The Hounds And The Fury. The Tell-Tale Horse

5. THE HOUNDS AND THE FURY

CHAPTER 1

Silvered with frost, the geometric patterns on the kennel windowpane displayed Nature’s gift for design. Sister Jane Arnold stared at the tiny, perfect crystals, then turned back to the large old oak desk in the middle of the office. In warmer weather the back door of the office would be open to the center aisle in this, the main kennel. She found it comforting to inhale the odorof her hounds, to hear them breathing as they slept on their raised beds. Today, Boxing Day, December 26, Monday, the mercury clung to twenty-eight degrees Fahrenheit. The office felt warm at sixty-eight degrees, and she gave a small prayer of thanks that she’d found the money to put in a new heat pump and venting for the main building. The hounds, nestled in their straw-filled beds, threw off body heat, so the thermostat in their portion of the building was kept at forty-two degrees. The actual temperature hovered near fifty. The two medical rooms were warmer. Fortunately, no one was in sick bay.

Christmas culminated in such frenzy that Sister wished Joseph and Mary had been sterile. Sister found Boxing Day one of the happiest days of the year. In England, thousands would turn out in the villages and along country roads to witness hundreds of vigorous folk riding to hounds. The ban on foxhunting, voted by Parliament in 2004 and coming into force February 2005, was a sorry work of class hatred. The first Boxing Day after the ban was 2005, and British foxhunters rode out to a man. Local authorities declined to arrest these men and women. Constables knew that foxhunting benefited the livelihoods of their communities. The bizarre aspect of the foxhunting ban was that not even the most fervid Labor Party members pretended they wished to save foxes. It was perfectly fine with them if the farmers shot the beautiful creatures. The whole point of the ban was to punish those suspected of wealth or title from enjoying themselves. The fact that most English foxhunters were middle-class people was lost in this revenge on the wealthy few. As the Labor Party had created seven hundred new criminal offenses under Tony Blair’s leadership, the fact that noncountry people tolerated these infringements on their rights shocked Sister.

She wondered whether Americans, no longer conversant with country life—and worse, feeling superior to it—could become as illiberal as the Laborites. The political push to ban foxhunting in America would start on one of the coasts, but Sister believed it wouldn’t succeed. Americans still retained vestiges of common sense. Better yet, Americans did not hunt to kill the fox. They were content to chase the highly intelligent creature until he finally eluded them—easy enough for the fox.

Sister’s study chair had rollers on it, and in a burst of enthusiasm she propelled herself around the room and spun backwards.

Shaker Crown, the huntsman, opened the front door at this moment.“Someone’s happy.”

“Three hundred and sixty-four days until next Christmas. Thank you, Jesus.” She braked, putting both feet on the ground.

“Amen, Sister.”

They burst out laughing.

“Hounds had a wonderful Christmas. Nothing like warm stew. I remember watching my father cook it up outside. The pot was large enough to hold three missionaries.”

He smiled.“Horses liked their treats, too, as did I. Thank you for my Dehner boots and my bug guard.”

“Do you think they really work?”

“Bug guards?” He paused. “Not now.”

“I deserved that.” She rolled her eyes at his droll remark. They wouldn’t work now because it was winter, hence no insects were flying around outside.

“Sure they work. That curve at the top sends the bugs away from the windshield.”

“Maybe I should get one for my GMC. You know, I’m still getting used to it. Drove the other one 287,000 miles and buried it with honors.” She smiled at him. “I actually considered parking it in front of the kennel and making a huge planter out of it.”

“You cut the bed off the truck and use it for a wagon.” He pretended to think hard. “Could still fill with dirt and spring bulbs.”

“No point wasting something that can be useful. All I had to do was sand the edges so we wouldn’t cut ourselves, put a Reese hitch on it. If nothing else, we can put a big old water tank up there, and I can water my trees on the drive if another drought comes.” She crossed herself as if warding off the evil eye, for droughts caused terrible damage.

“Heard anything?” After crossing himself, Shaker changed the subject.

“Not a peep.”

He sat on the edge of the desk as she rolled back to it, replying,“He’ll be vicious.”

“Marty can’t calm him down?” Shaker named Crawford Howard’s wife.

“Crawford was publicly humiliated. Even the ministrations of his good wife won’t help. His ego is in a gaseous state, ever expanding.” Sister threw up her hands, exasperated.

“He deserved it, loading hounds up like that, then setting them loose during the hunt ball.”

“Of course he did! After you belted him, he knew he couldn’t stand up to you, so unleashing hounds was his revenge. And a damned sorry one. He wasn’t entirely sober, which only made matters worse. He’s lucky I only slapped him.”

“Hard. Everyone in the room heard that crack.” Shaker relished the recollection.

“Too bad I didn’t have a roll of nickels in my palm. Then I’d have broken his jaw. Now, that’s a happy thought, Crawford Howard with his jaw wired shut.”

“Strange we haven’t heard anything. Betty hasn’t, either. I called her.”

“You surprise me.” Sister didn’t expect him to call Betty Franklin, one of her best friends, an honorary whipper-in.

He folded his arms across his chest.“I didn’t get us in this mess, but I made it worse.”

“When a man pulls down your fianc?e’s evening gown, even if he was pushed and tripped, most of us can understand the response.”

“Poor Lorraine. She’s still embarrassed.”

“Honey, any woman with that rack should never be embarrassed. Entire careers have been built on less.”

He smiled.“She’s a beautiful woman.”

“She is. You two are a good pair and a good-looking pair to boot.”

He walked over to the kennel-side door.“Sound asleep.”

“I often envy them. They are loved, have the best of care, and do what they were born to do. Think of the millions of people in this world struggling at jobs that aren’t right for them. They might be flourishing financially, but deep in their hearts, they know this isn’t what they should be doing with their lives—and, oh, Shaker, how fast the time slips away.”

“Got that right.” He returned to the desk. “Hope we can hunt tomorrow.”

“Me, too, but feel the storm coming? Truth is in the bones.”

“Seen the sky in the last hour?”

“No, I’ve been in here rooting through the old stud books.”

“Look.” He opened the front door, and they both stepped out into the biting air.

Gunmetal-gray clouds stacked up behind the Blue Ridge Mountains.

“Moving faster than the Weather Channel predicted.” She noticed the tops of trees swaying slightly. “Going to be a big one. We’d better get all the generators in place, just in case.”

“Already did. Up at your house, too.”

Relief filled her voice.“Thank you.”

“Rather deal with snow than ice.”

“Me, too.”

“Boss, you think Crawford will sue?”

“He doesn’t have much of a case. It would be a hardship on us, of course, but ultimately it would be worse for him. My hunch is he’ll forego that and do something where he can use his wealth as leverage.”

“Like withdraw his support to the club?”

“That’s a given.” She rubbed her shoulders. “It will hurt, too. His largesse covered about 25 percent of our annual budget.”

“He’ll go to Farmington Hunt or Keswick, maybe even Deep Run, and throw money at them. If he can keep his ego in check, he might even get along with most of them. What master doesn’t need money for the club?” Shaker put his arm through hers, and they stepped back into the office. Sister settled back into the warmth of the office, glad the door was closed. “Ego is the key word.”

“Hard on Sam.”

Sam Lorillard of the Lorillards, an African-American family that had been in the country since before the Revolutionary War, possessed both intellectual and athletic brilliance. Unfortunately, a tendency toward alcoholism had also passed from generation to generation among both the white and black Lorillards. Gray, Sam’s older brother and Sister’s boyfriend, had escaped it. Sam had not. He was currently sober after much suffering. Attending Alcoholics Anonymous Meetings helped.

The black Lorillards had taken the name of their owners, common enough in the Old South. Not even the pull of convention or ideology could keep the two sides of this vast family apart. A Lorillard stayed a Lorillard.

Before sobriety, Sam had wreaked so much damage throughout the Virginia horse world that he’d descended to living at the train station downtown. He and the other drunks sucked up Thunderbird, panhandled, took odd day jobs. Eventually, he got clean and, with Gray’s financial help, back on his feet. But no one would hire him. Crawford Howard, however, who was relatively new to the townand the club, did. He had no preconceived notions. Sam was loyal, drunk or sober. Sister knew he’d stick with Crawford even if he cringed at Crawford’s revenge. Shaker knew it, too.

Shaker glanced out the window again.“We’re in for it.”

“In more ways than one.” She pulled on her fleece-lined old bomber jacket and wrapped her red scarf around her neck. “Bring it on. If nothing else, we’ll find out who is the stronger.”

“My money is on you.”

“Funny, I was going to say the same thing about you. We’re in this together.”

“Hey, if there’s a fight, you’re the one I want at my back.” He threw his arm around her shoulders.

Since Sister was six feet tall and Shaker five ten, he reached up slightly. She was strong in her early seventies, smart as the foxes they hunted. He was thirty years younger, quick and muscular. They made a sensational team as master and huntsman, each intuitive concerning the other.

Outside the wind was rising.

“You know, we might get a foot out of this.”

“Plow’s on the old 454.” Shaker mentioned the old Chevy with the mighty engine.

“Sometimes I welcome a storm.”

“Nature’s pruning.”

“Clears the air. Trouble’s easier to deal with if you see it coming. We see this coming.”

Sister was right in that. Trouble that creeps up on little feet is far worse. That was coming, too.

CHAPTER 2

Like white molasses the winter storm moved so slowly that by the afternoon of Wednesday, December 28, the last bands still spit snow over the mountains and valleys of central Virginia. The power stayed flowing, a miracle under these conditions. If the storm didn’t knock down lines, some fool going sixty miles an hour in an SUV usually skidded off the road, taking out a utility pole. The snow, heavy and steady, kept even the owners of sixty-thousand-dollar SUVs at home.

Until midnight, every couple of hours, for two days, Shaker fired up the Chevy 454 to plow the farm roads and the paths to kennels and stables. By morning’s light he was back at it again while Sister fed and checked the hounds and horses. The horses when turned out played in the snow. The hounds in the big kennel yards frolicked as well until worn out, when they snuggled down into their condominiums raised off the ground. The wraparound porches onthese eight-foot-square, four-feet-high buildings glistened with snow. Before winter’s onset, Sister and Shaker had bolted on an addition to the large openings, blocking most of the frigid air. The opening, facing away from the northwest, could accommodate two hounds passing through. Sometimes inearly morning Sister would walk out into the quarter-acre yards to see the steam floating out of the condos from the hounds’ body heat.

She’d started at five-thirty this morning, accompanied by Raleigh, her Doberman, and Rooster, the harrier. Golliwog, the long-haired calico, felt that the deep snow would clump on her luxurious, much-groomed coat. She elected to lounge on the leather sofa in the den as the fire crackled in the simple, beautifully proportioned fireplace.

Sister returned every three hours to toss hardwood logs on that fire, put logs in the kitchen walk-in fireplace, and cram full the wood-burning stove in the cellar. The heating bills stayed down, thanks to the stove and fireplaces. The split hardwood logs came from dead trees on her property or the property of friends. Country neighbors helped one another in this fashion. Someone usually had an excess of fallen timber somewhere.

Sister told Shaker to keep plowing. She’d do the chores. Trudging through deep snow wearied her legs. Even with the paths cleared, in no time there’d be a bit more snow. Double-checking the condos was what told on Sister’s legs, even though hers were strong. At least her feet stayed warm in her Thinsulate-lined high work boots.

Another squall sent tiny flakes down. The big flakes looked pretty, but the tiny ones stuck. Little bits stung her cheeks, touched her eyelashes.

She’d put out kibble for the foxes on the farm in three locations. She figured Inky and Comet, gray foxes, brother and sister, and Georgia, Inky’s grown daughter, were toasty in their straw-lined dens. Each fox had only to go a few yards to the five-gallon bucket with the hole drilled in so they could pull out food. The small hole kept larger marauders from raiding the buckets, although raccoons and possums could fish out the small kernels of food. Once the snows subsided, walking would be easier. She’d move the feed buckets farther from the dens.

Shaker chugged along. He stopped outside the stable as she came out.

“How’s it going?”

“Pretty good. Did you check the Weather Channel lately?”

“Two hours ago when I filled up the fireplaces. Should end about five.”

“Jeez,” he whistled.

“You’ve got your girlfriend in the cottage.” Sister nodded at the smoke barely rising from the chimney before flattening out. “Bet she’s making barley soup.”

He smiled underneath the lumberjack cap pulled low over his auburn curls.“Want some?”

“I’ll be by later. Who could pass up Lorraine’s soup?” She rubbed her hands together. “While I remember, Delia’s looking a little ribby. I fed her separately and threw in some extra vits. Let’s not hunt her until she puts the weight back on.” She paused. “Starting to show her age a little.” Then she sighed. “She’s a good solid hound.”

“Old Piedmont blood.”

“Yep,” she agreed. Delia’s blood went back to a hunt established in 1840 that had used hounds bred for Virginia conditions by the Bywaters family, one of the great names in American foxhunting.

As he rolled up the window, slowly pushing snow again, she whistled for the house dogs, busy trying to catch a mouse in the feed room. The mouse would have none of it.

“Come on, boys. Come on, let’s have a cup of hot tea, and then we’ll come back and bring in the horses. Sun will set around quarter to five. Going to be a bitter night.”

No sooner had she stepped into the kitchen, the oldest part of the house, than the phone rang.

“Sam.” She recognized Sam Lorillard’s voice. “How are you doing over there?”

“Okay.”

“What can I do for you, Sam?”

“Crawford’s still in a rage.”

“Crawford’s not taking this out on you, is he?”

“No, no”—his voice lowered—“he’s really good to me. Marty, too. Politics,” he said, assuming she’d understand he needed to stay out of it, which she did. “The reason I called is before the storm hit, early Monday morning, I drove up to Green Spring Valley Hunt in Maryland to look at a timber horse, a balanced, sixteen-hand, flea-bitten gray. Good mind. Smooth, bold over fences. Crawford was interested, but the horse is too small for him. Crawford’s packing on weight again. This is your kind of horse: bold, kind, beautiful.”

“How much?”

“Twenty thousand.”

“That’s a lot of money.”

“It’s a lot of horse and only six years old. Duck Martin knows the horse. Sheila Brown, too, and I think Ned Halle is friends with the owner.” He named the three masters of Green Spring Valley Hounds, all tremendous riders. Green Spring Valley was one of the great hunts in this or any country.

“Why doesn’t one of them buy it?”

“Full up. You’ve got good horses, too, but you could use another made horse. You could throw a leg over him right now and go. He’s that good.”

“Why is the owner selling?”

“Getting out of the ‘chasing game.’”

“All right, give me the number and I’ll see what’s what. I sure thank you for thinking of me.”

“Sister, you’ve been good to me, and well, I know things are going to be tense for a while. I don’t want to lose my job, but I’ll keep you posted.”

“Everyone knows you need the job, Sam. No one will criticize you for it. And I’ll never reveal my source.” She chuckled.

“This is Virginia.” A note of sarcasm crept into his voice.

“You’re right. Some will criticize you, but they’ll end the sentence with ‘Bless his heart.’”

“Right,” he agreed.

“Sam, what’s the horse’s name?”

“Matador.”

“Bold name.” She liked it.

Sam lowered his voice, even though Sister was sure he was alone.“One other thing, Crawford’s always been on good terms with Jason Woods. Better terms now.”

“Oh.” Sister wondered what Crawford’s real interest was in the good-looking doctor. “Maybe he’s sick.”

“No. But Jason, Crawford, and the Bancrofts are the big-money people in Jefferson Hunt. No secret that Crawford will leave.”

“We all figured that.” Sister actually felt some relief that Crawford would be out of the club.

“I suspect he’ll pull Jason with him. I know the doctor hasn’t been in the club but so long. He’s the kind of member people want. Rich.”

“Yes.” Sister paused. “And often those members will give more as they settle in, really become part of the club.”

“All I know is Crawford is up to something.” He waited a beat. “See you on Matador.”

After the call, Sister checked each of the fires as the water heated. She poured herself a restorative cup of orange pekoe. While the tea warmed her she called the number in Maryland. Once she learned that the top line of the gelding went back to War Admiral and the bottom line traced to Golden Apple, a chestnut mare born in 1945, she made an appointment to have a vet check the horse. There are some people with whom you do business on their word; Sam was one. If he said it was a good horse, it was. Add the“staying” blood, and Matador was probably more than good. She made a note to send Sam a finder’s fee if this worked out. Sam needed all the money he could get. Next she called a vet she knew in Carroll County, Maryland. The sky had darkened; she piled her gear back on and went out to bring inthe horses.

Raleigh and Rooster tagged along.

“You’ll be cold, paws wet, I’ll be warm as toast,” Golly called after them.

“You’re a big hairball the devil coughed up,” Raleigh replied over his shoulder.

Incensed, Golly grabbed Raleigh’s big knotted rawhide chew, but it was too big for her to damage it. She shredded one of Sister’s needlepoint pillows instead. [Êàðòèíêà: img_3]

As Sister and Shaker finished the day’s chores and hurried in for barley soup, Samson “Sonny” Shaeffer, president of Farmers Trust Bank and a dear friend of Sister’s, received a phone call.

“Sonny, it’s Garvey Stokes.”

“How are you doing in this storm?”

“The kids love it,” Garvey replied. “They’ve worn me out.”

“By tomorrow every house in the county will have a snowman.”

“Yeah,” Garvey agreed. “I called to do a little business.”

“Sure. Anything I can help you with now?”

“Well, I’ve got a shot at tying up fifteen tons of aluminum, very high grade at $1,680 per metric ton. The Chinese are snapping up everything. I think by spring the price per metric ton will top out at $2,300. Of course, you never know, but despite the slowdown in demand by the auto makers for aluminum, I still think prices will climb. So I was hoping for a modest expansion to the business line of credit.”

“We should be able to accommodate you.”

“Business has been great, booming,” Garvey added.

“Once we can all get back to our offices, I’ll send over the paperwork.”

“Okay.”

After a few more pleasantries, Sonny hung up. He was glad to have Garvey’s account, Aluminum Manufacturers, Inc. The company made everything from window frames to the small caps on top of broom handles. It was one of the largest employers in the area. For the past five years Garvey had been buying up smaller companies in Virginia as well.

A good businessman, he hired competent people and trusted them to do their job while he concentrated on creating more business, seeking greater opportunities for profit.

Garvey, a foxhunter, rode the way he hired: bold with brio, if occasionally too impulsive. Better to have impulsiveness as a fault than to be too cautious in both business and foxhunting, although sooner or later one would tumble. Garvey trusted he’d get right back up again, and so far his trust had not been misplaced.

CHAPTER 3

The Blue Ridge Mountains stood like cobalt sentinels, reminding those who knew their geology of the time before human time when Africa and part of South America slammed into this continent during the Alleghenian Orogeny, pushing up what then were the tallest mountains in the world. These collisions had occurred between two hundred fifty million and three hundred million years ago, knocking into rock already over one billion years old.

Time’s unchallenged power affected Sister Jane. Each time she beheld the beautiful Blue Ridge Mountains, she paid homage to the forces of nature and to the brevity of human habituation: only nine thousand years by the Blue Ridge. At this exact moment, she was paying homage to the wisdom of the red fox,Vulpes vulpus.

Target, a healthy red in luxurious coat, had traveled too far from his den on After All Farm, the neighboring farm. He graced Sister’s Roughneck Farm. The Bancrofts, Sister’s beloved friends, owned After All. Hounds gaily shot out of the kennels at nine in the morning, skies overcast. Hunting in snow presented interesting tests for a pack of American foxhounds. The glowering skies, perfect for hunting, presaged well, but the snow would release scent only as the mercury climbed up from thirty-two degrees Fahrenheit. Today it stuck at thirty-eight degrees. Little snow melted. In the shade of towering pines and spruces, the mercury shivered below thirty-two degrees. But a fresh line is a fresh line, whether on dirt, sand, soft wet grass, or snow. A fresh line allows hounds to get on terms with their fox, and this morning highlighted both Sister’s and Shaker’s own good hunting sense. The hounds did the rest.

The small field, nine people, trotted behind the thirty-two couple of hounds gaily working what was called the wildflower meadow, a half mile east of the kennels, east of the sunken farm road that wound its way up to Hangman’s Ridge.

The two whippers-in, Betty Franklin and Sybil Bancroft Fawkes, rode at ten o’clock and two o’clock in relation to the pack. Shaker rode at six on the clock dial. They’d already moved through the mown hay field, which had been treated to a good dressing of fertilizer and overseeded before the hard frosts. The snow couldn’t have been better for the hay field.

