Outfoxed. Hotspur

The foliage, nearing its peak, offered a contrast to the rain. If tomorrow proved as clear as the weatherman promised, the giant oak in the front lawn would be an orange almost neon in brightness.

Sorrel Buruss, on the board of the historical society, had arranged this dinner party. Fontaine, unlike many men, loved preparing for a party. So many house chores, piling up over the weeks then months, were accomplished in the frantic rush to get everything shipshape before guests arrived.

Thirty people, black-tie, laughed, reached for canap?s off silver serving trays, enjoyed Cristal champagne as opposed to the cheap champagnes so often foisted off on guests at these dos.

Sister chatted with the president of the university. The Franklins made a point of introducing Walter Lungrun to the movers and shakers of the community. Walter had been away for almost ten years. His family, being poor, was not social so he needed to meet people. Also, in those ten years, many new people had moved into the area. Fontaine invited him at the last minute, which gave him as much pleasure as he took in not inviting Crawford.

Given the people attending this soiree, Crawford seethed but he was plotting his parry even as the assembled were shepherded into the dining room, a phenomenal shade of cerise with linen-white trim. Only Sorrel could have thought of such a color, which in the glow of the candelabra and wall sconces was fabulous. Sorrel believed anyone having a dinner party using electric lighting was an infidel.

The Heart Fund dinner and dance, headed by Crawford, would trump this, or at least Crawford Howard hoped it would. He’d hired the best dance orchestra in the country and was transporting all of them to Virginia at his own expense. The Heart Fund would have been better served had he just given the medical charity the forty thousand dollars he would spend on the orchestra. But then these fund-raisers were about far more than raising money for the charity.

Sister Jane sat at Fontaine’s right and the president of the university sat at Sorrel’s right. Even if Fontaine hadn’t wanted to be joint-master, the seating arrangement would have been the same. The president, powerful as he was, was transient. Sister Jane was permanent.

Sister observed Sorrel shining in a turquoise sheath dress, one shoulder exposed. The color, set off by the dining room walls, made Sorrel the center of attraction.

She probably would have been regardless, for she possessed a seemingly effortless elegance and a ladylike sense of decorum. Sorrel’s blond hair carried a few streaks of gray, which somehow made her even more appealing. Even Sorrel must bow to the vulnerability of age.

Sister had bowed to it emotionally years ago but she wouldn’t give an inch physically.

Sorrel, a Richmond girl, could have married many a fine fellow but Fontaine, carefree, bursting with obvious masculinity, won her heart. That he still held it said a great deal about his wife’s perseverance as well as Fontaine’s own qualities, which perhaps he shared only with her. She knew about the other women. She didn’t always know who they were but she knew. Since she viewed passion as a danger and not a delight, Sorrel had little desire to retaliate. As long as appearances were maintained, the children protected, she closed her eyes.

Fontaine’s foolishness with money caused her much more concern. But tonight none of that was apparent.

A harpist played after dinner. Real Cuban cigars, not fakes, were offered to the gentlemen in the smoking room. The ladies retired to a drawing room, relieved of the burden of supporting male egos.

The men felt the same way, although they wouldn’t have put it in terms of supporting female egos, only that paying court to women was tiring. That rigid law of southern life, women must be flattered, could try a man’s patience as well as his imagination.

Fontaine racked up the balls on the pool table. Bobby, Walter, and the university president reached for their cues. The other men sat along the park benches against the wall, waiting for their turn. Four fellows dealt cards over the inlaid-wood card table, the monogrammed chips in neat stacks by each player’s right hand.

Bobby won the toss and broke. Brightly colored balls ricocheted everywhere. He socked away one, two, and three but just missed putting the fourth ball in the pocket. Walter took over, bending his muscular frame. As Fontaine watched the young man fire away he was glad he hadn’t bet more than five dollars on this game. Walter was too good.

Fontaine leaned into Bobby as they observed Walter’s deft touch.

“Why are you supporting Crawford?”

Knowing he hadn’t told anyone but his wife as well as hinting to Sister, Bobby nonetheless knew that his lunch with Crawford at the club had to have been reported.

“The money.”

“I’m hardly a pauper.”

Bobby felt a tightness across his huge chest. Tiptoeing around Fontaine’s financial history he said, “Of course not.”

“Crawford Howard will alienate everyone in the club sooner or later.”

“I fear that,” Bobby honestly answered.

“Then why in bloody hell are you supporting him?” He kept his voice low, a light voice for such a butch-looking man.

“He knows how to generate money.”

“Off other people’s hides.” Fontaine displayed the aristocrat’s disdain for trade.

“I’m afraid that’s true, too, but half the fortunes in this room were made off other people’s hides. That they were done so long ago simply sanitizes them,” Bobby shrewdly said, shifting his weight from one foot to the other.

Walter finished out the game.“Guess I had a lucky run.”

Each player handed him five dollars.

“More than luck.” The president smiled. “I don’t know if I can afford another game.”

“You break.” Fontaine picked the smooth balls out of the pocket.

“How much?” The president brushed his sandy hair from his forehead.

“Five dollars,” Fontaine said, then remembered his guests who were sitting. “Bobby and I will bow out. Ronnie, Ralph, up next? Ready?”

“Sure,” they said.

Fontaine walked over to the bar, pouring himself a brandy and one for Bobby. Not a true drinker, Fontaine would sip socially. He’d snorted two lines of good cocaine after dinner. Retiring to his own bathroom away from everyone, he quickly inhaled his stimulant of choice. A touch of booze after that put him in a mellow yet quite clearheaded state. He could take or leave drugs. He knew most people couldn’t. He genuinely liked coke but he watched himself. He’d seen men ruin careers and families thanks to the white powder.

“Bobby, I give you a lot of business and I bring you a lot of business.”

Bobby’s bushy eyebrows shot upward. Crawford was a cornucopia of business, too. “You do and I am grateful.”

“We’ve known each other all our lives. I can’t believe you’d do this to me.”

“I’m not doing anything to you. I’m trying to …”

He didn’t finish because Walter joined them, having just won the game in record time. “May I?”

“Of course. Brandy?”

“No thanks. Soda water.”

“Not a drinking man?” Bobby mildly asked, knowing that Walter’s father sure was.

“No, not much. Seeing the insides of alcoholics cured me of any desire to be a drinking man. That … and Dad.” Walter smiled.

“You must hate Crawford Howard.” Fontaine, wanting Bobby to hear this, asked.

“I do,” came the swift reply.

“How old were you when all that happened? Twelve? Fifteen? Time goes by so fast.” Fontaine swilled the deep golden amber liquid in the glass.

“Fifteen.” Walter leaned his arm on the bar, putting his foot on the brass footrail.

“Painful.” Bobby lifted the brandy to his lips.

“It was but, Mr. Franklin …”

“Call me Bobby.”

“Thank you. I will if you’ll dispense with Dr. Lungrun.” He nodded. “Anyway, I learned. I learned self-reliance. I learned I wasn’t the center of the universe. Mom needed help and I learned to put the family first. As much as I hate Crawford Howard, in a sense, he made a man out of me.”

“You made a man out of you.” Fontaine placed his glass on the countertop. “Plenty of other young men would have escaped somehow—booze, drugs, women, you name it.”

“Why did you come back?” Bobby was genuinely curious.

“I love this place. I came back for Mom. It’s what she wanted.”

Neither Fontaine nor Bobby could think of what to say until finally Fontaine said,“We’re glad of that.”

Harry Xavier, having cleaned up at the card table, stood, shoving money in his pocket.“Dr. Lungrun, you young pup. I’ll take you on at the pool table.”

The men crowded around. Xavier’s skills had emptied many a wallet.

Back in the drawing room the ladies surprised themselves with their vehemence. It began innocently enough with Betty Franklin mentioning Peter Wheeler“hunting” from the back of his pickup.

The disposition of his property, on everyone’s mind, provoked the heated exchange.

Tinsley Wetherford Papandros declared that Peter should have settled his estate years ago. In his decrepit condition he could fall prey to whoever offered the most money.

Isabel Rogers, a tawny beauty, backed up Tinsley, saying the least he could have done was put the land in conservation easements.

Betty replied that was all very well for a rich person to say. Isabel was rich, but if Peter had done that he would have devalued his land. Only someone who wanted to farm would buy it.

“Devalue the land? What about the environment!” Lisa Bredell nearly shouted. She was president of the Blue Ridge Conservation Council. “There isn’t going to be anything left for our grandchildren.”

“Don’t overstate your case,” Sister dryly said.

Lisa wheeled on Sister.“You of all people should know what I’m talking about. There won’t be any land for your precious hunting.”

“Don’t talk to Sister like that,” Betty firmly said.

“She’s not God,” Lisa popped off. The champagne loosened her tongue.

“She is on the hunt field.” Sorrel laughed, hoping to restore harmony.

“It’s primitive,” Lisa, not a Virginian, stated.

“We don’t kill the fox.” Betty felt hot anger rising in her throat.

“How do you know? You all will say anything so you can charge over the countryside shouting ‘tallyho’ or whatever you shout.”

“Of course we know,” Sister, fighting back her own anger, said. “If the hounds killed a fox, they’d be covered with blood. The pieces of the fox would be there for us to see. You overestimate human intelligence, Lisa. The fox is smarter than we are, than the hounds, than the horses.”

“Certainly smarter than Fontaine.” Sorrel laughed and most of the ladies laughed with her.

“Back in the late seventies the sport began to change. Not that we could catch the fox but we tried. Now we’ll call off the hounds,” Betty reported.

“How?” Lisa’s lower lip jutted out in stubborn disbelief.

“The horn. Hounds are taught to obey the commands the same as cavalry officers obeyed the bugle.” Sister, unless in hunting company, did not discuss her passion at social events. However, Lisa, Tinsley, and Isabel were not convinced.

Sorrel passed around small chocolate cookies.“Ladies, go to opening hunt. See for yourself.”

“When is that?” Tinsley asked.

“First Saturday in November. There’s a wonderful breakfast afterward. You’ll enjoy it.” Sister smiled although she felt like slapping their faces.

“All right,” Lisa said, half-defensively.

“Will Peter Wheeler be there?” Isabel inquired.

“He hasn’t missed opening hunt since he returned from World War Two. Or at least that’s what he tells me.” Betty laughed. “That was before my time.”

Sister, knowing what Isabel was after, which was to woo Peter into signing a conservation easement, said,“He’s an old man. He doesn’t know how to use a computer. He doesn’t want to. He doesn’t have an answering machine. He figures if it’s important, you’ll drop by. He doesn’t own a fax, a video machine, and he doesn’t have a satellite dish either. He’s a country man who loves country ways. He knows more about the environment than all of us put together but Peter isn’t going to sign anything that limits his options.”

“But it’s to protect the environment!” Isabel protested.

“For you. Not for him.” Sister plainly stated the truth, which, as always, is hard to swallow.

Before Isabel could further hector Sister and Betty, Sorrel reached for her elbow.“Come on, I want to show you that fabric.”

Isabel hesitated, then stood up.

“Tinsley and Lisa, join us.”

A command is a command no matter how nicely put. The two placed their small plates on the coffee table, falling in behind Sorrel and Isabel.

“Ladies, we won’t be long,” Sorrel called over her shoulder.

“Take your time,” Betty said, a hint of malice in her voice.

Sister leaned over to Betty.“How are the girls?”

“I don’t know. We aren’t supposed to communicate. Part of the program. I pick them up Tuesday evening.”

“I pray for them. It’s about all I can do.”

“Me, too. I’ve had to relinquish my ideal of the omnipotent mother. I thought I could bind all wounds, create all happiness.” She sighed deeply. “I liked it when they were small. I really was the most important person in their world.”

“It’s a bit like getting fired, isn’t it?” Sister said.

“It is. Well,” Betty waved her hand. “I don’t want to talk about it. There’s nothing I can do at this point. But before I forget it, I want to go on record.” She whispered into Sister’s ear, “I am not in agreement with Bobby. I do not support Crawford. Absolutely not.”

“What are you girls whispering about?” Kitty English, an attractive middle-aged woman, crossed the room.

“You.” Sister laughed.

“Me? What have I done?”

“Best basketball coach the university has ever had. Better than the men.” Betty adored women’s basketball.

“And I want to know where you bought those shoes. Just enough heel to look spiffy but not enough to break your neck.” Sister admired the low heels.

“Oh, that.” Kitty plunked herself down on the sofa and they merrily chattered away about shoes, high heels versus low heels versus total rebellion against fashion—always said, never practiced. They talked about basketball and lacrosse, the endorsement deals of professional athletes, and how many of them wind up in court for violence. They decried the lack of any good women’s clothing store in town. All three of them hated driving to Washington, D.C., which wasn’t that good for women’s clothing anyway, and Richmond, which was a fashion joke. They agreed one had to go to New York City, but who could afford it? Then Kitty shared her secret: Charlotte, North Carolina. Five hours by car and two really wonderful women’s stores.

By the time Sorrel returned with her environmental trio, high spirits had been restored.

CHAPTER 23

The long corridor between both halves of the new wing of Central Virginia Hospital, lined with large square windows, let in the light. The old part of the hospital, built in the thirties out of brick, although renovated, was dark and depressing by contrast.

Having been in the operating room since seven that morning, Walter was glad to see natural light. He loved his work although at times the sheer intensity of operating drained him. He started med school thinking he would become a surgeon but discovered neurosurgery fascinated him. The hardwiring of the human body, an astonishing edifice, amazed him and not the least because nerves could regenerate. Without his being fully aware of it at the time, regeneration was a necessity in his own life.

Dr. Thesalonia Zacks, young and pretty, called Tandy by her friends, met Walter and they walked to the small cafeteria on that side of the hospital.

One black coffee and a turkey sandwich later, Walter was feeling better.

“Don’t know why, but all the research indicates people addicted to drugs, alcohol, even cigarettes”—Tandy emphasized “even”—“don’t feel pleasure to the level of most of us. The substance enhances pleasure for them, whether it’s nicotine or whiskey or even sugar. The old saw is it passes in families and it does but we still can’t explain why, say, child A of an addicted parent does not become an addict whereas child B does. The truth is we are on first base with research and that’s because for decades, for centuries, medicine viewed alcoholism or drug addiction as a personal failing.”

“No one puts a gun to anyone’s head and says, ‘You will smoke a cigarette today.’ There is an element of choice.”

“Yes, but there again—to what level—we don’t know. Walter, I have had patients tell me they had their first drink at age twelve and knew they had to have more. Often they didn’t even like the taste.”

“How did you become interested in this?”

“My mother. Alcoholic.”

“My father.”

Their eyes met, a sense of understanding between them.“Is he still alive?”

“No. He killed himself when I was fifteen. He’d lost everything in a bad business deal. He drank more and more until he disappeared down that bottle. Death may have been the easy part for Dad.”

“I’m sorry.”

“What about your mother?” he asked.

“She’s still alive. My father left her. My two brothers refuse to have anything to do with her. She’s a binge drinker. She can stay dry for six months, eight months, and then she’ll buy six bottles of vodka, lock herself in the house, and drink until she’s wiped them out.” She held up her cup for more coffee. “Of course, this stuff is addictive, too. I read somewhere that Voltaire drank sixty cups of coffee a day.”

“If it would make me as intelligent as he was, I might try it.” Walter accepted a refill, too. “The Franklin girls are being released today. Right?”

“Right.”

“How do you think they’ll do?”

“They have as good a chance as any. The parents are supportive. The mother more so than the father. He’s not hostile but he still doesn’t get it. Betty said she’d spoken to you.”

“Yes, at Fontaine Buruss’s party. She asked me to check in. I’m glad I did. Your program is impressive.”

“It is and it isn’t.” She leaned back in her seat to stretch out her long legs. “I don’t like treating drugs with drugs. In some cases it’s the only treatment we have. Especially heroin users. My personal feeling is we substitute one dependency for another but if we don’t use what little we have available to us they often backslide. You know the story.” She appraised Walter. He was more handsome than she remembered from passing him in the halls. “Fortunately, that’s not the problem for Cody and Jennifer. Cody has a longer history of abuse, obviously. She’s burned more bridges behind her and has more messes to clean up. Jennifer’s rebelling and the drugs are mixed in with that so-o attractive stage of life. How does anyone survive adolescence? I didn’t smile from age eight to twenty because of my braces.”

“Good orthodontist.”

She laughed.“Thank you. Do you know Cody and Jennifer well?”

“No. I know Betty and Bobby somewhat. I grew up near here. Kids don’t pay much attention to older people. I’ve started foxhunting and that’s how I’ve come into contact with the Franklins again.”

“The girls are very beautiful.”

“Pretty is as pretty does.”

“Men don’t usually say that.”

“Then you’re talking to the wrong men.”

“Not now.”

He laughed.“Keep talking.”

“Really. My experience with men is that they are completely undone by looks. That’s why Cody has gotten away with her addiction as long as she has. There’s always a man to rescue her. Only makes it worse, of course.”

“I’d rather look at a pretty woman than not, but maybe I’ve seen enough in my life to know that if there isn’t more, it’s never going to work. You know?” He leaned forward. “One of the most fascinating and beautiful women I know is seventy years old. She walks into a room and you can’t look at anyone else. She’s electrifying and on a horse she truly is the goddess of the hunt.”

“Jane Arnold.” Tandy smiled. “Yes, Cody and Jennifer have mentioned her. She scares them half to death. I’d like to see her.”

“Opening hunt is the first Saturday in November. Ten o’clock at Sister Jane’s place, Roughneck Farm. If you’d like to come, I’ll call Sister Jane.”

“I can’t ride.”

“Don’t have to. Come and enjoy the spectacle and then eat all that good food.”

“Thank you. I don’t have my Filofax with me but if I’m free I’ll call you. I’d like to see a hunt.”

“Before I forget. Do you know where the girls get their drugs?”

“If I did, I’d tell the sheriff. Even in rehab people protect their sources. Talk about misplaced loyalty but … There’s something more going on. Cody’s not protecting a dealer boyfriend. I don’t know what it is. I just know there’s something more.”

CHAPTER 24

“You people make me sick.” Alice Ramy shook her finger in Sister Jane’s face. “You think you can do whatever you please. A bunch of rich idiots!”

“Alice, show me the hound.”

Without a reply the disgruntled Alice, as wide as she was tall, waddled out to her chicken coop. The plump bodies of chickens lay about inside and outside the coop.

Rooster, Peter’s harrier, rested amid the carnage.

“I locked the gate. I’m not touching him. You take that damn hound out of here and you pay me for my chickens!”

Sister opened the gate.“Hey, Rooster.”

The harrier pricked his ears.“I’ve been framed!”

Sister quietly approached and petted him.“It’s Peter Wheeler’s hound. He’s bred to run rabbits, small game.”

Alice grumbled.“I’ll call the animal control officer.”

“Don’t do that. I’ll take him to Peter.”

“Thank you. I didn’t kill these chickens but I’d like to eat one. I’m afraid of that harpy, though.”

“He ought to be shot!”

