The Tell-Tale Horse

CHAPTER 17

Heavy frost silvered the rolling pastures, fields, and the rooftops of the old stone buildings of Mousehold Heath, a new fixture fifteen miles southeast of the kennels.

As is always the case with a new fixture, it takes perhaps two years to figure out the fox population, most especially how they run.

Established in 1807, the simple farmhouse and outlying clapboard barns acquired its name owing to the unusually large mouse population. Over the centuries, generations of hardworking cats somewhat reduced the numbers of these little marauders, as did foxes, owls, and hawks, but Mousehold Heath still boasted regiments of mice.

Sister noticed Faye Spencer parked as far away from Cabel Harper as possible, down by the old cattle barn. The two pointedly did not speak. Ilona, with quiet glee, was observing every nuance.

It must have killed Cabel that Clayton dropped his mare at Faye’s farm.

Betty Franklin noticed too, simply shrugging as Sister said nothing. Human dramas bored Sister. Her focus was on foxhunting in particular and animals in general, although she did care about her Custis Hall girls. They were young, experiencing powerful adult emotions for the first time. They needed a friendly ear, perhaps a friendly nudge. Adults should be accustomed to such tempests, although Sister had come to the conclusion that adults were just wrinkled children with greater resources to inflict greater damage.

She swung her leg over Matador, the two still getting acquainted. The sixteen-hand flea-bitten gray, light gray with dark flecks in the coat, former steeplechase horse looked wonderful, and she accepted compliments as she rode along the trailers.

Ascertaining that the small Thursday crowd out on this cold crisp day was five minutes from ready, she checked her watch. Well enough, five minutes to the first cast.

Sister did not wait for people who showed up late or fiddled with tack. Scent, often a fragile thing, demanded her utmost attention. Why punish all those who did arrive on time by letting slip an opportunity to pick up a fox, scent possibly fading as the hands on the clock kept ticking?

Like every leader before her, regardless of the organization, the sum is greater than the parts and the group takes precedence over the individual. She’d bend over backward to help a hunt club member, even Cabel, but when it came to the actual hunt, you’d better mind your p’s and q’s.

Hounds rocked the party wagon, they were so eager to hunt. Wisely, Shaker and Sister had brought only seasoned animals. No reason to risk a young hound’s becoming confused in new territory and perhaps skirting off.

“Let’s decant ’em.” She smiled at Shaker, already mounted.

Sybil opened the back door to the hound trailer.

“Hold up.” Shaker quietly commanded the eleven couple of hounds, which stood patiently but with high expectation.

Sister scanned the small field, noting that Vajay appeared drawn, Kasmir elegant, and Cabel and Ilona stuck next to each other. Weekdays the field included more women than men. Those men owning their own businesses might take one morning off during the week but they usually couldn’t take two.

Sybil swung her leg over Bombardier, her tried-and-true horse. Betty sat on Outlaw, those two like an old married couple.

Having discussed the morning’s draw before arriving, Shaker stuck to the plan, which was to cast behind the cattle barn, across the pasture, and thence to the back pastures and cornfields.

Hounds eagerly dashed behind the cattle barn, feathered, but didn’t open. A thin but fast-moving stream separated the barn field from the next pasture; the eastern hillside faced the barn. A million tiny rainbows glistened. The temperature rising on the eastern slopes would soon turn that glittering sight into thick dew. Shaker urged hounds forward, Cora being the strike hound today, Dragon left in the kennel.

A long row of rolled-up hay lined the southern side of the twenty-acre pasture, like giant biscuits of shredded wheat. Shaker asked hounds to investigate the round bales, for mice liked to make warm nests in the sweet-smelling hay.

“Hey,” Dasher called as the whole pack worked, noses to the hay.

Cora joined him. “H-m-m.” Her stern moved faster.

Trudy, now in her third year, leapt atop the hay, jumping from one bale to another. She could hear the mice inside. The humans couldn’t but all the hounds both listened intently and inhaled deeply.

They covered the ground. The fox had been there; a deep hollowed-out spot in the hay bale marked one entrance. It was a red dog fox that they could clearly smell. This fox had decided to live with his food supply, but he wasn’t there.

As it was the end of February, the hay fox might be coming home from courting. They cast themselves farther away. Scent picked up, then frittered away.

Hounds moved across the pasture, easily clearing the three-foot-two-inch coop at the end of the field. Throughout the summer, staff and some members had worked to prepare the fixture.