On level ground the white blanket was piled to a foot. Wind kicked up deep drifts. Other spots had but two or three inches, thanks to the winds. Trouble was, you couldn’t readily tell the depth of the snow just by looking at it. If the temperatures remained low and another front passed through, this packing of snow would become the base for more powder. Weeks might pass before it melted in the deepest folds of ravines. Sometimes the snows in those places wouldn’t melt until April.

Sprays of white powder followed the hounds. Clods of snow popped off the horses’ hooves. The chill air brought color to everyone’s cheeks.

On Thursdays, Sister’s joint-master, Dr. Walter Lungrun, could join them. Tedi and Edward Bancroft, Gray Lorillard, Charlotte Norton, Bunny Taliaferro, Garvey Stokes, Henry Xavier (called “X”), and Dr. Jason Woods filled out the field this Thursday, December 29.

Diana, anchor hound, paused by a low holly bush. She inhaled deeply before moving to a dense bramble patch, which even without leaves was formidable.

A small tuft of deep red fur fluttered on a low tendril replete with nasty thorns. Large pawprints, rounder than a gray fox’s, marked Target’s progress. He’d meandered through in a hunting semicircle coming from the east.

“Target,” Diana called out.

Cora, the strike hound, Asa, Diddy, Dasher, and Dragon hurried over. All hounds put their noses to the bluish snow. Just enougheau de Vulpes, fresh on the surface, kept hounds moving. Their long wonderful noses warmed the air as it passed through.

As hounds, sterns waving, eagerly pushed this line, Sister passed the brambles. Her sharp educated eyes noted the tiny red flag. She observed the fresh prints, fur showing around the pad, preserved in deep snow as perfectly as fossils in stone.

“Close.” She thought to herself, echoing the assessment of her hounds.

Shaker still did not lift the horn to his lips.

“Let the young entry come up to the scent,” he thought to himself as four couple of first-year students joined the pack today, their very first hunt in snow.

Both Shaker and Sister liked hounds to figure things out for themselves, to be problem-solvers, a trait natural to foxhounds in general. It was one thing to call out in heavy coverts, or in ravines to give a toot just to let the hounds and whippers-in know where he was, but in open ground, he liked to be silent, with a word or two of encouragement to a youngster.

Both master and huntsman loathed noisy, showoff staff.

The“A” young entry looked ahead as the pack lengthened their stride.

Shaker smiled down at the gorgeous tricolored hounds and quietly said,“Hike to ’em, young ’uns.”

Picking up their pace, ploughing through the snow, within seconds they filled in the pack. As yet no hound opened, spoke to the line, but all those gifted noses kept down.

Cora, the richness of years and high intelligence to her credit, wanted to make certain the line was growing stronger and fresher before she sang out. She didn’t much like poking around old lines of scent when fresh ones could be found with diligent effort. Being head bitch as well as the strike hound, she occasionally needed to chastise younger hounds who, in their excitement and desire to hunt, opened too early. Sometimes they would babble on the wrong quarry. That would never do.

Dragon, proud, competitive, and desperately wanting to become the strike hound, pushed ahead of Cora and called out,“Come on.”

Cora, livid that the younger dog hound had challenged her authority, bumped him hard, knocking him in the snow. As she passed him she bared her fangs. Even Dragon, arrogant as he was, knew better than to start a fight during hunting and certainly not with Cora.

The pack opened, the young entry lifting their voices. Mostly they knew what they were doing, but sometimes the excitement of it overcame them and they’d“Yip, yip, yip” in a higher pitch than the other hounds.

Target, hearing the hounds, picked up his handsome head and looked around. The wind, light, blew away from him in a swirl. Once out of the shallow bowl he happened to be in at that moment, the wind would revert to a steady breeze from west to east. He realized he hadn’t smelled the hounds because of where he was. The little wind devils didn’t help. Being lighter than the hounds, he could run on snow with a crust on it, but this fresh powder slowed him. Target was not in an enviable situation.

Perched high in a two-hundred-year-old walnut, St. Just, king of the crows, peered down with relish. Perhaps this would be the day when he would watch Target die. He hated this fox with a vengeance, for Target had killed his mate.

Also observing the hunt was Bitsy, the screech owl. Curious and tiny, but big of voice, she was returning to her nest in the rafters of Sister’s barn when she heard the pack. Bitsy, social, liked to visit other barns and other owls. She’d enjoyed a night of feasting on various tidbits at Tedi and Edward Bancroft’s barn with a regular barn owl who lived there. That particular bird also lived for gossip, just like Bitsy.

None of the owls liked St. Just or any of the crows. Crows sometimes mobbed them in daylight. The battle lines were clearly drawn. St. Just and his minions feared Athena, the great horned owl. In fact, any animal with sense kept on the good side of the Queen of the Night. She could hurt you.

She wasn’t in sight, so St. Just, emboldened, began calling for his troops to rouse themselves. Within moments the edge of the nearby woods filled with cackles and calls. Those crows dozing in the walnut tree awakened, their bright eyes focusing on the laboring fox in the snow.

The sky filled with black birds circling the fox.

St. Just dive-bombed the big red, who snapped with his jaws.

Hounds were gaining, and the fox and crows heard Shaker blow one long blast followed by three short ones. Three times this sequence was played, which meant“All on.” All hounds ran on the scent.

To those riding behind, their bodies as warm as the tears on their faces felt cold, the hounds flying together on the blue snows was a sight they would always remember.

Target hoped he’d live to remember.

Bitsy flew wide of the crows to stop and assess the situation from the top of the recently vacated walnut. She flew back, and since she was an owl she could fly slowly, the marvelous construction of her feathers’ baffling silencing her approach.

“They’re a quarter mile behind.”

“Bitsy, help me,” Target pleaded as he ran.“See if the pattypan is open. Used to be an old den there.”

The pattypan, so named for its circular shape, had been a small forge built immediately after the Revolutionary War. After World War I it had fallen into disuse, although burrowing animals found it a wonderful place for a home.

The crows shadowed Target, the braver ones bombing him, slowing his progress. The edge of the woods, now one hundred yards ahead, could be his salvation, but he had to cross open ground—and therein lay the danger.

Cora could now see, dimly, the big red pushing through the snow, his brush straight out. Sister, too, could see him and knew from his brush that he wasn’t fatigued or beaten, but he was in peril. Target’s stride, shorter than the hounds’, was now, though not usually, a problem. He flattened his ears, his heart pumping, and he ran straight as an arrow.

A young male crow swerved right in front of him to slow him, but Target, quick as a cat, lashed out with his front paws and batted the bird down, then crushed its neck in his jaws. He bit into the body, kept the bird in his mouth, and trailed blood for ten yards before dropping the crow.

St. Just waxed apoplectic.“Kill him, Dragon! Kill him, Cora!”

The odor of fresh blood threw off even Cora for a moment. The intoxication of it slowed the pack down just a second or two, but that was enough for the fox to reach the woods.

“The old den is clear; you can get in.” Bitsy noticed the blood on Target’s jaws. “The old deer path is better going. Not as much snow on it.”

The sheltering pines, oaks, hickories, black birches—the whole rich panoply of eastern hardwoods and pines—did keep the snows lighter on the deer path. Target sped along.

As the field rode along the narrow path the thunder of hooves brought down the snow on the boughs and branches. Showers of iridescent spray slid down collars, stuck to eyelashes, and secreted themselves into the tops of boots.

Target spied the thick walls of the redbrick forge ahead. He lunged forward, skidding into an old woodchuck den whose entrance was at the outer wall of the forge. Over the centuries this den had developed into a labyrinthine maze worthy of a tiny minotaur. Safe, he flopped on his side to catch his breath.

Dragon vaulted through a long window four feet off the ground, the glass long ago pulverized. Diddy, Dasher, and Cora followed, Asa last over the windowsill.

“There’s got to be more denholes!”

Cora looked around. The interior was intact.“There are plenty of holes, Dragon, but he’s not going to pop out.”

“We can dig him out,” Diddy, young and excited, squealed.

Shaker blew three long notes, then called,“Come back.”

“Better go,” Asa advised as he also heard the rest of the pack baying, digging at the outside den entrance.

As the five hounds turned to obey their huntsman Cora lifted her head. She trotted over to another window where snow streaked across the floor. A raspberry, congealed lump the size of a tin of chewing tobacco, glistened. She drew close, inhaled deeply.“Human.”

Asa joined her, putting his nose close to the lump.“Indeed it is.”

Calling again, Shaker half-sang the words,“Come along.” He blew “Gone to Ground,” which should have excited them as well as the hounds outside.

“What’s this mean?” Diddy asked, puzzled.

Dragon, having given up on a promising denhole, now stood by Diddy’s side.“Don’t know. Someone could have cut themselves.”

“But there’s no footprints. And no scent.” Diddy, young though she was, already displayed formidable powers of logic, powers necessary to a good foxhound.

“Scent’s long gone by now.” Asa furrowed his brow, wrinkles deepening between his ears.“And the storm blew snow over whatever footprints there might be.”

Diddy inhaled again, her warm long nasal passages helping to release what scent remained.“I’ve never smelled human blood before. Since this is frozen, it must be very strong when it’s fresh.”

“’Tis,” Asa simply replied.

“Sure a big glop.” Dragon, too, was baffled.

“Human blood is never a good sign. Never.” Cora, voice low, turned from the blood against the snow to leap through the window, followed by the others.

Bitsy sat on the spine of the slate roof, almost as good as the day it had been put on in 1792. She’d watched everything, and her amazing little ears had picked up tidbits of the conversation inside the pattypan forge. St. Just then dive-bombed her.

“One of these days, Bitsy, I’ll get you!”

She blinked, ducked, then opened her little wings to scuttle through a window. St. Just flew in after her. She emerged on the other side only to be confronted with the whole angry mob of crows.

Shaker knew Bitsy. When Cora, Dragon, Asa, Dasher, and Diddy had rejoined the pack, he praised his hounds, patting them on the head.

“Bitsy, come down toward me.” Then he called to the little brown owl, badly outnumbered.

The hunt staff, as well as some of the other humans, recognized Bitsy, for her curiosity lured her into their company. She’d watch people disembark from the trailers, she’d sit on the barn weather vane, or she’d hang out in the big tree opposite the kennel door. Every now and then she’d emit the screech for which her type of owl was named. It could freeze one’s blood as sure as that frozen lump in the forge.

Bitsy, not as fast as the crows, kept her head down, which was pretty easy for her, and she flew to the edge of the slate roof closest to Shaker and the den entrance.

Target, inside, heard the commotion. If the pack hadn’t been out there he would have helped his friend. Under the circumstance, his emergence meant instant death.

The crows, wild with rage, ignored the human underneath them. They continued to attack Bitsy.

A huge pair of balled-up talons knocked one crow out of the throng. Then another. The people below, the horses and the hounds, looked up to behold Athena, her huge wingspread out to the full, her talons balled up like baseballs, wreacking havoc among the crows.

St. Just cawed loudly, then sped off, his squadrons with him. Two dazed crows lay in the snow.

Tinsel, a second-year hound, started for one.

“Leave it,” Shaker said quietly.

Tinsel quickly rejoined the pack.

“Never saw anything like that in my life.” Walter was gape-jawed.

“Me neither, but I know enough not to mess with a great horned.” Sister, too, was dazzled at the winged drama. She spoke to Shaker next. “Pick them up. It was a very good day for the young entry.” She smiled down at the pack. “Very good day for the Jefferson hounds.”

As they walked back, Sister motioned for Charlotte Norton to ride up to her.

The attractive young headmistress of Custis Hall, an elite preparatory school for girls, came alongside Aztec, Sister’s sleek young hunter.

“What a beautiful sight, the pack running together over the field.” Charlotte was radiant.

“Do you ever think of what we see? Things most folks never see. They see the tailpipe of the car in front of them.” Sister marveled at the patience of people for sitting in traffic as they shuttled to and from their jobs.

“We are very, very lucky. One of the things I try to impress upon the girls is how we have to work together to preserve farmland and wildlife. They’re receptive, for which I’m grateful.”

“You’re a good example,” Sister complimented her. “Do you ever regret being an administrator instead of faculty?”

“No. I really love being at the helm of our small ship.” Charlotte felt passionate about education, particularly at the secondary level.

Although many of her peers were climbing the ranks at major universities and some had already been named as presidents of smaller colleges, Charlotte felt fulfilled.

“Have you been having a good Christmas vacation?”

“I have. Carter had a few days off from the hospital. We drove up to D.C. to the National Gallery, to the Kennedy Center. I like being reminded of why I married him in the first place. He’s such fun, and I’m always intrigued by his observations. It’s that scientific mind of his.”

“I miss the girls.” Sister mentioned the Custis Hall girls who had earned the privilege of hunting with the Jefferson Hunt. “Tootie and Felicity e-mail me. Val has once.”

Bunny Taliaferro, riding instructor at Custis Hall, rigorously selected the toughest riders for foxhunting. The prettiest on horseback competed in the show ring, since there was high competition among the private academies. But the toughest, some of whom were on the show jumping team, foxhunted.

“They’re so buoyant, so full of life and dreams. They make me feel young again,” Charlotte beamed.

“Me, too, and I have more years on me than you,” Sister laughed. “Funny though, Charlotte, I feel younger than when I was young. I love life and I love my life. Sometimes, I feel light as a feather.”

“You look light as a feather. And you fool people. They think you’re in your fifties.”

“Now, Charlotte, that’s a fib, but I thank you. You never met my mother, but she grew younger as she grew older. Energy and happiness just radiated from her. Dad, too, but he died before Mother. She made it to eighty-six, and if she were alive today, the technology is such that she’d still behere. But I think of her every day, and I’m so glad I had that model. It must be difficult for people who grow up with depressed parents, or drunks or angry people. Makes it harder to find happiness because you haven’t lived with it.”

Walter Lungrun, riding behind them and a colleague of Charlotte’s husband, Carter, was head of Neurosurgery at Jefferson Regional Hospital. Riding with him was Jason Woods, a doctor in the oncology department; both men could hear them because the snow muffled the hoofbeats. “If you can’t be happy foxhunting, you can’t be happy, period.” Walter smiled.

“Hear, hear,” the riders agreed, toes and fingers throbbing with cold.

“Because of us.” Aztec believed riding cured most ills for people.

“Hound work, that thrills ’em,” Asa, the oldest dog hound in the pack, said with conviction.

As they neared the kennels Athena and Bitsy flew toward the barn.

“Mutt and Jeff,” Sister remarked.

Tedi Bancroft, her oldest friend, also in her seventies, laughed.“You know, there are generations that never heard of Mutt and Jeff.”

“Never thought of that—the things we know, silly things I guess, that younger people don’t know. Well, they have their own references.”

“References are one thing; manners are another. The boys still haven’t written their Christmas thank-you notes.” Tedi thought her grandsons lax in this department.

They really weren’t. She had forgotten how long it takes to become “civilized.”

“Tedi, they’re good boys.” Sister believed in the young. Her eyes followed the two owls. “I’ll tell you, girls, let’s stick together like Bitsy and Athena. A friend in need is a friend in deed.”

Up in the cupola, Bitsy, thrilled at her near miss and by what she’d heard inside pattypan forge, breathlessly relayed all to Athena.

“H-m-m,” was all Athena said.

“Let’s go back and see for ourselves.”

“No.”

“Why not?” Bitsy, disappointed that her big friend showed so little interest, chirped.“If someone hurt themselves, a deer hunter, say, it’s over and done with. But what if someone is”—Bitsy relished this—“dead.”

“When the snows melt we’ll know.” Athena found hunting small game or raiding the barns more fascinating, most times, than human encounters.

“Maybe.” Bitsy blinked.“Sometimes they never find them, you know.”

“Bitsy, did it ever occur to you that that might be a good thing?”

“Well, no,” the little owl honestly replied.

“Think about it.” Athena’s gold eyes surveyed all below. Then voice low, she sang,“Hoo, Hoo,” and paused.“Hoo, Hoo, Hoo.”

The small brown screech owl knew her large friend would not appreciate more questions, so she decided she would think about it. In time Bitsy would come to understand Athena’s idea that it might be better, sometimes, if humans didn’t know where the dead slept.

Before Sister could dismount, Dr. Jason Woods rode up to her.“Might I have a word?”

“Of course.”

Handsome, reed-thin, he spoke low.“You know, when I was a resident I whipped-in at Belle Meade.”

Belle Meade, located in Georgia, drew members from as far away as Atlanta as well as country folks closer to Thomson, Georgia.

Sister knew Epp Wilson, the senior master, so she knew Jason told the truth but not all of it, or he hadn’t figured out his real position vis-?-vis Mr. Wilson. Given his ego, the latter was quite possible.

Before Jason had joined Jefferson Hunt two years earlier, she’d done what any master would do. She called the master of his former hunt. Epp gave a forthright assessment, no beating around the bush.

The young doctor rode tolerably well. To his credit, he was fearless and generous to the club with his time and money. To his discredit, he was arrogant and thought he knew more than he really did about foxhunting.

Jason was an outstanding doctor. He went to war daily against cancer, his particular specialty within oncology being lung cancer. He never gave up and encouraged his patients to keep a positive attitude. He had a special talent for tailoring treatments to the individual. He didn’t practice cookie-cutter medicine. He also displayed an additional talent for self-aggrandizement, emboldened by the worship of many of his patients.

At Belle Meade Jason had whipped-in on those occasions when one of the regular whippers-in was indisposed. He confused riding ability with hunting ability. A whipper-in needs both.

“Yes.” Sister had a sinking feeling about where this discussion was heading.

“I’d like to whip-in for you. You could use a man out there.”

She bit her tongue.“I appreciate your enthusiasm. If you’re willing to walk out hounds in the off season, to learn each one, then we can go from there to next season’s cubbing.”

This was not the answer he’d anticipated. “I could learn their names as I go.”

“No. You need to know each single hound. You need to know their personalities, their way of going. How else can you identify them from afar on horseback?”

“Epp didn’t ask me to do that.” His face reddened.

She wanted to reply,“Epp didn’t ask you to do that because you were a last-minute fill-in. He’s a true hound man, and he’d not pick a whipper-in just because he could ride.” Instead, she demurred, “He would have gotten around to it.”

“Am I refused?”

“Delayed,” she smiled.

He had the sense not to lose his temper. He was a highly intelligent man and he recognized that Sister was like the great horned owl: silent and powerful. Don’t openly provoke her.

He rode back to his impressive three-horse slant-load trailer with its small, well-appointed living quarters, something rarely seen in foxhunters’ trailers. This was pulled by a spanking new Chevy Dually, a mighty Duramax 6600 turbo-diesel V-8 under the polished hood. Coupled with an all-new Allison six-speed transmission, the 6.6 liter Duramax put out 360 horsepower and 650 pound-feet of raw torque.

Sister admired the brute of a truck. She gave Jason credit for buying a truck that could do the job. She also gave him credit for managing to buy this model months before it would be on Chevy lots. She hoped when it was made available it wouldn’t be tarred and feathered with the Chevy ads that completely insulted women. They had to be seen to be believed.

Jason had money. He’d no doubt give more to the club if he could claim to be a whipper-in, a coveted position.

Many a master, strapped for cash, gratefully accepted a large contribution, then put the soul out where he or she could do the least harm. The other alternative was to couple the neophyte with the battle-hardened whipper-in for a half season or entire season and pray some of the knowledge would rub off.

Her method was to watch a candidate in the stifling hot days of summer. Were they quiet with hounds? Did they impart confidence with firmness? Were they helpful in the kennels if asked?

It was one thing to be on the edge of the pack, possibly attracting the admiring gaze of the ladies and the envious stare of the gentlemen. It was quite another to clean the kennels in ninety-degree heat with corresponding humidity.

Yes, many wanted to be whippers-in, to swarm about the tailgates once hounds were in the kennels or loaded on the party wagon. That, too, wasn’t entirely proper. Staff shouldn’t mingle until hounds were properly bedded down. If a hound happened to be out, the whipper-in should find him or her. This divided the professional whipper-in from the honorary. The honorary would leave the hunt to go to their jobs whether or not a hound was out.

Jason might actually make an honorary whipper-in. She needed to see if he had hound sense and the even more elusive fox sense or game sense.

Her instincts told her he didn’t have the patience. Nor would he shovel shit.

She thought she had time to work this out, to provide him with something for his ego but steer him away from thinking he could handle her sensitive American foxhounds. Deep down, she also knew that he’d not be able to handle Shaker.

What an interesting dilemma.

CHAPTER 4

The winter solstice on December 21 was the sun’s fulcrum. The seesaw of light slowly moved upward from that date in the northern hemisphere. Sister watched light as she watched flora and fauna. Country people read nature the way city people read books.