“Alice, if this hound had killed these chickens, he’d have eaten at least one. Have you counted your dead?”

Alice quickly counted the two roosters and seven hens.

A cluck from under the henhouse gave hope to all.

Sister knelt down.“The rest are here.”

Alice couldn’t kneel down. “How many?”

“One, two, three, uh, some are hiding behind the others but I’d say you have eight. No roosters, though.” Sister stood up, brushing off her knees and her hands. “Let me take this big Rooster home.”

“Good. He can kill Peter’s chickens!”

Sister accepted Alice Ramy’s choleric nature. She was a woman only happy when airing a complaint, some terrible thing that had happened to her. Her narcissism was such that she even shied away from the disasters of others, their shortcomings. She concentrated solely on her own dramas. Sister patted the harrier on the head, then walked around the inside of the pen. “Here you go, Alice.” She pointed to a shallow tunnel dug under the wire.

Alice thumped over.“That’s how he did it.”

“Look at the size of this hound. Look at the size of the tunnel. And look at these tracks.” Sister pointed to clear fox prints.

“Dog. I told you.”

Sister knelt down again.“Hey, sweetie, give me your paw.”

“Give it to you. Wouldn’t give it to that bitch. I was on the trail of that fox. Aunt Netty. I’d know Aunt Netty anywhere. By the time I got here, Aunt Netty had had her jubilation.”

Sister pushed the paw into the dirt right next to the fox print.“See the difference?”

“Yes.” Alice shut her mouth like a carp.

“This hound couldn’t have shimmied under the wire. My guess is he was on the fox but far behind. It’s a good day for scent.”

“What am I going to do with all these dead chickens?” Alice chose not to apologize, since she could never be wrong. She simply accepted that the fox had killed the chickens but that didn’t mean she was wrong.

“Give you fifty cents apiece.”

“Two dollars apiece.”

“Fine.” Sister reached in her jeans pocket, counted out eighteen dollars, handed them to Alice. Then she picked up the chickens, tossing them in the back of the truck. Alice threw in the two dead roosters.

“I’ll shoot that fox if I see him.”

“Put a thin strip of concrete on the outside of your chicken coop or even a hot-wire. Might work. But don’t shoot a fox, Alice. It’s unsporting. If the fox comes back, I’ll replace your chickens. Just don’t kill him.”

“Maybe.”

“When the scared chickens come out, I’m willing to bet you another ten dollars that you’re missing a chicken. Fox carted it off.”

“What I want to know is why was this hound sitting in the middle of the chicken yard?”

“I just got here!”

“My hunch is, like I said, scent was good so he could have been a half a mile or even a mile behind the fox. Be easy to keep on the line today. By the time Rooster got here the fox was gone and as luck would have it, you walked out just then.”

“You can’t trust people. You’d say anything to cover a precious hound of yours or Peter Wheeler’s. All you foxhunters stick together.”

Sister whistled softly to Rooster, who followed her.“Can’t trust some people, Alice. Let me know if the fox comes back.”

“I could pee on her leg,” the harrier offered, but Sister trotted him out of there, putting him next to her in the truck. She wanted to get to Hangman’s Ridge before anyone saw the dead chickens in the back of the truck. No point in wasting good chickens. She’d strategically place them throughout that fixture after filling them full of ivermectin, a wormer.

By the time she reached Peter’s, she and Rooster were good friends. She honked the horn. Peter opened the back door. “Hey, Pete. Rooster was in the middle of Alice Ramy’s chicken pen. It’s confusing calling him Rooster in the middle of roosters.”

He slowly walked out, saw the dead chickens.“Guess these chickens won’t be crossing the road. Alice Ramy’s a good five miles from here. Rooster, what are you doing?”

“Fox killed her chickens. She blamed your hound, who doesn’t have a drop of blood on him. God, she’s a miserable bitch.”

“Yeah,” the dog agreed.

“Guess I’d better keep an eye on you, buddy.” Peter clapped his hands and Rooster jumped out of the truck when Sister opened the door. “Come on in for a drink.”

“Thanks. I’ll take a rain check. I want to put out these chickens.”

“Good idea.” He turned for the house. “I forgot to ask you the other day… . When I go, will you take care of Rooster and my chickens?”

“Yes. I wish you’d stop talking about dying.”

“Well, I feel just fine but I need to put my house in order. I’ve lived a long time. I’m damned grateful but it may be worth dying to get away from Crawford Howard.” He then related how Crawford had dropped by, giving him the hard sell. Sister didn’t get the chickens out until sundown.

CHAPTER 25

Aunt Netty ducked into Target’s den, as hers was a half mile farther on. She’d carried her booty long enough.

“A feast!” Charlene sank her fangs into a limp wing.

“You should have seen Alice Ramy, the sow,” Aunt Netty crowed in triumph.“If I were bigger I’d break her neck, too.”

Reynard, Charlie, Grace, and Patsy ate in respectful silence as the adults discussed corn, oats, and mice.

“The gleanings are especially good down by Whiskey Ridge,” Target said.

“It’s good everywhere. A perfect year. Oats, rye, corn, barley, fat mice, fatter rabbits.” Aunt Netty lived to eat.“Even my useless husband mentioned it the other day.”

“I haven’t seen Uncle Yancy since July,” Charlene noted.

“I hardly see him myself, which I consider a benefit,” his wife remarked.“He’s spent most of the summer down at Wheeler Mill studying the wheels and the raceway. He likes to talk to the foxes down there, reds, you know. Yancy feels that he can prove all mammals descend from a great prehistoric fox. He says birds come from flying reptiles, so we have nothing in common with them, but all mammals come from the original fox.”

“Even humans?” Reynard wondered.

“Yes. They’re more closely related to us than we’d like, but better to be close to a human than an armadillo, I suppose.”

Grace, the image of her mother, put her paw on a piece of flesh because Charlie was inching toward her.“Does that mean we’ll build machines?”

“I don’t follow, dear.” Aunt Netty, full, stretched out on her side.

“If we’re related to humans will we build machines like they do?” Grace slapped her brother, who put his nose too close to her portion of chicken.

“Gracious, no. Machines dull your senses. We’d never be so foolish.”Netty laughed.“That’s what’s wrong with them. They get further and further away from nature. Yancy says there was a time when they had better eyes and ears than they do now. He said once humans could even smell game. If they keep on the way they’re going, they’ll even lose their sense of direction. Yancy says millions of them live in cubicles stacked on top of one another. Seems impossible but he says he’s seen it on television.”

“Where does he watch television?”The patriarch of this family joined the conversation.

“Doug Kinser. Yancy sits on the window ledge and watches the eleven o’clock news.”

“Why bother? It’s only about them.” Charlene shrugged.

“Yancy says you never know when they’re going to do something stupid like build a dam. Affect all of us. Even St. Just.”

“I’ll snap his neck yet.” Target’s eyes lit up.“He’s worthless.”

“Worthless but smart. He won’t be satisfied until he sees you dead.” Aunt Netty lifted her head.“Children, take the chicken outside. Help your mother clean up this den.”

Patsy, the quiet one, whispered,“Dad, how can a blackbird kill a fox?”

“Can’t.” Target swished his tail around.

“He can lead the hounds to you, Target. Pride goeth before a fall,” Netty warned.

“I’ll get him before he gets me.”

As the young foxes gathered up the debris of their meal, Aunt Netty scolded:“What are you all doing here, anyway? You should be in your own dens.” Her speech was clipped.“Charlene, you spoil these children. Why, the grays are already in their new homes, even that little black thing. She has a pretty face. She’ll need it with that black coat.”

“Who cares what the grays do?” Reynard, parroting his father, said.

“I do. They aren’t stupid, you know.” Netty, who’d seen a lot in her day, couldn’t help but sound superior.“They’ve taken the good new dens near the cornfields. Makes it that much harder for you. You should have found a place last week.”

“I’ll chase one out and take his den,” Reynard bragged.

“I wouldn’t be so sure of that.” Aunt Netty had no time for youthful folly.“Opening hunt is not but ten days away. You’d better get yourself situated.”

“We can dust those guys.” Charlie, the good-natured son, laughed.

“And so you can but what if you duck in a den and find Comet there? He’s a young gray but he’s tough, very tough, just like his father. You’ll have a fight on your paws and hounds at your heels. Prepare now.”Having imparted enough wisdom for one day, Netty closed her eyes, curling her tail around her nose.

Charlie picked up a drumstick; Reynard, some feathers. Grace batted the neck around and Patsy picked up the backbone. They walked outside, scattering the bones. The sun filtered through the trees.

“Why do they start formal hunting in early November?” Grace asked.

“Because we’re looking for dens. They’ll get better runs. That’s what Mom says,” Charlie answered.

“It’s because there’s frost on the ground. Usually. The first frost comes around the middle of October but some years not until later. By November the frost is here until April. Scent holds,” Patsy said.

“Maybe it’s both things.” Grace walked toward the creek. She liked to watch the fish. She’d seen bear catch them and she thought if a dumb bear could do it, she could do it.

Reynard dashed by her. Charlie ran after him. Patsy bumped into Grace just to hear her squeal. A perfect October day was meant for play. They could worry about hunting later.

CHAPTER 26

The last label peeled off the sheet of paper was smacked onto the envelopes. Formal invitations to opening hunt had already been mailed the first of October. This mailing was the fixture cards.

Fixture cards listed the time and place of each hunt. Often at the top of a fixture card was printed the phrase“Hounds will meet.”

Scheduling fixtures drove many a master to drink. Even with the fixtures scheduled, last-minute changes wreaked havoc. A hard rain might prompt a farmer to request no one ride over his fields and with good reason. A crop of winter wheat could get cut up or the slipping and sliding of trailers could turn a pasture into brown waves, which, when frozen, were hell to negotiate.

The ladies of a hunting club usually did the mailings. Gentlemen built fences. Both genders cleared trails. However, as those lines blurred, the new order was whoever could do the job, did it.

The ladies, gathered in Sister’s living room, laughed, gossiped, teased one another.

Golly sorted the mail. Raleigh slept by the fireplace.

A knock on the front door brought Sister to her feet.

Crawford asked to come in. The ladies said hello.

“Perfect timing.” He smiled. “I’ll take the fixture cards and run them through my postage meter.”

“Why thank you, Crawford,” Sister said.

“Martha wasn’t here, was she?”

“No,” Betty Franklin, sitting cross-legged on the floor, remarked. “She got tied up at work. Called about an hour ago.”

“Oh.” He wanted to say something but whatever it was it stuck in his throat.

“A libation?” Sister reached for his jacket.

“No. I’ll do this right now and drop them at the main post office. Oh, I forgot to tell you, thirty coop flats with top boards will be dropped over at Rumble Bars tomorrow. Had the lumber yard knock them together.”

There were many ways to build coops but if the sides were built, then carried to the site, they could be leaned against one another, braced, a top board put on, and then painted. It saved time building the flats off-site.

“Crawford, that’s wonderful.” Sister was pleased. He allowed himself a smile. “When we know how the fox runs we can put up more. This is a good beginning. What a wonderful surprise. Are you sure you wouldn’t like a drink?”

“No. No. I really need to go.” He picked up the cards all in their envelopes in cartons according to zip codes. Out he went.

“H-m-m,” was all Betty Franklin said.

Before that subject could warm up, Sister deftly said,“Did I tell you girls the caterer called this morning and said I’d better switch from spoon bread to corn bread? I mean how can you have a hunt breakfast without spoon bread, ham biscuits, gravy—well, I’ll make us hungry. Anyway, he said there are now so many Yankees in Virginia that every time he makes spoon bread there’s a dreadful mess.”

“What does he mean, a dreadful mess?” Georgia Vann asked.

“Yankees pick it up with their fingers. They think it’s undercooked corn bread.” Sister emitted tinkling laughter.

“No!” Betty howled.

“I can’t believe that. How can you not know how to eat spoon bread? I mean, it’s called spoon bread.” Lottie Fisher shook her head, then laughed.

“That’s what he said.” Sister laughed more.

“The hell with the Yankees.” Lottie waved the rebel flag figuratively.

“You know, we give foxhunting clinics in the beginning of cubbing. Maybe we should run a hunt breakfast clinic or a southern cooking demonstration,” Betty merrily suggested.

“As long as you organize it,” Sister said.

“Spoken like a true master.” Betty giggled some more.

“Isn’t it glorious to be superior to Federals?” Georgia teased.

“Like Crawford.” Lottie had to get back to that. “I wonder what he’s about? I mean, I heard he’s trying to win back Martha. If I were her, I’d slap him right in the face.”

“She did that already,” Betty dryly said.

“Shotgun,” Georgia laconically said as she reached for a piece of pound cake with fresh vanilla icing dribbled over it.

“He’s not worth going to jail over.” Betty thought the pound cake looked pretty good, too. This was her third piece.

“Maybe he’s learned something,” Sister said. “More coffee? Drinks?”

“You sit. You threw this together after hound walk. You must be tired by now.” Georgia got up, walked over to the gleaming silver coffeepot, and poured into the cups handed her.

“If I had a nickel for every time I wanted to shoot Bobby Franklin, I’d be rich.” Betty laughed at herself. “Who knows what Crawford and Martha have to work out together. It’s hard for a middle-aged woman to make it alone. Let’s not forget that, girls.”

A quiet murmur rippled across the gathering.

“Sister, you know I can’t keep my mouth shut. Are you really going to make Crawford a joint-master? You must know the club’s abuzz with speculation.” Georgia blushed.

“I don’t know. Crawford and Fontaine have a lot to offer.”

“And a lot to sidestep.” Lottie hated Crawford. She thought he was a rich oaf who tried to buy his way into everything. He didn’t belong here.

As they batted pros and cons back and forth, as well as Martha Howard’s future, Sister listened. She thought to herself, if only Raymond Junior had lived. He’d be old enough now to assume the responsibilities of a joint-master. She’d always dreamed of that. She snapped out of her reverie. “Don’t question the will of God,” she said to herself, then said to the ladies, “I really do appreciate your concern for the hunt.”

“Not just the hunt, Sister Jane, we appreciate you. Can’t you go along for one more year as sole master? Surely something will turn up or resolve itself,” Lottie inquired earnestly, her soft brown hair framing her square face.

“I’ve said that for the last five years.”

“You’re stronger than we are. Wait five more.” Betty echoed what the others were thinking.

“I don’t know. There’s a black young vixen on the farm. You know everything happens in the black fox years.”

The ladies knew the black fox legend.“That doesn’t mean it’s going to happen to you,” each said in her own way.

“Well—I hope not.” She was tempted to tell them about the lone figure on Hangman’s Ridge but decided that would be between her and Doug Kinser. “But let’s change the subject to something more cheerful or challenging. Can you imagine Crawford Howard without his clothes on?”

CHAPTER 27

The old office in the center of town exuded a sepulchral air. The sturdy white Doric columns, the large iron doors boasted of public wealth, solidness, and civic duty. Built in 1926 on a flood tide of government spending and public speculation, the post office, like the country that spawned it, witnessed the subsequent depression, another world war and three smaller ones, more economic booms and busts.

When the post office was being built, slabs of granite lying along Main Street, men came to the post office wearing coats and hats. If it was summer, they wore jaunty straw boaters. In the winter, fedoras and borsalinos predominated. Ladies festooned in hat, gloves, purse, and shoes dyed to match sashayed onto the black marble floors. The very colors the ladies wore announced their feelings about the day and about themselves. Farmers, some still driving teams, would tie up at the gray iron balustrade designed for that purpose. Wearing overalls and straw hats in the warm weather, they’d stride into the halls cheerfully greeting everyone, stopping to talk about that riveting subject: the weather.

As Crawford Howard pushed open the heavy doors with his back he harbored none of these memories. A post office was simply a post office to him, not a community statement. But it remained a federal building and therefore a citizen trust. An American can enter a post office at any time of night or day to deposit mail in the shining brass slots, to open their own large or small mailbox with their key.

People didn’t dress to go downtown anymore. They barely pulled themselves together, properly groomed, to attend church. The South and especially Virginia practiced a dress code much stricter than that of the rest of America but even here in the bosom of courtliness standards were falling. Many wore jeans and Tshirts. Businessmen still paid attention to their furnishings, as did those ladies who were hoping to catch a businessman’s eye. But even their standards of dress were lower than just thirty years before.

Crawford reached the slots and slid the mail in. One brass slot was marked with the town’s zip code, another was marked VIRGINIA, and a third was marked OUT OF TOWN but it may well have read OFF THE WALL. Virginians, without making noise about it, quietly, calmly, considerately believed any activity of importance took place within the state’s borders. From the Potomac to the Dan River, from the Atlantic to the early steep folds of the Alleghenies shared with its rebellious sister, West Virginia, this was the center of the universe.

Even Crawford, as he methodically tossed the mail in the slots, listening for the satisfying soft thunk on the other side as it hit a mail basket, even he who knew the world had adopted this point of view. What was Nairobi, London, New York compared to Charlottesville, Fredericksburg, or the dowager herself, great fusty Richmond? Crawford, a direct and active man, hardly realized the seductiveness of the area. When he repaired here with Martha, flush with the first fortune he’d made, he came for the beauty of the place and because it was an hour by air to New York City, only fifteen minutes more by air to Atlanta. Washington, D.C., was a half hour by air or an hour and a half by car if no state troopers prowled the corridors to that corrupted seat of power. He certainly did not move to central Virginia for the people. He made fun of them, decrying them as parochial, falsely genteel, and silently racist.

When Virginia elected Douglas Wilder, the first black governor in the history of the United States, he questioned his stand on Virginia’s racism. The more he thought about it, the more he decided Virginians were no more racist than New Yorkers.

As the years rolled along he would travel out of state and find himself irritated by the lack of grace in random encounters. He began to fume about the manner in which people drove in Boston and once in Los Angeles he upbraided a man at a business meeting for not wearing a suit and tie. He told the young man that he was being disrespectful to the other men at the meeting. One should always consider the effects of one’s dress and demeanor on others.

This is not to say that Crawford Howard, born and bred in the hurly-burly of Indianapolis, that gritty competitor to massive Chicago, had become a Virginian. This is only to say that the state of Virginia, her siren song sweet and strong since 1607, had filtered into Crawford’s ears.

He began to tip his hat to ladies even if only a baseball cap. He smiled at older women and told them they were alluring. Before telling a male competitor how wrong the competitor was, Crawford might even say something like“Have you considered this … ?”

The natives first ignored him. In their eyes he was a rich barbarian. Over time, his good qualities—vision, responsibility, and determination—won praise from some. He cared far too much about money and talked about it and business far too much but he had come a long way.

Fontaine Buruss, of course, would never give him credit for smoothing over his rough edges. There were those who agreed with Fontaine but they were often the same people who, if living in England, would not speak to you if you couldn’t trace your lineage back to William the Conqueror. William and his men had a lot to answer for.

As Crawford picked up the now empty carton, he walked under the cream-colored swinging bowls of light, lamps hanging by heavy chain; he passed the long tables whose red marble tops contrasted richly with the black marble floor. He paused for a moment to consider whether the drunk sleeping on a marble bench in the corner was still alive. He was and Crawford pushed open the door, walking down the cascade of broad steps to his Mercedes.

