The Tell-Tale Horse

CHAPTER 28

Shaker reined in, cast hounds in a wide net, but that yielded not a jot.

He noticed that the bit of wind died and a stillness muffled sound in the woods. He could hear horses breathing about half a football field from him but no birds flew, no deer appeared.

Not only are there dead spots where wireless phones can’t receive transmission, there are dead spots and dead times, period.

Sometimes this presages the edge of a low pressure system. Other times it’s just a calm moment or calm spot, just as there are spots where little wind devils forever spiral upward.

Shaker turned, casting back toward Shootrough. Given conditions, he thought it better to head toward food sources like the ground nester paradise. Usually he didn’t draw the same covert twice, but this time he thought he’d draw toward the north, then move out of Shootrough where, once through the woods and skirting a ravine, an array of fenced pastures beckoned, little coverts stuck here and there, all rich in game.

Back in the wheat and millet, a bobwhite flew up, then another. Asa moved to the edge of the large area where the switchgrass formed a border. He lifted his head, flared his nostrils, then lowered his head. Patiently, he worked this old line as it grew warmer. A gray fox came for breakfast, feathers everywhere as though the vixen played with them, which she well may have done. Finally, he had enough fresh scent to open in his deep basso profundo, a sound to send shivers up one’s spine.

Hound ran a half circle around the edge of Shootrough, staying in the switchgrass; then, to the field’s delight, the gray vixen burst out, making a straight blast across the fields, tall grass bent down from winter’s snows.

Betty, to the left of the beautiful fox, jumped a deep ditch, new, thanks to runoff. Clods of red clay flew up behind Outlaw’s hooves.

Sybil, on the right, moved into the edge of the woods because the gray swerved, heading for the woods; then she turned again, making a straight shot toward Mill Ruins, two miles away as the crow flies.

Close to their fox, hounds grew more excited, as did the field.

The vixen knew her territory, moving over a large patch of running cedar that baffled scent just long enough for her to put more distance between herself and hounds. She ran another quarter mile, then launched straight up, grabbing on to the rough bark of a mighty walnut tree. By the time hounds reached her, she was grooming herself on a thick limb, tail held in front paw.

“Come down here! Come down here!” Doughboy leapt up and down.

“Cheater! Cheater!” Pookah was beside herself.

The gray looked down and smiled. “When pigs can fly.”

Shaker rode up, Showboat lifting his gorgeous head to behold the fox.

Sister brought the field up close so they could see the vision. Bobby had room to come up too, as no saplings grew around the spread of the walnut’s branches.

Shaker laughed. “Is there a call for Climbed a Tree?”

Sister laughed too. “Well, give Gone to Ground a few doubling notes.”

He did, and the young horse that Sam rode just blew up.

“Brother, I’d better head back,” Sam said quietly. He knew the animal had had enough.

“I’ll go back with you.” Gray wanted to keep hunting but Sam should have company. “I’ll tell Sister we’re heading back.”

Gray rode up and spoke quietly to Sister, who nodded, and the two men turned to pick their way toward the farm road on a well-worn deer trail.

Deeper in the woods than they realized, they kept pushing toward the southwest. Sooner or later they would find the farm road. The steeplechaser calmed down with the leisurely walk and the fact that Gray’s stalwart foxhunter stayed low-key.

The deep ravine to the right helped them get their bearings. Neither Sam nor Gray had the best sense of direction, unlike Sister and Shaker, two human homing pigeons.

Gray sighed. “Whew. Know where we are now.”

“Yeah, I was getting a little worried too.”

“Sister would have put out drinks and a cooler with food. She’d feed us like the foxes, figuring we’d smell out the food,” Gray teased.

“Wouldn’t put it past her. Remember the time Ronnie Haslip sank in the bog? The horse struggled but Ronnie couldn’t move for the mud sucking him in. As everyone tied their stirrup leathers together to throw him a line, she calls out, ‘Don’t worry, Ronnie, if you go under we’ll throw a wreath on the spot.’ Took his mind off his predicament.”

“Funny, isn’t it, how the mind controls the body?”

Sam snorted. “In my case it’s usually the reverse.” He looked toward the ravine. “Damn, sure are a lot of crows over there.”