The sun dipped behind the Blue Ridge Mountains before five o’clock Thursday evening, but with the cloud cover, the underside of the gray fleece darkened to charcoal. Hounds curled up in the kennels, and foxes wrapped their brushes around their noses down in their burrows.

Target, finally back in his den, pushed around a Day-Glo Frisbee he’d carried home at summer’s end. A baseball cap, an undershirt, and two nice ballpoint pens bore testimony to his desire for material goods. Once he’d taken a class ring, but he later put it outside his den where Sister and Crawford Howard, then on excellent terms, found it.

Before turning in for the night, Sister drove over to Tedi’s, parked her truck, and walked through the snow to Target’s den. She inhaled deeply, smelling the big red secure within. Given his run for the day, she refilled a five-gallon plastic can of kibble, coating it with corn oil. This rested not far from his main entrance.

She knelt down, snow reflecting the fading lavender light.“Target, pay more attention. You’re getting sloppy.”

He barked back at the human he had known all his life,“I know.”

She smiled when she heard his bark, took off her glove, reached into her pocket, and dropped a large milkbone into his den. As she walked back by the covered bridge she passed the grave of Tedi and Edward Bancroft’s eldest daughter, Nola, buried next to Peppermint, Nola’s favorite hunter, a big gray. Snow covered the lovely stone-walled enclosure. The marble grave markers were flat on the land and covered with snow.

Sister paused for a moment. One of the deep bonds she shared with the Bancrofts was that both had lost a child. Unfortunately, Sister had had but one son, whereas the Bancrofts still had Sybil. Sister envied people little in life, but she did envy those with healthy children. Her son, Raymond Jr., had died at fourteen in a tractor accident. He’d be forty-six now.

“You missed a good one today, Nola,” Sister said to the grave marker. “Pepper, you would have loved it, too. We nearly chopped Target, God forbid, and the crows mobbed him across the wildflower meadow. There’s a foot of snow on the ground. Feels like more coming.” She lingered for a moment. A rustle in the bridge told her someone was returning to his winter nest, a brave little wren who had stayed out late. He was scolded by his mate, wrens possessing an infinite variety of scold notes. The spat soon dissipated. She smiled, then added, from Psalm 118:24: “This is the day that the Lord hath made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.”

As she started the truck Sister hoped that Nola’s soul, for all her wild ways when she was alive, had found peace and joy in whatever lay beyond.

The formidable and incredibly snotty Mrs. Amos Arnold, Sister’s mother-in-law, F.F.V. (First Families of Virginia), had insisted that Raymond Jr., who’d died in 1974, and then Sister’s husband, Raymond, who’d died in 1991, be buried at Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, a place where a president rested as well as numerous generals, admirals, senators, and other worthies. Sister, although she preferred having her loved ones near, had not protested. It wasn’t that she feared Lucinda Arnold as much as she pitied her. All the old woman had was her bloodlines and her pilgrimages to her own husband’s grave, then that of her son and grandson. In her mid-nineties, she had let these visitations become an obsession, although she seemed in no hurry to join her three beloved men.

Sister turned east after passing through the simple gates to After All Farm. The roads, even the back roads, were clear. Within seven minutes she had turned down the winding dirt road, snow packed, to the old Lorillard place.

She parked the truck and knocked on the faded red door. She laughed to herself that the color could be named“Tired Blood” in honor of the old vitamin ads promising to pep up your tired blood.

“Come on in,” Sam Lorillard’s voice called out.

She opened the door, welcomed by the fragrance of wood burning in the fireplace.

Sam, emerging from the kitchen, brushed off his hands.“Let me take your coat.”

“You’ve accomplished a lot since my last visit.”

“Thanks. Next task, rewire the whole joint. Then replumb. Little by little, Gray and I are getting it done. I’m glad he gave up his rental and moved in with me. We get along most times.”

“Good,” she remarked. During Sam’s long tenure with alcohol the brothers had barely spoken.

“Coffee?” he asked.

“Tea. If you have any. Something hot would be good. Where is Gray, by the way? He left after hunting this morning with Garvey Stokes. I barely had time to speak to either of them.”

“Running late.”

“Ah.” She sat down, her hand gliding over the porcelain-topped kitchen table like the one from her childhood. She traced the red pinstripe along the edge. “Don’t see these anymore.”

“Too practical.” Sam smiled. “Everything today is made to self-destruct in seven years. Our whole economy runs on obsolescence.”

“Is that what you learned at Harvard?”

“Actually, what I learned was to drink with style and abandon.”

She noted all the cookbooks on top of the shelves.“Sam, if you remove those cookbooks I reckon your roof will cave in.”

“That’s our spring project. Rebuild the whole kitchen. No choice but to rewire, then.” He placed a large, dark green ceramic pot of tea before her, along with a bowl of small brown sugar cubes. Then he sat down and poured her tea into a delicate china cup at least one hundred fifty years old.The pale bone china had pink tea roses adorning its surface. “Greatgrandmother’s.”

“M-m-m, the Lorillards knew good things. White Lorillards, too.”

“They knew enough to buy us,” Sam joked. “And we knew enough to buy ourselves free, too.”

“Ghosts. So many ghosts.” She sipped the bracing tea. “Sam, what is this? It’s remarkable.”

“Yorkshire. A tearoom called Betty’s, which has the best teas I’ve ever tasted—and the cakes aren’t bad either. I love the north of England.”

“I do, too. And Scotland.”

A silence followed, which Sam broke.“Funny, isn’t it? The chickens come home to roost. I’m lucky to have a roost.” He stared into his teacup, then met Sister’s eyes. “You know, you were one of the few people who would talk to me down at the train station. You spoke to me like I was still a human being.”

“Sam, no one asks to be born afflicted, and I consider alcoholism an affliction even if there is an element of choice to it. You threw away your education, your friends, but you’ve come around.”

“Rory, too.” Sam mentioned his friend from his train station days who had cleaned up his act, thanks to Sam, and now worked at Crawford’s alongside Sam. “We finished up early today, which is why I called. Thanks for coming over.”

“Visited Target, so it wasn’t far to visit you.” She smiled.

He brightened.“Heard you had a good one.”

“Did. Target damn near got himself killed. So what’s the buzz, Sam?” She got to the point.

“Let me preface this by saying that Crawford can be a peculiar man. He’s egotistical and vain, and it’s difficult for him to realize other people know more than he does in specific areas. On the plus side he’s generous, actually does learn from his mistakes eventually, and he treats me better than most other people would. He’s a good boss. He comes down to the stable, bursting with ideas from whatever he’s just read, but if I take the time to point out what’s commercially driven in those articles along with what has always worked for me with horses, he listens. He’s like most people who didn’t grow up with horses; he thinks he can read about them and become a rider.”

“Woods are full of those.” Sister shook her head. She, like other masters, had seen it all and heard it all.

The hunt field usually sorted people out in a hurry. No matter how bright they were, no matter how much they could talk about staying over the horse’s center of gravity, either they could stick on the horse or they couldn’t. And sometimes even a fine rider couldn’t stick. Sooner or later even the best would eat a dirt sandwich.

“He’s going to start his own pack. He’s found a pack in the Midwest that’s disbanding, and he’s buying the whole works: the hounds, the hound trailer, even the collars. He’s also called Morton Structures to put up a kennel.”

“In winter?”

“He’s clearing out the old hay shed for temporary kennels.”

“Jesus Christ!” She whistled.

“He’ll hunt his own land, obviously, but he’ll poach your fixtures.” Sam was referring to land hunted by Jefferson Hunt; Sister, as master, lovingly nurtured the relationships with the landowners, people she quite liked. “You know, Sister, most landowners don’t understand the rules of the MFHA. They figure if it’s their land they can have anyone hunt it.” He named the Master of Foxhounds Association of America.

“Well, they can. It is their land. What they really don’t understand is what an outlaw pack can do to the community: tear it up.”

“Overhunts the foxes. Creates accountability problems. If a fence is knocked apart or cattle get out, who did it? And it sure puts hunt clubs at one another’s throats.” Sam felt terrible about this.

“I know,” Sister grimly replied. “But I will bet you dollars to doughnuts, Jefferson Hunt will acquire the lion’s share of the blame precisely because we are accountable. Let a hound pass over someone’s land, especially someone new to the area, and they assume it’s one of ours. You wouldn’t believe the calls I receive, not all of them friendly. Shaker or I dutifully go out, we catch the hound, often a Coonhound or a Walker hound, we explain to the caller that it isn’t our hound but we will try to find the owner. And then we spend hours on the phone doing just that. If we don’t find the owner, we find a home for it because people have strange ideas about hounds. They don’t adopt them from the shelters. It’s sad because hounds are such wonderful animals and so easy to train.”

“Can you imagine what this pack will be like?” Sam raised an eyebrow.

“No. Do you know what kind of foxhounds they are?”

“No.”

“M-m-m, puts you in a bad spot.”

“He asked me to hunt the hounds, and I told him I can’t. I don’t know anything about hunting hounds, and that’s the truth. He’s going to hunt them himself.”

“Sweet Jesus.”

“He’ll need Jesus,” Sam laughed.

“So will I, Sam, so will I. No Jefferson Hunt master since 1887 has had to deal with an outlaw pack.” She paused, then changed the subject, since it made her feel dreadful. “Getting Matador vetted. I’ll let you know.”

They heard the rumble of Gray’s Land Cruiser. Then the door opened. “Hello.”

“Hi back at you,” Sister called out.

Gray walked in. He removed his lad’s cap and hung it on the peg by the back door along with his worn but warm old red plaid Woolrich coat. He kissed Sister on the cheek, his military moustache tickling slightly. “Tea still hot?”

“Yep.”

Gray grabbed a mug from the cabinet and sat down.“Sam, didn’t you offer Sister anything to eat?”

“Uh, no.”

“Worthless.”

“Honey, would you like a tuna fish sandwich, a fried egg sandwich, or a variety of cookies which Sam had stashed in all those tins on the counter unless you ate them all?” He directed his gaze at his younger brother.

“The double chocolate Milanos.”

“Sam,” Gray grumbled. “My favorite.”

“Well, they’re mine, too, and I didn’t have time to stop by Roger’s Corner on the way home. I’ll buy some tomorrow.”

“I can’t tempt you?” Gray asked Sister.

“Not with cookies.” She smiled.

Gray poured honey in his tea and smiled sexily back at her.“Sam tell you the latest?”

“There will be hell to pay before it’s all over,” she responded.

“I expect.” He nodded.

“How’d your day go?”

“After a glorious start hunting, then going to Garvey’s plant, I met with an architect.” He looked at his brother. “I finally broke down and hired one. We can’t do this ourselves, Sam. It’s just too big a job. I spent three hours there. We both need to go back.” He sipped his tea. “Garvey Stokes wants an independent audit of his books. Meant to tell you that straight up. The architect is on my mind. Anyway, I told Garvey I’d be happy to perform the audit. So now I’m semi-retired instead of retired,” he joked. Gray had been a partner in one of the most prestigious accounting firms in Washington, D.C. Two former directors of the IRS graced the firm’s roster.

“Garvey should change the name of his company from Aluminum Manufacturers to Metalworks. He can work with anything: copper, iron, steel, titanium. Can you imagine working with titanium?” Gray added to Sam’s information.

Sister laughed.“I wish he would make a titanium stock pin.”

“Now there’s a thought. Even the steel-tipped ones eventually bend,” Gray agreed.

Sam turned on the stove to heat more water.“Why does Garvey want an independent audit?”

“The usual in these situations; he’s not a detail guy. And he feels something isn’t right. Also, just in case, he wants to be prepared for an IRS audit. We’ll see.” Gray truly liked accounting, but he realized most people found it boring.

“Iffy’s Garvey Stokes’ treasurer. How’s she going to take this?” Sister wondered.

“She’s a glorified bookkeeper, and she wasn’t happy to see me,” Gray said good-naturedly. “I assured her the audit was not a reflection on her skills but good business practices. I didn’t feel right pulling rank on a woman in a wheelchair.” He paused. “But I will if she forces me.”

“Wheelchair?” Sister exclaimed. “I saw her last month and she was walking with a cane.”

“She can get around just fine.” Sam endured Iffy. “She glories in the sympathy.”

“The good Lord didn’t grant Iffy the best personality in the world. It, too, has deteriorated. But hey, we don’t suffer from lung cancer. She’s battling it. Let’s give her a little room to be testy.”

Sam countered his brother’s comment. “Gray, Iphigenia Demetrios was born a bitch. She’ll always be a bitch, lung cancer or not.”

“I expect,” Gray agreed, with resignation.

“The New Year looks like it will start out with a bang. Crawford’s buying an entire pack of hounds, and Jefferson Hunt will pay for his every mistake. The club loses a boatload of money as he closes his wallet. Iffy will not be Miss Sweetness and Light as you go about your business,” Sister said. Then she looked down from Gray to Sam. “And if Crawford thinks you favor me or Jefferson Hunt, he’ll crack down on you. He’s a hard man that way.”

“True. No middle ground with Crawford. You’re either with him or against him.” Sam nodded.

“Those are the problems,” said Gray. “Here are the good things for the New Year. The three of us are healthy. I’m back in the saddle again in all respects.” He laughed an infectious laugh. “And we’ll solve problems together. Who wants an easy life? No glory there.”

“Honey, we’ll be covered in glory.” Sister loved his enthusiasm.

CHAPTER 5

A few lazy snowflakes twirled to earth at nine in the morning, Friday, December 30. Iphigenia Demetrios, at her office before anyone else, heard the front door open and close repeatedly as three officers of Aluminum Manufacturers came to work. Three assistants also arrived. It was a cozy office, in contrast to the large plant with high windows that housed the machinery and workers. To date no women worked in the pit, as Iffy called it.

Hearing Garvey’s cheery voice, she waited a beat, then hit the button on her motorized wheelchair. Before he had time to check his e-mail, Iffy rolled into the sparse office, the whirr of the wheelchair motor noticeable.

“Good morning, Iffy.”

“Morning.” She had a file folder in her lap. “Here.” She came alongside, handing it over.

“What’s that?” He glanced at the folder.

“The invoice from Tiptop Trucking for the copper delivery. I stopped by when I was in Richmond yesterday. Paid the bill while I was there.”

He opened the folder.“Okay,” handing it back.

“Stopped by Farmers Trust main office, but I also popped in Wachovia, BB&T, and Crestar, too. Never hurts to keep the relationships fresh; right?”

He smiled.“Those last-Thursday-of-the-month trips to Richmond probably keep other relationships fresh.”

A warm smile crossed her face.“I wish.”

“You need to get out more.”

“I’m going to the patient support group. Tonight’s our New Year’s celebration. No booze. No outlandish behavior, but we are celebrating Alfred DuCharme’s two-year anniversary. So far he’s cancer free.”

“That is a celebration.” Garvey paused. “Really, there’s no liquor?”

“Some of our people are in chemo.”

“Can’t drive?” Garvey inquired.

“Some can. Funny, too: radiation and chemo affect people so differently. It nauseated me, but my hair didn’t fall out.” She paused. “After our little party I expect a few of us will toast our health.”

“You know Alfred won’t miss the chance to celebrate,” Garvey mentioned, for Alfred was known to like a stiff drink.

“No, he won’t.” She thought a moment. “It’s the uncertainty, Garvey. You think you’ve banished it, then a few days before your check-up, fear creeps in. Getting the all-clear is such a relief. Two years and his cancer hasn’t returned.”

“Yours won’t come back either.”

“I hope not.” She tapped the arm of her wheelchair. “I just had a bad reaction to some of the treatments. I know the strength will come back to my legs. Still, it’s queer.” She brightened, naming another member of her group. “But Macey Sorensen lost all feeling in her left hand after radiation. Came back.”

“See,” he said encouragingly as he leaned his rear against his desk, facing her.

Iffy abruptly switched subjects.“What’s the big idea hiring Gray Lorillard? That’s a slap in the face.”

“We haven’t had an independent audit of the books in ten years. It’s time. It’s good insurance.”

“I keep an eye on all that. We’re in good shape if the IRS ever calls us in. Besides, he’s overpriced.”

He glanced out the window.“You know, it’s coming down harder.”

Iffy kept up with the latest radar pictures.“More snow, a stalled low-pressure system.” She waited a beat. “Cash flow’s good. Course, if you go forward with this, Gray’s fees will suck some of that up.”

“I know.” He then returned to the subject at hand. “He’ll have the use of Angel’s old office.”

Angel had left this earth to become one at the ripe old age of eighty-four. Garvey let her keep working because he knew she would have died ten years earlier had she stopped. Angel loved being Garvey’s right-hand woman. Like many elderly people she’d had some heart problems. Walter Lungrun, her doctor, noted that apart from her irregular heartbeat she was incredibly healthy. Garvey missed her terribly, not only because her fierce wit kept him thinking as well as laughing but because she could sweep her years for dustings of knowledge. Angel had known generations of the quick and the dead. That long memory helped Garvey when she’d tell him an anecdote or character trait concerning the family of a supplier, customer, or employee. He could never replace her.

They’d found her slumped over her desk, a can of cold Mountain Dew next to her notepad. Walter, as her physician, signed her death certificate.

“At least that office will be used. You’ve kept it as a shrine.”

“One of these days I’ll hire a new personal assistant, but I haven’t had the heart to look.”

“It’s been a year, Garvey. She couldn’t live forever.” Iffy had loathed Angel because the older woman often questioned her.

“She gave it a good try,” Garvey replied.

“An auditor is going to take up a lot of my time, and the end of the year is when I have to get everything in order—an entire year’s worth of stuff.” She emphasized “stuff.”

“I appreciate that, but I think it’s good timing otherwise. The year is over. The books are closed, so to speak.”

“I think it would make more sense to bring him in right after April 15. The tax work would be done. He’d have all that in front of him.”

“Iffy, we’re going to do this my way,” Garvey replied firmly but without rancor.

She glowered at him.“I’ll provide Gray with whatever he needs, but don’t expect me to fool with him. Or to humor him.”

“I reckon Gray Lorillard can take care of himself.”

“Certainly seems to be taking care of Sister Jane. Can you believe it. She’s at least ten years older than he is!”

Sister was only five years older than Gray.

“And beautiful. She could wear out two men half her age.”

“Facelift.”

“I don’t know about that, but she’s kept herself in shape.”

“Boobs don’t sag. Probably got those tucked up, too.”

“Iffy, what have you got against Jane Arnold?”

She pulled off her black-framed glasses, the latest fashion.“She’s an imperious bitch. Just look at the way she walks.”

“Ah.” The five-foot eight-inch Garvey finally pushed away from his desk to sit in his leather chair.

“Ah, what?”

He shrugged.“Nothing.”

“You think I’m jealous because I hobble around when I’m not in this wheelchair, and I’m overweight.”

“You’re not that overweight. If it worries you, go to Jason and get him to put you on a program. Go to physical therapy. You’re going to live, Iffy. Think of it this way: you’re one of the few people to endure chemo and radiation and gain weight.”

“Very funny.”

“Jason said you beat it. He’s the best. It hasn’t been easy for you. I’m sorry for that. But you’re getting mean.”

Iffy and Garvey had grown up together, as had many of the people in this part of central Virginia. No reason to mince words.

“Just because I don’t like Sister Jane, you think I’m jealous because she still has a great body and I don’t. I never did.”

“You weren’t fat.”

That did it.“Fuck you!” She wheeled around as he bit his lips. “Dammit,” he whispered under his breath as he listened to her wheelchair roll toward her office. The light flickered on his phone. “Hello.”

“Sonny here. How you doing?”

Garvey smiled at the sound of the banker’s deep voice. “All right. Iffy just blew up at me.”

“How’s she doing?”

“Just told you.”

“Lot on her plate,” Sonny said simply.

“Oh well.” Garvey’s tone lightened. “What’s the point of having friends if you don’t see them through? What’s up?”

“I’m sending over the papers to amend your line of credit. Naturally, I’ll review everything, but then I have to send it down to North Carolina. Gone are the days when I could do business on a handshake. You’d better brighten Iffy’s mood because this falls in her lap.”

“You have our corporate report and our tax information. Of course, we haven’t done this year’s yet, but neither has anyone else.”

“The way it is now—thank the federal government for this—I pretty much need to know what you spend for toilet paper on an annual basis.”

“If I had back all the time I waste on paperwork, regulations, insurance, and workers’ comp red tape, I’d double my profit, I swear.” He sighed.

“Brother, be glad you aren’t a banker,” Sonny simply replied. “I used to love this business. Last night I told Liz I’m retiring at sixty-five. Gone.”