A small covert on both sides of a deeper stream pointed down to a larger creek. Hounds burst in and burst out. This time yet another fox, a good-sized gray, shot in front of them.

Betty, on the left side, hollered, “Tally-ho!” when he burst out.

To everyone’s surprise, he made a large circle and then dashed into that same covert.

Betty called, “Tally back!”

The fox was young and became unnerved by hounds when he bolted from his den. He wouldn’t make that mistake again, and he was lucky to pop back in and save his brush.

Shaker dismounted, flipping his reins over Gunpowder’s neck as the sweet older horse stood. Shaker slipped going into the covert but recovered. The thick brambles impeded progress, but he could make out hounds digging at the den. Fighting his way through the thorns, he reached the den, blew “Gone to Ground,” and praised his charges. He returned, favoring his right leg a bit, and swung up on Gunpowder to head toward the woods across the pasture.

They fiddled and faddled in there but nothing—still too cold—so he emerged on the eastern side, hunting back below the cattle barns in the opposite direction. Ardent picked up a line and they ran for perhaps ten minutes, but it faded and that was pretty much the day, although they kept trying.

Still, when they returned to the trailers Sister felt positive. They’d only hunted Mousehold Heath three times. The owners, a young couple determined to make a profit off a combination of cattle, timber, and hay, came out from the house to join the impromptu tailgate.

“Won’t you all come inside?” Lisa Jardine asked Sister.

Sister declined. “We’ll track up your house.”

“It can’t be any worse than what Jim and I do. Come on. It’s cold out here.”

They carried the food into the big old country kitchen, a white porcelain table in its middle.

Jim joined them. “Twenty degrees this morning. How do you keep your feet warm in those boots?”

Shaker replied, “You don’t.”

After forty-five minutes of thawing, drinking hot coffee, and eating the ubiquitous ham biscuits, these made by Faye Spencer, the whole gang returned to the trailers.

Sister, hand on the crystal doorknob with a center of mercury, smiled at the well-built pair. Country life kept them strong and healthy. “Thank you. This was an unexpected treat.”

“You know I rope cows. I can ride pretty good.” Jim, at first thinking foxhunting a sport for toffs, was coming to understand it was quite the reverse.

She challenged him. “Well, Jim, let me put you to the test.”

“Can I ride Western?”

“Jim Jardine, you can ride anyway you want. We’d be honored to have you join us, and you will see your beautiful farm in a new light.”

“Can I wear my chaps? Haven’t got any special gear, you know.”

“You can.” She thanked them again and walked back to the trailer.

Jim Jardine would get hooked. The only people who didn’t succumb to the lure of foxhunting once they rode out were those who were terrified but couldn’t admit it. Everyone else embraced the majesty of the chase. Even today, pushing off in the low twenties, her toes already throbbing, Sister thanked God for this bountiful earth and all its beauty. She never felt more alive than when foxhunting. Even making love, an activity that found favor with her, posted a dim second. Her reasoning was a great lover might last an hour. Wonderful and good. A great chase might last two hours and occasionally four. Do the math.

Strictly speaking, the square-built Jim shouldn’t come out in chaps on a Western saddle. But landowners, special generous folk, could do whatever they wanted in Jefferson Hunt. As far as Sister was concerned, she was damned lucky to have him. Over time he’d realize the traditional hunting kit served a purpose, one tested over centuries. Then, too, if she were a man she wouldn’t want to take a jump in a Western saddle. That horn could be lethal to one’s reproductive career. Hell, Jim could ride naked if he wanted to! But then she regretted that thought, for it brought Lady Godiva to the fore.

No sooner had she reached the trailer than she heard Faye Spencer and Cabel Harper yelling at each other.

High and Kasmir ignored them. Betty and Sybil did too, but their responsibilities as staff precluded such intrusions. Ilona was vainly trying to pull away the puce-faced Cabel.

Shaker stepped up to Sister. “You might want to speak to the ladies.”

“How long has this been going on?”

“Um, maybe two minutes, maybe five; the air is sulfurous.”

“Yes, I can hear that.”

“You slut! You piece of white trash!” Cabel screeched.

“And you’re not?” Faye shot back, but at lower register.

“Cabel, come on now. You’re making a spectacle of yourself.” Ilona pulled at Cabel’s elbow, only to be shaken off as Cabel spun around on her.

“Leave me alone! You don’t think your precious Ramsey hasn’t rammed his dick up her?”

This vulgarity shocked everyone more than the fight. Cabel had never been a vulgar woman.

