she dusted herself off.

“Why, Netty, I don’t think that’s possible.”

Netty, somewhat mollified, said, “You’re looking well.”

“Shrews, I’ve been eating shrews. Does wonders for me. Well, Target, cat got your tongue?”

“No, it’s good to see you. I hear you helped out Uncle Yancy the other morning.”

“St. Just was calling the hounds on after they’d lost scent.”

“I’ll kill him if it’s the last thing I do.”

“You know, Target, that’s what he says about you,” Aunt Netty said, adding her two cents.

“I’m here with the news. Guy Ramy’s body, sealed in a fifty-five-gallon drum, was dredged out of the James this morning. A red-winged blackbird watched the whole thing.”

“Blackbirds, crows, ravens,” Target snarled, “can’t believe a word they say.”

“Don’t let your hostility to the species blind you to the truth,” Athena sagely counseled.

“You’re quite right,” Aunt Netty agreed, and wanted to kick her brother hard with her hind leg. One needed to pay court to Athena. She stared crossly at Target.

Although full of himself, he wasn’t stupid. “You are right, Athena. I hear the name, St. Just, and my blood boils. He killed my son.”

“And you killed his wife. You’re even. Be done with it.” She raised herself to her full height, as she’d been leaning down to speak to the foxes. Athena, at two feet tall, was undeniably regal.

Target weighed his next words. “Yes, but I think it’s gone beyond that. I don’t think he’ll stop. After all, he called the hounds on Uncle Yancy.”

“I know. My concern is that you don’t endanger other animals with this blood feud. There’s enough going on now. Finding Guy Ramy is not a good omen for any of us.”

“The humans are already stirred up about Nola Bancroft.” Aunt Netty moved over to sit beside her brother.

“The human who killed these two knew enough to put them where vultures couldn’t get them or dogs dig them up. He or she knows a little something about animals. Right?”

“Yes.” Aunt Netty nodded her head.

“And although none of us were born then, we know from the humans’ incessant talking that Nola and Guy disappeared after the first day of cubbing in 1981. A full cycle. Cubbing has just begun.” She leaned down toward them again. “And if they turn up something or someone gets a notion, they’ll start digging, literally. They’ll disturb our dens and nests and flush game. They’ll make a mess.”

“I’d better tell the cubs at Wheeler’s Mill,” Target thought out loud.

“I already did. And Bitsy is telling Butch, Mary Vey, Comet, and Inky.” Athena mentioned the gray foxes.

“Do you really think it’s that bad?” Target wondered, not wanting to challenge her, just wondering.

“Actually, I’m afraid one of them’s going to snap.” Athena’s low voice dipped even lower. “Bitsy, Inky, and I saw Ralph Assumptio, crying, parked by the side of the road.”

“That’s it. He’s the killer, then,” Target declared.

“Maybe. Maybe not.” The brown bird cast her golden eyes upward as a blue heron, late, headed for home. “My point is they are all feeling the strain.”

“Do the hounds know?” Aunt Netty asked.

“Yes. Bitsy is telling them.”

“Who cares if they know?” Target didn’t dislike the hounds, but he felt them an inferior member of the canine family because they allowed themselves to be domesticated.

“Are you argumentative tonight or thickheaded?” Netty nudged him on his shoulder. “The hounds are closer to the humans than we are.”

“And the killer is a foxhunter as surely as I am the Queen of the Night.”

A little while after Athena had left, Charlene returned. Target and Netty filled her in, then they all discussed what Athena meant about the killer being a foxhunter. They weren’t sure.

Athena had been figuring. There had been no reports of struggle. If there’d been a fight in a car or truck, someone would have noticed the blood and the damage to the vehicle. If someone had sold their vehicle immediately after the disappearance, someone would have noticed that, too. Both Nola and Guy willingly followed or climbed into the vehicle of their murderer. Nola’s car was left at the Burusses’. Guy’s was parked downtown on the street. Athena had gathered all this with Bitsy’s help by listening to the humans talk on their porches or on the phone, windows open.

She had just been sharing all this with Bitsy, sitting on a crossbeam in Sister’s barn. Bitsy nodded. “Guy and Nola knew their killer.”

Athena added, “And trusted him.”