“You’ve got a few years left.”

“Not many,” Sonny replied. “Oh, before I forget, Custis Hall has begun the search for a new director of alumnae relations and a new head of the theater department. Let Charlotte Norton know if anyone comes to mind.”

“I will. Be a nice place to work. If nothing else, think of the vacations.”

“Another reason to retire. Liz and I can travel.”

They chatted for a few more minutes. Once finished, Garvey walked down to Iffy’s office.

Hunched behind her oversized computer screen, Iffy, gold earrings dangling, peered up at him.“Now what?”

“Paperwork from Farmers Trust will be walked over this morning.”

“What are you trying to do? Bury me in paperwork?”

“It is all coming down at once, I know.” He slid his right hand into his pocket. “If I don’t buy aluminum now at this price, I’ll pay through the nose by spring. Between the Chinese and Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath, I’m lucky to get this price. Everyone needs aluminum.”

“I’ll get right on it.” Her tone was conciliatory, but she didn’t apologize for her earlier surliness. “If for some reason this isn’t feasible—I mean that in terms of the interest rates, of course—we’ll get more credit, but it might make sense to float a short-term loan for the purposes of buying the aluminum. I’ll call around and check the interest rates. Could have asked yesterday when I was down in Richmond.” She mumbled, as if to herself. “No point paying more interest than needs be.”

“Good idea, but bear in mind we want to keep our relationship with Farmers Trust strong.”

She turned her wheelchair away from the screen.“Money talks. Bullshit walks.”

“Right.” He left the office, but they did smile at each other.

That evening, the snow, having fallen steadily all day, although not heavy, accumulated six more inches. The sun set just before five. The long twilight, enlivened by flakes turning from white to pink to blue, finally surrendered to darkness.

Raleigh and Rooster slept in their large fleece-lined dog beds in the kitchen while Sister fiddled with garden plans spread over the table, knowing that the best time to plan a garden is in the dead of winter. Colored pencils filled a white ceramic jam jar.

Humming to herself, she drew a purple line around a corner bed.“More iris. Masses of iris.”

Golly, on the table holding down the papers, flicked her fluffy tail.“Catnip. Don’t forget to plant catnip.”

The phone rang. Sister rose to lift the receiver off the wall phone.“Hello.”

“Sister, it’s Tootie.” None of Anne Harris’s fellow students at Custis Hall called her anything but Tootie, nor did anyone else.

“How good to hear your voice.”

“I wanted to hear yours.” Her young voice betrayed her loneliness.

Sister heard the emotion.“The hounds will be glad to see you. Mrs. Norton and Bunny hunted yesterday. Great day, really. You would have loved it.”

“We’ll be back on Wednesday the fourth, so if Bunny says it’s okay, I can hunt Thursday. I miss it. Hope Val and Felicity can come, too.” She named her two best school friends.

“I’ll cross my fingers,” Sister replied.

Tootie said,“Wonder when we’ll find out which colleges accepted us? Dad really wants me to go to Princeton.”

“It’s a great institution.”

A long pause followed.“I know.”

“Tootie, you have a little time to sort this out. I know you aren’t too enthused about Princeton even though you applied. It will all work out, one way or t’other.” She used the old pronunciation “t’other.” She added, “And you can always talk to me.”

“And Iota.” Tootie mentioned her horse, already feeling better.

“Iota knows more than all of us.”

Sister hung up and returned to her rough drawings. Golly, paw on colored pencils, was now sprawled over them. Judging from the teethmarks, Sister surmised the calico favored something yellow.

The phone rang again. It was Anselma Wideman, who with her husband a year ago had bought Little Dalby, a lovely old place of two thousand acres. The middle-aged couple dedicated themselves to refurbishing the house, restoring the outbuildings.

Once owned by the Viault family, it had been one of the main fixtures used by the Jefferson Hunt. When the last Viault died, the place, sliding downhill anyway, picked up speed, so the Widemans’ efforts were welcomed by hunters as well as by those who valued architecture and history.

“Sister, Harvey and I agreed to allow Crawford to hunt Little Dalby. He said he wouldn’t be here when you are, and Marty has been so good to us, I didn’t see how we could refuse.”

Marty Howard, Crawford’s wife, had designed and helped renovate the house gardens at Little Dalby. She and Anselma had become friends in the process.

“I understand, and I’m sure Crawford and I can work out some accommodation.” Sister hung up and cursed, “Goddammit, it’s already started.”

CHAPTER 6

Central Virginia Medical Center, although not part of Jefferson Regional Hospital, sat two blocks away from that highly respected institution. Many of the doctors at JRH, as they referred to it, rented space in the two-year-old complex.

A lovely black band of bricks in a diamond pattern halfway up the four-story structure broke up the red brickwork. The large double-paned windows allowed much natural light into the rooms.

What was distinctive about the offices was their layout. The developer, Melvin Sweigart, knew physicians liked to group together by specialty, if possible. He figured it was the same principle as car dealers setting up shop next to one another.

Melvin had created internal squares, small quads. The offices surrounded the quads, and hallways connected the various quads.

Garvey Stokes had made special stainless steel sinks and tables for the center, as some procedures could be performed in the office. This saved a patient money.

The cardiac quads were on the first floor. The cancer quads were on the second. The third floor was dedicated to sports medicine. The top floor, flooded with light from gorgeous pyramidal skylights, housed the plastic surgeons.

A further advantage of this arrangement was it allowed the doctors in the various specialties to pool their resources if they wished.

Walter Lungrun and his associates bought the highest-tech heart monitors available, just as Jason Woods and his associates purchased an x-ray machine for forty-two thousand dollars.

The sports medicine group on the third floor went so far as to buy a magnetic resonance imaging machine for eight hundred thousand dollars. The other physicians rented time on it.

While the hospital provided this equipment, too, the doctors at Central Virginia realized nine out of ten people never want to set foot in a hospital. The antiseptic odor alone upset people, and the impersonality of it added to the psychological discomfort.

The more procedures that could be performed in this pleasant environment, the better from the patient’s point of view.

Business exploded. Walter had just hired another nurse, and Jason had to hire another head nurse and another secretary. Even with those expenses and the exorbitant insurance the doctors were forced to carry, they made money.

So successful was the design for Central Virginia Regional Center that Melvin Sweigart was buying up old houses downtown to build another. Crawford Howard was a partner in this enterprise. He was considering buying out the company that disposed of waste—biological hazards, as they were now coined—since he thought he could do this more profitably than Sanifirm.

While the snow continued to fall, the survivors’ party hit high gear at seven in Jason’s quad.

Birdie Goodall, a pert thirty-two, office manager for this quad, ladled out the nonalcoholic punch.

Iffy held out her glass cup.“Did you put ginger ale in for sparkle?”

“I did.”

Alfred DuCharme tiptoed behind Iffy, reached around, and, holding a paper bag with a bottle inside, poured in a touch of something stronger.“Here’s your sparkle, girl.”

Birdie winked at Alfred.“Works for me.”

He reached over and poured some into her own cup.“Say goodbye to your troubles.” Then he held up his glass to the twenty partyers, all of whom had their hair again, “Here’s to a New Year!”

“Happy New Year,” they agreed.

Another raised his glass cup again.“And here’s to Mr. Jason, without whom we wouldn’t be here.”

A clamorous cry filled the quad.

Jason demurred, then lifted his own glass.“You have fought the good fight. It was a team effort.”

The patients all knew one another, if not before treatment, because of treatment. They were all in it together. Jason made a point of speaking to each person, wishing each one health and happiness.

Birdie called out at one point,“Hey, don’t forget your insurance forms if you haven’t turned them in! I promise no more business.”

This brief interruption was followed by more partying. Iffy, using a cane, wearied of standing and sat behind the table of treats, so she enjoyed many conversations. Her demeanor, so different from that at work, was relaxed and warm. Among the other soldiers, as they thought of themselves, she flourished.

Birdie glanced out the window at eight-thirty.“Still coming down.”

Alfred also noticed the heavier snows as he walked over to Iffy.“Would you like me to drive you home? I’m going to leave.”

“No, thanks. I don’t have as far to go as you do, and the plows have been pretty good.”

“That they have. Now if only they’d plow the roads on the farm.” He smiled. “Well, Old Bessie will get me through.” He named his rusty four-wheel-drive truck.

“By the way, Al, whatever you put in my punch makes me feel warm all over.”

He patted the flat bottle, still in brown paper, in his inside jacket pocket.“And here I thought it was me.”

“You, too.” She smiled.

He leaned down conspiratorially, kissing her on the cheek.“To health and wealth.”

The small gathering broke up at nine. Birdie handed Jason three insurance forms.

“Paperwork.” He sighed.

“Well, if you’d asked Alfred for his bottle you’d fly through it.” She smiled.

“I would. Of course, whatever I wrote would be illegible.”

“I’ll see you next year.”

“Next year, Birdie. And may it be a good one.”

Fifteen minutes later, Walter knocked on Jason’s open door.

“You missed the party,” said Jason.

Walter smiled.“Special group. They didn’t need an intruder. Hey, do you have a Tom Thumb Pelham I can borrow?” Walter mentioned a type of bit.

“Rocketman?” Jason smiled, for Walter’s young horse could be strong.

Clemson, the older hunter who had given Walter confidence when he started foxhunting, went in a simple snaffle. The Clemsons of this world were worth their weight in gold.

“Thought I’d try it before buying one.”

“I’ll bring it by.”

Walter stared down at the papers on Jason’s desk. “Me, too. I’m determined to get the damn paperwork done so I can really enjoy New Year’s. I love the bowl games.”

“Even with Birdie, I can’t keep up with this shit.” Jason disgustedly pushed the papers away.

“Insurance.”

“Biggest scam in America.” Jason’s dark eyebrows knitted together.

Walter folded his arms across his massive chest.“Remember when we thought forty thousand a year in insurance was a ripoff?”

Jason rose from his chair.“What I don’t understand is why we put up with it.”

“Two reasons.” Walter obviously had thought about this. “Doctors are scientists, right? We aren’t by nature businessmen. We don’t have a lot of free time. Our work can be emotionally exhausting.”

“Right. That’s more than two reasons.” Jason smiled at him, one eyebrow now quizzically raised.

“One. Let me go back to the fact that we are scientists. That means we aren’t accustomed to banding together for political purposes.”

“We have the AMA,” said Jason, referring to the American Medical Association.

“And what have they done about these crushing insurance burdens?” Walter uncrossed his arms. “In my darker moments I think the AMA is in collusion with the insurance companies.”

“No.” Jason shook his head. “The AMA isn’t corrupt. Ineffective sometimes.”

“I don’t know.” Walter walked to the window, which looked out over the back of the building.

“One thing, we lose hospital privileges if we don’t carry the insurance.”

“Yep.”

“Look on the bright side, Walter. We could be OB/GYNs.”

Walter sighed but nodded in agreement, for gynecologists and obstetricians were bent double by their insurance load.

“Donny Sweigart, in the snow, picking up the trash.” Walter looked sideways at Jason, who now stood next to him. “Ever notice that Sweigarts are either really smart or…really not?”

“We know where Donny falls. Funny how after his father died in that warehouse fire he demanded that no one call him Junior.”

“Was.” Walter watched as the younger man, of medium build and wearing heavy coveralls, lifted tightly tied plastic bags into the large truck.

“He’s a good truck driver.”

“Think Crawford will buy Sanifirm?”

“I don’t know, but if he does I bet Donny still has a job.”

“Not if he keeps poaching, he won’t.”

“Deer?” Jason wasn’t a deer hunter.

“Donny will sneak on your property and pretty much shoot whatever he can, although deer are his preferred target. He’ll do it out of season, too.”

“He doesn’t shoot foxes, does he?” Jason sounded scandalized.

“Sister put a stop to that.”

“I’ll bet she did.” The corner of Jason’s lips curled upward in a half smile.

“She’s too much of a fox herself to crack on him. She pays him off.”

“No kidding?”

“Out of her own pocket. No hunt club funds are touched. She asks him to tell her where the dens are, so he’s a consultant.”

“But she knows where they are.”

“Like I said, Jason. She’s part fox.” What Walter wanted to add, but didn’t, was “Never underestimate the old girl. Never.”

CHAPTER 7

December 31 is St. Sylvester’s Day, commemorating a pope who died in 335 AD. He tolerated all religions and is credited with building many churches, including the first St. Peter’s in Rome.

St. Sylvester probably would have stayed inside this Saturday, for the snow lay deep on top of the foot-deep base. Occasional squalls still cast down flurries. Snow plows worked through the night, so the roads were reasonably decent if one drove prudently.

As it was the New Year’s Hunt, the last of the four foxhunting High Holy Days, forty-two people braved the weather to gather at Beveridge Hundred, a Jefferson Hunt fixture since 1887, the founding year of the club. Beveridge Hundred remained in the Cullhain family. The current crop of Cullhains struggled on. Their money had disappeared in 1865 along with some of their men, dying agonizing deaths in America’s worst war. The survivors had pulled themselves back up, only to fall destitute again during the Great Depression. In deference to their pinched financial position, club members brought dishes for the traditional hunt breakfast. Walter supplied the drinks, which eased the burden on this most genial collection of relatives.

Hounds got up one fox for a short burst and then another, but the deep snows kept foxes close to their dens. By noon, everyone had filled the old mansion, whose outside and inside were badly in need of paint. A few spots, plaster off, revealed laths stuffed with horsehair. The piano in the parlor was put to good use. Jason Woods, a clear tenor, paired with Walter’s baritone. Soon everyone sang with them.

Hounds were already back in the kennels by the time the humans reached the desserts.

Hunt staff’s first responsibility was the hounds or staff horses, depending on their position. Rarely did Shaker attend a breakfast, although he might be able to get to a tailgate once the hounds were in the party wagon, the small horse trailer outfitted to carry them. A quick sandwich or muffin before he pulled out, accompanied by hot coffee, kept him going until he could really replenish his body. Huntsmen burn calories the way prairie fire burns grass.

Betty Franklin and Sybil Bancroft Fawkes, although honorary whippers-in, not paid staff, still performed all staff functions. They too didn’t attend the breakfasts until hounds were in the party wagon or in the kennel, horses cooled out, blankets thrown over them.

Later, back in the barn, Betty Franklin and Sister cleaned tack in the heated tackroom. Shaker, with Sybil’s help and that of her two sons of grade-school age, had fed all the hounds and even rubbed soothing bag balm on their pads. No one’s pads had been cut up, as there wasn’t much ice, but Shaker figured an ounce of prevention was worth a pound of cure. The two boys felt important to help with a big job. Sybil appreciated Shaker’s thoughtfulness. Her marriage, a disaster, had left her a single mother. She liked her sons to be around real men, and Shaker was about as real as it got.

Sari, Lorraine Rasmussen’s daughter, and Jennifer, Betty’s daughter, were home from Colby College on Christmas vacation. They washed down the staff horses and asked to clean tack, but Sister sent them on their way. She knew both girls wanted to primp for a big New Year’s Eve party, although first they had to attend Betty’s party.

As Betty finished washing the bits, hanging Shaker’s bridle on a tack hook high over a bucket, she asked, “When does Gray start at Aluminum Manufacturers?”

“Tuesday. Thought Garvey might be with us today, but maybe the roads aren’t as good out his way.” Sister paused. “Iffy won’t take kindly to what she considers a footprint in her garden.”

“Iffy’s been a pill since birth.”

Sister laughed so hard she startled Raleigh and Rooster, who barked.“Oh, shut up. It’s just me. Go back to sleep. Betty, savage but true.”

“She isn’t that bad looking. A bit of a dumpling, but pretty enough. She’s so sour no man would have her.”

“No woman either.” Sister laughed.

“Who do you think is pickier? Men or women?”

“Men.”

“See, I think it’s women.” Betty answered her own question.

“Maybe men and women are picky about different things. Men get very distracted by looks. Women get distracted by promises. And both get what they deserve.”

“Ain’t that the truth. You’d better go into marriage with your eyes wide open.”

“Betty, you no more did that than I did. When you’re young you can’t possibly know the changes the years bring. Love is blind, for which I suppose we should give some thanks, or there’d be no next generation.”

“Ha!” Betty wrung out a soft rag before rubbing it on saddle soap, her first step in cleaning the leather.

“Ha, what? I know that tone of voice.”

“Sex. Nothing can keep the human animal from sex. No laws, no religion, not even the threat of death. In the old days it was syphilis. Now it’s AIDS. We’re fools breeding fools, and we always were.”

“I did my share,” grinned Sister, alluding to her very rich past. “You did all right.” Betty wiped down the leather after the saddle soap. “Back to Iffy. I heard she was seeing a lot of Alfred DuCharme. Hard to believe.”

“Lord.” Sister raised her eyebrows. “Hadn’t heard that. Let’s keep on the good side of Alfred. He allows us to hunt Paradise. Took awhile to bring Binky around to it, so we need Alfred to be especially happy with us. Iffy, on a whim, could toss a monkey wrench into the works. Especially if she gets mad at Gray. She’ll take it out on the club.”

Binky, Alfred’s older brother, had stolen Alfred’s girlfriend, Milly Archer, a west end Richmond girl, back in 1975. Alfred had never forgiven Binky.

Regardless of Binky’s entreaties, Alfred refused to attend the marriage. He wouldn’t even wave to his brother or his sister-in-law if he passed them on the road.

When their father, Brenden, had died he’d kept the land intact. He thought this would force them to cooperate, and thus reconcile, without him alive to be a go-between. He figured wrong.

Instead, Binky and Milly’s daughter, the bright and spunky Margaret, soon found herself filling in for her departed grandfather and mediating between her father and her uncle.

Embittered though he remained toward Binky and Milly, Alfred worshipped his niece, a sports physician at Jefferson Regional Hospital.

The brothers lived in separate dependencies, small houses, near the ruins of the main house. The one time they had been seen together willingly was at Margaret’s graduation.

“Yep. Funny how people shoot themselves in the foot. Think of the happiness Alfred has missed. He doesn’t stick with a woman long. Maybe that’s why he’s going out with Iffy. He thinks she’ll be dead soon, so he won’t have to dump her. Or vice versa.” Betty giggled, finished cleaning Shaker’s bridle. “You stripped your bridle. I didn’t strip Shaker’s. I washed it, then used saddle soap.”

Stripping took more time as one used something like castile soap to wash it, then rub it even cleaner. After this, one hangs it up and reapplies a light leather oil with a clean cloth. Then one uses the heat of one’s fingers to rub it again, lastly wiping all down once more with a clean dry cloth.

“I know. I’m being superstitious, so I went the whole nine yards.”

“Any other superstitions besides cleaning way too thoroughly?”

“I count the spoons in the house.”

“What?”

“I count the spoons in the house.”

“Why?” Betty looked at her.

“I don’t know. My mother did it and her mother did it every New Year’s Eve. I know it’s stupid—but hey, you asked me and I told you. What do you do?”

“Make resolutions. The usual. I will lose weight.”

“You don’t need to lose any more weight, Betty.”

“I’m so used to making that as a New Year’s resolution, I can’t stop.”

“See, that’s why I have to count the spoons. I’ve always done it.”

Another forty-five minutes passed between the two close friends, who could open their hearts to each other as well as talk about substantive issues sprinkled with the paprika of gossip.

The phone rang in the tack room.

“Hello. Hi, Walter.”

“Jason Woods cornered me at breakfast after you left. He said you didn’t think he knew how to whip-in.”

“That’s not what I said.”

“I know. You’d be more diplomatic. He’s taking this as”—a note of humor filled Walter Lungrun’s voice—“a slur on his manliness.”

“Jesus Christ, spare me a man who isn’t one.”

“He’s okay, Sister. He’s just one of those people who needs attention, adoration. He’s very good at what he does.”

“So are a lot of other people. If you aren’t at the top 20 percent, you slide into mediocrity, I reckon. But that’s not the point. The point is, what do we do with this twit?” She went on to explain her entire conversation with Jason concerning how Jefferson Hunt develops whippers-in. “And I apologize. I should have told you, but I thought he’d be smart enough to let it go. Or if not, then show up this summer to start walking puppies.”

Betty listened, attention rapt.

“If he would do that, would you and Shaker work with him?”

“Of course, if he has aptitude. Look, I know he can ride. He has that beautiful chestnut gelding, Kilowatt. That’s not the issue. It’s the rest of it. I have yet to see him evidence any interest in even one hound, much less the pack, and he wants to whip-in?”

Walter, putting his feet on the hassock in his den, replied in a relaxed voice.“But if he does the real work, the hard work in the off-season, will you and Shaker work with him?”

“Yes.”