He cruised by Martha’s apartment. He told himself he was curious. Then he motored by Fontaine’s office. The light was on. A bead of sweat appeared at his left temple even though the temperature was now fifty-four degrees. He parked in the lot across from Fontaine’s office. The sweat rolled down to his chin. He wiped it off, walked into the lobby, and knocked on the door.

“Who is it?” Martha’s voice called out.

“Your beau.” He liked the sound of that.

He heard a muffled exchange.“Come in,” Martha said.

Fontaine and Martha, bending over a drafting table, stood up to greet him.

“Hello,” Fontaine coolly said.

“Hello,” Crawford replied to equal degree.

“Did I get the date wrong? Were we supposed to have dinner tonight?” Martha hastily reached for her daybook.

“No, no, I was dropping off fixture cards at the post office and I don’t know … drove by and saw the light on.” He smiled.

“We’re trying to come up with something English but not too rigid for the Haslips’ new garden. See.” She pointed to designs.

A moment of silence followed.“We might as well start fresh in the morning,” Fontaine said warmly to Martha.

“Fine.”

“A nightcap?” Crawford asked hopefully.

“Sure,” she replied, a quiet look of happiness on her face.

This infuriated Fontaine, who rolled a second set of plans, popping them into a heavy cardboard tube. Half sounding playful and half in warning he said,“Watch out for him, Martha.”

Crawford, face suddenly bright red, replied through clenched teeth,“This is no affair of yours.”

“You were a damn fool to let her go in the first place. If I weren’t married, I would have asked her out myself.”

“Since when has that stopped you!”

Fontaine gave his reply, a straight right to the jaw. Crawford, not being a boxing man, crumpled.

Martha knelt down as he shook his head, then scrambled up. He did not offer to return the blow. Crawford recognized his physical limitations. He was four inches shorter than Fontaine and about ten years older. No amount of elective surgery could turn back the clock.

“Come on, Crawford.” She tried to move him toward the door.

He held his jaw with his hand. Hurt like hell but he managed to hiss,“I’ll dance on your grave!”

CHAPTER 28

Bridles, broken down, stripped, and dipped, hung overhead on tack hooks, which resembled grappling hooks. Underneath, a plastic bucket caught the dripping oil.

Sister and Doug sat on low three-legged stools, buckets of clear rinse water and buckets of washing water between their feet. With a toothbrush in hand they scrubbed each steel bit until it shone. They ran their fingers over the bits, searching for pitting. Korean steel bits pitted quickly. They weren’t worth the money paid for them. German bits were good but nothing compared to English steel. The English from the nineteenth century onward excelled in creating a smooth, perfectly balanced bit with superior steel, no cheap alloys. The expense, initially steep, panned out over time, for the bitlasted generations.

This held true for English vegetable-dyed leather, too. In order to speed the process most tanners chrome-dyed their leather. Vegetable dyes couldn’t get the consistency of color—Havana brown, tan, or black—that chrome could but the vegetable dye imparted a soft sheen to the leather as well as being better for the leather itself.

Sister, not a wealthy woman but a comfortable one, refused to cut corners on tack or anything relating to the care of her horses. Since she spent little on herself it all worked out.

She had splurged by putting a gas stove in the tack room. Fake logs inside it glowed red and it looked just like an old wood-burning stove. Threw out lots of heat, so much so that usually she had to crack a window.

The day, perfect for cleaning tack, was raw. The temperature, in the low fifties, sounded good but the light rain sent a chill right through you. She was glad she had bought the gas stove.

With only six days until opening hunt, she and Doug worked to make sure each piece of tack was spotless, boots were shined to perfection, pants, coats, hats, everything was dry-cleaned or brushed.

The hounds, too, were subjected to beauty treatments. The central room in the kennel was heated, with a large drain in the middle of the floor. Hounds were taken out of their runs to be scrubbed and have their nails clipped and ears cleaned, and were then allowed to dry off on the benches in the central room before being taken to their runs again.

The runs, scrubbed down each morning with an expensive power washer, were kept scrupulously clean.

As Shaker worked in the kennels, Sister and Doug merrily chattered away.

“Someone’s coming,” Raleigh announced as he heard a car a quarter of a mile away.“I’ll go to the door.”

“Don’t bother. It will be some hunt club member half-hysterical because he or she has lost their boots and they want to know if they can wear field boots. It’s always something.” Golliwog rolled over, turning her head to the side, very coy.

Raleigh jumped to his feet as the silver Jaguar rolled down to the stable. Fontaine dashed toward the tack room. He wasn’t wearing a raincoat.

Once inside the tack room, he shook himself slightly.

“Please,” Golly complained as a raindrop landed on her.

Raleigh circled three times and lay down on the sheepskin thrown in the corner.

“Sit down.” Sister pointed to a tattered wing chair.

“Thank you. Getting everything ready. I knew you’d be here. I didn’t even bother going to the house. How are you, Doug?”

“Fine. Can I get you coffee or anything?” Doug inquired.

A small refrigerator and kitchenette were in the corner.

“No. No.” Fontaine couldn’t ask Doug to leave. After all, both he and Sister were working and he did barge in without calling first. “I’m here to tell you that I had an unfortunate experience with Crawford last night.” He paused; then his tone relaxed. “Unfortunate. Hell, the man really wanted his ass kicked bad. He walked into the office at about nine-thirty. Martha and I were working late. He was sniffing around Martha, as you know that’s sort of on again, and anyway he accused me of impropriety, not just with Martha but with every female since Cleopatra. I passed my hand over his jaw.” Fontaine broke into a grin, an appealing crooked grin.

“In other words, you wouldn’t serve with Crawford if Christ Almighty told you to.” Sister had to laugh.

“Well—yes.”

Doug laughed, too, although he suspected Fontaine had been chasing Cody despite her protests. She’d finished her intensive rehab and was home but she hadn’t called him yet. He wondered if she was okay. Then he wondered if he was okay.

“I appreciate you coming out here on a rainy day to tell me.”

“I’m sorry I can’t accommodate you, Sister. And I found out he’s been trying to get Peter Wheeler’s land. He offered him life estate.”

“That’s no surprise.” Sister knew Crawford would try that.

“He intends to develop it.”

“That’s what he says about you.” Sister shouldn’t have blurted that out but there it was.

“Never. That’s a hunt fixture. If the damned development keeps up we’ll be in the middle of West Virginia riding mountain goats.”

“You called Gordon Smith.” She figured she might as well show her hand.

“I did.” He was surprised that she knew. “I called him to ask if he could help me put together a syndicate to preserve the Wheeler place. He’s only interested in commercial real estate, not residential, and the Wheeler place had no commercial application. I was direct about that. He was helpful. I’d only met him a few times at political fund-raisers but he really was helpful. The impediment, as you know, is this conservation easement clause.”

“I got an earful of that the other night. I assume some members of a syndicate want it and others don’t.”

“Correct.” He watched the oil drip into the bucket. “I’d better go home and do the same. Saturday will be here before I know it.” He asked Doug if he had heard from Cody.

“No.” Doug wanted to say, “Have you?” but kept his mouth shut.

“Betty called to say she’s pleased. She thinks both girls profited from the experience, which I gather was tearful, expensive, and rigorous,” Sister said.

“So they say.” Fontaine sounded noncommittal. He stood up. “I’d better get rolling.”

“This will all work out somehow but I’d avoid Crawford in the hunt field if I were you.”

“No problem. He’ll pop off Czapaka in the first hour. Even if they made a saddle with a Velcro seat and he wore Velcro pants he’d part company with that horse. Beautiful horse. Oh well, overmounted again.”

“Men tend to do that.” Sister let fly a small barb. “In all respects.”

Fontaine laughed.“Oh, but the fun of it.” He walked out into the rain and sprinted to the Jaguar.

“Full of himself,” Raleigh observed.

“God’s gift, he thinks. Going to seed, I think,” Golly commented.

“How long before we hear from Crawford?” Sister smiled as she put a bit into the clear rinse water.

“Um-m, by supper.”

“Wanna bet?”

“How much?” Doug, graceful hands, reached over and flipped a girth off a saddle rack.

“A dollar.”

“I’ll take that bet. What do you think?”

“He’ll call or be here within two hours.”

Doug glanced at the wall clock, a cat with a tail for a pendulum, its eyes rolling in time with the tail.“By three. Okay. You can give me that dollar now.”

“Ha.” She scrubbed an eggbutt-jointed snaffle. “I can feel waves of distrust and disgust coming off your body around Fontaine. Is this a guy thing because the ladies preen when they see him coming?”

“I don’t know if it’s a guy thing. I flat out can’t abide him. He’s pompous, racist in a sly way, and he doesn’t give a shit about anybody or anything other than his own pleasures.”

“Well, that’s about as much as I’ve ever heard you say about anybody—ever. What else?”

“He treats me like a servant. I may work for you, Sister, but I’m not his slave. Fontaine wants to hear not ‘Master’ but ‘Massa.’ No shit.”

“I suppose there is that in him. It’s all smoothed over, of course.” She reached into the bucket, scrubbing under the water. “It’s Cody. I can’t prove anything but it’s the way he looks at her.”

“Damn him!”

“I can understand Crawford’s anger, too, but I know Martha didn’t have anything to do with Fontaine on that level. He was enjoying playing the savior too much to spoil it. Besides, he has too many other women to service. Why in the world would Cody fool around with him … if she has?”

“I don’t know if she has.” Doug laid the girth across his knees, scrubbing the underside. “At first I thought maybe he leaned on her, using her parents. He does a lot of business at Franklin Press. Maybe he threatened to take business elsewhere. She feels guilty about what she’s put her parents through over the years. I thought, okay, maybe that’s it.”

“You don’t now?”

“No.”

“It can’t be a sexual attraction.” Sister was incredulous. “She’s not that dumb even if he is handsome.”

“No. He has a hold on her.”

“You think she has slept with him then?”

A sickly look passed over Doug’s handsome features. “Yeah.”

“Oh, Doug, I hope not but if she has, maybe it’s over.”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you think she loves you?”

“I don’t know.” His voice dropped.

“Steady on. Whatever is supposed to happen will happen and even if she brings you pain this will lead to the right woman. Maybe not to Cody but to the right woman.” His stricken face brought a swell of sympathy. “Doug, I didn’t know you cared that much. I hope she is the one, truly. If she’s the one you want then I hope it works out.”

“Thanks, boss.” He smiled weakly. “You like her, don’t you?”

“I love her. I’ve known her since the day she was born but I’m afraid for her. She’s been a handful since birth. Betty said she kicked like a mule in the womb. I don’t know what to tell you, Doug. It seems there’s something inside Cody that drives her on like Juno’s fly biting Europa.” She didn’t need to explain mythology to Doug. He loved the Greek myths.

“Maybe people are born like that.”

“I don’t know but I do know you can’t try to satisfy her or anybody. You take care of yourself. You can’t fix Cody.”

“I hope that’s what rehab was about.”

“I do, too.”

“Car!” Raleigh informed them.

“Crawford.” Golly rolled onto her other side.

When Crawford strode through the door Sister couldn’t help but laugh as Doug shook his head.

“How’d you know it would be Crawford?” Raleigh asked in amazement.

“Cats know everything.”

CHAPTER 29

Crawford, narrow-eyed, waited for an invitation from the silver-haired master to sit down. Once he heard that he unzipped his raincoat, the latest, most expensive Gore-Tex model, hanging it on a coatrack by the door.

“Crawford, hand me that sponge as long as you’re standing up?” Sister asked.

He handed her a long, natural sponge before easing himself into the chair Fontaine had just vacated.“Knees. Football.”

Sister pointed to her entire body.“Bones. Life.”

Doug laughed.

“Just wait.” Sister waggled her forefinger at him.

“I hurt now.”

“Where?”

“Where I broke my shoulder blade.”

“Okay. That counts. You can join the aches-and-pains club.” She dipped the fresh sponge into the clear rinse water. “Crawford, I’m all ears.”

“I’m sure you are. I passed Fontaine on Soldier Road. That mouth of his is an inexhaustible motor. He is a person entirely lacking in self-control.” Crawford realized he was going on in the wrong vein. He crossed his arms over his chest. “What did he say?”

“He had words with you, etc. …” Crawford glanced from Sister to Doug and before he could say anything she added, “He’s not going to repeat what you say.” She paused and with a malicious little grin said, “But I might.”

At that moment, too self-important, brimming with wounded pride, Crawford sputtered,“I don’t care who you tell. He’s damned lucky I didn’t call the sheriff.”

The blow to his jaw, turning an interesting shade of reddish blue, bore testimony to Fontaine’s aim.

“Did you ice it down?” Doug politely asked.

“Yes. He caught me off guard. If he’d given me fair warning I could have defended myself,” said the man who couldn’t. Crawford, reared in suburban luxury, had never been in a fistfight in his life.

“Fontaine was born with an unfortunate infirmity of temper.” A wry smile played over Sister’s lips as she dipped the clean sponge in a white jar labeled SADDLE BUTTER. A friend sent Sister the tack conditioner from out west and she found it the best stuff she’d ever used.

“What do you mean?”

Crawford evidenced little appreciation for the subtleties of the English language.

“Hothead. Fontaine’s always been a hothead.”

“Oh.”

Sister held out the brow band at arm’s length. “Doug, we dipped this at the beginning of the summer. It still looks good. I’ll just wipe it down with the butter.”

He reached over, rubbing the leather between thumb and forefinger.“Yes. Fine.”

Sister pointed to the tack dripping oil into the bucket.“I need a couple of warmish days before opening hunt or I’m going to soak up all that oil on my breeches. I should have done this at the beginning of September but I never found the time. Time speeds by me like light.” She put the plain, flat hunting bridle back together as she talked.

The deep rich brown of the English leather bore no adornment, no lines cut into the sides, no raised portions, just excellent flat leather. An old friend had made her this bridle before he died. It was his last gift to her—that and a lifetime of friendship. As her hands flew over the supple yet strong leather, she felt the edges which he had minutely beveled.

“Sister, I’ll cut to the chase.” Crawford liked to use expressions he heard bandied about in his business. These were generally sports allusions or sexual allusions designed to make the speaker appear manly and in control. Usually whoever mouthed such stuff was neither, although Crawford was,in a business sense anyway. “I believe Fontaine should be removed from Jefferson Hunt.”

“He has committed no crime which reflects badly upon the hunt.”

“Not true. He simply hasn’t been caught. He is an adulterer and he’s violent.”

“Oh, Crawford.” Sister wrapped the thin chin strap around the bridle in a figure eight. “There’d be no one left were those the criteria. You yourself would fail the test.”

“I never went to bed with Tiffany. Not until I separated from Martha. You may not believe me but it’s the truth.”

The drip, drip of the oil punctuated the silence as Sister thought of a neutral response.“That showed admirable restraint. However, I can’t toss people out of the hunt for being human. Sexual escapades are a common and often amusing human frailty. Besides, Crawford, we have to have something to talk about, otherwise conversation descends to the weather or worse, politics.”

“You are a tolerant woman.”

Before he could continue she shot back,“Masters need to be.”

“Why? Your word is law.”

“My word is law until each year when the board of governors of the club elects their master.”

“As long as you live, you’ll be elected master. You know that.”

“Crawford, if I could afford a private pack I would have one. Believe me. A subscription pack is an invitation for endless political maneuvering and there’s enough maneuvering being a master as it is. Dealing with landowners, for example. Making certain one complies with all Masters of Foxhounds rulings and bylaws. And remember, the MFHA sits in Leesburg. We, in Virginia and Maryland, are right under their noses. You do it right or you get the boot.”

“But you can still remove a member.”

“No, I can’t. Only the master of a private pack can remove someone from the roster. I can remove a member from the field.”

“You could petition the board.” He glowered, which made him look like a middle-aged child angry about having to go to bed.

“No. Fontaine has endangered no one in the field. He has shown respect to master and staff. Whatever his quarrel with you, it’s between the two of you.”

“But it’s over the joint-mastership!” Crawford exploded.

“No.” Her voice was firm. “The joint-mastership allows you two to compete openly. You’re like oil and water. And kindly remember, I do not have to appoint a joint-master.”

“You can’t appoint one. You have to ask the board’s approval.” With that statement Crawford betrayed the fact that he would use the bylaws of the club not only to dislodge Fontaine but to try and force himself on Sister if he gained enough board support. If he could remove Sister he would, but he knew that was impossible. Crawford hadn’t a clue as to what Sister did as master other than she was responsible for hiring and firing staff and maintaining territory. He wanted a position of power and respect in this community. It took him a while but he learned that money wasn’t enough in Virginia. It helped but it wasn’t enough. He wanted to lord it over people. What better position than joint-master? And when Sister went to her reward he had enough money to bribe everyone. He’d be sole master.

Crawford had half learned his lesson about money. The other half would come back to haunt him, namely that even poor people can’t always be bribed. Many Virginians still believed in honor, quaint as that concept might be in the twenty-first century.

“You are exactly right. But I don’t have to recommend anyone.”

“The board can suggest you take a joint-master.”

“They can but they won’t,” she replied with the confidence of a person who knows how things get done.

“You’ve got to end this impasse. What if you died during opening hunt?”

“I’d die happy.”

“But the club would be thrown into chaos. You need an understudy—an understudy with a fat checkbook. I can supply this club with a great many things, including building a separate kennel for the half-grown hounds. I know you don’t like to turn them out with the big boys and the puppy kennel gets overcrowded.”

Her patience wearing thin, Sister stood up, putting her hands in the small of her back.“Crawford. If you are that rich, if you love hunting as much as you say you do, if you love Jefferson Hunt as much as you say you do, you know what—you’d spend the money for the love of the sport. We’d name the goddamn kennel after you.”

As Sister rarely swore to someone not close to her, Doug’s eyes widened, his shoulders stiffened. He knew that Crawford didn’t know she was really, truly pissed off.

He snarled.“Only a fool spends money without getting something out of it.”

“Which proves my point. You don’t love foxhunting as much as you love being important. You want joint-M.F.H. behind your name. It’s a bargain for you, Crawford. To be a master, to be a huntsman, to be a whipper-in, you have to love it. You have to eat, sleep, and breathe hunting, knowing all the while that most people don’t understand what you’re doing or why you’re doing it. People outside of Virginia, I mean.”

“Maryland,” Doug laconically added.

“Well, yes. And parts of Pennsylvania.” Sister was loath to credit anyone north of the Mason-Dixon line.

“Red Rock, Nevada.” Doug, his green eyes alight, smiled.

“Doug, I know that. Anyway, Crawford, Americans live in cities now. The old ways are lost to them. They think we ride about shooting fox with guns. They think we’re all rich snobs. They haven’t a clue. So you have to love it because you aren’t going to get respect outside of Virginia.” She glanced at Doug. “And a few other important spots.”

“I know that. I don’t need a lecture on the reality of foxhunting.”