“Probably a deer carcass left over from deer season.”

“Hate that. Hate it when they wander off and die.” Sam grimaced.

“Well, a good hunter will track his deer when wounded, but sometimes they can get away. Come on.”

They rode to the lip and looked down to see St. Just and his flock merrily feasting on a corpse. St. Just had an eyeball in his yellow beak. The cold weather had preserved the body, and the slight thaw allowed the crows to really dig in to this unexpected treat.

“Jesus Christ!” Sam exclaimed.

Gray discerned the dead was male but the crows so covered the body he couldn’t tell much else. “We’ve got to get Ben Sidell.”

“Try this first. Yell. I’d like to spare this horse if I can. You’ve got a voice that carries.”

“Worth a try,” Gray agreed, cupping his lips with his hands. “Yo! Yo! Yo!”

Country folk know three shouts is a signal of distress. When it comes to yelling there’s no formula, but Gray continued using three repeats.

Sound carried well today and the field three-quarters of a mile away heard him.

Shaker had already cast hounds back toward the mill so they were coming in that direction but on higher ground.

Sister paused a moment. “Edward, take the field.”

“Yes, Master.” Edward Bancroft touched his top hat with his crop.

Sister cantered up to Shaker. “That’s Gray. Either he’s seen a fox or there’s something else.”

Often times, if at a distance with no hounds near, someone will tally-ho. As it is, one shouldn’t tally-ho if hounds noses are down. Then, too, how does a field member, who lacks the view up front that the field master has, know if the fox viewed is the hunted fox?

The protocol of foxhunting is grounded in common sense.

“I can hunt that way.” Shaker took his boots out of the stirrup irons to wiggle his cold toes.

“I rarely ask you to do this, but given today’s conditions, which are pretty darned good, please lift the hounds and cast them forward when we reach Gray. We might get a popping run out of it. If not, I’ll bear the blame.”

“Yes, Master.” He didn’t like it but Shaker as a hunt servant did what his master told him to do.

Then, too, Sister and Shaker had worked together, cheek by jowl, for nearly twenty years; usually she was right. He tormented her mercilessly when she wasn’t but all in good fun.

Within four minutes at a relaxed trot they reached the Lorillard brothers.

The second Sister and Shaker saw their faces they knew a fox had not been viewed.

Seeing the crows fly up, Cabel Harper couldn’t resist walking toward the edge of the ravine to look down.

Shaker held up hounds.

Ilona hissed at her. “Cabel!”

A moment before Cabel reached the precipice, St. Just, possessed of a wicked sense of humor, flew right over her head and everyone else’s with that juicy eyeball.

Cabel screamed bloody murder, looked over the edge, turned her horse and rammed High Vajay so hard she unseated him, and then almost trampled the hounds.

Diddy said loudly, “That’s the lady with the perfume.”

Cabel flew through the woods toward the farm road.

Ilona, ignoring Ramsey, rode up to Sister, astonished at both Cabel and what she had seen deep in the ravine.

“Master, please allow me to go after Cabel. I think she’s quite lost her mind.”

“Go,” Sister simply said.

Ben Sidell, already making his way down on foot, confirmed what Sister and Shaker had suspected, as crows lifted up when Ben drew closer. The crows’ lunch was Clayton Harper.

In the distance, receding, people could hear Cabel screaming.

Ben climbed back up; his cell wouldn’t work in the ravine. He called the department and flipped the phone back, leaving it on.

Kasmir helped Vajay back up. The horse was fine but Vajay had fallen flat on his back, knocking the wind out of him.

Mandy held the horse’s reins, feeling an unspecified sense of dread. She shrugged it off, deciding that Cabel’s screams were unnerving. Then again, St. Just’s display of the eyeball certainly ruined the appetite.

“Sister, take everyone back, will you?” Ben turned to Walter. “When my team comes, will you bring us back here? You know the terrain better than I do.”

“Of course.” Walter nodded.

As the field rode back, everyone talked. Gray stuck with Sam, since in company with hounds, humans, and other horses Sam’s steeplechaser grew restive. Fortunately few saw Clayton since Sister prudently kept them back, but everyone saw the offending king of the crows.