“Do you mind if I call him and discuss this? I’ll relay our conversation.”

“No. I’m grateful. Gets me off the hook.”

“Not if he shows up in April.” Walter grunted when his Welsh terrier launched into his lap.

“Means early morning four-thirty or five o’clock wake-ups. We try to knock out the walks, the individual puppy walk, too, before ten in the morning. Once we cruise out of spring into summer, you know how fast that heat comes up. Stifling.”

“Sticky hot.” He thought for a moment. “The bait Jason dangled in front of me, so you know, is he will contribute ten thousand dollars annually to the Club.”

She interrupted, something she rarely did.“Oh, if that’s not a bribe!”

“Sister, with all due respect, Jason possesses considerable resources.”

“Okay, Walter, you’re managing me, but I get it.”

He laughed.“I am. Bluntly put: Better to have Jason in the tent pissing out than outside the tent pissing in.”

She exhaled through her nostrils.“You’re right, but I’ll be goddamned if I’m going to start creating whippers-in of people who write big checks. I just won’t.”

“Well, let’s see how it plays.”

After hanging up, Sister relayed Walter’s half of the conversation to her curious friend.

“Who knows? He might turn out all right.” Betty clearly supported Walter in this. “Since you, Shaker, Sybil, and myself might be working with Dr. Woods, let’s list his good qualities.”

A brief silence was followed by Sister saying,“Brilliant intellectually. Driven. Rich, although some of that wealth has to be inherited. We’ve never met his people, you know. He rarely mentions them except that they live in Newport Beach, California. Let’s see. Well, he’s handsome.”

“Succumbs to flattery, especially from women,” Betty added.

The two women looked at each other and laughed.“What man doesn’t?”

“I’m on empty.”

“By the time you know whether he really can make a whipper-in, you’ll have figured out how to handle him,” Betty said.

“Or he’ll have figured out how to handle me.”

“That’s easy.” Betty tossed her sponge in the bucket. “Do what you say.”

CHAPTER 8

The glow of candlelight and the free flow of champagne improved everyone’s complexions.

Betty and Bobby Franklin’s modest, pretty clapboard house sat on forty acres. Bobby had wanted to name this patch of land Mortgage Manor, but Betty prevailed, and the name remained Tricorn Farm, for once a hatter had lived here who made tricorns in the eighteenth century.

The hunt membership plus flotsam and jetsam from town and country jammed into the traditionally decorated house. A time traveler from colonial Williamsburg would have felt at home. Jennifer and Sari, after dutifully greeting guests, sped away to a party where the median age was twenty. At the Franklins’ the median age had to be forty, which for two girls in their freshman year at Colby College might as well have been one hundred and ten.

While the Franklins’ daughter and Sari might have had no need of candlelight’s soft glow, it added to Sister Jane’s natural radiance. The soft glow didn’t hurt Tedi and Edward Bancroft, either.

It most certainly didn’t hurt Frederika Thomas, whose creamy cleavage pulsated in the light from the fireplaces, the candles flickering in the two-hundred-fifty-year-old chandeliers. Freddie’s bosom, much admired, rose and fell at a pace she controlled. The more they heaved, the more she sought to impress upon the gentleman (it was usually a gentleman) with whom she spoke that she was deeply impressed with his conversation. Perhaps, given the height of the heave, she might even be sexually interested. When Freddie discovered the power of her mammary glands, she made certain to wear low-cut dresses or blouses. A snug cashmere turtleneck could be worn to good effect as well. Freddie had mastered this technique by eighteen. At thirty-four she had perfected it.

Speaking with Sister, a respectable 38C, which suited her six-foot frame, Freddie kept her glories at a moderate pace with the chat. Freddie admired Sister but had never thought of seducing her. Good thing, because Sister would have laughed herself silly.

“Poor Marty.” Freddie’s doe eyes widened further. “You just know she’s dying to come. This isthe party. Anyone not invited to the Franklins’ winds up at the country club, I suppose. Well, at least Marty will be able to wear her major jewels. Crawford’s no cheapskate.”

Out of the corner of her eye, Sister saw Iffy in her motorized metal wheelchair festooned with party lights and sparklers, which Iffy intended to set off at midnight.“Marty needs a scooter like Iffy’s. I’m surprised those rubies and diamonds don’t bend her double.”

“I’d kill for those rubies and diamonds.”

“You’d have to.”

Freddie, possessed of a good sense of humor, laughed at Sister’s good-natured jibe. “Good as he is that way, Crawford’s a brute to keep her from her friends.”

“Once a man takes a position publicly, he rarely backs down or seeks a compromise. It’s a particular failing of the gender, I’m afraid, and Crawford is more pigheaded than most.”

“You don’t think women can be stubborn?”

“I do.” Sister’s silver hair gleamed in the light. “But with great effort, especially from friends, most women can be brought around to seek a compromise. Maybe I’m making too much of it. I’m upset with Crawford, obviously, and I adore Marty. I miss her already. She was the most P.C. person in the hunt, and even though I often thought she was to the left of Pluto she made me think.”

Jason Woods, intent in conversation with Walter, turned his head. Both Freddie and Sister noticed his classic profile simultaneously.

“Divine.”

“I’d have to agree.” Sister smiled. “But surely you’ve met him.”

“In passing. There’s never been enough time to talk, and I was usually stuck with my tick of an ex-boyfriend.”

“Jason seems to have a refreshingly low opinion of monogamy,” Sister remarked.

“These days so do I.” Freddie laughed.

If a male stranger had beheld these two women together, he would have first fixed his gaze on Freddie. At thirty-four, lithe and voluptuous, she’d send the blood south. Eventually his eyes would shift to Sister. Standing there, completely unself-conscious, the older woman burst with raw animal energy. Maybe his blood wouldn’t head south, although it would have when she was younger, but even a man half her age would be drawn to her. Theenergy would pull him—and it pulled women, too, in a different manner.

Some creatures possess this magnetism. Secretariat had it. Archie, Sister’s late anchor hound, had it. You justhad to look at him, the way you had to look at Sister.

Freddie wanted to be like Sister, but she was too concerned with her effect on others. Beautiful as she was, this made her vulnerable. She needed praise to feel feminine, to feel good. Sister woke up in the morning feeling good. If people liked her, fine. If they didn’t, well, there were six billion people on earth. There ought to be someone out there they liked.

“I heard your parting with Mick was stormy.”

Freddie pursed her lips.“I vented to all my girlfriends, and now I’m ashamed of myself. I should have kept my mouth shut.”

The wind rattled the windowpanes. A downdraft sent spark showers flying up in the fireplace and glowing on the firescreens.

Jason made his way to the two women.

“Ladies.”

“Jason, you’ve met Freddie Thomas before, I believe.”

“That has been my pleasure, but”—he inclined his head toward the lovely woman—“she was always guarded by a two-toed sloth.”

Freddie and Sister burst out laughing.

“You haven’t been out hunting,” Jason remarked.

“I’ve been so busy this season, I haven’t been out once.”

“Freddie has reached that critical juncture in her practice where she needs to either take a partner or partners or cut back on work so she can enjoy life—which of course means foxhunting.” Sister leaned toward Freddie. “I mean it.”

Freddie was a certified public accountant. Gray thought highly of her.

“I’m sitting at the crossroads being a big chicken.” She sighed in agreement.

“If you don’t get off the crossroads you’ll be squashed. Listen to the sage of Roughneck Farm,” Sister teased.

“Funny, my image of accountants is of someone dull. I was wrong.” Jason assiduously avoided staring at her cleavage.

“I love accounting. I get to study businesses from the inside. I guess I’m a little like Sonny Shaeffer.” She nodded toward the florid-faced banker. “I know a little bit about every business, but perhaps not enough to run one.”

“Freddie, you could do anything you set your mind to because you’re so intelligent.” Sister meant that. She turned to make her exit so these two could discover one another but was nearly run over by Iffy, who hit her brakes.

Sister was pinned between Iffy on one side, Jason and Freddie on the other.

“Happy New Year.” Iffy appeared festive, although resentment bubbled beneath the surface.

“Happy New Year,” the others replied.

“Freddie, did you know that Jason is my doctor?”

“I did.”

“He saved my life. If you ever feel a lump anywhere, go to him.” She stared at Freddie’s bosom.

“I’ll bear your advice in mind, although I hope I never need it.”

Jason put his hand on Iffy’s shoulder. “I’ve never seen you so lit up.”

“How do you mean that?” Iffy sounded a little testy.

“The lights.” He pointed to her wheelchair. “If you all will excuse me, I’m going to find Gray.”

“He’s with Garvey.” Iffy’s lower lip jutted out. “And I’m mad at both of them.”

“Don’t stay mad long, Iffy; it’s New Year’s Eve. And I need you to back up.”

“Oh.” Iffy turned her head, beeped her horn, and backed up a tad as Binky and Milly DuCharme moved out of the way.

“Happy New Year,” Sister greeted husband and wife.

Binky, golden hair laced with gray, wrapped his arm around her waist.“Here’s to the two-faced god, Janus. He looks to the past; he looks to the future.” With that he gulped his champagne.

Milly, a less enthusiastic drinker, clicked glasses with her husband and Sister.“You look divine in that color.”

Sister, in royal blue, laughed.“Thank you, but I’m not divine, or I guess I’d be like Janus.”

Leaning very close, Milly whispered,“I don’t want to see the future.”

“Me neither,” Sister agreed.

“What’d you say, Honeybun?” Binky hadn’t caught the whispered conversation amidst all the noise.

“That it’s best for us not to know what tomorrow brings,” Milly chirped.

“We know to not count our chickens before they’ve hatched.” He laughed, then stopped. “One thing is consistent: Alfred.”

“Sometimes old wounds are lovingly tended.” Milly had lived with the situation since the middle seventies and felt justified in speaking her mind.

Sister, not wishing to criticize either brother, kissed both Binky and Milly on the cheek.“Whatever the year brings, I hope we stay healthy and thankful for our friends.” As she sidled through the crowd she thought to herself that the statute of limitations on youthful traumas had run out.

When she reached Gray and Garvey she noticed Iffy doing her best to butt into everything Jason and Freddie had to say to one another.

Garvey noticed, too.“I think she’s like a lot of women. She fell in love with her doctor.”

“Perhaps,” said Sister. Then she added, “Iffy’s motto is, ‘If I have made just one life miserable, I have not lived in vain.’”

Gray and Garvey laughed, for the sting of truth was in it.

“I’ll get my share.” Gray smiled.

“Hey, take mine, too. I’ve been on the short end of her stick for the last week.”

“Hopefully Iffy will bow to the inevitable. She’ll have her nose out of joint for a while about the audit, but it takes too much energy to stay angry,” Sister sighed. “She needs a positive outlet.”

“I thought Alfred was an outlet. Course he’s not here tonight, since Binky is.” Garvey looked over the room. Gray succinctly summed it up. “Iffy and Alfred are so used to being unhappy they don’t want to upset the status quo. They’re perfect for each other.”

Sister held up her champagne flute. The men touched theirs to hers, and the crystal chimed, a high, clear note.“Here’s to a New Year filled with new ways and old ways. Over solid bedrock the earth keeps shifting.” She knew the Blue Ridge bedrock was granite more than one billion years old. However, no need for her to be pedantic.

“Hear, hear,” the men toasted.

Then Garvey laughed.“I don’t think I’ve ever heard a geological toast. Makes me wish I’d been in your geology class at Mary Baldwin.”

“How about a toast from your profession?” Gray teased him.

“Put the pedal to the metal.” Garvey raised his glass.

“That was too easy!” Sister laughed at him.

“You didn’t say it had to be hard.” Garvey then looked to Gray. “Your turn.”

“Put your money in your head; no one can steal it from you there.”

Sister and Garvey clicked their glasses once more.

Meanwhile, Iffy drove right under Freddie’s bosom as if to find shade. It’s doubtful Iffy could have found a toast for the occasion, but she could have wedged her champagne flute in Freddie’s cleavage. Of course, Freddie could have used Iffy as an end table.

Ben Sidell, sheriff of the county, his back to Freddie, half turned and caught Jason’s eye. “Dr. Woods, Happy New Year. Iffy”—and he included Freddie when she turned round—“Happy New Year.”

“Why aren’t you in uniform?” Iffy blurted out, oblivious to the fact that the sheriff was entitled to a private life.

“I worked Christmas Eve and Christmas.” He smiled broadly. “Interesting hunt this morning.”

“Interesting hunt tonight.” The corner of Jason’s mouth turned upward.

Ben looked at Jason, then Freddie, then Iffy, and thought this a strange triangle.“I was wondering if any of you could introduce me to the lady standing by the fireplace.”

Champagne flute in hand, Dr. Margaret DuCharme leaned against the end of the fireplace.

Jason, unwilling to surrender his spot with Freddie, didn’t move.

Nor would Iffy.

Freddie, happy to ditch both of them, took Ben’s hand for an instant. “I’d be happy to.”

Iffy and Jason were abandoned to one another.

Iffy smiled. Jason’s eyes followed Freddie.

Meanwhile, Freddie, voice low, said,“She’s a sports medicine doctor. I’m not exactly sure what that means, but she must be very good because the Washington Redskins send her their wounded. Professional golfers fly in to see her, too.”

“Married?”

“To her work.”

As they drew closer Freddie stepped forward.

Margaret, diminutive and attractive, extended her hand to Ben.“I didn’t recognize you out of uniform.”

The touch of her hand befuddled him. He stood there speechless.

Freddie, wise in such matters, chatted for a moment.“Everyone knows our sheriff.”

Ben recovered, dropping Margaret’s hand. She smiled. “If you two will excuse me.” Freddie skillfully slipped away.

Jason watched her every move from behind Iffy’s wheelchair.

People are like colors: they complement each other or they clash. Ben and Margaret complemented each other. Once Ben had regained his composure they talked easily, lighting up like the sparks flying in the fireplace. And the conversation veered from the superficial immediately. Their physical attraction was obvious. What a partygoer observing them couldn’t have known was that their minds were on fire.

Driving home from the party, Sister and Gray noticed Donny Sweigart’s truck by the side of the road a quarter of a mile from Crawford’s entrance.

The headlights revealed blood on his camouflage fatigues as Donny walked to his truck.

Gray pulled over. Sister opened the window.“Donny, are you all right?”

“Yeah. Deer blood.”

“If Crawford catches you here, he’ll put the law on you.”

Donny smiled slyly.“He’s celebrating. Anyway, I’m out of here.”

As they drove home, Gray, who planned to spend the night with Sister, said,“He pushes it.”

“What I want to know is, where’s the deer?”

“Could be down in the meadow.”

“He can’t drag it out by himself unless he dresses it in the field, and then he runs the risk of Crawford catching him. No deer in the truck bed.”

“What the hell is he up to?”

Sister, lips taut:“I don’t think we want to know.”

CHAPTER 9

The New Year fell on Sunday. It was also the Feast of the Circumcision, a festival honoring the removal of the infant Christ’s foreskin. No doubt the early church introduced this celebration to replace pagan New Year frolics whose devotees found other things to do with their foreskins.

Sister, up before dawn, as usual, left Gray in bed sound asleep under a down comforter. Not a drinker, she had enjoyed last night’s champagne, but at this moment she enjoyed her hot tea even more.

After feeding the dogs and Golly, she pulled a heavy three-ply cashmere sweater over her head, wrapped a scarf around her neck, slipped her arms into her fleece-lined bomber jacket, and slapped on her cowboy hat.

She stepped outside into a charcoal-gray world and looked east, where a faint sliver of lighter gray lined the horizon. The snow clouds had cleared out last night. Breathing in the cold air, she felt seventeen years old. Raleigh and Rooster plowed behind her as her boots sank deep into the snow. Hard going though it was, she told herself this was terrific exercise for her thighs.

Not one hound mumbled as she approached the kennels. They always slept well after a hunt, and yesterday’s go had pooped them out.

Once inside the kennels, she put the two house dogs in the office. Removing her bomber jacket and draping it over the back of the office chair, she double-checked the clipboard on the desk.

Each hunting day, those hounds selected to go out had red checks by their names. She’d check their pads again, then note if anyone needed a little extra feed. She used the day’s roster to determine who would go out next hunt. One of her favorite times was going over the draw list with Shaker. They rated each hound’s work during the last hunt and each hound’s condition. Sheloved few things in life as much as her hounds. Raleigh, Rooster, Golly, and all the horses ranked right up there, too.

Then she walked into the feed room, a large square room with a huge drain in the center of the gently sloping concrete floor. The room could be power washed in ten minutes. The temperature inside the feed room was forty-five degrees, but it would rise when the hounds came in, and it would also climb a bit as the sun did.

Keeping hounds at temperatures humans find comfortable produces a sick hound. Their body heat when they sleep together keeps them warm, as does good food. It’s cruel to pamper a hound who, God forbid, might become separated from the pack and spend the night hunkered down in a covert or outbuilding somewhere. Hounds need to be hardy, fit, and resourceful.

The best thing any person who keeps animals can do is feed them properly, taking activity and season into account.

Sister filled the troughs with high-protein kibble: 26 percent during hunting season, 21 percent the rest of the time. She then poured a little hot water over it, along with corn oil.

First she pulled in the dog hounds. If the girls were fed first, their lingering enticing aroma could sometimes cause problems with the dog hounds.

Jefferson Hunt had separate housing away from the main kennels for gyps, the females, in season, connected by an arcaded walkway to the main kennel. Even when playing with hounds, Sister played with the dog hounds first. Sad to say, the girls evidenced much less interest in the boys than vice versa. After the dog hounds ate, she checked them. Everyone was fine—no bruised or cut pads, no barbed wire streaks on anyone’s back.

She repeated the process with the girls. When those exuberant ladies finished, she brought in the youngsters, who cheerfully gobbled every morsel. Finally, she brought in Asa and Delia, two older hounds, fed separately to give them time to relax. She mixed in vitamin powder with their warm kibble. As Asa was stiff in the mornings, she let him eat Rimadyl out of her hands. He thought the medicine was a treat, it tasted so good.

“Asa, this is your last year hunting. After this, I’ll need you to help me train puppies. If you don’t like that, you can come on up to the house, but you have to put up with Raleigh and Rooster.”

“It’s Golly that plucks my last nerve,” the gentlemanly hound smiled.

“Is that good?” Delia sniffed as Asa ate his Rimadyl.

“Candy.”

“Here.” Sister patted Delia on the head and let her eat one from her hand. “You don’t really need it, Delia, but one tab won’t hurt you.”

Asa and Delia then ambled to their separate quarters.

Usually Shaker fed the hounds. Sister tried to be there as often as she could, but being a master took time. Landowners called, as did members, each needing information or wanting to impart the same to her. She and Walter both secured and opened territory—another time-consuming process.

Apart from foxhunting, Sister sat on the board of directors for Custis Hall, helped raise funds for the SPCA, and had her farm to run. Seed and fertilizer, if ordered early, often came with a 10 percent discount. Each year what the fields needed varied. Fences might need repair or replacing. A household chore would always pop up: a dying refrigerator, a crack in the wall. It never ended, but she was never bored.

Gardening, second to foxhunting in her passions, restored her spirits if they happened to be flagging. Even in winter, looking over glossy holly bushes and various conifers delighted her and inspired her to plant more trees, bushes, and flowers come spring.

Sari would return to Colby tomorrow. Today would be Shaker and Lorraine’s last day with her until semester’s end, which was why Sister fed the hounds. When Shaker roused himself in about a half hour, he’d find everything done: hounds fed, yards picked, the manure spreader full.

A long low pink ray of light fell over the snows. She left a note for Shaker, tacking it on the bulletin board in the office. She couldn’t wait to get outside, for soon the world would be bathed in pink, then scarlet, and last, gold.

She put her bomber jacket back on. The dogs rose. The phone rang.

“Hello, Jefferson Hunt Kennels.”

“Sister, you come over here this instant and pick up your goddamned hounds!”

She recognized Iffy’s voice. “My hounds are in the kennels.”

“Oh, sure, that’s what you hunters always say. You pick up these hounds or you’ll never pass through my land again.” Iffy slammed down the phone.

“That girl needs charm school or Prozac. Maybe both.” Sister replaced the receiver as she talked out loud to Raleigh and Rooster. “Well, let’s crank up the party wagon. I don’t know whose hounds are out there, but we’ll pick them up.”

She drove slowly. The road looked smooth enough, but black ice could flip you on your side in a skinny minute.

Fortunately, no traffic gummed up the works. No motorist impatiently hung on her butt in an effort to speed her along. A large portion of the county would be nursing hangovers. They wouldn’t be out and about.