Doug stood up.“You need one on manners, Mr. Howard. It won’t do to worrit Sister.” He used the old form of “worry.”

Crawford cut him off.“If you want to mix with white people, then you ought to learn how to use the King’s English. Don’t say birfday. Birthday. Ask not ax. You people can’t learn to talk.”

“Crawford. That’s quite enough.” Sister, enraged, choked out the words.

Doug, who cared little what a wimp thought of him, growled like one of the hounds.“Mr. Howard, if you trouble Sister anymore, I’ll decorate the other side of your jaw and for the record, if you become joint-master I will resign as first whipper-in.”

“I wouldn’t have you anyway.” Crawford looked to Sister. “Damned half-breed doesn’t know his place. You dote on him. You dote on him as though he were your son. It’s understandable but he’s not your son.”

“Crawford”—her tone deepened, her speech slowed—“I will overlook your desire to be master in any way you can manage. Ambition is a curious thing. I cannot overlook your attitude and insult to Doug. And you’re absolutely right, he is like a son to me. Now I suggest you leave us. I also suggest you take the opportunity to review this conversation. Furthermore, however you feel about Fontaine, Doug, and myself, I expect you to behave like a gentleman at opening hunt. Good day, sir.”

“Get your ass outta here.” Raleigh, an imposing presence, stood next to Sister, his mouth slightly ajar.

Crawford snatched his expensive rain gear off the coatrack, slamming the door on his way out.

“Really.” Golly fluffed her fur, then stood up, stretched, turned in a circle, and lay down again.

As Crawford started his motor, Sister sat back down, then stood up again, tossing the bucket of wash water down the industrial sink, filling it again.

“Money and the demons it incubates,” was all she said as she and Doug returned to their task.

CHAPTER 30

Along with the steady rain, charcoal clouds obscured the mountains, pressing down into the dark green pastures. The tops of ancient oaks, walnuts, and hickories were tangled in the low clouds. Overtop the rivers and creeks the mists hung thick but there the color was bright silver. Occasionally a patch of clearness would appear and the flash of red maple or orange oak was startling.

As Fontaine turned back toward town, his silver Jaguar, swallowed in the rain and mist, was almost invisible save for his headlights. He laughed to himself as he passed Crawford Howard on his way to Sister Jane’s. Crawford’s Mercedes, a metallic deep red, would be hard to miss even in the thickest fog. Crawford, hands gripping the wheel, eyes intent on his side of the road, neither waved nor acknowledged Fontaine, a breach of manners in the country.

Fontaine laughed to himself as he pulled over to the one-story white store at the crossroads. Low-pressure systems made him sleepy. If he ate chocolate or something loaded with sugar, he could usually keep from nodding out.

ROGER’S CORNER, a long rectangular sign proclaimed on top of the roof. Two lights aimed at the sign illuminated the rain and clouds more than the sign.

Fontaine liked Roger’s Corner, especially the worn wooden floors, the ornate black-and-gold cash register.

“Hey, bro,” Roger, amiable, called out from behind the counter. “Cuts to the bone, don’t it?”

“Makes me tired.” Fontaine scooped up Moon Pies, Yankee Doodles, and a small round coffee cake. “Your coffee potable today or do I need a sledgehammer to break it up?”

“Ha ha,” Roger dryly replied as he poured him a cup of strong, good coffee, not caf? au lait or anything fancy, just wake-you-up coffee.

Roger had inherited the store from Roger Senior. Both were attractive men, lean and long-jawed.

Fontaine drank the coffee as he leaned against the counter. The cellophane wrapper on the coffee cake crinkled as Fontaine opened it.“Every time I go to New York City I buy these coffee cakes made by Drake’s. Can’t get them down here. I mean these are okay but those little Drake’s things are the best. I love the crumbs on top.”

“Never been there.”

“Gotta go, buddy, gotta go.”

“If Yankees will stay on their side of the Mason-Dixon line, I’ll stay on mine,” Roger joked.

“There is that. Hey, Cody been by here?”

“No. Thought she was in rehab. Betty stopped by last week. Told me. Both kids.” He shook his head, for it was too confusing.

“People are gonna do what they’re gonna do.” He polished off the coffee cake. “Maybe those places give folks some understanding.” He beamed. “If it feels good, they’ll do it again.”

“That’s just it, though, isn’t it? Feels good when you’re doing it and feels bad when you’re not.”

“Life’s just one big hangover.” He held out his cup for a refill.

“Had a few of those.” Roger laughed.

“Coming to opening hunt?”

Roger, a foot follower, enthusiastically said,“Best breakfast of the year.”

“Muffin hound.”

“I do my share of running. Tell you who did blow through here … Crawford. Not twenty minutes ago. He asked me what my annual take was.” Roger laughed. “I said, ‘Why do you want to know?’ and he said, ‘I’d like to buy this place.’ I don’t know what to make of that guy.”

“Would you sell it?”

“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “Man’s gotta work at something.”

“If he gives you a fair price, you can work at something else. But that man’s a snake.”

“You know, he might be.” Roger, like a bartender, tried to stay out of other people’s disagreements and personality clashes. “When I first met him I thought he couldn’t pull piss out of a boot if the directions were on the heel. I was wrong. He’s smart enough but he’s not—what am I trying to say?”

“No practical knowledge. Couldn’t start up a chain saw if his life depended on it.”

“Kinda.”

The small pile of cellophane, white wrappers, and napkins diverted Fontaine’s attention. “Did I eat all that?”

“Yep.”

He sighed.“Better go straight to the gym. See you, bud.”

However, he didn’t head for the gym. He headed for Cody’s place, taking the precaution of parking his car behind old holly bushes.

He knocked on the door, rain funneling off his cowboy hat like a downspout.

Hairbrush in hand, she opened the door.“Fontaine, what are you doing here?”

He stepped inside.“You look as wet as I do.”

A towel wrapped around her head looked like a fuzzy turban. Her white bathrobe was worn thin at the elbows.

“I’ve got an appointment.”

“Why didn’t you call me?” Fontaine didn’t unzip his raincoat.

“I needed time to think.”

“I thought that’s what you were doing in rehab.”

“I did. I needed time to think in my own place.” She stuffed her hairbrush in her pocket. “I need to change a lot of things, break a lot of habits.” She took a deep breath. “I can’t see you anymore. I guess this is as good a time as any to end it.”

“Why don’t you settle back in before you make sweeping decisions,” he smoothly replied, his voice pleasant, seductive.

“I need to be clear. Look, you’ll always have a mistress somewhere. It’s your nature. For all I know you’ve got two or three stashed in Richmond or Washington. I don’t know. You’re a player.”

“Only you,” he lied.

While he chased skirts with a kind of predictable boredom, he liked Cody. He liked any woman that could ride well, hold her liquor, and make love with abandon.

“I can’t do it.” Her lips compressed.

“Anyone else?”

“That’s not the point.”

“Yeah,” he said sarcastically.

“One other thing, Fontaine, and I mean this. You stay away from my sister.”

His eyes opened; he took a half step back involuntarily.“I resent that.”

“I know you.”

“Nobody knows anybody.” He turned on his heel and left, far more upset than he imagined he would be.

Cody locked the door behind him, sat on the edge of the twin bed that served as a sofa, pushed against the wall, embroidered pillows everywhere. Love didn’t enter into this decision. She’d never loved Fontaine. He was fun, spent money like water. His approach to life was “Do it now.” There was a kind of wisdom to that, since you only have the moment you’re in, but Fontaine never gave much thought to the future. Again, that was part of his charm.

Cody was realizing she had to think a great deal about her future. She’d seen too many human shipwrecks at forty and fifty and sixty in rehab. Seeing and hearing the old druggies and drunks knocked sense into her head far more than the counseling sessions with the doctors.

She had to get some training, find a decent job, and forget going out at night to the bars until she could handle it—or maybe forever. What was there about the soft wash of neon light over a polished bar that made her reach for a vodka martini or sneak into the back for a toot? Night seemed to absolve her of tomorrow but then tomorrow would come. Wasted, the sunrise rarely gave her hope. A panic would set in. She’d snort another line until there wasn’t anything left except the shakes and a black hole into which she’d tumble.

She wasn’t going down that rabbit hole again.

Tears ran down her face. She knew better than to take up with Fontaine in the first place. She thought she could forget Doug. She did for a while. Maybe she’d treated him badly last spring before he got fed up with her boozing and coking. That way she felt in control. Junk him before he’d junk her.

She’d thought a lot about him in rehab, too. She dreaded the apologies she needed to make. She knew her mother and father would forgive her. She knew Doug would forgive her, too. In his way, he already had but she had to sit down, face-to-face, and truly apologize. She thought after opening hunt shemight have the courage.

She rubbed her hair with the towel, tossed it toward the bathroom, shook her head. She brushed out her long sable hair.

“Hell.” She reached for the phone, dialing Doug’s number. The answering machine came on. “Doug, I bet you’re at the stable. I know this is an intense week. Why don’t I take you to dinner after opening hunt? Bye.”

CHAPTER 31

The last week before opening hunt kept everyone frantically busy. Turnout for cubbing was heavy and people who should have been legging up their horses starting in July thought that two shots of cubbing would do it.

Shadbellies for the ladies, weaselbellies or cutaways for the gentlemen, frock coats, Meltons, were brushed out and hung on the line or brought back from the dry cleaner. Caps were knocked off with a small wisk brush as were top hats and the always charming derbies. Spurs submitted to rigorous polishing. Shirts and stock ties were ironed, buttons wiped clean, on the coats. Stock tie pins dangled in open buttonholes, where they wouldn’t be lost in the nervousness of preparation. The last thing a hunter did was to fasten that stock pin horizontally across the tie.

Ties would be four-in-hand or just flipped over in a cascade of white. Not a hint of yellow or gray for opening hunt; those ties had to be white, white, white.

Garters—and many still used them, as was correct—were also polished. They’d be just above the boot line and if a lady or gentleman wore the old buttoned pants, the garter would be between the third and fourth button.

Breeches, whipcord or the newer materials, were checked along the seams, the suede knee patches checked, too.

The one item everyone appreciated most and talked about the least was a good pair of underpants. Anything with a raised seam eventually rubbed your leg raw. A few underpants were even padded on the crotch to protect that sensitive area from damage. Of course, if they were riding properly, the next generation should be safe.

Vests also dotted clotheslines. The fortunate few wore white vests handed down from the nineteenth century and the most proper attire for the High Holy Days of hunting: opening hunt, Thanksgiving hunt, Christmas hunt, and New Year’s hunt.

Most people wore a canary vest. Tattersalls were used during formal hunting but not during the holiest of holies, although a few hunts demanded tattersall in the hunt club colors. A vest in the hunt’s colors was also proper, although few wore them because they needed to be specially made.

Jefferson Hunt, formed by veterans of the Revolutionary War, had Continental blue with a buff piping for its colors. A hunter could earn his or her colors only in the field. No amount of good deeds or financial support could buy colors. They were not given lightly and they were given only at Thanksgiving hunt.

Winning your colors meant a gentleman was entitled to wear a scarlet frock with three buttons. A master rode with four buttons, five if the master carried the horn. A gentleman could also wear a scarlet weaselbelly, which is a coat with tails, with a top hat, colors on the collar. This was the most elegant of all outfits, although a black cutaway or tails might also lay that claim. There was something about a man in tails and top hat, scarlet or black, that proved irresistible to women.

The gentleman with colors was also entitled to wear a contrasting cuff on the top of his black boots. Ideally this cuff would be champagne-colored but that, too, was proving hard to find since World War I. A tan top was now acceptable, although the champagne was coveted and those men who cared paid leather craftsmen or leather buyers to find them the exact right color with the right toughness to withstand the rigors of the hunt. A few men would wear mahogany tops, which were certainly acceptable but actually more proper for coaching.

A woman with colors wore a black coat, frock, Melton or shadbelly, tails, with the colors on the collar. The tops of her boots could be black patent leather.

Both genders also wore the special hunt button if awarded colors. For the Jefferson Hunt it was a simple intertwined JH.

Not only were the clothes being aired out, polished to a mirror shine, inspected and inspected yet again, but the horses were going to the beauty parlor. Braiders, paid plenty, showed up at barns at dawn to weave tight little braids, always on the right side of the neck, yarn the color of the mane woven into them. An even number of braids for a gelding, an odd number for mares was the rule. Many members braided their horse’s manes but as they aged and those fingers hurt on a frosty morning, they engaged braiders. Often the top of the tail had a braid laid into it, a nice touch. Staff might even braid the entire tail and then fold it up, since they traversed rough country. The last thing a whipper-in wanted was hisor her horse’s tail dragging thorns or vines. On regular formal days staff executed a mud tail, a simpler version of the braided, folded-up tail.

The night before the hunt, the horses would be washed in special shampoos, some even concocted for the horse’s color. People might put a little Dippity-Do on the manes. The next morning the animals would be brushed down with brushes and then crisscrossed with rubbing cloths until they literally gleamed. Hooves would be painted black or, if white, painted with a clear hoof paint, a mixture that wasn’tlike house paint but filled with emollients as well as color. The old adage “No hoof, no horse” was as true today as it was in Xenophon’s day.

The hunters with experience packed a gear bag for themselves and one for their horse. In their gear bag they folded an extra stock tie, extra stock pins, safety pins to help keep the stock tie in perfect position, Vetrap, extra socks, rawhide strings for last-minute tack repair. A pair of white string gloves would be in the gear bag and those would be put under the saddle billets, one on each side, before mounting up. A second pair of formal gloves, ideally deep mustard but tan was acceptable, since deep mustard was hard to come by, was also in the bag—just in case. Gloves seemed to walk away. Hair nets, the color of a lady’s hair, were in the gear bags and if a single gentleman was smart, he’d put a few different-colored hair nets in his own gear bag.

Few things impress a lady more than a single man who has thought of something particular only to women. Fontaine always carried a box of tampons in his trailer. This earned him more than the normal gratitude.

Then there was the question of flasks. Gentlemen could carry a large flask on the left front side of their saddle, above their knee. These expensive heavy handblown flasks with silver tops created instant popularity in the hunt field. Hunting flask recipes were as zealously guarded as four-star-restaurant specials. Invariably, later in the season, one club would issue a challenge to the others as to which person had the best flask contents. Judging this contest was hotly contested itself. Whereas a master might pull out his or her hair trying to find volunteers for fence building, no master ever had to work to find judges for the flask contest.

The contest would take place after that day’s hunt. This meant beds in stables, homes, even horse trailers would be thoughtfully provided.

Ladies, too, could carry a flask but theirs was a small rectangular affair, also handblown, nestled in a square case that also contained a sandwich tin. The smallness of their flask in no way detracted from the lethal contents. Ladies, too, entered the flask contests.

In the old days, masters might spot-check the sandwich tins just like a Corinthian class at a horse show. The sandwich had to be chicken, no mayonnaise, on white bread, crusts trimmed off.

Today few masters were that fierce.

No makeup was allowed on a lady, although lipstick finally triumphed by the 1970s. Small pearl stud earrings were acceptable but most women had learned the hard way not to wear anything in their ears.

Sister Jane, a lenient soul during cubbing, put the fear of God into her field for opening hunt. Years ago she dismissed a very popular lady member for wearing overlarge earrings and too much rouge. She also dismissed a gentleman for having a running martingale on his horse—only a standing one would do. The running martingale’s further strap divides after passing through the neck strap. The standing martingale had one thick further strap and this was the only proper hunting martingale. Naturally both people were humiliated and furious even though Sister did not single them out verbally but rode up to them and whispered in their ears. The gentleman finally forgave her, since he realized a running martingale could cause harm to the horse and rider even if stops were correctly placed on the tack. Flying through rough and close territory it would be possible for a stop to be torn off or bent in such a way that the rings of the running martingale could flip over a full cheek bit. The chances seemed remote but after a person had hunted for a few decades, he or she had seen a lot of things that could have been prevented with forethought, things that seemed irritating or silly to the novitiate.

The lady, of course, never forgave Sister and harrumphed off to another less strict hunt where she lambasted Sister until that master finally told her it was imprudent to criticize a master to another master.

But every person preparing for opening hunt knew Sister had a sharp eye for turnout as well as territory. Proper turnout is a sign of respect for the master and the landowners.

The hounds, too, prepared for the great day. Anticipation built. Arguments flared. Young entries feared they wouldn’t be called out on this day because the huntsman or the master felt they might fumble the ball. Old hounds counseled the younger ones, often repeating themselves, which only further upset the younger ones, who couldn’t absorb any more information thanks to the tension.

The horses loved the constant grooming. Since they had to follow hounds, the burden of proof was not on them. The excitement rippled through the stable but there was little anxiety with it. A green horse might fret but the tried-and-true hunters believed the foot followers came out to see them. Good manners kept them from saying this to the hounds but every hunting horse believed this and acted accordingly, which caused a snipe and a snip from a few hounds on the great day.

The staff horses affected a world-weariness laced with pride. Being a master’s horse meant one had acquired special knowledge plus one was bold. Lafayette oozed confidence and leadership. The huntsman’s horse also swaggered and the whipper-in horses bordered on belligerent. These paragons would trot or walk by the field horses and bid them hello, a hello bursting with egotism.

The foxes, too, prepared for opening hunt. Since 1782, hunters had gathered on Hangman’s Ridge by the oak tree. When the private packs coalesced into a subscription pack they continued meeting there.

The foxes, knowing this, often slept in on that day. But over the years they learned that Sister Jane and Shaker Crown treated them fairly: no earthmen to dig up their dens, no Jack Russells for the same purpose, no traps, and help for foxes in times of trouble. During the winter of the three blizzards in the mid-1990s, Sister, Shaker, and Doug fought their way through the snows to feed their foxes within a two-mile radius of the kennel. Once the roads were plowed they also drove to the other fixtures and pushed their way through the snows to put out corn, grain, and dog food for all their foxes.

The foxes attributed this to Sister and she was a good master, but the times had changed drastically in America. Few hunts had ever used earthmen or Jack Russells as they were used in England, although hunts in poultry-raising counties did in the old days. Trapping a fox and carrying him to another territory, called dropping a bagged fox, was made illegal by the Masters of Foxhounds Association. Apart from being cruel, it was a serious offense because such a fox could spread disease. The practice could result in a hunt being excommunicated from the MFHA. That meant no other hunt could draft hounds to the excommunicated hunt. No other hunt could enjoy a joint meet with them. No member of a recognized hunt could hunt with them.

Sister believed strongly in sporting chance. The foxes knew that and in gratitude for her work during the year of the blizzards they mapped out their routes for opening hunt to ensure that Sister and the Jefferson Hunt always had a rip-roaring opener. This was one of the few times when the reds and the grays cooperated.

This year they determined to move straight away east for four miles, working in relays, then curve northwest and finally come back to the ridge. They figured this ought to take two and a half hours. They agreed on their checks, too, those places where they’d disguise their scent. Given the importance of the occasion, they demanded that too young or slower foxes stay in, or within fifty yards of, their dens.

They did not want a nonparticipating fox to mess up their route.

