The Hounds And The Fury

CHAPTER 19

Hunt days were outlined in bright green on Sister’s month-at-a-glance calendar on the kitchen wall. A smaller version was tacked onto her bathroom wall. Today’s fixture, Little Dalby, owned by the Widemans, interested her. During summer and fall, hunt club members reopened old trails and built jumps. The property, in limbo for years, had suffered neglect. The lawyers in charge of the old Viault estate lived in New York City. They had thought they were protecting the property by throwing off Jefferson Hunt. The reverse had happened, because it was the hunt club that had kept the hundreds of acres cleared, hayed, and tidied up during those last years of Mr. Viault’s life. It was Jefferson Hunt’s thank-you to a family that had been a vibrant part of foxhunting.

Pricker bushes, pokeweed, chickweed, and broomsage choked the once luxurious pastures. Outbuildings listed. A hole had been punched in the roof of the main house during a hurricane. The lovely little church, St. John of the Cross, had suffered comparatively little damage, although a great horned owl was now in residence.

Sister wondered whether the owl had converted to Christianity. She suspected not, given that the owl is sacred to Athena. Then, too, Christians talked too much about lambs and sheep and not enough about owls.

Last night Sister had called Anselma Wideman to make sure Crawford wouldn’t be hunting and to find out whether he had hunted the territory at all. The “all clear” pleased her. She wondered how long it would take Anselma and Harvey to realize this arrangement wouldn’t work.

After she’d checked in with Anselma, she and Gray hung on the phone like teenagers. Since Sam’s accident, he’d stayed home to help his brother. Usually from Friday night through Sunday night Gray spent the weekends at Roughneck Farm. Sister found she missed him. Apart from sharing a bed with him, she missed his picks and pans as he read choice passages from the morning’s paper.

Gray operated under a code of ethics as strict as that for physicians. He couldn’t discuss a client’s affairs, but she could tell from his voice that something was amiss. She figured the tension was because Farmers Trust had thrown a monkey wrench into the process of extending credit. But last night, she could hear in his tone that something was wrong, something more significant than Farmers Trust. Of course, she knew nothing about Garvey’s call to Ben Sidell. Nor did she know that the deputy sent to pick up Iffy couldn’t find her. She had flown the coop.

Gray promised to spend next weekend with her. Sam swore he could fend for himself. He told Gray to go; he was tired of being with a lovesick moose. Sister liked hearing that.

Right now she liked hearing little Diddy opening at St. John of the Cross. After drawing through a still unrehabilitated pasture for twenty minutes, Shaker finally jumped the coop into the woods. Sister noticed hound sterns waving. Diddy marched right up to the heavy front door, the cross on the graceful steeple covered in snow, and she sang out.

Since Diddy was a second-year entry, Diana trotted over to double-check.

“Good!” The beautiful anchor hound seconded Diddy’s excellent work.

With that, the pack put their noses down, inhaled deeply, and opened in joyous chorus.

They threaded through the woods, the low limbs of spruces, bearing the snow’s weight, touching the ground. As hounds moved through they’d brush under the spruces; snow would cascade down in a shower of tiny sparkles.

Sister stayed on the farm road. No point plunging into the woods as long as she could keep near hounds. They were moving west. The folds in the land grew tighter. As she burst out of the woods the sun touched the top of the Blue Ridge Mountains, turning the snow crimson.

Scattered clouds began to glow underneath.

She turned to look behind. Tedi, Edward, Walter, Val, Tootie, Felicity, and Bunny Taliaferro constituted the field. The cold weather and last layer of snow had kept others at home. Then, too, the holiday season had ended, so folks redoubled their efforts at work. There were all those Christmas bills to pay.

The hounds suddenly shut up. Sister stopped on the meadow’s rise, the mild wind stinging in the cold, to behold them casting themselves.

Asa, wise, walked into the wind. Thirty yards later he picked up the scent, faint though it was, for the wind had blown it off the actual fox’s line and the scent dissipated as it lifted.

“Hop on it. Fading fast,” he commanded.

Not one hound would ever question Asa. They collapsed on the line and opened again, pushing ever westward.

Ahead, Sister saw Betty with Outlaw, her favorite mount, a tough little quarter horse, battling snowdrifts like a destroyer in heavy seas. To her left, Sybil was jumping a stout stone fence, some center stones having tumbled down over the years. Sybil kept alongside the hounds but far enough away not to bring their heads up or cause them to question her presence. The whole pack turned as one and cut sharply left, heading southwest now, to disappear into second growth forest.

Sister squeezed Keepsake, her thoroughbred/quarter horse cross, the perfect mount for this terrain and these conditions. He found his spot, soared over the stone fence, and then stretched out as they flew along the deer path in the forest only to burst out onto another meadow, broomsage spiking up through the snow.

They galloped down to a swift-running creek, where hounds threw up, meaning they lost the line, throwing up their heads. Unfortunately, so did Felicity. As hounds cast for the line she dismounted, ran behind a bush, and tossed her breakfast.

She came back, bright as a penny, and hopped up on Parson.

Tootie reached over to feel her forehead. “No fever,” she whispered.

“I ate too many doughnuts on the way over,” Felicity whispered back.

“Me too.” Val put her gloved hand on her stomach, the white string glove contrasting sharply with the black melton coat.

“You going to heave?” Tootie whispered.

“No.” Val shook her head as Bunny turned to glare at them for whispering during a check.

Cora moved further away from the pack, but she could find nothing.

Dasher stared down the steep bank of the creek, then launched himself. Airborne for a moment, he hit the water with a splash, swam with the current, and reached the far bank fifty yards downstream. He clambered out, put his nose to ground and worked back. He passed the pack on the other side and kept working. After five minutes, he had found nothing.

“Come on, Dasher. Good work, boy.” Shaker called the hound back.

The big fellow hurtled off the opposite bank and swam again, the current carrying him downstream. He emerged, shook himself, and trotted back to the others, working in vain.

“Helicopter.” Dasher laughed.

“Yeah.” Trident agreed that the fox must have stepped into a helicopter to be lifted right up.

Nothing remained. Not the tiniest scrap of scent.

“I hate this!” Cora, filled with drive, kept searching.

“Come along.” Shaker called them together. “Good work. I’m proud of you. We’ll hunt back.”

As they turned to hunt on the south side of the fixture, moving in an arc toward the trailers two miles distant, Sister heard a siren.

As the crow flies, they were little more than three miles southwest of Chapel Cross. By road it would take fifteen minutes, but the sound carried.

Sister wondered if one of the DuCharmes had finally met his Maker.

No, but one of the DuCharmes was deeply troubled.

Ben Sidell stepped out of his squad car. Margaret, in shearling coat, came out of the small dependency in which she lived.

“I’m so glad to see you. You made good time.”

“I was going against morning traffic.” He noted the rich seal-brown color of her hair falling over the shoulders of her coat.

“Look at this.” She walked to her Subaru Forester and opened the door.

Ben touched nothing but carefully noted Iffy’s wheelchair on its side, blood spattered over the backrest.