Iffy owned a small piece of land, thirty acres, give or take, south of Beasley Hall, Crawford’s large, pretentious estate. Iffy’s place rested twelve miles from Sister’s farm, but twelve miles on treacherous roads could take a half hour or longer.

When Sister finally pulled down the plowed drive, the sun had fully cleared the horizon. Snows glistened bloodred.

Black and tan hounds aimlessly ran about.

She stopped the truck, put the hunting horn to her lips, and blew three even long blasts. Hounds lifted their heads to stare at her. She blew the“come in” call again.

They trotted over the crusted snow toward her. A few heavier hounds broke through, leaping forward and up as snow sprayed in front of them.

“Good hounds,” she called to them in a cheerful voice.

She opened the door to the party wagon. They hopped in.

“That’s a blessing,” she thought to herself.

If they’d been shy, she’d now be on a wild-goose chase. She put up three couple of hounds, then continued down the drive. No more appeared. She stopped and knocked at Iffy’s back door. She could hear her thumping tread, then the door flew open.

“Happy New Year again, Iffy.”

“Bullshit! Did you get those damned hounds?”

“I picked up six. How many did you see?”

“I don’t know. Step in a minute. I’ll catch my death of cold.” Iffy motioned for Sister to step into the kitchen.

Sister noticed the .22 revolver on the kitchen table. She also noted that Iffy was moving along without her cane.

“I have never seen these hounds. They don’t have tattoo marks in their ears, and they don’t have collars either.” Sister forced a smile. “Our pack is tricolor, Iffy. These are black and tans, but they’re in good flesh. Someone has cared for them.”

Iffy did not thank her for picking up someone else’s hounds. “You’re the hound queen. You’ll find out who owns them before I do. I was ready to shoot them if one of them so much as bared a fang at me.”

“Did it sound as though they were hunting?”

“I don’t know. All I heard was my garbage cans knocked over.”

“I’ll pick up the mess,” Sister volunteered. “No point in you going out in the snow.”

“Some days are better than others. Most people stiffen up in the cold, but I have more trouble in the heat. Maybe it’s the medicine. I don’t know.” Her features, a little puffy, brightened. “Jason’s putting me on a new program for the New Year. He said my resolution is to build the strength back in my legs and”—she sucked in her breath—“lose the weight.”

“He takes good care of you.”

Iffy’s lower lip quivered. “I’m not even forty. I want my old self back. Jason’s lining up a physical therapist and a nutritionist.” She brightened again.

Sister put her hand over the old brown porcelain doorknob.“If I find out who these hounds belong to, I’ll let you know in case they come this way again.”

“Do that.” Iffy’s voice was friendlier.

Sister walked outside, careful on the steps. She walked to the side of the house. One can, lid off, had garbage strewn about. The others, on their sides, had the lids on tight. She scooped up the debris: orange rinds, coffee filters and grinds within, soup cans, and one large bottle—no label, but a whiff informed her it contained something potent. She gave thanks for the freeze. Made the task easier, and easier on the nose, too.

Given that the road to the barn hadn’t been plowed out, she trudged back there. No hounds.

As she drove out she pondered where to put these hounds. Since she had no idea as to their vaccinations or health records, she didn’t want them near her hounds. She reviewed hunt club members who might have a vacant stall in their barns or a secure outbuilding. She saw, coming in the opposite direction, Sam Lorillard.

She flashed her headlights. He flashed. They both stopped. The shoulders had snow piled up. They couldn’t get off the road. Fortunately, there wasn’t traffic on this back road.

One of the hounds yowled.

“Sister, where did you find them?”

“Iffy’s. Three couple. Crawford’s new pack?”

“A pack of escape artists. Got most back. Only one couple out now that you picked these up.”

“You might suggest that the boss appease Iffy as well as anyone else.”

“Yeah.” Sam looked from her party wagon to his small trailer. “Think we could get them in the trailer?”

“Better not take the chance, Sam. They might piss off again. How about if I take them to Beasley Hall? You follow me. Where do I put them?”

“The old unused barn in the back. Rory’s there patching up where they chewed through the rotted wood. Crawford has no sense.”

“Well, no hound sense. We’d know not to put them in there.”

Within twenty minutes the three had unloaded the hounds at Crawford Howard’s barn.

Struggling with ready-mix concrete, Rory tried to get it to the right consistency to slap over the chewed place.“Pretty hopeless in this cold.”

“Yeah. Got any riprap?” She named a large type of stone most quarries carried.

Sam piped up.“We do. Leftover from when Crawford put in the culverts.”

“My suggestion,” said Sister, “and it’s only a suggestion—you gentlemen do as you like—would be to take heavy-duty page wire, run it along the sides, curve in the bottom of the page wire, and put down riprap at the edges until you can properly pour concrete or sucrete.”

“It’s going to be a bitch to dig through this frost to get the wire down in the ground.” Sam did not relish this task.

“Yeah, it is; and bending it forward is no picnic either. Crawford might not want to spend the money on page wire and concrete. He’s going to build a new kennel, right?” Sister inquired.

“Right,” Rory answered.

“You can’t have these hounds running all over the country. Apart from the bad will it creates, some will get killed. They don’t know where they are yet. This is going to be hard as hell to patch up until the temperature is in the high forties at least. I think you’re going to have to spend the money on cinder blocks against the wall and some kind of grid like Equistall for the floor. You’ve got to secure these hounds.”

Crawford had walked in behind them.

Sister turned when she heard the bootsteps.“Happy New Year, Crawford.”

“She brought back three couple of hounds that were at Iffy Demetrios’s,” Sam quickly apprised his boss.

“Iffy is, well, Iffy.” Sister shrugged. “I’ll be getting on home. If I see any more, I’ll pick them up.”

It pained him, but Crawford was man enough to utter“Thank you.” He then puffed out his chest. “They won’t get out again.”

“Dumfreishire blood?” Sister asked sharply, knowing from their looks that the hounds had that type of Scottish blood. Although originally hunted in Scotland, the Dumfreishire was classified as an English hound.

“Right.” Crawford nodded.

“Handsome.” She left them to their labors and thought how foolish Crawford was thinking he could handle this type of hound.

The Dumfreishire, a large handsome hound, would be less high-strung than an American hound, but the good-looking black and tans would rapidly discover that Crawford knew nothing. They’d hunt on their own, discounting him. Also, their nose, not quite as good as that of the American hound, would frustrate him.

The English hound developed in a land of abundant moisture and rich soils. The red clay of central Virginia, occasionally enlivened by Davis loam, put the picturesque English hound at a disadvantage. Crawford would blame the hound, not himself.

On those perfect scenting days, this pack would hunt with brio. The other little thing Crawford would discover the hard way is that English hounds, as a rule, don’t have the cry that American, crossbred, or Penn-Marydels do. Again, given where they were developed, they didn’t need it to the degree that the New World needs a big booming sound, for much of the English countryside is open. One can see the hounds working.

They were big, they were beautiful. That part would swell his ego. Maybe he should just mount up and parade them around until he could find a real huntsman.

As she passed the beginnings of the stone St. Swithun’s Chapel she had ample time to consider the unholy mess Crawford was creating for himself—and for her, too.

“Happy New Year.” She sighed.

As she drove through the imposing gates, two huge bronze boars guarding the entrance had icicles dangling from their snouts. Their bristly chests glistened with ice rivulets. She turned west.

A quarter mile down the road she noted Donny Sweigart’s treads from last night’s supposed deer hunt.

Curious, she pulled as far off the road as she could given the conditions, hit her flashers, and got out. She wanted to see if there was a carcass or deer offal in the snow. She looked down the slight embankment, then over the expanse of snowy meadow. A copse of trees and shrubs stood out against the white. Something bright caught her eye.

She slid down the embankment. Tracks were partly covered with snow, but she could make out boot marks. She followed them toward the copse. Once there she saw a glob of congealed blood, fist sized, bright red.

There were no signs of struggle, no feathers either. If Donny had set out a trap she’d see it. No trap.

It was eerie, a hunk of frozen blood. She returned to her truck wondering what the hell was going on.

CHAPTER 10

Ben Sidell slouched in the passenger seat of Sister’s red GMC early Monday morning, January 2, St. Basil’s Day. “Take me to Paradise.”

“If I were young, I would,” she sassed back.

He laughed as he unrolled the map on the dash.

These expensive, lovely maps had been donated to the Jefferson Hunt by Francis McGovern, a buoyant member more on the road than home to hunt.

“Apart from the home fixtures, how old are the fixtures adjacent to Paradise?”

“Mill Ruins, Mud Fence, Orchard Hill, Chapel Cross are original fixtures going back to the beginning of the hunt. Course they’re older than 1887, but once the hunt was founded their landowners were part of the fun. What’s happened in certain parts of the county, especially the east because it’s closer to town, is large estates, over time, have been broken up. Newcomers don’t understand foxhunting or they plain don’t like it, and we lose, say, fifty acres, which make the one thousand acres we use to hunt unhuntable for practical purposes because we can’t get around the fifty acres.Even if we do figure out a way around, hounds can’t read. They go through the No Trespassing area and you get an enraged phone call, Sheriff.”

“In time some of the comeheres change their minds.”

“Some.” She nodded. “But there are other people who just don’t get it and never will. They want to live in the country, but they aren’t of the country. Pretty much they look down their noses at us.”

“Do they look down at people like Tedi and Edward Bancroft?”

The Bancrofts had been wealthy since the Industrial Revolution, the family wise in nurturing that wealth.

“The comeheres don’t even know they’re not in the loop. If they see Tedi and Edward at a big party they think they’ve made it. Know what I mean?”

“I think so,” said Ben. Originally from Ohio, he had been hired three years earlier to be sheriff of the county.

“It boils down to this: the arrogant ones only talk to other arrogant ones. They’re ignorant of their social status. They think because they’ve built a McMansion on twenty acres, they’re elite—if you can stand that word. They haven’t a clue that they’re close to the bottom of the barrel. A poor but warm person from an old family has much higher status than they do.”

He smiled wryly.“You’re at the top of the heap.”

“Not in wealth but in other respects, yes. No point in false modesty. And the reality is, if you’re of it, you don’t dwell on it. I mean by that, you take it for granted. Maybe the first lesson new people need to learn is to treat people with respect regardless of their bank balances.”

“Yep.”

She slowed.“Okay, here’s Chapel Cross. Orchard Hill and the other fixtures all fan out from this crossroads, an old tertiary road in highway department terms. Everything you see, I’ll drive slowly, is our territory right up to the Blue Ridge. The top of the mountains divides us from Glenmore Hunt in Augusta County.”

“Why don’t you go up the mountains?”

“Would you?” She laughed. “For one thing, it’s hard going. For another thing, there’s boar up there, and I fear them like death. Lastly, there are folks in those hollows who come to town maybe once a year. They are famous for the purity of their country waters.”

He knew about the distilleries in the hollows but not their location. Most moonshine busts were made when a trucker was pulled over and moonshine was discovered in the rig’s closed bed.

Also, no prudent sheriff in any county would send a lone deputy to seek out the stills.

“Let me go back for a minute. Some of the new people really are good. They take to hunting, they value wildlife, they are good stewards of the land, and we’re lucky to have them. We’re lucky, too, because they’re usually more liberal, politically, than we are and they challenge us, force usto question. I believe that’s a good thing. If all you do is converse with people who think just like you do, you don’t learn much.” She slowed again, pointing to a lone brick fireplace. “Used to be the gatehouse to Paradise.”

The gatehouse pillars, brick with a shield of arms near the capped top, still stood.

“Are you going to tell me the Yankees burned it?”

“No.” She laughed a deep appreciative laugh. “Not this one. Way back before you were born, electrical wire was wrapped in silk. Anyway, a short burnt it to a cinder. The big pile with towering Corinthian columns is at the end of this road. It was incredible. It survived 1865, but each year itfell further and further into disrepair.” She paused. “Thanks to Margaret’s efforts, we’ll be back hunting here. You’ll see it Saturday. Decayed as it is, there’s magic to Paradise. God, what it must have been in its heyday.”

“Why did Margaret help?”

“Walter and Jason asked her to do it, and she likes to see the hunt. She’s just not a hunter. Golf is her game.” Sister paused. “Just one of those things. Binky and Alfred had another major disagreement—not face-to-face, of course, but through their lawyers—so the lawyers suggested no hunting because of the liability. Alfred’s always been warm to hunting, and, really, Margaret worked on her father. Once lawyers get in anything it’s a mess.”

“Yeah,” Ben agreed.

“In a way this is still paradise. There’s a forlorn majesty to the ruin.” Sister felt the pull of the place.

“Where are we, about four miles north from Chapel Cross?”

“Right. Good judge of distance. If we turned around, passed through Chapel Cross, we’d reach Tattenhall Station. From Chapel Cross, Little Dalby and Beveridge Hundred are on the south and west side of the road. Orchard Hill and Mud Fence are on the south and east side. Tattenhall Station is straight south. Paradise is five thousand acres, and it covers both sides of the old road north of Chapel Cross. Beyond Paradise it’s billy-goat land owned by Franklin Foster in northern Virginia. At long last, he’s given us permission to hunt there. Walter and I drove up to Fairfax to see him lastsummer. With the leaves off the trees and snow on the ground, you get a good sense of how the land rolls. All crisscrossed by creeks. It’s good soil. Some of the grades might scare you on a tractor, though.” She laughed.

“I just heard that Jason Woods made an offer on this land.”

“Good God.” Sister’s silver brows shot upward. “He’ll have his work cut out for him. Binky and Alfred won’t agree to sell.” She added, “Offer must be less than a day old. I usually hear about those things. It’s hard to keep a secret in this county.”

“I think it’s a place of secrets.”

She considered this.“Maybe you’re right. The little secrets leak out. The big ones—well, some escape like evils from Pandora’s box. And others we’ll never know. I’m thinking about Nola Bancroft buried near the covered bridge for all those years.”

Tedi and Edward’s oldest daughter had been murdered and buried at the site where the bridge was being built. Decades later her skeletal hand, huge sapphire still on the third finger, had broken through the surface, ultimately pointing to her killer.

“That was one of my first big cases on the job.” He glanced at the hunt club map again. “That’s when I learned to listen to you.”

“Go on.” She smiled.

“Forgive the pun, but you know where all the bodies are buried.”

“Some. Not all.”

“The brothers live simply?” Ben inquired.

“In dependencies, buildings that used to house workers like the farm manager. Smaller ones housed slaves. They live at opposite ends of the farm, so they don’t have to pass and repass too much, as we say. Oh, one other thing, Arthur maintains all the machinery.”

“Mechanical ability runs in the family,” he noted.

“Right.” She nodded. “What Margaret does is mechanical in a way.”

“Do you think Arthur keeps a still on the property? I’ve heard rumors to that effect.”

Sister, not one to tell on people, replied,“Arthur wouldn’t be that stupid. There are so many hollows with clear running streams as you get right up next to the mountains, he’d do it there. Arthur wouldn’t jeopardize Paradise.”

Ben considered this.“Good point.”

She dropped into a lower gear as the road narrowed, beginning the switchback climb up the eastern slope of the mountain.“Seen enough?”

“Sure.”

She turned around, sliding. She’d learned to drive in snow before four-wheel drive. “Ben, there are many ways to circumvent the law. For instance, if someone wants to poach bear on my land, they can take their license plates off, shoot the bear, say up by Hangman’s Ridge, and even if I stop them what do I have? No I.D.”

“I know. You foiling Arthur’s line, are you?” The corner of his mouth turned up as he used the hunting term.

“No. There are, however, greater sins than making moonshine. Do I think he makes it? Of course. Do I know where? No. Nor do I want to know. Ignorance is protection. If I don’t know, then I’m not in a position of covering up, right? I don’t cotton to lying for someone.”

“I understand.” And he did.

“You know, Ben, there are a lot of things I don’t understand. Seems to me you spend just as much energy breaking the law as you do making an honest living. You know we have thousands of years of evidence to prove the wisdom of the Ten Commandments. They’re broken every minute.”

“Yep.” He turned his head to the right as they passed the pillars and lone fireplace near them again.

“Then there are things you learn on your own.”

“Such as.” He was interested.

“Anyone who refuses love is a fool. Every now and then the gods give us the chance to open our hearts.”

He placed his forefinger on the sensitive skin just above his upper lip, a habit when thinking.“I hear you.”

She laughed.“The worst that can happen is you’ll have a great story to tell when you’re my age. The best that can happen is you achieve paradise.”

CHAPTER 11

Jefferson Hunt took out hounds on Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays, weather permitting. This Tuesday, January 3, the weather was permitting but the footing tried the patience of all the giving saints. However, the fixture card read Tattenhall Station, 9:00 a.m., and Tattenhall Station it would be.

Hunts varied their meeting times to adjust to the light and the temperature. Cubbing days would begin at 7:00 a.m. or 7:30 a.m. As fall gained strength, Sister moved the time to 8:00 a.m.

For cubbing most hunts did not print a fixture card. A fixture card was a handy list of times, dates, and places, called fixtures, usually printed on heavy stock paper, the print perhaps in the hunt’s colors. Traditionally, a fixture card should fit into a jacket pocket.

Some hunts dispensed with tradition, issuing fixture cards in varying sizes and even on lightweight paper, which meant the card couldn’t hold up to the rigors of a season.

In the family scrapbook, Sister could read fixture cards used by her grandparents.

A stickler for tradition, Sister, the fifth master since 1887, had printed Jefferson Hunt fixture cards exactly like those from 1887.

The Franklins’ printing business had dies from that time.

Fixture cards were usually received by mail before Opening Hunt. They could also be personally handed to a member by the master. This was considered a proper invitation to hunt.

Sans fixture card, a person rode as the guest of a member. The member’s social obligation was to call and inform the master.

Someone who landed in Sister’s hunt territory without knowing a member could write or call to ask permission to cap on a particular day. A cap was the amount of money a visitor paid to hunt that day. It can be collected by a field secretary or dropped in the offered field master’s cap. Recently people had begun to e-mail to request permission. Strictly speaking, this was not a 100 percent correct way to ask the master.

Sister would inquire if they were a member of a recognized hunt. It not, had they capped at other hunts or ridden with farmer packs?

The point of these queries was to gather information so as not to overface the rider. The last thing any master wanted was for people to risk injury or to scare the bejabbers out of themselves.

If callers truly were neophytes, Sister suggested they go out with the hilltoppers. If their schedule was flexible, she’d suggest a day when territory was more forgiving.

Riding was necessary for foxhunting, but not sufficient. A foxhunter needed to know the fundamental law: hounds always have right-of-way.

The old siding lot at Tattenhall Station originally existed for mules and the baggage carts they pulled. As the mules disappeared cars began to park there. In the early 1960s, railroads abandoned unprofitable spur lines. This fate befell Tattenhall Station. The tidy, dark mustard board-and-batten buildings that housed the switchmen, the fireboys, various laborers, and the all-important telegraph operator looked picturesque covered with snow.

Their condition was a tribute to Norfolk& Southern’s solid construction.

The few residents of the pretty little community around the old spur line faithfully plowed out the parking lot, still called the siding.

Nine rigs and the party wagon came out on Tuesday.

Ronnie Haslip and Henry Xavier rode up behind Sister. Charlotte Norton, Bunny Taliaferro, Dr. Jason Woods, Tedi, and Edward trudged through the snows. Bobby Franklin followed with Garvey Stokes and Lorraine Rasmussen in tow.

However, after an hour, Shaker and the hounds doing the best they could under clear skies, Shaker called it a day. No point in frustrating the hounds.

The worst the field could complain about—if they were in the habit of complaining, which, praise Jesus, they were not—was that they enjoyed a bracing winter’s ride among good company.

Back at the trailers, Ronnie Haslip, a childhood friend of Ray Jr. and treasurer of Jefferson Hunt, surprised everyone. He had hired one of the silver-quilted food trucks, Jack’s Snacks, that visit construction sites to stop by.

Hot coffee, hot tea, hot soup, hot dogs, and hamburgers warmed everyone.

“Ronnie, that is the classiest thing any member has ever done.” Xavier held up a Styrofoam cup to toast him.

The others joined in.

Ronnie, shoulder to shoulder with Sister, asked,“Does Gray want my job?”

“No; do you want out of it come May?”

May 1 was the general meeting date on which master or masters were elected, along with administrative officers.

“No.”

“Are you baiting me?” She smiled at Ronnie, two inches shorter than herself, whose turnout was always impeccable.

“A little.” He grinned, for he loved gossip, any manner of personal information. “Isn’t this his first day at Garvey’s?”

“It is,” she laughed. “You’ll notice Garvey is here, so he doesn’t have to deal with it.”