Butch would tell his children,“It’s not the hounds you fear on opening hunt; it’s the humans!”

CHAPTER 32

Thursday night as Cody was pulling socks out of her drawer, tossing them all over the bed, a knock at her door disturbed her.

Irritated at the interruption, she opened the door.

“Found her two miles from Roger’s Corner.” Doug had his arm linked through Jennifer’s.

She was too out of it to protest.

“Oh God!” Cody’s face fell. “Bring her inside.”

As Doug propelled Jennifer to the twin bed–sofa, he whispered, “Should you call your mother?”

“Eventually, yes. Right now, no.” She picked up the phone and dialed Dr. Tandy Zacks. After ten minutes of paging, she finally got Dr. Zacks on the phone. She told her what had happened.

“Bring her to me.”

Cody and Doug were surprised to find Walter Lungrun at the rehab clinic but they were soon glad of his presence. As Jennifer began to be more aware of her surroundings she pitched a major, hateful fit. It took the muscle power of both Walter and Doug to restrain her.

After two hours of pure hell, Cody sat down and sobbed. She was struggling for her own sobriety. She didn’t know if she had the strength to struggle for Jennifer’s.

Walter sat with her on one side; Doug was on the other. Dr. Zacks and two other doctors were in another room with Jennifer, who alternated between snarls and sobs.

“Cody, you’ve done all you can do. Let Dr. Zacks call your mother. Jennifer is a minor and we must notify your parents. My advice to you is to go home or go somewhere where people will support you. Go somewhere safe.” He put his large hand on her shoulder while looking at Douglas.

“Mom’s going to need support herself,” Cody said, crying.

“She is. We’ll do what we can.”

“Dad doesn’t get it. I should be here.”

“Cody, you’ve been through enough. You don’t need any more upset. Go on now. If we need you or your mother needs you, you’ll hear from us.”

“She’ll be with me.” Doug scribbled down his number for Walter. “Top one’s the house. Bottom is the barn.”

Still crying, Cody walked out with Doug. She looked over her shoulder and Walter made a pushing-away motion with the back of his hands.

“Oh God, Doug, I’m afraid she isn’t going to make it.”

“But you are.” He wrapped his arm around her waist. “Only Jennifer can save Jennifer. Come on. Let’s pick up your tack and I’ll help you clean it.”

“Already done.”

“Chinese food? We can take it home and be by the phone.”

“Okay.” She wiped away the tears, then reached in her coat pocket for a tissue. “Did she say why she was wandering around out there?”

“She wasn’t verbal.”

“Her car!”

“When it shows up maybe we’ll know where she was.”

It did show up, right at Bobby and Betty’s house.

Jennifer refused to tell who she met or where they went. Mostly she was still screaming obscenities at everyone, especially her mother and father.

When Betty called Cody later she told her she was all right. Cody should stay where she was.

That night Cody curled up in bed with Doug. Snuggled in his arms she finally fell into a sound sleep.

CHAPTER 33

The first frost usually came around the middle of October. The silvering would melt within an hour of sunup and many nights the temperature still didn’t dip low enough for frost. By November the frosts were steadier.

Sister Jane brought her unwieldy potted ficus tree inside by mid-October, along with two potted Russian junipers, which could withstand the cold, but she’d grown fond of them and thought them decorative. The other potted plants—hibiscus, tiny rosebuds, portulaca, tulips in hopes of spring—had all been covered with a thin layer of straw with about an inch and a half of mulch over that. On the northwest corner of the garden and the back patio she constructed burlap windbreakers. What they lacked in aesthetic appeal they made up in effectiveness. Sister vowed that one day she would figure out an attractive system to protect those plants.

The ficus tree, emphatically healthy, nearly touched the twelve-foot ceiling. The trunk was thick as a strong man’s arm.

Golly lounged in the branches, feeling quite warm toward Sister for providing her with a tree. If in a good mood, she’d swing from limb to limb like a monkey.

If Raleigh offended her, Golly would pull the mulch out of the Russian junipers, scattering it about the floor. Sister would scold the dog, to the cat’s malicious delight.

It was the Friday before Saturday’s opening hunt. Everything that could be done was done.

Sister’s shadbelly, worn on the big days, hung on the old wire mannequin. Sister was one of those people who had to lay her clothes out the night before. Wardrobe decisions and mornings didn’t mix. The cleaned coat hung over the white vest, her great-grandfather’s cut down to fit her, and that was buttoned over a perfect Irish linen hunting shirt she’d picked up at Hunt Country. Her stock tie, same material as the shirt, was draped over the shoulder of the mannequin. The simple gold stock pin was pinned through the bottom coat buttonhole. Her top hat, the true ladies’ top hat, which gracefully curved in toward the brim, hat cord attached, rested on the wire head. Her boots, with a cedar insert to keep them firm, sat under the wire form, the knee-length socks stuffed inside along with a sheer pair of white silk socks in case it was really cold the next morning. Her spurs sat on top of the socks, simple hammerheads. Her mustard gloves, butter-soft, were folded and in her hat. Her father’s pocket watch was in the bottom left vest pocket. A thin, unadorned braided belt, Continental blue, was already threaded through the dark canary breeches laid out on top of the blanket chest, her thin cotton underpants half in, half out of the front pocket.

A small linen handkerchief, an O embroidered on it, was neatly folded into the top vest pocket, left. The O stood for Overdorf, her maiden name. In the right lower vest pocket was a small, sharp penknife. The upper pocket carried ten Motrin in a tiny plastic bag just in case the weather got really raw and her myriad battle scars and breaks talked back. Although hunt staff were not allowed to carry a flask on their saddle, Sister, as the master, could carry one and she used her grandfather’s flask. Since she was the master the masculine bit of tack was acceptable, as was scarlet, which she chose not to wear, although younger lady masters were doing it. Sister could never get used to the sight of a woman in scarlet although she thought it was handsome.

Usually she filled her flask with iced tea but today she filled it with hunting port. A small silver flask, a bold roman A in the center, was slipped inside her left shadbelly pocket. This carried straight Scotch, Famous Grouse. She rarely used it but sometimes a member of the field needed restoration.

She read down her checklist. The only thing she didn’t have was a stirrup leather, used as a belt. For opening hunt she didn’t want that peeping out from under her shadbelly, although her vest points should cover it. She thought it a good idea to carry an extra stirrup leather. Her couple straps, used to collect hounds if needs be, were already attached to her saddle, as was her pistol case, the Ruger .22 inside, filled with birdshot. Used only in extremes to ward off a bolting hound, the sight of it often upset nonhunters. Better a butt full of birdshot than a hound running in front of a car.

Usually she carried a .38 under her jacket or on the small of her back. She’d only had to use it once when a dying deer, hideously injured, front leg blown mostly out of the socket, crossed her path. She was glad to deliver the coup de gr?ce. Wearing a shadbelly left no room for the .38 but Shaker, Doug, and Betty would have theirs under their coats.

She walked downstairs, her footfalls reverberating throughout the house. No radio or TV was ever turned on unless she wanted the news. She detested noise of any kind save the cry of her hounds.

A small cooler squatted on the kitchen table. A checklist was beside that: two bottled waters and two Cokes and a sandwich. Sister could never eat at a hunt breakfast because no one ever gave her time. She was crowded from the minute she walked in the room. Self-preservation taught her to pack a cooler and eat in the trailer before going in to the breakfast. Since hunting people knew not to bother a master who was gathering hounds, she could usually eat.

“Ham or chicken?” Raleigh asked.“Ham will make you thirsty.”

She sliced a loaf of fresh pumpernickel, buttered two thick slices, slapped on chicken, tossed pieces to Raleigh, and tore smaller pieces for Golly, who happily shinnied down the ficus tree.

The phone rang.

“Hello.”

“Back at you,” Betty Franklin said.

“Ready?”

“Had to let my britches out a notch. Clearly I’ve failed at my diet and”—she tried to make her voice light—“I’ve failed as a mother. Jennifer went back to rehab last night for an impromptu visit and I apologize for not being at hound walk.”

“You left a message—”

“I did but I didn’t tell you why I wasn’t there. Anyway, I sat there for four and a half hours while she cursed, cried, kicked. Oh yes, kicked. Bobby lasted thirty minutes. He couldn’t take it. I told him to go work late.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Is Cody still there?”

“I saw her at the kennels this morning.”

“Cody, thank God, had the sense to call rehab and hustle her down there. Doug found Jen a couple of miles from Roger’s Corner. Did I tell you that?”

“No.”

“Did he tell you that?”

“No. He wouldn’t unless it was necessary.”

“He’s a good boy. Or man. I keep seeing that little boy with the big green eyes. Jane—I don’t know what to do.”

“Honey, I’m just sorry. I wish I could tell you what to do. Is she at rehab now?”

“No. She’s home in her room. Dr. Zacks, who I like a lot, by the way, said let’s try her on an outpatient basis. If it doesn’t work, back she goes.”

“This is going to cost a fortune.”

“So far, a week’s stay cost $6,280. Counseling is $120 a session and she’ll need to go in at least twice a week. Once a day all next week and then twice a week. One hates to focus on the money but it is a factor.”

“Are there statistics about the success rate of this kind of thing?”

“Yes. They aren’t impressive. Over half the patients relapse. Dr. Zacks believes the Alcoholics Anonymous and the Narcotics Anonymous help tremendously if people will commit to it. Jennifer is so young. How many seventeen-year-olds will be sitting in a Narcotics Anonymous meeting?”

“I often wonder if Raymond would have—”

“Ray. No. He would have gotten drunk with his fraternity brothers when he got to college. He would have smoked a little weed but Ray was a happy kid. That boy was like sunshine. Jennifer came out of the womb unhappy, honestly.”

“They come into this world ready-made. Betty, want to have a slumber party? Come on over.”

“I’d love it but I’d better stay here. Bobby can hardly speak to Jennifer. She’s got his number. If he corrects her, she blames him. If he doesn’t pay attention to her, she says he doesn’t care. Right now he’s guilty and useless.”

“It’s harder for men.”

“Some men. I’m not making excuses for him based on gender. You know, I’m getting to the point where I’m not making excuses for anybody and I don’t want to hear any either. Goddammit, Jane, we are each responsible for our own lives. That’s it. No passing the buck. If Helen Keller, blind and deaf, could make something out of her life, I don’t want to hear this shit about being a victim. Jennifer Franklin is not a victim no matter how much she wants to be. Right now she’s a spoiled, rotten brat and I’d like to knock the stuffing out of her.”

“Good.”

“Good?”

“Betty, if you’re mad you’ll do something. If you’re sad you’ll bawl and sit on your ass. And you’re right, Jennifer has no excuse for her behavior.”

“I wish I’d known the signs. I could have caught Cody earlier. I was so obtuse.”

“Drugs aren’t part of your life.”

“Well, I was born in 1952. It’s hard not to have some awareness of drugs but I was never part of that scene. You were lucky. You missed it.”

“Because I’m older than dirt.” Sister laughed at herself.

“You’ll never be old. God, here I’ve dumped my troubles at your door and right before the big day. I’m sorry.”

“Opening hunt will take care of itself. This is a little more important.”

“I can’t make up my mind whether to let her hunt or make her stay home. It’s one of the only two things that make her happy.”

“What’s the other one?”

“Sex.”

“Oh dear,” Sister blurted out.

“I say ‘Oh shit.’ They’re all doing it. I mean at that age I thought about it but I didn’tdoit. So we’ve drawn blood to test for AIDS and other unsavory consequences. She had the sense to use contraceptives. Foam. She used foam because she didn’t want to go with me to the doctor to get the Pill or to get some other kind of contraceptive. She thought it would upset me. Well, it would have but not as much as not knowing. Bobby can’t even talk about the sex. He gets red in the face and stammers.”

“Do you know who she’s sleeping with?”

“I need a calculator. She hasn’t restricted herself to boys either. Jennifer is freely distributing her favors.”

“Is she afraid she’s gay?”

“Hell, no. She thinks it’s cool. Oh, she doesn’t know what she is.”

“The first thing is to get her off drugs. If she’s going to spend her life as a bisexual harlot at least she can be a sober one. If you want my opinion about hunting, I say let her do it. Plus as long as she’s riding, she’s not in bed with someone. If it makes her happy, that’s one step in the right direction.”

“Maybe you’re right. I’ll tell Bobby what you said.”

“What did Dr. Zacks say?”

“We didn’t even get to hunting. We were too busy dodging the karate kid. She’s quick, too, I can tell you. Oh, I forgot to mention that Walter Lungrun was there when I got to rehab. He helped Cody and Doug when Jennifer blew up. He’s a commanding man when he needs to be. You know, this is the damnedest thing—he reminds me so much of Big Ray.”

“Me, too.” Sister smiled. “A quiet, take-charge kind of man.”

“But he even looks like Ray when he was young.”

“Betty, enjoy Bobby while you have him, warts and all.”

A silence followed. Then Betty replied,“You’re right. I know you miss both your Rays every day.”

“You cope with the loss, the physical loss, and you even learn to be thankful for the time you did have but, Betty, there are days when I would give anything, anything, to hear my husband’s laughter or for Junior to open the back door, throw his books on the floor, and bellow, ‘Mom, where areyou?’ ”

A sigh followed.“I will try to cherish Bobby and Jennifer but right now it’s not easy.”

“Well, think of this. Two months ago, two weeks ago you might not have given a nickel for Cody but look how she’s trying. People can change if they want to.”

“You’re right. You’re right. You know if I didn’t have Outlaw, if I didn’t have hunting, I think I would have unraveled at the seams a long time ago. And I have you.”

“Thanks.”

“All right, Madam Master, I’m going to make sure my husband and my youngest daughter are ready for tomorrow and I’ll say a little prayer that it’s a three-fox day. Good night, Jane.”

“Good night, Betty.” Sister hung up the phone. She sat on the kitchen floor as Raleigh trotted over.

“Me, me, me!” Raleigh begged as he rolled over.

Sister scratched his tummy.

“A little to the left.” Raleigh giggled.

“I would bite, as in sink my fangs to the hilt, anyone who rubbed my stomach. First destruction. Then Death!” Golly bragged as she quickly filched another piece of chicken from the table.

The phone rang again.

“Bag it,”Raleigh suggested.

Irritated, Sister nonetheless rose to pick up the offending instrument.“Jane Arnold.”

“Sister, this is Crawford Howard.”

“Yes, Crawford. How are you tonight?”

“Fine, thank you. I called to apologize for losing my temper. I’m sorry.”

“Me, too.”

“I also wanted to tell you, since everyone gossips—I wanted you to hear from me that I am dating my ex-wife with the hope of reconciliation.” He spoke rapidly.

“Well, I hope it works out for both of you.” Sister remained furious at Crawford’s insults to Doug.

“It’s awkward with Martha working for Fontaine, which was my fault. Totally.”

“Avoid him tomorrow.” She almost added “and me.”

“If he knows what’s good for him, he will avoid me.” Crawford abruptly changed subjects. “Have you come to a conclusion about taking on a joint-master?”

“I have and I will bring this matter before the board, which, as you know, meets next Wednesday.”

“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 you—and 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 wouldonly 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 nothave 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.

CHAPTER 35

Raleigh and Golly sat side by side at the kitchen window. Hounds, sterns up, eyes bright, walked behind Shaker. Doug, riding Rickyroo, walked in front of the hounds at a leisurely pace. Betty Franklin and Outlaw took the left flank. Cody took the right. Jennifer, a good rider, rode with her father, which pleased him.

As they rode off, light streaming in from the east, Golly said,“I’m glad I’m not a pack animal.”

“Me, too,” came the dry reply.

Golly, sitting on the window ledge and therefore eye to eye with the handsome Doberman, replied by curling her upper lip and emitting the smallest of hisses. Raleigh just laughed.

An old farm road snaked up to the top of Hangman’s Ridge. The pack reached this ten minutes after leaving the kennels. At the foot of the ridge, in the flat meadow once used for growing soybeans, trailers were bumper to bumper. People came from neighboring hunts wearing the individual colors of their hunts. Each rider from another hunt had called Sister to request permission to wear their hunt’s distinctive colors. Sister always gave that permission although some masters did not. In that case riders had to wear black coats and boots with no cuffs.

People came to follow on foot. It was going to be a big day thanks in part to the gorgeous weather—good for humans, not so good for scent.

As Sister rode by, men tipped their caps, top hats, and derbies. Ladies called out,“Good morning, Master,” as was proper. Ground followers also doffed their hats or waved. Lisa Bredell, Tinsley Wetherford Papandros, Isabel Rogers all mingled around, dying to find something to bitch and moan about. Each woman wore the perfect outdoor ensemble. Peter Wheeler sat on his truck like an elderly, beloved pasha holding court. When the hunt climbed the ridge his best friend, Granby Vann, a distant relative of Georgia Vann’s, hunting in a frock today, would drive Peter up. From the vantage point of the ridge they would be able to see much of the hunt. Most of the foot followerswould stay high also.

Each horse, braided, hooves painted, tail plaited, felt the excitement. Their coats, especially the chestnuts’, caught the morning light, a thousand copper sparkles, whereas the dark grays gleamed like black diamonds. Dappled grays, flea-bitten grays, light grays, almost white, vied with blood bays, light bays, seal browns, and a few paints as to who was the best-looking horse that morning.

Children, barely able to breathe with anticipation, mounted their ponies. Adults heaved themselves up, the older and wiser ones bringing mounting blocks. Once up, a friend on the ground gave their boots a last-minute flick of the towel.

On they rode, up the hill, a pageant timeless in beauty, a passion older than the walls of Troy.

“Hold up,” Shaker gently spoke to his hounds.

Thirty couple, tricolor, medium-height American hounds carrying sculpted heads looked up at the huntsman and then back to the master.

“What beautiful children,” Sister said, beaming.

As the humans gathered round the hanging tree, Sister counted heads: 92 mounted and perhaps 130 on the ground. She couldn’t be sure, as more were climbing the hill. Thank god she’d ordered twelve cases of champagne for the breakfast, plus the usual bar. She laughed to herself because some of these people would rush to the bar with a siphon. How they lived to middle age or beyond amazed her.

Walter Lungrun was perfectly turned out. She smiled at him and he tipped his cap.

Fontaine wore a black weaselbelly, since he knew Sister loved the look. His white cords were set off even more by the rich, black coat. His top hat, smoothed and brushed, suited him.

Crawford wore a scarlet swallowtail with a white vest and his top hat was also perfect, with a scarlet cord attached to his coat. Men would kill for that scarlet cord, as they searched years for them. Most had to make do with a black hat cord, which strictly speaking was not proper. There was Crawford, his hat cord correctly in place, his boots direct from Lobb in London, costing him somewhere between $5,000 and $6,000, depending on the exchange rate. Everyone else got along with Dehners or Vogels, not cheap but at least under $1,000. But there was Crawford in the best boots money could buy in the world. His gloves, handmade by a glover also in London, were composed of more than thirty pieces of leather, matched, stitched so that he couldn’t feel the seams. No one in America even knew how to make such gloves anymore. His breeches, his shirt, his stock tie—all bespoke his wealth and, in his favor, his taste.