Sister, towering over the women, said firmly, “That’s enough.”

“Who the hell are you to tell me what to do? We aren’t hunting.” Cabel now spun on Sister. “You lured my husband away.”

“Years and years ago, Cabel, and I can now see I was wrong. You’re overwrought.” Sister wondered if perhaps Cabel wasn’t ill; something was pulling her down. “This doesn’t become you.”

The fact that Sister didn’t scream back at her, but remained calm, began to have an effect.

Ilona, glancing at Sister, voice low, pleaded, “Come on, honey. You’re upset.” Then she said, “I’m going to tell Sister.”

“Don’t.”

“It’s too late, Cabel. This isn’t like you.” She turned to Sister. “Clayton asked her for a divorce. I don’t know why she wants to keep him, but that’s love for you.”

Cabel burst into tears. “I made him! I made him what he is today!”

Sister had to bite her tongue because she wanted to say, “Yes, you did.” Instead she spoke sympathetically. “Cabel, that’s painful news, I know. Certainly I have no advice except to say, if you can’t patch it up, end it and go forward. You have a lot of living ahead of you.”

“How can he do this to me?”

Sister couldn’t say a word to that.

Ilona murmured, “He’s going away for twenty-eight days; that might change things.” She turned again to Sister. “He says he’s truly going into rehab.”

“I see.” Sister, seeing that Cabel, though sobbing, had stopped attacking Faye, walked over to the younger woman, who had retreated to her trailer. “You all right?”

“Yes. She flew at me like a harpy. Scared me half to death.”

“He’s asked for a divorce.”

“Well, it’s not because of me.” Faye bit her lip. “Oh, he came around sniffing. That’s Clayton. But I certainly didn’t go to bed with him.”

“She thinks you did.”

“She’s lost it. She thinks every woman in this club has gone to bed with him.”

Sister smiled slightly. “Ah, well, some of us did back in the Bronze Age. I know this is hard to believe, but he was so handsome. So handsome and so much fun. The years work on all of us, I reckon.”

“Some more than others.”

“Well, I thank you for not throwing a punch at her. It was bad enough.”

“It was. I shouldn’t have lost my temper and said what I said,” Faye looked imploringly at the silver-haired woman, “but I’m sick and tired of it.”

“I understand. Do your best to keep it in check.”

As Sister rode back to the farm in the truck, Betty at her side, the two rehashed the day’s hunt and then touched on the human explosion.

“We make ourselves miserable.” Betty played with her gloves, which she’d folded over in her lap. “We do, we make our own Hell.”

“Yes, we do.”

“Speaking of Hell, how about Heaven? Today’s saints?”

“Herefrith, Bishop of Lincoln, most likely killed by the Danes in 873, and also Oswald. Now he’s really interesting. He was the bishop of Worcester in the late tenth century and then became archbishop of York. He came from a Danish military family. By now the Danes controlled huge sections of England; the Saxons in the north were weak at the time. Oswald must have been quite something. He was much loved, and eyewitnesses commented on his splendid physique and his beautiful voice.”

“Did he get murdered too?”

“Died on February twenty-eighth, reciting the Gradual Psalms. For an archbishop, that’s the way to go.”

“Ever think about your own death?”

“In my teens. I suppose the reality that I would die intruded on my consciousness, but the intrusion was intellectual. Now I know it emotionally so I accept. Not that I want to go. I’m quite happy to live.”

“Sometimes I wonder,” Betty mused, “then I banish it from my thoughts. Nothing I can do about it. We’re all going to go.”

“Think about Herefrith. So many of the saints died terrible deaths. Being cut down by the sword was relatively kind. And here it is, over a thousand years later and some of us remember their sacrifice. I don’t know if I could die for an idea. I could die for a person. I could die for a hound. But an idea? No. I know I’ve said this before, but it bothers me. I can’t understand a person dying for an idea.”

“I don’t know if I do either, but then you think about World War Two. Did those men die for democracy?”

“I suspect most Americans died because they didn’t want to let down their buddies. Maybe some thought about what would happen if the Axis powers overran the world, but mostly I bet they marched on, sticking to their comrades. You know, about sixty million people died in that war. We’re way past that, we’re in the billions now, and we still can’t get along.”

“Must have been easier when you could just dispatch an enemy with a sword.”

“Nothing has changed, Betty. We still kill our enemies. I’ll bet you if Cabel, in her rage, had had a weapon she would have brained Faye. Blind rage.”

“Distorts the features,” Betty dryly replied, and they both laughed.