Jason, who had devoured an entire bowl of chili and was glowing from the warmth, joined the conversation,“I’ll probably have to prescribe tranquilizers for Iffy this afternoon.”

Ronnie’s eyebrows raised. “She’s always been high maintenance.”

Jason thought a moment.“Even people who aren’t high maintenance can become that way if they’re sick or injured.”

Sister agreed.“People need extra reinforcement.”

“Attitude.” Ronnie pronounced judgment. “Attitude is everything.”

“Medicine helps,” Jason wryly smiled.

Betty walked over.“Ronnie, spectacular idea!”

“Thank you.”

She turned to Sister for a moment.“The weatherman predicts the temperature will climb into the high fifties tomorrow. All this will start to melt, then freeze over every night. But he said it will be a short January thaw.”

“I know.” Sister frowned. “If it’s really bad, I’ll cancel Thursday’s hunt, but I’m not going to worry about it until seven Thursday morning.”

She put changes to the day’s hunting on the Huntline two hours before the time posted on the fixture card.

“This will take a long time to melt.” Jason looked around at the dazzling snow.

Ronnie noticed Xavier on the other side of the small knot of people.“His lordship commands my presence.”

“You’re awful.”

“Speaking of high maintenance.” He winked at Betty as he excused himself.

“Jason, I heard you’ve made an offer on Paradise?” Sister asked. Ben hadn’t said this was privileged information, so she felt free to bring it up.

“Put down the earnest money last night.” Triumph illuminated his face.

“Paradise? DuCharme’s Paradise?” Betty couldn’t believe her ears.

“The same.” Jason’s lad cap added a jaunty air to his presence.

“How did you ever get those two nitwits to come to the table?” Betty blurted it out.

“Well, one came to the operating table. He credits me with saving his life.” Jason tried to sound humble.

“That may explain Alfred’s cooperation, but what about Binky?” Betty’s curiosity flipped into the red zone.

“Milly worked on him. No contingencies in the offer. No financing. She knows they’ll never see an offer like this again. They can’t afford to run a place that big. Don’t think Margaret, when it passes to her, can afford it, either. The far fields are going down. The houses they live in aren’t in great shape, either. This is an answered prayer for the DuCharmes.”

Betty reached for a hot dog and hot coffee. She wasn’t sure it was an answered prayer. However, she simply asked, “Have you signed a contract?”

“Two weeks from now. Both parties wanted their lawyers to read it. Cut and dried, but we’ll go through the lawyer song and dance.” He paused, eyes down, then up quickly. “Both said Margaret had to agree. I made the offer New Year’s evening, and I haven’t talked to her yet.”

“Five thousand acres,” Sister said in wonderment.

“Plans?” Betty knew she was being nosy.

“I’m going to work from old photographs and restore Paradise.”

“Those stone barns are beautiful. The slate on the roofs held up.” Sister lusted after stone.

“What shell remains is better than I’d hoped, even though it looks like a war relic.” He laughed. “I know I can restore the outside of Paradise. The interior will be the challenge.”

“What a fabulous project.” Sister meant that, but she was equally glad she wouldn’t be doing it. She wondered exactly what was in that contract, noting he didn’t utter the dreaded word “development.”

“Meant to ask you”—Betty touched the blackthorn crop he carried on informal days—“where’d you get that?”

“A present from Iffy.” He paused. “She can be very thoughtful, but she gives me too much credit. She wanted to be well.” He paused again for effect, then smiled. “Do you two ladies believe the story about the treasure at Paradise? From the War of 1812. I’ve heard more than one version.”

“I do.” Betty flatly stated. “It’s there.”

“I’d like to.” Sister smiled.

“Which version do you all subscribe to?”

The two women looked at one another, then Betty spoke.“We always heard that Sophie Marques, a maternal I don’t know how many greats-grandmother, raided a pay wagon for the British somewhere on the Bladenberg Pike. Anyway, she came here rich as a queen and bought all the land we know as Paradise. Before Sophie it was virgin timber. She created every pasture you see, sited every barn and outbuilding.”

Sister interjected,“She built a little house on it, a two over two. She lived in it while she created Paradise. What she didn’t spend she buried.”

“Why?” He shrugged.

“Didn’t trust banks. She’d seen too many collapse,” Sister responded.

“You’re telling me that the ancestor of those two yokels was a highwaywoman?” Thus he revealed his disdain for Binky and Alfred, who weren’t exactly yokels.

“Well…yes.” Betty hedged a moment. “The story goes that she worked throughout Maryland during the war as a spy. A pretty woman, she used her wiles to extract information from British officers. After serving her country for no pay she made one big haul in 1814 and had the wisdom to repair toVirginia.”

“Make a great movie.” He laughed.

“I expect there’s a good story about every old place in Virginia.” Betty took it for granted.

Jason’s cell rang. “Excuse me.” He walked to his trailer. Amid the hubbub of conversation he could not be heard, but Sister noted the expression on his face.

He finished the conversation, closed the phone.“Iffy.” He sighed. “She’s feeling shaky. Says Gray is making her sick.” He paused. “I don’t know if one’s emotional state can trigger cancer. I doubt it, but I do know we all do better if we’re stable.”

“Can she truly recover from lung cancer? Excuse me. I realize a doctor can’t discuss a patient. I apologize,” Betty asked.

He waved it off.“Her tumor is gone. Starved, to put it in layman’s terms. The danger for Iffy is if the tumor was able to seed itself. Despite all our advances, we don’t always know that. It’s one of the reasons I continue to run tests on Iffy. But she has an excellent chance for survival. Her work now hasto be with a physical therapist. The treatments debilitated her more than most people. But let’s face it; they’re unpleasant for anyone.” He waited a moment. “Speaking of time, I could begin walking out hounds in February. That gives me time to adjust my schedule. Will that work for you?”

“Yes.” Sister’s shoulders stiffened.

“Make me a whipper-in, and you’ll see Paradise.” He beamed.

She didn’t quite know whether this was an offer or a bribe. “Jason, I see paradise each time I hunt,” she said good-naturedly.

CHAPTER 12

The large silver commercial horse van pulled into Roughneck Farm at three in the afternoon.

Matador, who had passed his vetting with flying colors, stepped off the ramp, stopped, and took in his surroundings. Ears forward, eyes bright, beautifully conformed, he lowered his head when Sister held out her hand to him. She brushed his muzzle, then stroked his ears.

“Boss, he’s a beaut,” Shaker exclaimed.

“For his price he ought to be.” Sister smiled, but she, too, found the flea-bitten gray dazzling, flea-bitten referring to the brown flecks in the gray coat.

Horsin’ Around, one of the many good commercial haulers in the country, covering coast to coast, knew Sister and the farm.

“How’d he load, Hank?” she asked the driver.

“No problem. He’s a real nice horse.”

The staff horses in their various paddocks and pastures viewed the newcomer with curiosity.

Lafayette called out to him,“Pretty is as pretty does.”

Matador turned his head toward the other gray in the barn, snorted, but said nothing. He figured he’d show them.

Keepsake, half thoroughbred and half quarter horse, a friendly guy, simply said,“Good shoulder.”

“Good shoulder is one thing. He’d better damn well take care of our master.” Rickyroo stared at the charismatic animal.

Aztec, youngest of Sister’s hunt horses, said,“Sister Jane has been riding horses since she was four. I expect she knows a good one when she sees him.” He paused for effect.“After all, she picked us, didn’t she?”

Sister handed the cashier’s check to Hank with a fifty-dollar tip. She took the clipboard and signed the paperwork. “January 4. Already four days into the new year.”

“Time flies.” Hank took back the clipboard and thanked Sister for the tip.

Shaker was leading the new fellow into the barn as Hank pulled out.

Sam, in Gray’s Land Cruiser, came down the drive. He bounded into the barn. “Had to see ’im.”

“Well?” Sister raised an eyebrow.

Sam walked around him, stroked his neck, then stood behind as Shaker led him to his stall.“I liked him when I rode him. He really is your kind of horse. Bold.”

“Your word is dipped in platinum.” Sister dropped her arm around his shoulder.

Shaker closed the bottom half of the stall door. He leaned over the top half as Matador checked his surroundings.

“Well, I’m not hunting him until the footing improves. We’ll exercise him, but I do want to give him every chance to get settled and show his best.”

“How about some hot coffee, or what about hot chocolate?” Sister invited Sam into the house.

“Thanks, but I’m heading home. I’m going to work on the kitchen cabinets. Went in at six this morning. Rory and I are working all hours to get the hounds settled along with the other chores.”

As they walked outside to the car, Sister discreetly dug into her pocket for money. She’d gone to the bank earlier. “What are you doing with Gray’s pride and joy?”

“He wanted me to pick up distressed oak. He’s driving my wheels.” Sam smiled. “Hope the car lives long enough to get him home.”

As he slipped behind the wheel of the expensive SUV, Sister stuck five hundred dollars in the front of his coat.“There’s more coming.”

“For what?” Sam fished in his pocket to hand it back. She gently held his wrist. “Part of your finder’s fee. I appreciate you telling me about the horse, and, of course, I appreciate you keeping your brother from other women.”

He sighed.“If I don’t take the money you’ll send it to me as a check.”

“You got that right.”

He grinned.“Gray doesn’t know other women exist.”

“Oh la!” She rolled her eyes.

“While we’re on the subject, I’ll work for food. I’ll muck stalls, groom—I’ll recite poetry even, if there’s a woman out there who’d have me.”

“Funny, isn’t it, Sam? Time was when you trailed clouds of women. None of them did you much good.”

He quickly interjected,“I didn’t do them much good, either.”

“Six of one, half dozen of the other. There’s a lid for every pot. Look at Shaker.”

“Lucky man.”

“Be patient.”

As Sam drove off, Sister hurried back into the stable to admire Matador.“Well, let’s bring these other actors inside.”

As she and Shaker led in the other horses they talked about Thursday’s draw, who to take. The sun touched the horizon. They were glad to be with the horses and one another.

This was not the case at Aluminum Manufacturers. Iffy, buried in paperwork for Farmers Trust, grimaced each time Gray passed her door.

Each time Gray asked her for information, she gloried in retarding his efforts.

She’d erupt, sulk, and use her cane to stomp around, eventually complying with Gray’s request.

She left the office at five. Damned if she’d work late.

No sooner had she passed through her back door when the phone rang.“Hello. Garvey, what do you want?”

“Hate to call you at home, but Sonny called after you left.”

“It was five. Quitting time.” She glowered.

“I’m fine with that. But why I’m calling you at home is because someone must have told the state president of the bank that we were performing an internal audit. He told Sonny to hold approval until Gray finished the audit.”

“Bullshit.” She exploded. “Sonny is president of Farmers Trust for our region. He has the power to make the loan.”

“Sonny’s madder than hell. Look, we’ve got to speed up this audit.”

“Why can’t Sonny face down the Big Prez in Henrico County?”

“You know, Iffy, once banks started merging, once computers replaced people who actually knew their community, it all changed. If the economy were up, I expect Sonny wouldn’t have heard a word. But interest rates are rising; the Dow is falling. You know the rest of the story. The banks are nervous.”

“I’ll talk to Sonny. No, let me just take him what I’ve done so far. We’re rock solid. I resent this.”

“I do, too.” Garvey thought a minute. “Let me handle Sonny. If you worked with Gray, how quickly could you two finish the audit?”

“I can’t work with Gray. I’m your treasurer. If I work with him that could be construed as a conflict of interest. There goes the enhanced line of credit.”

Garvey exhaled a long sigh.“Of course, it would. I don’t know where my head is.”

“Have you spoken to Gray?”

“Yes. He suggested I hire Freddie Thomas, another independent, to work with him. Even with Freddie they’ll be pushing to get it done by next week.” He sighed, irritated and worried. “The devil is in the details.”

“Always is. Is Gray still there?”

“Just left. He said his mind is tired. He’s going to be coming in at seven-thirty, and he’ll work until five.”

“Who ratted to the big president?”

“No idea.” He thought it funny that she said “ratted.”

“Why would someone call the president of Farmers Trust about us?”

“Our audit isn’t a deep dark secret. I doubt anyone called. Sonny probably mentioned it to his staff or at a meeting in Richmond. I doubt he expected this complication.”

“Rotten timing.” She took a breath, then exhaled. “There will be small discrepancies, Garvey. I meansmall. It’s a bitch to get it to the penny. If you’d kept Gray out of this, forgotten the audit idea, you’d have had the loan the first day of business this year, I swear. I could have finished up the paperwork in a hurry before Sonny could blow his nose.” She paused again. “Turn in our last tax return. It will give Sonny and company something to read. When Gray finishes, they can compare the two. I don’t want this to drag out any more than you do. Of course, we haven’t done last year’s income tax returns. No one has. To be safe, I’ll turn in the prior three years’ returns. That’s a start.”

“Thanks, Iffy.”

On the drive home, Gray’s teeth rattled. The shocks in Sam’s rattletrap were that bad. The checking of invoices against services and goods received must be thoroughly done.

Iffy approved invoices for payment. Although he’d just begun this task, he noted that Aluminum Manufacturing had poor internal control. He suspected as much. He observed that any purchase or service over ten thousand dollars carried Garvey’s initials. Iffy could approve anything under that sum.

Iffy prepared the checks and signed them.

A quick study, he felt that by tomorrow’s end he would have some sense of regular monthly payments and services.

All businesses exhibited a pattern.

He was reviewing this when he pulled into the drive, now hard-packed snow. Sam wasn’t home, which surprised him.

He was even more surprised when Ben Sidell called him. Sam had been shot coming home from the lumberyard and had veered off the road, totaling the Land Cruiser. But Sam was alive.

CHAPTER 13

There should be a reality show, thought Gray, where interior decorators compete to see who can put together a hospital room that doesn’t make one gag. Bad enough to be injured or sick. Worse to be flopped in a bed, an ungainly TV jutting out overhead.

Gray sat beside his brother. Odd to be once again at Sam’s side, but this time Sam wasn’t suffering from the DTs, screaming his head off. Sister, called by Walter about the same time Ben Sidell had called Gray, had hurried down to the hospital.

Sister sat beside Gray while Walter stood at the end of the bed.

Sam had been conscious during the entire ordeal. At the sight of his brother, the first words out of his mouth were“I didn’t touch a drop.”

Walter simply nodded slightly when Sister glanced at her joint-master.“He was lucky. The bullet passed through his shoulder. It entered from the front, passed through the back just under his scapula, nicked his rib, and broke it. Lower, and the damn thing would’ve blown out his heart.”

“Did you see who shot you?” Gray reached for his brother’s hand.

“No. I came around the curve at Soldier Road, just before Roger’s Corner. Next thing I knew, I heard a pop, something hit me, and the windshield crinkled into a thousand tiny pieces.” He blinked in rapid succession for a few seconds. “It took a minute for me to know I’d been shot. It kindof delayed the pain, I mean.”

“Thank God for safety glass, or you’d be cut up.” Sister cared deeply for Sam.

“Hope it was the last of the deer hunters. Thought I’d put most of my enemies behind me.” He smiled ruefully. He sat up, winced, dropped back. “Car’s trashed. I…”

Gray butted in.“I don’t care about the car.”

Walter smiled.“That’s what insurance companies are for.”

Gray murmured,“Well, brother, what else is tore up?”

“Knee.”

Walter spoke reassuringly,“The patella’s fine, bruised. We can drain the fluid off. Sam wasn’t eager to allow any procedures done to his perfect body,” Walter remarked with humor. “But Sam, your knee will swell even more. Let’s take care of it. The needle feels like a big hornet sting, but it doesn’t last long.”

“It’ll go down.” Sam was defiant.

“Sam, trust me. Drain the knee now. I can understand you feel you’ve had enough for one night, but the knee will hurt worse than your broken rib.”

“Do like he says.” Gray squeezed Sam’s hand.

“Birds in your hand,” Sam said sharply.

“Sorry.” Gray released the pressure.

“What?” Walter didn’t understand.

“When we were kids, Peter Wheeler used to tell us when we’d hold the reins too tightly, ‘Little birds in your hands. Don’t squeeze them to death.’”

“I can ride with a bum knee. Plenty of people do.”

“Yes, you can.” Walter smiled at Sam. “Running will hurt. And if you jump, landing will be a bitch. Sooner or later, Sam, you’ll need to have the knee scoped. It’s probably a torn ACL.”

“It can wait.”

“It can, but since you have your brother here and Sister, come on—let’s drain the knee.”

Sam sank deeper into the pillow. He didn’t want to look like a chicken. Truth was he hurt, he was shaken, and he hated needles. On the other hand, get it over with, because Walter wasn’t going to give up.

“All right,” Sam grimly agreed.

“Be back in a minute.” Walter walked out to the nurses’ station, had them call Margaret DuCharme, and apprised her of the situation.

Within five minutes she arrived, along with a thin nurse who carried a porcelain kidney-shaped bowl. A long, long needle was in the bowl with a towel over it. She also carried a small packet of ice in a padded circle that would conform to the knee.

“Can you sit up and dangle your legs over the side of the bed?” Margaret asked. “I’ll put a chair under your feet, if you need it.”

Gray helped Sam sit upright.

The bullet’s path stung, his rib ached, and his knee throbbed. He closed his eyes.

“I’ve seen worse,” Margaret said reassuringly.

“Dr. DuCharme, I don’t want to cuss,” Sam said, which made her laugh.

“I don’t either. This won’t be the worst pain you’ve ever felt, Sam, but you will feel it. I’m going to stick this needle in and draw off the fluid. Then we’ll pack this ice band around your knee. You’ll be surprised at how quickly you’ll feel relief. Ready?”

Sister stood to the side, placing her hand on Sam’s shoulder. Not squeamish, she was nonetheless glad that long needle wasn’t being plunged into her knee.

Sam stiffened.

As Walter and Margaret promised, it was over in a minute.

Both doctors looked at the clear light yellowish fluid. Some blood was in it, which they know was consistent with a torn ligament.

The nurse wiggled the ice bracelet up to his knee.“There you go.”

“That’s it?” Sam’s cheeks sported a gray tinge.

“That’s it,” Margaret smiled. “I’ll check on you tomorrow. You’re tough as nails, Sam Lorillard. Always were.”

“Family trait,” Gray said as he and Walter helped Sam swivel back to rest on the pillow.

“Sam, I know you don’t like drugs, but that wound is going to throb. Your knee shouldn’t hurt as much as it did before draining. Let me give you a mild sedative. You need a good night’s sleep.” Walter’s deep voice soothed.

“No. No drugs.” Sam pressed his lips together.

“Sam, you aren’t going to get hooked. We monitor those things,” Walter reassured him.

“With all due respect, Walter, my body chemistry…well, let’s just say if there’s any kind of downer, booze, or narcotic, I crave it. I fought too hard to get where I am. I’d rather deal with the pain.”

“Can he take aspirin?” Sister asked.

“Yes.” Walter admired Sam’s desire to stay straight, although he felt he could control the situation.

As Margaret reached the door Jason Woods walked in. There was a moment, a slight tension, as they acknowledged one another. Margaret left and Jason entered.

“Sam, heard you escaped an invitation to heaven,” he joked.

“Might have been the other place.” The exhaustion had begun to show on Sam.

“Very possible.” Jason smiled, then spoke to Gray. “He has friends here, Gray. He’ll be all right. Why don’t you go home?”

“No, I’ll spend the night.”

“We’d like to keep him for at least two days, but I expect we’ll be lucky if we can keep him for one.” Walter resigned himself to Sam’s determination.

Sister kissed Sam on the cheek as he nodded off. She kissed Gray.“Can I bring anything back for you?”

“No thanks.” Gray kissed her again. “We’ll both be up and out of here come morning. I’ll be fine. You go on home. I’ll call Crawford about this so that’s taken care of.”

She walked outside with the two doctors.

“What a crazy damn thing,” Jason murmured.

“Yes.” Walter motioned for Sister to wait a moment as Jason returned to his rounds.

Walter leaned against the wall.“Sam got any old enemies left?”

“I don’t know, I expect.”

“The path of the bullet doesn’t lead me to believe it was a stray shot. Someone waited by the road and fired right when he came round.”

“He was in Gray’s car. Maybe they wanted to kill Gray.” Sister felt a ripple of fear pass through her as she leveled her eyes on Walter’s.

“Jesus.”

“We need Him now.”

CHAPTER 14

You look like the dogs got at you under the porch.” Iffy, carrying a file folder while using one cane, walked into Gray’s temporary office.

“Spent the night in the hospital.”

“Are you all right?”