Martha, wearing a deep navy frock coat made by hand in Hospital, Ireland, surely was the best turned out of the ladies. Like her ex, everything on her body had been made expressly for her. Ravishing, she smiled both because she knew she looked good and because Crawford was courting her as though they were young again.

Once Peter Wheeler was in place, Sister stood in her stirrups.“Gather round.” As they moved up closer she looked at each person, acknowledging their presence. “Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for being here today. This is the one hundred and twenty-first time that the Jefferson Hunt has gone out, save for 1917 and 1918. We are thankful to be here yet again. I know of no sport as exciting. I know of no people quite as brave, occasionally foolish, and always gallant as foxhunters. The words ‘gallant,’ ‘glory,’ and ‘honor’ seem to have disappeared from our language and certainly from our behavior. Foxhunters may be the only people left who understand and live by those words. We are the last humans to practice chivalry. Therefore we wish our quarry a good day and may we never catch him. We wish our hounds a good day’s sport and we thank our horses for their spirit and their patience with us. I wish each of you a splendid day, a dayyou will forever remember with happiness and pride.” She paused. “Hilltoppers ride with Bobby Franklin. Field, come with me. Huntsman.” She nodded to Shaker, who placed his cap on his head, ribbons streaming down, as were Sister’s.

“Hounds ready?” Shaker asked.

“Yes!”

Smiling, Shaker rode down the side path of the ridge to the cornfield.

Crawford’s horse, Czapaka, hopped around a bit, as did others.

“I am the best-looking horse here,” Czapaka bragged.

“Shut up, asshole,” Cochise, Martha’s tough leopard Appaloosa, ordered.

Clemson, not the prettiest of horses but one of the wisest, Walter on board, simply said,“You have yet to finish a hunt the way you started it, buddy.”

The humans chattered, too, until they reached the bottom of the ridge, the cornfield beckoning.

The field halted. Doug was already on the far side, the north side of the cornfield. Betty took the left side but farther away, halfway up the ridge on the trail. Cody stayed in the meadows but was near the fence line.

“He’s in there.” Shaker’s voice encouraged the hounds. He lifted the horn, blowing a few notes.

“Yahoo!” Dragon plunged right in.

“You’re still wet behind the ears. You stay behind me,” Cora growled as she sped past him, the drying corn leaves rattling as she brushed them.

No sooner were all the hounds in the corn than Target trotted out the north side. Doug saw him, removed his cap, and pointed his cap and Rickyroo in the direction that the enormous red was traveling.

Not satisfied with being viewed by the first whip, Target moved away from the corn and brazenly sat down in the field.

A child in the rear of the field screamed,“The fox.” His mother, mortified, reached down, putting her hand over his mouth. “Sh-h-h. He’s too close to tallyho.”

By now the field had spied him. Happy with this, Target trotted away until Cora burst out of the other side of the cornfield, her lovely voice booming.

Archie, anchoring and still in the corn, replied,“I’m behind. Go on, Cora.”

“It’s him. It’s him.” Dasher was so excited, his nostrils full of hot, fresh fox scent, that he yipped like a puppy.

Target, about two hundred yards ahead of the strike hound, put on the afterburners. He scorched the meadow, jumped Fontaine’s coop, to the thrill of the field and the foot followers on the ridge. Then he ran hard through the woods.

The field followed Sister, surprised at the fast pace, for she didn’t think scent would be good but then she didn’t think they’d jump a fox and stay so close either.

Lafayette, smooth and always balanced, arced over Fontaine’s coop. Most everyone made it and those few who didn’t cursed under their breath, rode to the rear, and hoped to boot their horses over. Everyone did but one poor little lady, a picture of frustration. She gave up and joined Bobby Franklin as he leaned over to flip up the kiwi gate latch.

The music carried up to the ridge. Peter Wheeler stood on the back of his pickup and kept repeating,“Can you beat that? Can you beat that? Biggest damn red I ever saw in my life!”

Sitting atop the hanging tree, St. Just also watched everything. Usually he flew low over the red fox, cawing loudly for the hounds to close the gap. His jet-black feathers shone iridescent, his deep-yellow beak opened and closed, revealing his tongue, but he made little noise.

Target charged straight for Aunt Netty’s den. He lingered a bit too long in the field, showing off, and he needed to widen the gap between himself and Cora. He glanced back, seeing Dragon running neck and neck with Cora.

“I hate that hound,” he thought to himself, wishing the snake had killed Dragon.

Target ran through a rotted log knowing that would slow Cora and Dragon for a moment. Dasher, Diana, and other hounds were only a few paces behind the lead hounds.

This gave him just enough time to warn Aunt Netty as she reposed on the log fallen across the creek.

“Netty, go on now. They’re too close!”

She scrambled up the other side of the bank and headed off at a burning clip. Target ran halfway across the log, then jumped into the water. This was a slight variation on the plan but the only way to keep the hounds from the mouth of the den. He swam down the creek, then climbed up the bank into the opening.

As planned, the hounds, noses to the ground, streaked across the fallen log.

Blinding speed had served the slender, cagey Netty all her days. She put further distance between herself and the hounds as she zigzagged through the woods, emerging onto the back meadows still deep green.

A sizable hog’s-back jump punctuated the fence line, an old three-rail. Shaker cleared it right behind his hounds. Sister, fifty yards behind her huntsman, also sailed over.

As they thundered through the fields she heard hooves moving up too fast behind her.

Lafayette put back his ears. He slightly turned his head.“Bug off,” he warned Czapaka.

Crawford couldn’t hold the big Holsteiner.

Just as Czapaka’s nose drew even with Lafayette’s, Sister unleashed her whip, which she’d switched to her left hand. The thong and cracker snapped right in front of Czapaka’s nose. The warmblood, startled, half reared, then stopped dead. Crawford slammed up on his neck, then slid off to the side as the entire field passed him.

Bunky Jenkins, riding tail this day, perceived that Crawford was fine. He didn’t stop to help him, which only made Crawford even more furious.

With reluctance, Martha turned back. He mounted up and then they had to fly to catch up because the pace accelerated. An upright jump, four logs stacked on top of the other, guarded the other side of the field. Cochise popped over and Czapaka with a whip and a spur followed.

They reached the back of the field. Fontaine had moved up right in Sister’s pocket, the most prestigious place in the field. Crawford choked on his fury.

Aunt Netty burst out from the woods, ran almost to Soldier Road, and then doubled back on her own tracks. Those people on the top of Hangman’s Ridge could see her as she doubled, then sped off first south, then zigzagged north as she headed toward the ridge. Then she veered back again. She knew the hounds were a quarter mile behind. She was pleased with herself.

Grace waited at the still.

“They’re in fine fettle today, Grace. Go now.”

“Cora first?”Grace had been told to fear Cora’s speed.

“And that arrogant young entry, Dragon. He’s fast. Very fast but fortunately he’s not very bright. Go on.”

Grace trotted toward the old farm path, then picked up her speed.

Cora stopped at the still.“Aunt Netty, I know you’re in there.”

“Go to the right. You’ll pick up Grace’s scent. We’ll make this a good day for Sister. After that, it’s business as usual.”

“To ground! To ground!” Dragon lifted his head back as he ran up and almost over Cora.

“Forget it.” Cora moved to the right.

“But I’ve put a fox to ground!” Dragon wanted to be a star.

“Scent is tough today, you fool. It’s warmed up. There’s a light breeze. The ground is drying out. Don’t spoil the plan.”

“I put a fox to ground,” he bellowed.

Lightning fast before the other hounds joined them, Cora leapt up and turned sideways like a marlin on a line. She crashed into Dragon. He hit the ground with a thud, the wind knocked out of him. Then Cora seized him by the throat and shook him. She dropped him and ran to the right, picking up Grace’s scent.

“Over here. Over here.”

The rest of the pack followed her as Dragon, choking, stood up, shook himself, coughed, then sullenly hitched up with the rest of the pack.

Sister and Lafayette leapt over a fallen tree trunk as a shortcut to the farm road. She’d heard Cora and then the pack turn. As she glanced behind her she saw her field strung out, the attrition rate rising.

“Stay with the hounds,” she thought to herself, and wondered when she’d had this long a run, this fast.

Grace ran back over Target’s evaporated scent, making a semicircle. She flew over Fontaine’s coop, not knowing the grays were in the trees watching her. She ran straight into the cornfield and then in a change of plan, because she was young and got confused, she blasted out the back of the cornfield with Uncle Yancy.

“What do I do?”

“Stay with me. There’s no den up here, Grace. You’ll have to run with me. You okay?”

“I’m not tired. I’ve only covered a half mile.”

Grace and Yancy skirted the fence line into the woods, a deep ravine in the far distance. Just to make life interesting, totally confuse the humans, they ran two large, loopy figure eights in the woods. The humans would think they were on grays until someone caught sight of them.

Lottie Fisher’s horse stumbled. Fontaine, who happened to be looking back, pulled up Gunpowder. Lottie, quite good-looking, brushed herself off as she checked her horse.

“You need company?” Fontaine reined in Gunpowder, lightly dismounting and removing his top hat. “Gets so lonesome in these woods.”

She blushed.“Thank you. I’m fine. He’s fine, too.” She patted the gelding’s sleek neck.

“How about a leg up, then?” He cupped his hand under her right leg. “One, two, three.” He pushed her up into the saddle.

Then he swung up on Gunpowder, top hat back on his head.

“Thank you so much, Fontaine.”

“The pleasure was all mine.” He grinned. “Shall we join them?”

Off they galloped on the last loop of the figure eight. The coop up ahead led into the meadow.

Lottie didn’t realize Fontaine was not behind her until she came right up on the rear of the first flight. She didn’t think a thing of it.

Together, Grace and Yancy dashed straight up the ridge, right to the hanging tree, dodging the screaming people, some of whom yelled“tallyho” to no avail. They scooted under Peter Wheeler’s truck.

Old Peter, on his feet, slapped his thigh with his hat.“Yip, yip yoo.” He belted out a rebel yell. “Yip, yip yoo. I never saw anything like this in my life. Two red foxes. Yip, yip yoo. Janie, where in the hell are you?”

Sister had just cleared Fontaine’s coop with Georgia Vann now riding in her pocket. But the entire field was feeling the effects of the long run. The staff horses, in fine condition, felt loosened up. But other horses who should have been conditioned but weren’t really began to labor, drenched in creamy white sweat.

Crawford stopped at the back of Hangman’s Ridge. “He feels lame.”

“Looks lame.” Martha confirmed his opinion.

“You go on. I’ll walk him to the trailers,” he instructed.

“Are you sure?”

“Sure. I’ll take the shortcut around to the trailers.”

“Crawford, you might want to stay in the meadow even though it takes longer. You don’t run the risk of fouling scent quite so much.”

He glared at her, for he hated to be told what to do.“Fine.”

“I’ll see you back at the trailers. Hope he’s okay.” She trotted off. Then, when far enough away from Czapaka, she broke into a canter.

Crawford thought all this talk about fouling scent was bullshit, hunters showing off. He headed straight into the shortcut.

Overhead, St. Just flew low, startling Czapaka.

By the time Sister reached the hanging tree she, as a show of respect, stopped to ask Peter what happened.

“Two! Two, Janie, and two different than the first one you flushed out of the cornfield. I never! I never!” Then he turned his aged body, pointed with his hat to the direction the two foxes ran, the hounds already on.

“Thank you. You’re my best whip.” She smiled, squeezed Lafayette, and they were off again.

She leaned back as she cantered, slowly, straight down the ridge. No time to fiddle with the old farm road and bypaths now. A few more people rolled onto the earth with a thud. Loose horses ran about, finally stopping to graze.

At the base of the ridge Sister swooped around, heading toward her house. A zigzag fence was to her left, a few old locust posts from the former fence still in place at the corners. She smelled the skunk as she neared the zigzag. She cleared the zigzag, started into the western woods then stopped. Hounds were all over the place like marbles rolling.

“Hold hard!” she shouted, raising her left arm.

People strained to pull back. They stood there, horses and humans panting like the hounds. The temperature inched into the low sixties. They were burning up and there had been not one check or slowing of pace for one solid hour.

Georgia Vann dropped her feet out of the stirrups, as did Walter Lungrun. They flopped onto their horses’ necks to relieve crying muscles. Even Martha, always in great condition, breathed heavily then leaned all the way backward in her saddle to stretch out.

The hounds, eyes watering, circled around one old locust fence post. Uncle Yancy and Grace snuggled down in the den, slowly making their way underground to the walnut, its canopy a cooling covering.

“Stay down. We don’t come out until the pack is off Patsy.” But as they inched toward the walnut they found Patsy still underground.

“What are you still doing here? You can’t go out now. You’d have to be as fast as Netty,”Yancy, upset, shouted.

“The pack split, Uncle Yancy,” Patsy explained.

“I hear them above us,” Grace said.

“Only half. I swear I was at the base of the walnut and I was ready to run but I heard a young hound go off back toward the east. Half the pack went with him.”

“If that damn little buster spoiled our plan, I’ll run him right out of the forest myself!”Yancy spat.

Sister waited. She heard half her pack. They rarely split and on a day like today such behavior would be quite unusual.

Cora milled around the fence post.“I can’t get through the skunk. Fan out again. Fan out, I tell you!”

The hounds obeyed.

Diana, timid, said,“I think I’ve got something here but it’s blood. Is it fox blood?”

Both Archie and Cora loped right over. They put their noses to the ground, then looked at each other.“Yes.”

“Follow me!” Cora commanded.

As Sister followed her hounds, running, but running more slowly, since Cora wasn’t certain about this just yet, she glanced around for the whips. Betty was off to her left. She could see Outlaw’s buckskin coat better than she could see Betty in her black frock. She saw no one on the right nor did she see Shaker. She couldn’t remember when they’d parted company. The pace, killing, would begin to tell on the older hounds.

As the field rode off, Grace, Yancy, and Patsy, one by one, crept out of the hole. They put their noses to the earth like hounds.

“Cora said blood.” Uncle Yancy frowned.

They continued moving on in a line.

“Here,” Patsy said.

The other two ran over, noses to the ground.

Yancy grimly picked his head up.“It is blood. Fox blood.”

“What do we do?” Patsy worried.

“Should we follow them at a safe distance?” Grace asked.

“No. Wait until we hear the hounds go back to the kennel. We’re close enough that we can hear. Then we follow this trail ourselves.”

Sister pushed on. The hounds, baffled again at a creek, milled about. She counted heads. Only fifteen people were left out of the forty-one that had ridden first flight. She wondered how many hilltoppers were left. She hadn’t seen Bobby Franklin since the hog’s-back jump at the high meadow. Even Fontaine was out of the run and she couldn’t remember when he’d dropped back.

She couldn’t worry about who was where now. Hounds picked up the scent again about thirty paces downstream. She found a crossing and over they went. As she stayed close behind she glanced at the ground, a habit born of tracking on difficult days. She, too, noticed blood. Not buckets of it but a steady drip, drip.

She reached the high meadow, took an in-and-out on the western side, then cantered across the meadow. She pulled up before the hog’s back.

Doug and Shaker dismounted and held up their hands. She saw a horse on the ground and then a human.

“Stay here. Martha, you’re in charge. Don’t anyone move.”

Crawford had just reached the last of the field. He, too, pulled up, Czapaka now sound as a dollar.

The hounds sat in the meadow. Some of them were lying down.

Sister dismounted. Gunsmoke, on his side, was barely breathing. Fontaine, face down, wasn’t breathing at all.

“He has no pulse,” Shaker simply said.

Sister didn’t bother to ask him if he’d called 911 on the tiny hand-held he carried. She knew that would be the first thing Shaker did.

“Doug, help me turn him over. Shaker, how long have you been here?”

“About one minute and a half.”

She and Doug rolled Fontaine over. No mark was on him save one hole on the left side of his chest. He was emphatically dead.

“Better call the sheriff.”

He flipped open the phone and dialed 911 again. As he gave precise directions to the sheriff’s department, Sister and Doug walked over to Gunsmoke. She felt his pulse. She checked his gums, which weren’t white. She pointed to a mark across his throat. She felt to see if his windpipe was broken.

Then she walked back to Lafayette and got her flask out of its case. She knelt down by Gunsmoke’s head, pouring port into her hand. She rubbed it over his lips. His eyes opened.

“He’s got the wind knocked out of him and he’s scared. We’ve got to get him up. Doug, give me your whip.”

She stepped back and cracked her whip, stinging the lovely animal on the flank.

“Oww!” He struggled up.

“Sorry, Gunsmoke.” She ran her hand along his neck, pressing her ear to his neck, low. “He’s all right, I think.”

She hadn’t realized that she was shaking slightly. She cupped her hands to her mouth. “Martha, take the field home and start eating breakfast. Now!”

Martha, smart, knew Sister needed everyone out of there before people panicked. She waved and turned the diminished band home.

Sister bit her lip.“Did you see anything or anybody?”

“No,” Shaker replied.

“No, but I heard a shot about fifteen minutes ago. I thought it was another whip,” Doug replied.

Betty rode out of the woods, beheld the spectacle.“Oh my God. What happened?”

“We don’t know.”

“Is he dead?”

“Yes,” Shaker said.

Betty, too, dismounted. She viewed the corpse with horror, her hand flying to her mouth as she realized he’d been murdered.

A whining drew Sister’s attention. Dragon walked up, dropping a dead red fox at her feet. The fox, too, had been shot. It was Reynard, Target’s son. A rope was still wrapped around his hind paws.

Sister patted Dragon on the head. The humans scarcely knew what to say.

As Gunsmoke caught his breath he shook a little bit.

Lafayette asked,“Did you see anything?”

“No. I took the hog’s back and I hit something. I don’t remember anything.” He cast his big brown eyes at his dead rider.“He was a strong rider, you know. Never gave a false signal.”

“I’m sorry.” Lafayette sympathized. If it had been Sister, he would have been crushed with sadness.

“Yeah.” Gunsmoke hung his head.

“I told you I’d get the fox,”Dragon bragged as he rejoined the pack. The other hounds stared at him, not daring to speak under the circumstances.

They all heard the sirens on Soldier Road. As the ambulance and patrol car turned onto the farm road the noise grew louder.

Overhead St. Just cawed and circled once. Vengeance was sweet.

CHAPTER 36

Three blasts on the horn brought Cody to the hog’s-back jump. Cody arrived in about five minutes’ time, bringing Sally, an older hound who had slowed due to the pace.

Shocked, the sheriff was there, as was an ambulance.

She remained silent. After brief questioning the whips were released to take hounds back to the kennel.

Sister Jane and Shaker remained behind. The sheriff, new to the area, had been recruited nationally from a list of qualified candidates. The county department, swept clean with a new broom, certainly increased in efficiency. However, Benjamin Sidell, secure in his knowledge and training as only an Ohio man can be, was surprised by murder in this most Virginian of pastimes.

“Mrs. Arnold, can you think of anyone who might want to kill the victim?” Ben had asked the other obvious questions establishing everyone’s whereabouts.

“Sheriff, any one of us collects enemies in life but no, I can’t think of anyone who’d trip over the line,” she truthfully answered.

Shaker stepped up to stand next to Sister. He watched the hounds following Doug in good order as Betty led back Gunsmoke. When Ben turned his gaze directly to Shaker, the curly-haired, broad-shouldered man simply shrugged.“Good-looking. Bad at business. Bad with women.”

“Some life.” The young sheriff allowed himself a wry smile.

“Will you notify his wife and children? They should be at the University of Virginia football game today. You might try there,” Sister Jane thoughtfully informed Ben.

“Thank you, I’ll go there myself.” He ran his hand over his slick hair, good haircut. “Was Mr. Buruss a good friend of yours?”

“I knew him all of his life. Yes, he was a friend, although I’m not sure I would depend on him. It’s difficult to think about it right now, Sheriff. Did I like him? Yes. He was a most charming man even when he was lying to you.”

“Ah.” The sheriff had discovered Virginia specialized in such fellows. “And you, Mr. Crown?”

“Didn’t like him but I could get along with him.”

“And why didn’t you like him?”

“Empty-headed. Thought he knew hounds. Didn’t.”

“That’s a reason to dislike a man?”

“To me it is.”

“Yes, well …” The sheriff’s voice dropped off. The ambulance crew had loaded Fontaine on the gurney. The wheels clicked as they rolled it the few yards to the ambulance. “Perhaps you could tell me why this dead fox has a rope around its hind legs. Did you shoot it while hunting?”

“No, sir!” Shaker, stung by what to him was an accusation, was vehement.

Sister spoke up.“Sheriff, we don’t shoot foxes. That would be unsporting. We chase them. We don’t even let the hounds kill one if we can help it.”

“So this isn’t your fox?”

“No, sir.” Shaker’s face reddened.

“This is a young male. He’s from a litter about one mile from my house. He moved off to find his own den and I’ve only seen him once since then, which was a few weeks ago. Males generally travel farther than females to find their own territory, but he remained close.”

Ben was incredulous.“You’re telling me youknowthis fox?”

“Yes.” Sister folded her arms across her chest.

“Course we know our foxes, man. I’ve been hunting this red family for three decades.”

“You can actually recognize them?”

“Can’t you tell the difference between dogs?” Sister tried to lower the hostility level between Shaker and the sheriff.

“Sure, but a Lab looks a lot different from a Chihuahua!”

“Foxes vary in size. Their markings, too. You see this fellow is still thinnish because he’s young. There’s tons of game so he’d only be thin if he were sick or young and as you can see this was a fine, healthy fox. He had only a bit of a white tip on his brush whereas his father has a widewhite tip,” Sister told the young sheriff.

“What’s a brush?”

“The tail,” Shaker said as the ambulance’s back door closed.

“I see. All right. You know this fox and, I take it, his father.”

“Was a fine litter. They all lived.” Shaker admired Target and his get. They ran him ragged sometimes.

Sister began to feel exhausted. The shock was seeping in.“Sheriff, the death of a red fox is to be lamented. The death of a good gray, too. We don’t want our foxes killed. Whoever killed this beautiful young male no doubt killed Fontaine as well.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because he laid a drag, man!” Shaker exploded.

Before the sheriff could respond Sister quietly added,“Your killer created a scent line, fresh and fresh with blood, too, which would inflame the hounds. This way they would turn away from the hunted fox to this line. The pack split. The killer knew Shaker and I would stay with the pack on the hunted fox. By the time we got the pack back together the deed would be done.”

“You know that, too?”

“Yes.” She again spoke in a soothing tone. “But we can be fooled just as you can, Sheriff.”

“One more question.” He flipped through his notes. “Doug Kinser heard one shot. It would have taken two. The fox is shot, too. Right?”

“Doesn’t mean we would have heard that shot. Hounds were giving tongue. The hoofbeats would drown out most noises. It would be easy not to hear a shot,” Shaker said with conviction.

“Sheriff, we want to help you find whoever killed Fontaine. But, please, we’re tired. Our horses are tired. You know where to find us but let us get our boys back to the stable,” she requested. “Let me make a suggestion. Ask a good veterinarian to perform an autopsy on this fox. He may not have been recently killed.”

“What?”

“He could have been killed, frozen, thawed when needed.”

“Ah.” This was a new thought to the sheriff, who let it sink in before asking, “Do you have a list of who hunted today?”

“The field secretary will have a list of caps—those are the fees paid by nonmembers. With a good night’s rest I think we can reconstruct who was with us today, mounted and on foot.”

“Thank you.” Ben smiled, a nice smile. “I apologize for detaining you.”

Once back to the stable Doug ran up to help both Sister and Shaker.

“Have Betty and Cody gone into the house?”

“Yes, but they swore they wouldn’t say anything until you came home.” Doug had already slipped the saddle off a grateful Lafayette.

“Well—they’ve had the best opening hunt we’ve ever had until this. They’ve had an hour and a half to eat, drink, and make merry. I guess I have to tell them.”

“I’ll go with you.” Shaker thanked Doug for taking care of his horse and the two friends trudged up to the house.

As they walked through the mudroom and into the kitchen the aroma of ham, biscuits, gravy, grits, roasted turkey, and candied yams assailed them.

The caterers continued to replenish the main table and the dessert table.

Sister had braved spoon bread despite the caterer’s warnings. Another large tray, perched on a young man’s shoulder, was being carried through the swinging doors.

The caterer, Ted, glanced up from his labors.“Ah, Mrs. Arnold, we’re down to half the champagne.”

“Good.” She smiled reflexively, then turned to Shaker, who put his hand quietly on her shoulder.

“Well?” he asked.

“Well, I guess I’m going to have to spoil my own party.” She dropped her gaze to the uneven-width heart-pine flooring, then looked up at him. “Here goes.”

When she pushed through the swinging doors people at first didn’t notice. The packed dining room hummed. The living room, too, was overflowing with people. Many of them knew something had happened to Fontaine but no one as yet had guessed the truth.

Raleigh threaded through the people to be by Sister’s right side. Shaker was on her left.

Golly reposed on a bookshelf above all. Rooster, attending with Peter Wheeler, ensconced in a club chair by the fireplace, noticed Sister flinch for a split second.

One by one the parties, hunters, quieted, glasses poised in midair as they turned toward Jane Arnold.

People parted like the Red Sea. Betty moved toward Sister, as did her husband.

“Are you all right?” Betty asked.

“I think so,” Sister answered.

Bobby tapped his wineglass with a spoon. People had begun to stop talking. Now they quieted completely.

Shaker staunchly beside her, Sister nodded to her guests, then took a deep, long breath.

“Friends, this opening hunt was one of the best opening hunts we’ve ever had. May we all remember its glory.” She searched for the right words. “It is my duty … to inform you, with sorrow, that Fontaine Buruss was killed today. Shaker found him at the hog’s back. Fontaine was shot. Weknow nothing more than that. Please cooperate with Ben Sidell in any way you can and please assist Sorrel and the children in any way you can. Thank you.”

A horrified silence enveloped the room. Then a low murmur, like a wind from the west, moved through as it accumulated power.

Hours later the last person, Peter Wheeler, with Rooster, had left. Sister paid the caterer, who cleaned up then left. She’d fed the pets, taken a shower, and called Shaker and Doug to make sure they were doing okay.

When she hung up the phone a longing for Raymond filled her with stale grief. He would know just what to do even in this most improbable of situations. His deep voice would have filled the gathering with authority. He would have handled the sheriff with the correct mixture of assistance and personal power. He would have put his strong arm around her and whispered,“Steady on, girl.”

Ray Junior would be in his thirties now. He would have been much like his father.

Like most women of her class and her generation, Jane had motored through life without fully realizing how much her husband had shielded her from the unsavory aspects of life. She was always grateful for his economic acumen but the emotional buffer Ray provided was not clear to her until he was gone.

Golly snuggled on the pillow beside Sister, who tried to read. Raleigh lay at the foot of the bed.

The phone rang.

“Hello,” a weary Sister answered.

“Mrs. Arnold, it’s Walter Lungrun. I seem to be forever calling you late and I apologize.”

“That’s all right.”

“I hope I will be able to help in some small way. I know the coroner and I will get the report but more importantly, if you’ll take me to the place where you found Fontaine I might be able to, well—help.”

“Thank you, Walter.”

“The earlier the better. Might I meet you at six-thirty in the morning?”

“Of course.”

CHAPTER 37

Uncle Yancy, Grace, and Patsy had been the first foxes to the hog’s back. Yancy waited until Shaker blew in all the hounds. With a split pack he wisely didn’t show his face but as he heard the one hound group swing around, he popped out of the hidden entrance under the big walnut. His nieces followed.

They crept toward the hog’s back, not even stopping to hide themselves as the remainder of the field rode on the farm road.

As a few humans stood on the meadow, the hog’s back between them and the foxes, Yancy remained in the woods. Although Shaker was there, he didn’t trust Dragon, the hound that broke off from Cora and the main pack, taking young entry with him. By then, one o’clock, the scent had risen so that a mounted human could smell it but scent wassafely over hounds’ heads. Still, why take a chance.

The three reds waited. The ambulance roared down the rutted path. Then came the squad car. They strained to catch part of the conversation. It wasn’t until Reynard was hoisted up by the sheriff that they realized their brother, Yancy’s nephew, had been murdered.

Yancy raised his head as St. Just circled the meadow. The crow didn’t see the foxes. But Yancy knew St. Just was in some way responsible for this dolorous occasion.

Finally the humans, hounds, and horses left. The sheriff put Reynard in a plastic bag, placing him in the back of the squad car.

Patsy ran to find Target and Charlene. She was surprised to discover Butch and his family loping over the meadows to help. The outright killing of a fox outraged all foxes.

Throughout the night under the noctilucent clouds, the foxes moved in circles. Inky, down a ravine about a mile and a half from the hog’s back, found a rope—not just any rope but a special rope for bringing down steers at full tilt. The strands, braided, were impregnated with wax.

By the time she returned at sunrise, everyone had gathered again at the jump. The foxes didn’t need to see the sun to know it was up despite low Prussian blue clouds.

“I found a rope in the rock ravine. Hoofprints, too.”

Buster, who had climbed one of the trees to the side of the hog’s-back jump, said,“Did the humans find the marks on the tree? High. High enough to catch Gunpowder.”

“Yes,”Yancy replied.“The sheriff and his people found the marks on the bark, slight but perceptible. They performed the basics but they missed a lot. They missed the hoofprints along the fence line on the woods side.”

“Could have been one of the whips coming in to fetch hounds.” Target, sorrowful at the loss of his handsome son, could still think clearly.

“Yes, but it could have been his murderer, too,” Charlene, eyes filling with tears, added.

“What a pity we were stuck at the walnut tree!” Yancy yipped.“If nothing else, we could have smelled which horse it was or even caught sight of the killer. That split pack cost us dearly.”

“Clever. One doesn’t expect a human to be that clever. Almost foxlike,”Butch murmured.“And you’re sure the last time you saw Reynard was day before yesterday?” he asked Target again.

They’d gone over it again, everything they’d initially said to one another when they gathered at the jump yesterday. Everyone was tired, footsore, and depressed.

The only thing new was the rope.

“I have an idea,” Inky said in a low, respectful voice. Her elders turned to her.“If someone will come with me to the kennel tonight maybe we can talk to some of the hounds and tell them what we’ve found. Next hunt we can agree to go there.”

“Dumb,” was all Grace said.

“You underestimate hounds, Gracie. You’ll pay for that someday,” Yancy corrected her.

“I’ll go with Inky,” Aunt Netty volunteered.“Cora has sense. I can talk to her. I think Archie will listen, too.”

“What if Raleigh’s out?” Comet wondered.

“Raleigh’s main concern is Sister Jane. It’s the damn cat I worry about.” Target grimaced.

“She’s too spoiled and fat to chase us.” Patsy sniffed.

“She’s not too fat to scream at the top of her lungs and get the kennel in an uproar,” Comet said.

Aunt Netty’s tail waved to and fro slightly.“Well, I’m willing to chance it. Reynard must be avenged. Only a coward shoots a fox and only a cad would use the carcass as a drag.”

“Hear, hear,” the others agreed.

“That Raleigh is fast,”Charlene warned,“if he has a mind to chase you.”

“The only animal faster than myself is a cheetah,” Netty boasted.

“Well, I wasn’t thinking of you exactly. I was thinking of Inky. No offense, Inky, but I don’t know how fast you are.”

“Not as fast as Aunt Netty.” She called the red“Aunt,” which was what all the young animals called her.“But I can climb a tree if I have to.”

A low flutter hushed them. Athena glided down, tail used as a brake, to sit on the top railroad tie of the hog’s back.“I’m very sorry,” she said swiveling her head to the reds.“St. Just is behind this. Whoever killed Reynard, he led them straight to him.”

“Leave St. Just to me.” Target crouched low, baring his fangs.

The others agreed that they would.

“When will the hunt meet at this fixture again?” Comet asked. His gray fur, soft as the clouds, lightened a bit.

“Not for another two weeks,” Yancy said.“The only way the hounds can get to the rope is if someone bolts during hound walk.”

“That’s a big risk for them. Ratshot in the rear if they keep going.”Charlene frowned.“What are we to do?”

Patsy and Grace said at the same time,“Bring the rope here.”

“No,” Aunt Netty sharply replied.“The humans need to find the rope where it was dropped or thrown. That will tell them where the human killer was. They must be led to the rope. As it is, by the time we get them there the tracks could be gone, especially if it rains.”

“We need Raleigh.”

“Sister, Shaker, and Doug may not follow Raleigh,” Grace said to Comet, who’d proposed the idea.

“If he goes on hound walk, which he often does, he can help convince the humans. If a hound bolts, even a hound as respected as Cora or Archie, the humans will crack the whip and then finally use ratshot. That’s their job. They’ll think the pack is going to hell. If Raleigh makes a commotion and the hounds honor him, I think the humans will follow. We have to try it, as it’s our only hope.”Yancy listened.“Is it settled then?”

“Yes. We’ll go tonight.”

The foxes and Athena silently melted into the forest about an hour before Sister, Shaker, Walter, and Doug emerged on the other side of the meadow. They reached the jump in a few minutes, peering into the woods as a twig crackled.

They combed the scene. The sheriff and his deputies trained in crime detection were good but they weren’t hunters or country people.

“There are so many hoofprints here.” Walter ran his fingers through his blond hair.

“Let’s divide up. Walter and Shaker head south down the fence line, one on either side. Doug and I will head north. Shaker, give a toot, I will, too.” Sister always carried an extra horn, a lesson learned when Shaker fell hard from his horse years ago, squashing the bell of his horn.

Twenty minutes later Doug, on the forest side of the fence line, found tracks.“Look.”

Sister climbed over the fence, dropped to her hands and knees.“Yes. Could have been a whip coming in. Betty, maybe. These look like number one shoes, smallish feet. Could be Arts.” She mentioned the other popular shoe.

“Not a quarter horse. Not round enough.” Doug, too, was on his knees. “God, Sister, that’s half the horses in the hunt field. There were horses yesterday we’d never seen before.”

“I know. I know.” She stood up, put the horn to her lips, and let out a steady, one-note blast. The hounds heard it, two and a half miles away. They replied, which sounded faint and far away on this cool, overcast morning. “Good hounds.” Sister smiled weakly, for she remained terribly distressed.

Doug leaned against the fence.“You’ve bred them. They can hold their own against any pack.” A touch of pride crept into his light baritone.

Walter and Shaker joined them within seven minutes.

“What took you so long?” Doug asked.

“We were clipping right along.” Shaker hunkered down. “Ah. Number one.”

“Maybe Arts,” Sister said.

“No. Number one.” Shaker stood back up. “If only there’d been a bar shoe or a weighted shoe, a little dog to the inside. Number one. Standard. Well. Let’s follow it.”

“It might not be the killer,” Sister calmly said.

“No. But then again it might.” Shaker put his head down and followed the tracks over the fallen leaves. The pine needles carpeting the earth nearly threw them off, but they picked up the tracks again once out of the pine stand.

They lost them at the flat-rock outcropping and even though they each took a different direction off the flat rocks, they were soon brought up short by a tremendous thunderclap overhead. With no warning the heavens opened. Cascading heavy rain drenched them to the bone.

By the time the four reached the stable they were all shivering. The tack room, toasty, warmed them as Sister made a fresh pot of coffee on the hot plate. She offered clothing—she’d kept shirts and sweatshirts around for just such a purpose—but the men stood by the gas stove. Slowly they began to thaw out and dry out.

“See the body?” Shaker asked.

“Yes. I went down to the morgue.” Walter’s eyebrows furrowed for an instant. “The bruises on his left side were apparent. He’d been hit cleanly in the chest. Right through the heart, I would say. Apart from whatever emotions he felt at the fall I’d guess his death was swift. I suppose that’s a kind of mercy. Can’t jump to conclusions. I’ll have to wait for the coroner’s report. Except whoever shot him was a good shot. Dead-on.” He realized his pun. “Sorry.”

“You know I never liked that son of a bitch, so I can’t pretend I’m sorry.” Shaker opened a small cigar box, offering the men a smoke.

“I’ll take one. I need something soothing.” Sister reached in, grabbing a thin cigar.

Shaker cut the end for her with his round cutter, then held a flame. As she inhaled the end glowed scarlet and gold and he said,“Funniest damn thing, though. I would have bet you dollars to doughnuts that Crawford would be murdered. Not Fontaine.”

“Countenancing murder, are you?” She closed her eyes gratefully as the mild yet complex tastes reached her tongue and throat.

“No. But Crawford stirs up hornets’ nests. Fontaine”—he shrugged—“lightweight.”

“A crazed husband?” Doug offered.

“Hell, no. By the time he got at them the husbands were bored.” Shaker roared with laughter.

“If you say so.” Sister exhaled, knowing what the others did not—that Fontaine had had a fling with Shaker’s wife before she left.

“Business?” Walter asked.

“Worthless,” Shaker resolutely replied.

“Better find out who he owes money to, then.” Doug turned his back toward the stove. His pants stuck to his muscled legs.

“Half the county. I can tell you that.” Sister took off her boots, her wet socks, too.

“I can see it now: ‘Murder among the hunt set.’ ‘Galloping revenge.’ How about ‘Toff goes to ground’?” Shaker smiled slyly and the others couldn’t help it; they smiled, too.

“The papers and TV stations will have a field day. Paper ought to be delivered by now.” Walter sipped the coffee, glad for its warmth. “I expect there will be a lot of questions at the hospital today.”

“Walter, you were kind to come out here this morning.”

“Sister Jane, I will help in any way I can.”

“Smart killer, I’d say. Drawing off the young entry like that. Had to be a real hunting man.” Shaker puffed contentedly.

“He’ll forget something, something so small… . They always do, you know.” Sister half believed what she said. Mostly she hoped it was true.