“Fine. Tired.” Gray noticed her quizzical expression. “Sam was in a car accident.” He held back the small detail that Sam had been shot. He was tired and didn’t feel like indulging in speculation with people who weren’t close.

“Oh, no; he didn’t fall off the wagon?” Iffy exclaimed without thinking.

Gray shrugged.“Skidded off the road. He’s home. Banged up, but”—Gray motioned for her to sit, which she declined—“all right.” He half-smiled. “He couldn’t get out of that hospital fast enough.”

“I’m sorry.” She handed the folder to him. “Hanson Office Supplies. First quarter.” She paused. “Sometimes I keep things in my office instead of putting them in the central files. Going up and down steps is hard sometimes. Oh, is Freddie coming in?”

“At three every afternoon. We’re lucky to get her. Her business is booming; but she likes Garvey and understands the situation.”

“M-m-m.” Iffy tossed her head. “I wouldn’t want to be self-employed. Too Iffy.” She smiled at her joke.

Gray smiled, too, then said,“The company doesn’t pay any bills by automatic draft, does it?”

“No. We receive an invoice for every service or bill, and I cut the checks once a month.”

“All right, then.” He nodded, and she left.

The morning’s hunt pleased Sister and Shaker. They took out more young entry than usual. In the beginning of cubbing they’d put two couple of youngsters in with the pack. Keeping the number of young entry small allowed them to study them. By now, January 5, Thursday, enough of the youngsters had settled in that they could take more than two couple. However, it usually took a season, sometimes two, before a young hound fully came into her or his own.

Often an older hound would be retired or pass away and a young hound would step into that hound’s position, a bit like a first baseman retiring and a rookie taking over. But even if the young ones were learning quickly, a large number of them in the pack in their first year often meant excessive excitement, overrunning the line.

This Thursday they’d taken three couple, six young entry from the “A” litter.” Perhaps next Tuesday they’d take four couple. Since the field was usually large on Saturdays, Sister avoided a large number of first-year hounds. She didn’t want to overwhelm youngsters with too many people.

The snow had sunk down to the consistency of hard vanilla sauce. The footing gave everyone flutters. Horses slipped, although it didn’t bother the horses as much as it bothered the people. Most people instructed their blacksmith to put borium on the shoes. A few people used screwin caulks, a bit like small spikes on baseball shoes. While they could be tremendously useful on a day like today, they could also be dangerous. If ahorse overreached or inadvertently clipped himself, he’d tear into flesh. Worse, if an owner forgot to unscrew the caulks, the ride home could turn into disaster for the horse. And unscrewing the ice-cold caulks, when hands were frozen was not a congenial task.

Sister stuck to borium, a powder applied to spots on the shoe rim. Slightly raised and rough, it helped the animal get purchase. Besides which, borium created much less damage if her horse stepped on himself. She’d rather slip and slide than risk injury to her horse.

Despite the skating, they ran two foxes. The saucy creatures were fully aware that the footing gave them a great advantage. The hounds fared better, thanks to their claws, but they couldn’t keep up with the lighter foxes on a day like today.

Uncle Yancy, a venerable fox with peculiar habits, one of which was watching TV while sitting in Shaker’s window, sauntered in full view. As it was, he was all the way over on the Lorillard place. This surprised Sister, Shaker, Betty, and Sybil because Uncle Yancy usually kept within a small radius of Roughneck Farm, occasionally taking over a den at After All Farm.

Uncle Yancy was experiencing domestic problems with Aunt Netty. She said old age was making him dotty and querulous. He said she was an old harridan and her brush looked like a rat’s tail.

So Uncle Yancy was sleeping on the sofa, as it were. He explored the Lorillard place and was impressed with the brothers’ accomplishments. But it was too far east for him.

When hounds caught his scent, their third fox of the morning, Uncle Yancy headed west to Tedi and Edward’s After All Farm, which was where hounds had met for the first cast. He skated a few times, but it was fun. Uncle Yancy liked the cold air in his nostrils.

He hastened all the way to the pattypan forge, five miles as the crow flies, which St. Just was doing. The crow tracked Yancy the entire way, but both animals knew nothing would come of it. Still, it afforded St. Just a thrill to see the old red fox loping along. He hurled down insults.

When Uncle Yancy dropped into the pattypan den he kicked himself. He had discounted it as a homesite because he’d be within two miles of Aunt Netty. Once inside he changed his mind. He’d avoid her as best he could, but he wasn’t going to pass up the chance to live in this exotic labyrinth.

Hounds marked the spot.

Dragon sailed through the window. Cora, Diane, and Asa followed.

“You won’t blast Uncle Yancy out of here any more than you did Target,” Cora complained.

“I know. I’m looking for an arm or a leg. Or old bones. Remember the blood last time?” Dragon answered.

“Shaker will think you’re dawdling.” Asa turned to jump back out the window.

“If I show up with a human leg he’ll think otherwise. And a boneis a bone. Doesn’t matter what animal it comes from.” Dragon lifted the fur on his shoulders.

“Ass.” Asa jumped out.

“Take that, too,” Dragon called after him.

Cora didn’t feel like wasting time on Dragon, so she, too, jumped out.

Dragon looked at his sister.“A quick check.”

She turned to leave, but her curiosity got the better of her. She put her nose down. Seconds later at the actual forge she came up on another large glop of congealed blood, the cold giving it an odd glisten.

“Here.”

Outside Shaker called them.

Dragon hurried over. He trotted along the side of the old bellows.“This is weird.”

Diana joined him. Another frozen gelatinous lump, palm sized, had been dropped on the other side of the forge. Diana was baffled by this. Given the cold, not much scent came off this substance, either.

“Come on, Diana. Come on, Dragon.”

Dragon ran back to the blood, inhaled deeply. What little scent he could pick up with his long nasal passage made him sneeze.“Human blood, but something’s wrong with it.”

Both hounds then jumped out of the window in tandem. If they could return on a non-hunting day, maybe they could find more. But they left the kennels only for hunting or for hound walk. It was a sorry hound that ran off during hound walk. He’d lose his privileges or be coupled to another hound, berated by that hound for being a damned fool and being out of step besides.

Later, as Sister and Betty cleaned tack they heard the sound of a six-cylinder Wrangler. A lime-green Jeep pulled into the stable lot. Three young women crawled out, swinging their legs over the high bottom lip of the doorway.

“Sister!” Tootie, Val, and Felicity ran inside the stable.

After hugs and kisses, Sister and Betty listened to their stories of Christmas vacation, dreary dates, even more dreary family reunions, and how cold the dorms were when they arrived back at Custis Hall. How tough Bunny Taliaferro, the riding instuctor, was. Christmas vacation made her meaner.

“How cold?” Sister enjoyed the hyperbole.

“My toothbrush froze.” Val tossed her blonde ponytail.

“In her mouth,” Tootie added with a sly smile.

“My,” Betty simply commented.

“I’m surprised it’s still not stuck to your mouth, Val. Your Wrangler can’t be that warm,” Sister teased.

“But it is. Daddy bought me the hardtop. We can lift it off, but we have to disengage the wires to the windshield wiper on the back. Isn’t it cool? Isn’t it the coolest car you have ever seen?”

“It is. Looks like fun.” Sister loved being around these kids.

“You need one. Red.” Felicity imagined the master tooling around the back roads.

“Black,” Tootie said.

“I knew you’d say that.” Val laughed.

“Really, black with a blue and gold pinstripe. How cool is that?” Tootie folded her arms over her chest.

“Pretty cool.” Sister imagined the sight.

“You’re ahead of Jennifer. She still doesn’t have a car,” Betty said. “Wants a Pontiac Solstice.”

“Me, too. Howie wants one in that titanium color.” Felicity found a way to drag her boyfriend into the conversation.

“Howie will have a long wait,” Val replied.

Felicity ignored Val’s remark.

“How many great hunts did we miss? Tootie e-mailed us your reports. I wish we’d been here.” And before Sister could open her mouth, Val bubbled over. “But we can hunt Saturday. Bunny said so. I can’t wait! It’s horrible not being around horses. I love Mom and Dad, but my horse is here. I can’t live without Moneybags.”

Moneybags was a handsome gelding.

“Who’s the new gray?” Tootie noticed the compelling thoroughbred.

“Matador. Sixteen hands, but a big enough barrel he’ll take up my leg. Chaser.” She used the abbreviation for steeplechase horse.

“Wow.” Felicity walked out of the tackroom to Matador’s stall. She returned smiling.

“Are you girls going right back to the dorm?” Sister asked.

“No. We want to hang with you,” Val announced.

“I’m glad to hear that. If you help me for just an hour I promise I’ll feed you well.”

“Don’t pass up the apple crisp.” Betty smiled. “Made it this morning and brought it to the tailgate. There’s lots left.”

Once the tack was cleaned, Sister checked on the hounds and put Raleigh and Rooster in the house. The girls followed her to the spot where Sam had careened off the road.

Betty, too, followed.

Sister briefly recounted the events.

A dirt road, now snow packed, fed into Soldier Road on the opposite side of the road from where Sam had crashed. All three vehicles parked there.

“Girls, what I want you to do is walk three abreast in this field. Pay special attention to bushes and trees. And tell me if you see tracks: animals, human. Betty and I will walk up here on the road.” She turned to Betty. “Why don’t you walk against traffic, and I’ll walk with it? Shouldn’t be much, but I’ve got on this red scarf. Anyway, I expect Ben’s crew found whatever there was to find.”

They walked slowly. Only two drivers passed, one being Roger, the owner of Roger’s Corner, the last convenience store heading west before one climbed the Blue Ridge to drop into the Shenandoah Valley below.

After a half hour, the cold beginning to seep into their feet even with heavy socks and Thinsulate boots, Tootie called out,“Found something.”

The rest made their way to her.

Random pricker bushes dotted the snow. Deer tracks, crow tracks, and raccoon tracks were evident, all heading toward Broad Creek. The human tracks were scuffed so no sole tread would be apparent, and the size was indistinguishable.

“Damn.” Sister whispered as she noticed that. “Smart, too.”

CHAPTER 15

Odd dates and facts rolled around Sister’s mind.

She often conceived of her mind as a closet, which when opened would reveal the usual apparel but also a few dead moths, the remains of long-perished spiders, and tiny little skeletons of whatever Golly had secreted there long ago.

Yesterday had been the day of St. Simeon Stylites, born 390 and died 459. Apart from his piety, gentle preaching, and self-abnegation on top of the pillar that had given rise to his name, Stylites, he must have stunk to high heaven. Perhaps that was his plan. After all, the Olympians enjoyed the fragrance of offerings slaughtered or burnt in their honor. Perhaps Simeon’s Christian God liked human unwashed scent.

Sister doubted this. Simeon had had doubts, too, but they were of a higher order.

Today, January 6, belonged to St. Peter of Canterbury, birth date unknown, who died in 607 after an eventful life. On a mission to Gaul, disunited then (and perhaps still), poor Peter drowned in the English Channel. When found, he was unceremoniously buried by pagan locals. But a mysterious light danced over his grave at night, which made them reconsider Christ’s message.

Sister would have welcomed a mysterious light—any light to shed on the disquiet she felt. She’d driven to town at first light to meet with Ben Sidell, already in his office.

After informing him of the scuffed foot marks, she asked,“Any luck with other Land Cruiser owners?” She gratefully drank from the mug of hot tea she’d brought along.

He shook his head“No,” then added, “Brad Johnson was deer hunting here around that time, but he was on the other side of the road. Not much, but you gather these little bits of information. Eventually some kind of picture emerges.”

“I’m trying to convince myself the shot was an accident. If only Brad had been on the west side of the road.”

“I hope so, too, but I’ll keep on it—just in case.”

“Hunting Saturday?”

He nodded,“Yes.”

After classes, Tootie, Val, and Felicity carefully put out their kit for tomorrow’s hunt. Valerie as class president had a room to herself in the corner of the oldest and therefore most prestigious dorm. Tootie and Felicity, each carrying 4.0 grade averages, also lived on the same hall.

Custis Hall’s founder and succeeding headmistresses judiciously used earned status to motivate the girls. This part of the school had been built in 1812, along with the only other structure at that time, the administrative building, which had been used for classes as well back then.

Since 1812 Custis Hall had entertained building programs consistent with the rise and fall of capital cycles. The newest dorms, very attractive and with every modern convenience, had been built in 2000. The three seniors would slit their wrists before living in the newest dorm.

Old One, as their dorm was called, had been remodeled sporadically. Modern insulation, electricity, and plumbing had been installed. But each room still had a fireplace, and the girls had to take proper care of it or lose the privilege of living in Old One.

Val’s room had served every senior class president since 1812. Many had gone on to become the wives of senators, generals, admirals, and captains of industry. A few made their independent way in the arts. Fewer still started their own businesses, although more graduates had moved into the business world after the 1970s. Still, Custis Hall girls, after college, married well if they married.

As Val’s room was the largest, both Tootie and Felicity sat there shining their boots.

“I can never get this stuff out of my fingers,” Tootie grumbled. “Me, neither.” Felicity, slender and observant, vigorously rubbed in the black paste.

Val’s boots gleamed under her mahogany valet, where she’d hung her frock coat, her white shirt, her ironed stock tie. She pinned her stock pin through the buttonhole of her black frock coat so she wouldn’t lose it in the hustle of leaving in the early morning. Her canary vest was over the shirt,the coat over the vest. Her britches were draped over the bar constructed for that purpose. In the tray of the valet she’d placed two long thin strips of rawhide, one penknife, one pack of matches, and a cotton handkerchief. She’d already put her Virginia hunting license in her vest pocket. Hervelvet hard hat, tails up, sat next to her boots but in a special hat case wherein she kept two pairs of gloves, one white and knitted, one deerskin with a cashmere lining. Inside the hat case were small packs of handwarmers and extra hairnets.

“Val, how’d you get everything done? You’re usually behind,” Felicity inquired.

“MinPin.” She named a freshman by nickname.

“Wish I had a slave.” Tootie didn’t especially like the cloying freshman.

“I could be really obnoxious,” Val warned.

“Free blacks could own slaves, too, Val.” Tootie fired away because she knew what Val was thinking. Tootie was also black. “I know my history.”

“Not my strong suit, is it? But hey, I’m good at calculus.”

“You’re good at anything if you want to be.” Felicity made peace. “That’s what makes me wonder where Howie will go to school. His grades are okay, but you know.”

“We know,” Tootie and Val said in unison.

Blushing, Felicity remarked,“He’s such a good quarterback. He’s been scouted by a lot of schools.”

“Princeton isn’t one of them,” Val flatly said. “We’re all going to Princeton.”

“We haven’t got our acceptances yet,” Tootie reminded her.

“We will. You know we will.”

“Well, if not, we have our back-up schools, but I don’t think Howie could get into Bucknell or some of our others.” Felicity bent lower over her boots.

“So? You see him on big weekends unless he winds up in Kansas. Then you can see him at Christmas.” Val picked up a small hard-bristled whisk brush to brush Tootie’s coat.

Little clouds of fine dust whirled up and made Val choke.

“Here?” Tootie stood up, reaching for her coat.

“I can do it. You’ll get bootblack on the coat. What’d you get into? This coat is a mess.”

“Remember when we got muddy, last hunt before vacation? I brushed it off but not so good.” Tootie apologized.

“That was fun staying with Sister after the dorms closed. I didn’t really want to go home,” Val said. “Glad I did.” She laughed.

“You didn’t know your dad was getting you the Wrangler for Christmas?” Felicity didn’t envy her the car. She had no envy in her.

“No.” Val looked down as students walked across the oldest quad. “Wonder if she’ll really go to Ole Miss?”

They knew she must be watching Pamela Rene, an African-American student from great wealth.

Pamela didn’t like Tootie because Tootie was beautiful and popular. Pamela was neither, but she was smart.

“She won’t go,” Felicity predicted.

“Hell you say.” Val used the old expression.

“One dollar.” Felicity held out her hand.

She kept the kitty, which was filling up rapidly. One dollar for every swear word uttered by any of them. The plan was to use the money at the end of the semester for a party.

“She’ll go.” Tootie’s alto sounded firm.

Both white girls stared at her.“Why?”

“To defy her mother; to prove she can do it.”

“You mean survive in the Deep South?” Valerie caught on.

“Right. Her mother, the drama queen, thinks she’ll be walking into the arms of the Ku Klux Klan.”

“Thought they were strongest in Indiana. I swear I read that somewhere,” Felicity added. “Or maybe Howie told me. His favorite subject is current affairs.”

Tootie stood up, putting her boots on the floors to allow the polish to set before buffing. She walked to the window to watch Pamela.“Guess she’ll be hunting tomorrow.”

“She’s a good rider,” Val grumbled. “It’s the rest of it.”

“She’s lost weight. How does anyone lose weight over Christmas vacation?” Felicity, thin, wondered.

“Her mother wired her mouth shut.”

Val arched one eyebrow, a neat trick.

Tootie and Felicity burst out laughing.

“Felice, my darlin’,” Tootie grinned, “You’ll be okay if you and Howie are at separate schools.”

“He’s hoping for a football scholarship to Wake Forest. And they’ve offered him a tutoring program. I wouldn’t mind Wake.”

“Princeton!” Val fiercely said, her heart set on being a tiger.

“Are you in love or something?” Tootie sat back down beside Felicity.

A long silence followed.“I don’t want to live without him. I guess I am.”

“I am going to throw up!” Val swatted Felicity on the shoulder with the whisk brush. “You can’t fall in love. We’re too young. I mean, that’s like prison.”

“Val,” Felicity blazed, “in the last century most people our age were married. It’s natural to fall in love when you’re young.”

“Bullshit.” Val, a beautiful six-foot one-inch blonde, tossed her long hair.

“She’s right.” Tootie defended Felicity. “We’re the strange ones, out of step with biology.”

“Since when are you a biology major?” Val would have none of it. “You’ve never even felt a twinge for someone?” Felicity asked quietly.

“Only you.” Val smarted off.

“Val, you can be such an ass sometimes.” Tootie didn’t say this with hostility.

“One dollar.”

“God, Felicity, you’re relentless!” Tootie handed over her dollar. “Val, you owe two.”

“I know.” Val opened her bureau drawer and pulled out two crisp dollar bills. “You’re going to be a banker, I know it.”

“Maybe.” Felicity did, though, have a head for business, and she liked it.

“And you’ll run for public office after law school.” Tootie started buffing her boots.

“I will,” Val agreed. “And I’ll put off getting married until my middle thirties. Make every male voter believe he could be the one.”

Tootie appreciated this shrewdness in Val,“Sometimes I think I’ll marry, and other times I think never.”

“When you meet the right one, everything falls into place.” Felicity glowed.

“You’re seventeen. Lust—okay, I can understand that, but love? Come on, Felicity, get over it.” Val really couldn’t understand this.

“Let’s change the subject.” Felicity sighed.

Before they could do that, Pamela Rene popped her head through the open door, but she had the manners to knock first on the door frame.“Hi.”

“Hi,” the three said.

“I lost my stock pin. Can I borrow one?”

“Sure.” Tootie, who kept extras, reached into her coat, which Val had finished brushing. “Here you go.”

“I’ll give it back after tomorrow.”

“Keep it.” Tootie worked hard not to allow her feelings about Pamela to surface.

“I’ll order everyone a backup from Horse Country,” Pamela offered. “Be here next week.”

“Good idea. Got the catalogue?” Val asked.

“Yeah.”

“Can I see it later?”

“You can see it now.” Pamela, also a resident of coveted Old One, turned on her heel and walked down the polished wooden floor to her decorated room. She returned with the glossy catalogue. The four girls strained to view it, but Tootie gave up and buffed her boots now that the polish had set.

“Retail’s pretty amazing.” Pamela also liked business, but from a different angle than Felicity.

“I wish Marion would take on apprentices,” Felicity laughed, mentioning the owner of Horse Country. “I’d work for clothes.”

“Me, too,” Val agreed.

They commented on various delightful offerings and deplored their relative poverty, which was funny considering they were rich kids. But they were still kids and, with the exception of Val, were kept on a fairly strict allowance. Val’s parents often overdid; she liked that in material terms, but it embarrassed her with her peers.

The funny thing about Pamela’s parents was that they kept her on a short money leash, but then her father would send the corporate jet for her. Of the four girls, Pamela’s home life was the unhappiest. Her mother, Thaddea Bolendar, had been a highly paid model in the 1970s. She’d made the cover ofVogue more than once, and she never ceased to remind her daughter, a few pounds overweight, that she wasn’t perfect and she’d never makeVogue.

Val reveled in unconditional love, which gave her tremendous confidence. She was a happy young woman, if occasionally overconfident.