CHAPTER 38

The morning after Fontaine was killed, while Sister, Shaker, Doug, and Walter investigated the hog’s-back jump, Crawford Howard nicked himself shaving. Normally, this slip would have brought forth a torrent of vituperation: at the razor, at the shaving cream, at the lighting, and lastly at himself.

This morning he kept whistling. Fontaine was truly totally dead. He’d called last night to offer his services to Sheriff Sidell and to make certain that swaggering ass, Fontaine Buruss, really was gone, his temperature at least forty degrees below normal. If only that insufferable oaf weren’t in the cooler, Crawford would have the merriment of watching him go into rigor mortis. Let the funeral director deal with that.

He wondered how to handle Martha. Sensitive, attached to Fontaine, she would be weepy for days, perhaps weeks. She’d sobbed when Sister made the announcement. Crawford put his arm around her, offering solace.

How he kept himself from gloating even he didn’t know. He congratulated himself on his discipline.

Washing the white shaving cream off his face, patting his cheeks dry, he scrutinized himself in the mirror. Thanks to a discreet and gifted plastic surgeon in New York City he looked maybe forty-five, not the fifty-four he was. His hairline had receded a bit but other than that, he looked good. He was getting bored with the mustache and beard. Too artsy. He thought he’d make an appointment at the barber’s to get the beard shaved off. He’d softened a bit but he’d put down his money at the gym, arriving four days a week at seven to work with a personal trainer.

He had envied Fontaine, his luxurious mane of hair and his trim waistline. Fontaine kept in splendid condition, burning the calories in bed no doubt.

Ah, but he was dead now. Dead. Dead. Dead. Crawford had never realized what a solid sound that word had. Deadwood. Dead honest. Deadbeat. Dead. He began to enjoy the word. It wasn’t far from “deed.” Was being dead a deed? Was being dead a state of being, which English seemed to suggest, or was dead no being at all, just a linguistic twist?

Dead.

Well, he wouldn’t be dead for many a year. His doctors told him that.

He’d win his ex-wife back. He didn’t think of her as an ex but merely as a woman he possessed who had slipped out of his pocket. He loved Martha but he possessed her. A man had to own many things in order to be important and a good-looking woman was one of those things. Children, of course, were optional.

She’d want to stay on at the office until Sorrel Buruss decided what to do with the business. Martha was uncommonly loyal. Then he’d steer her toward home again. A pair of diamond spray earrings from Tiffany would help.

The best thing about Fontaine’s untimely demise, untimely for Fontaine, was that now Crawford would be joint-master of the Jefferson Hunt. Sister really had no choice.

He’d been reading about hounds. He’d wait but in good time he’d suggest an infusion of July blood and perhaps some Dumfriesshire, also. After all, he could read a pedigree as well as any other person. Top line, tail line. How simple.

Joint-master. About time, too.

CHAPTER 39

Given the jolt of the day, Cody spent that night at her parents’ home. Bobby spent half the night on one phone line while Betty was on the other.

Cody imagined the county intersected with a series of actual lines and they’d glow when in use. Finally the entire country would be pulsating with talk.

She and Jen sat in the kitchen eating fruit while overhearing Mom and Dad.

“Any ideas?” Cody asked.

“No. He didn’t look bad, did he? Asleep except for the hole in his coat. I’ve never seen a dead person before.” Jennifer took the clinical approach. “I was with the field but I could see he didn’t look slimy.”

“Fresh is better than nonfresh.”

Jennifer sang.“The worms crawl in, the worms crawl out, and I’ll play pinochle on your snout.”

“That’s compassionate.” Her older sister peeled back an orange, tossing the rind at Jennifer.

“He was old.”

“Not as old as Mom and Dad. Early forties, I think.”

“Forty is old.” Jennifer bit into an apple. “I’ll never live to be forty.”

“Bullshit. We’ll live way beyond that. Don’t give me this dying young crap. James Dean. Kurt Cobain. Elvis.”

“Elvis was old.”

“Forty-two. I don’t exactly get Elvis.”

“See. You have to be old to get him. Like Nine Inch Nails. Old.”

“They’re not old.”

“Yeah they are. Another decade. What matters is what’s happening right this minute. The eternal present.”

“Have you been reading self-help books? That doesn’t sound like something you’d say, Jennifer.”

“The therapy sessions are warping my mind.”

“Not enough.” She sighed. “So you have no compassion for Fontaine Buruss?”

“All he wanted was for someone to slob his knob. Yuck.”

Cody laughed and Jennifer laughed, too. Fontaine, driven by sex, gravitated toward a female as she lurched out of puberty. Maybe he didn’t sleep with underage girls and maybe he did—who knew? Or if they did, they weren’t talking—but any sign of sexual maturity captivated him. He was handsome. Women are fools for handsome men.

Betty called from the next room, her small office off the kitchen also called the recipe room, since she kept file after file of recipes.“Keep it down. How will it sound in the background if you two are whooping it up?”

“Yes, Mother,” they both said.

“Who are you calling now?” Cody asked.

“Aunt Olivia.”

“Mom, she lives in Chicago.” Jennifer giggled.

“She grew up with Fontaine. She’ll want to know.”

“Is there anyone you haven’t called? What about the bag boy down at Kroger’s?” Cody teased her.

“You two are taking this shock rather well.” Betty strode out of her office.

“Shit happens.” Jennifer burst out laughing again.

Betty’s hand flew to the space between her breasts. “Jennifer.”

“Mom, it’s not like he was my best friend. And he didn’t look so bad dead.”

She walked across the kitchen floor, her slippers barely making a sound, opened the refrigerator, taking out a soda.

“Better take two. You’ll be thirsty from all that talking,” Cody advised.

“And what do you think of all this?”

“I don’t know.” Cody grew somber. “I got along with him.” This was an understatement but since her family had no idea of her affair, they couldn’t appreciate her approach. “Once you knew what he was, he was easy. That’s how I see it.”

“And that’s how most women saw it.” Betty popped open the can. “But murder?”

“Yeah, well.” Jennifer suddenly darkened.

“Guess he pissed the wrong person off.” Cody tidied up her pile of orange parts.

“What if it wasn’t personal? You’re assuming it is. What if this is some nutcase who is opposed to hunting?”

“In Virginia. Mom.” Jennifer rolled her eyes.

“Pretty farfetched.” Cody supported her sister.

“Well, serial killers are around us. This could be some person’s sick idea of power. Random killings in the country. It happens. No place is ever safe from that kind of sickness now. People kill to kill.”

“Bet he owed somebody money.” Jennifer had a pedestrian worldview so at odds with her heavenly beauty.

“He did owe money.” Betty sat down with her girls. “Cody, you used to see him at the barn. Weren’t you trying out that horse—uh …”

“Keepsake.”

“That’s the one. Ever notice anything off the mark?”

“He didn’t talk business with me. If anyone had good reason to kill Fontaine, apart from someone he owed money to, it would be his wife, don’t you think?”

“She’d never!” Betty’s voice grew loud.

“I didn’t say she did, only that she had more reason than anyone. That is, if your soon-to-strike-again serial killer idea is wrong,” Cody replied.

“I wouldn’t laugh about that. There are serial killers in Virginia. There are too many unsolved murders.” Betty raised her voice. “And that’s the thing, Cody, that’s just the thing. How in the hell did Fontaine get separated from the field to follow a splinter group of the pack? It doesn’t make any sense.”

CHAPTER 40

November resembles a curveball. Just when you think you know where the ball will go over the plate it shifts on you and you’re swinging wind.

The rain morphed into tiny ice bits clicking on windowpanes; cars skidded off roads. Inky and Aunt Netty met at the base of Hangman’s Ridge. They trotted to the kennels, a half-mile distance but seeming much farther in the biting weather.

“No hound will show his face in this. They’re curled up in deep straw.” Netty thought they were spoiled.

When Sister built the main building out of cinder blocks she had dropped fluffy insulation in each row before the next row was laid over it. The result was a structure that hounds couldn’t chew to pieces when bored yet one that stayed cool in summer and warm in winter. Then, too, hounds threw off a lot of body heat, making the sleeping quarters toasty.

“We won’t need to worry about Raleigh and Golly. They’ll be in the big house.”Inky squinted through the sleet.“She takes good care of her pets.”

Aunt Netty said,“Before you were born and the blizzards hit, she put on her snowshoes and fed us.”

“Don’t most masters feed their foxes if the weather is bad?”

“Some do. Some don’t. Some believe that a fox has to survive nature’s tantrums. Others believe a little help now and then is a good thing.” Netty paused. The kennel loomed up ahead.“Might as well go right up to the chain-link fence and bark.” She trotted up.“Yoo-hoo. Cora. Archie.”

No one stirred inside.

“Do you mind if I try?” Inky politely asked.

“Go right ahead.”

“Diana. Diana, it’s Inky.”

They heard a few grumbles back in the bitch section of the kennel and then the magnetic door flap wentwhap as Diana, head down, pushed through. The lovely tricolor, lots of black on her saddle, hurried to the fence. She was surprised to see Aunt Netty.

“Diana, this is Aunt Netty.”

“Golly,” the hound gushed,“I’ve been on your line but I never thought I would see you.”

Aunt Netty, pleased, replied,“I know a trick or two.”

“What are you all doing out on a filthy night like this?”

“Diana, we need your help.” Inky came straight to the point.“Reynard, Netty’s nephew, was shot, then used as a drag to split the pack.”

“That’s how—“ Diana hoped Dragon wouldn’t get into more trouble, since he’d led the split faction.

Netty interrupted, her sharp features ablaze, sleet stinging her face.“We have only one clue.”

“What?”

“A rope left in the ravine to the northeast of the hog’s-back jump. This weather will blot out any hoofprints but the rope should still be there. If we help you, do you think you can get the pack to go there on hound walk?”

“The humans will never stand for it. If we bolt, I mean.”

“I think I have a way.” Netty raised her voice, as the sleet intensified.“Since Raleigh goes on hound walk you must tell him this plan. His cooperation is the key.”

Diana listened gravely as Netty mapped out her idea to be used on the first clear day.

After the sleek red finished, Diana blinked her eyes.“I’ll talk to the others.”

“Thank you.” Inky smiled.

“Diana, has anyone told you you’re much like your grandmother, Destry?” Before Diana could answer“No,” Netty chortled.“Now, that was a hound.”

The foxes melted into the darkness as Diana walked back to the kennel. She was young. Who would listen to her? But she hadn’t put a paw wrong since cubbing began. She decided to whisper to Cora while the others slept. If Cora listened, it meant two things. First, they might get the humans to the rope. Second, she had earned the respect of the pack’s strike hound.

She softly picked her way through the sleeping girls, as Sister called them, to snuggle next to the hard-muscled, lightning-fast Cora.

“Cora,” Diana whispered low.“There’s a rope in the ravine. It might have something to do with Fontaine’s murder. We need to get the humans to it. Aunt Netty has a plan.”

At the sound of Aunt Netty’s name Cora’s eyes opened wide. Diana had her full attention.

CHAPTER 41

Puffs of breath rolled out of Sister’s, Shaker’s, and Doug’s mouths like cartoon balloons. Each carried a knob-end whip with a long eight-plaited thong. A twelve-plaited thong existed but it was so expensive, almost two hundred dollars for twelve feet, that few staff members were fortunate enough to own one. At the end of the thong a brightly colored thin popper dangled.

The popper, if one were to be perfectly perfect, should be the same color as the hunt’s colors. Made in Italy, woven of silk, long poppers could be ordered from Fennell’s Tack Shop in Lexington, Kentucky, for 95 cents. Shorter ones were sold by Horse Country in Warrenton for about $1.25.

In desperation people had been known to use shoelaces for poppers, L.L. Bean duck boot laces proving the most reliable.

The knob-end whips, formed from ash, blackthorn, or even apple wood, were generally used only by staff members for walking hounds. A good knob-end was passed down from generation to generation, as was a good antler-handle formal hunt whip.

The three humans gathered in front of the kennel paid no mind to their knob-ends. Wearing down vests, thermal underwear, and other secrets of keeping warm at sunrise, they discussed who to take and who to leave in the kennel. They were as fooled by the weather, that sudden sharp turndown, as they were stunned by Fontaine’s murder.

Raleigh, called aside by Cora, listened intently.

Golly, lounging in the house kitchen, thought Raleigh loony tunes to roar out on a frosty morning, thanks to last night’s odd weather. She ate whatever crumbs were scattered on the countertops, then paraded into the pantry, where she jumped onto a shelf, throwing down dish towels until she succeeded in making a nest to her specifications in the remaining red-and-white-striped dish towels. Golly was very particular.

“Let’s just take them all, Shaker. They’ve been penned up a full day because of the weather. Doug can take the right; I’ll take the left. If our young group bolts, I think we can get them back. The longer we leave them in the kennel, the rowdier they’ll be.”

“There is that.” He pulled his lad’s cap further down on his head. “I’ve my doubts about this Dragon. Pity he’s so handsome.”

“Took his father two years to mature and settle down. Don’t give up on him yet.” She thought to herself that if he didn’t learn his lessons she would couple him to Archie. Archie did not suffer fools gladly.

“Ready?” Shaker asked Doug.

“Yes.” Doug pulled up his turtleneck.

“Okay, then.” Shaker opened the draw run gate and out they ran, invigorated by the cold and filled with purpose.

“I’ll go up front.”Raleigh danced around.

They walked in good order through the hickory-lined back lane that spilled out onto the low meadows, long grasses mixed with lespedeza, bent over by the frost and last night’s battering. As the sun rose each blade reflected its rays, thousands upon thousands of tiny rainbows.

Athena silently flew along the edge of the meadow, then disappeared into the woods.

She landed in the substantial pin oak by Netty’s den.“They’ve just plowed into the meadow at the bottom of Hangman’s Ridge.”

Netty stuck her head out of her front entrance.“Thank you, Athena. I’ll be on my way.”

“You’re not telling Target, I take it. Wise. Almost owl-like.” A low hoot rumbled from the enormous bird.

“He’s too emotional. And if St. Just shadows us—you never know about St. Just—Target might forget our mission.”

“I’ll rouse Inky.”

“I’ve underestimated grays. She’s very bright.”

Athena blinked that she agreed, then spread her wings, lifting off, moving quietly between the trees, then tilting upward to skim the tops.

As Netty hurried to her rendezvous spot with Inky, the humans and hounds reached the far edge of the ridge. A curious geological formation, with gneiss and quartz underneath, ancient rocks had been folded into an eight-hundred-foot-high ridge, quite flat on the top but blunt on the northern end as though someone had cut the end off with a cake knife. The other three sides tapered down to the plain. The northern face was a sheer drop.

Hunt staff’s intent was to walk around the edges of the large meadow and then go back to the kennel, a distance of around two and a half miles at the most. A brisk beginning to the day for canine and human.

Fontaine’s coop, the replaced boards blacker than the faded boards, separated the woods from this meadow.

For a moment the humans didn’t notice that Aunt Netty and Inky sat on top of the coop.

Raleigh called out,“One, two, three!”

Every hound lifted up his or her head, singing,“Do you ken John Peel.”

Netty warbled,“At the break of day.” Then hopped off the coop.

Sister said,“We’re foxhunters, aren’t we?”

Shaker took off his cap, swinging it once around his head in a circle.“She’s in there. She’s in there.” He gave a little whoop.

The hounds trotted to the coop, each one leaping over. Sister, Shaker, and Doug followed.

Raleigh stayed up with Cora. His blinding speed would be useful if any hound’s discipline began to waver. Raleigh would run the hound down, bump him hard, and stand over him. If that didn’t work, he’d sink white fangs into a juicy hip. He didn’t think it would come to that.

Inky and Netty ran at a steady speed, occasionally glancing over their shoulders. They reached the other side of the woods in fifteen minutes. Cora and Archie were behind them with the humans far in the rear. At the hog’s-back jump leading onto the high meadows, the two vixens swerved left, hugging the fence line. The hounds reached it about three minutes later, moving single file along the fence. Even though most of the leaves had come down in the winds and sleet, the undergrowth hadn’t died off. The humans fought their way through except for Sister, who trotted along the meadow side of the fence line in case her hounds swerved back out.

Instead they swerved deeper into the woods. She climbed over, fanning back to the left. Sister wasn’t as fast on foot as she used to be but her powers of endurance were superb. Shaker stayed as close to his hounds as he could, slipping and sliding on the slick, icy leaves and pine needles. Doug swung out on the right once the hounds cut off the fence line.

They pushed on for another mile, perhaps more. The humans, tired, had slowed to a jog.

Archie yelled out,“Slow down. Slow down. They’re falling behind.”

The pack slowed to a fast walk. Netty and Inky stayed in sight range just ahead.

Dragon bolted but before he passed Cora, Raleigh hit him so hard he rolled over three times. The Doberman seized the young hound’s throat, scaring the crap out of him.

Raleigh let go.“You’ll learn to be a team player or I’ll rip your useless throat out.”

Tail between his legs, Dragon circled around to the back of the pack.

Panting, Sister was brought up short at the ravine, a fold in the land but a deep one. The hounds had stopped at the edge, too. The humans caught up just as Inky and Aunt Netty stopped at the rope.

“Here it is! Good job,” Netty encouraged Cora.“We’ll leave you here.”

“See you in the hunt field,” Cora replied.

Inky looked for Diana, whose tail was up, her nose to the ground, then scampered off in the direction opposite Netty.

As Sister, Shaker, and Doug skidded, slipped, and slid down the ravine, she said,“Never saw anything like that in my life.”

“Me neither.” Shaker lurched forward, grabbing a tree branch or he would have been pitched head over heels.

“You okay?” Doug asked. He moved down the side diagonally.

“Yes.” Shaker prudently decided to descend the way Doug was.

Sister, too, followed suit.

At the bottom of the ravine the hounds patiently waited.

Cora, Archie, and Diana sat around the rope, the other hounds behind them. Raleigh had joined Sister. If she fell, Raleigh thought he could help her up.

Doug reached the spot first.“Here!” He pointed.

Shaker, at last at the bottom, knelt down.“Damn fine rope.” He looked up at his employer and friend. “Thinking what I’m thinking?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Should we leave it here and bring Sidell out?” Doug sensibly asked.

“No. I’ll tell you why. The rain and sleet washed out any prints. We’re lucky this is still here—not dragged off by an animal or dragged off by the killer. Sooner or later he’ll realize he dropped it.”

“I don’t think he dropped it.” Doug, sweating from the long run, unzipped the front of his jacket. “This ravine is a shortcut back toward Soldier Road. Or up to the high meadow, depending on the direction you’re moving. Right?”

“Yeah.” Shaker ran his large hand over his chin. Vexed, he hated not having an answer.

“I think our killer came back through here, tossed the rope, and rejoined the hunt. He had to have hidden the rope somewhere in these woods or somewhere close by, cut out of the hunt, picked it up, tied it to the tree, and then when the deed was done, ridden down through here and tossed it.”

“He’d have to be a pretty good rider.” Shaker held his hand under his jaw as though holding back his words.