Whiskers In The Dark

9

April 15, 2018

Sunday

The second day at Aldie saw the Virginians and the Marylanders lopping off hanging branches and clearing the few large trees remaining on trails. A small work party focused on the kennels. When they built a new roof for the badly damaged kennel, they discovered two other kennels needing repair. It took four of them to cut up and pull out the large tree limb that pierced the roof.

Everyone kept at it. The trials would be April 27 to 29.

The ground, soggy, clung to work boots, making every step heavy. Apart from the kennel crew, two work parties moved through the grounds. The weather, still cool, would numb fingers if one pulled off gloves. Wisely, everyone wore layers.

The cats, patrolling the barn, kept out of the slight wind, plus they had those luxurious fur coats. Still, Pewter would occasionally curl up in scattered straw while Mrs. Murphy hunted for mice.

“There’s a chill.” The gray cat draped her tail over her nose.

“If you’d hunt mice, you’d stay warmer.” The tiger cat crouched by a mousehole, mouse not budging.

“I killed so many mice last week, there can’t be many left.” Pewter noticed an old cobweb, dead flies still imprisoned therein.

“There are enough left. The mule will be stabled here. No point in the mice eating her grain.”

“If she would chew properly, like cats, she wouldn’t spill much grain.”

“Of course, you’re right”—Mrs. Murphy uttered those golden words—“but horses and mules can’t help the way their teeth are made. They grind down sideways on grains and grasses. We tear and chew.”

“Quite right.” Pewter was startled when a chickadee flew into the barn, perching overhead on a rafter.

“Whatcha doin’?” the little bird asked.

“Looking at you.” Pewter narrowed her eyes to appear fearsome.

Didn’t work.

Mrs. Murphy looked up at the black-capped, white-throated bird, asking, “Do the owls ever come in here? They’re good hunters.”

“Not so much anymore. There are so many fancy barns in the area, lots of mice, leftover sandwiches, stuff like that. They’re spoiled now. The owls don’t want an old barn. Has to be new. And I suppose the new ones are better built, so their high nests are toastier.”

“You live here? At the Institute?” Mrs. Murphy gave up on the mouse, and the minute she walked away, tiny black whiskers appeared at the mousehole.

Just checking. The mouse stayed put.

“I do. My wife and I have lived here for years. No eggs yet. The weather has been too strange, but once all this passes we’ll raise our babies. We do a lot of good, you know. Chickadees eat bugs and larvae.”

“Do you live in the barn?” Pewter decided to be social, even if this was a bird.

“No, we have a tidy and tight bird box. Some of the beaglers and basset people put out bird boxes. We used to live in a tree but then we got into an argument with nuthatches who said it was really their home. Wasn’t, of course, but as luck would have it, the humans had just put out bird boxes. So the nuthatches can sit in the tree and listen to everyone talk, watch other birds hang upside down from branches. It’s uncivilized, I tell you.”

The little fellow, a born gossip, chirped away, and Mrs. Murphy found herself liking him. “Mr. Chickadee.”

“Bud.”

“Nice to meet you, Bud. I’m Mrs. Murphy and this is Pewter. Tell me, have you ever seen the ghost beagle?”

“Ruffy. Yes. He walks about but he’s not very talkative. Nice enough.”

“He told us he was here because of his friend,” Mrs. Murphy replied.

“That’s what he’s told me, but nothing else. I get the feeling that whatever happened isn’t over. Ruffy has a mission.”

While the cats and chickadee talked about everything and anything, Harry, Susan, Arlene, Jason, and Mary Reed all struggled with a large tree blocking a narrow trail. This was not visible from the wider walking trails and riding trails, but if the beagles did find a scent, heading in this direction, it would take the humans too much time to find their way around the obstacle, as woods surrounded the trail. The judges would be stymied. Worse, the pack would possibly get so far ahead, the whippers-in couldn’t manage them, and the judges wouldn’t be able to see the work of the hounds.

Arlene sawed off limbs so Jason, Harry, and Susan could cut up the trunk. Mary Reed studied the upturned roots, quite large, protruding and taking up a lot of space.

“How can we cut the roots with all the mud?” Mary asked.

“Can’t,” Harry responded.

“So?” The Master of Bassets peered at the mess.

“We have to cut just above the roots.” Jason took charge of the problem. “We can roll away the pieces of trunk we’ve cut into smaller sections. But to pull away the roots, we’ll need a tractor and chains. And then, where do we drag it?”

The women, any of whom could have taken charge, didn’t much mind that Jason did. All four ladies operated on the theory, “Keep them working.”

After an hour, the large tree had been shorn of all limbs, the thick trunk cut into pieces and rolled to one side in a rough pile.

“Well?” Susan faced the huge root system, then looked upward. “We’ll run out of sunlight.”

“I have an idea.” Mary could be counted on to think things through. “Let Jason go back for the tractor and chains. The four of us can go in each of the cardinal directions to find a suitable place to haul the roots and maybe some of these trunk pieces.”

“We should take the trunk pieces back to the Institute. Use a front-end loader and stack them up. Let them dry. This is good hardwood. A chunk of this will burn a long, long time,” Harry suggested.

“Good point,” Mary agreed.

“We’ll walk. Jason, you take the ATV. You know where the tractor is. By the time you get back here, one of us will have found a spot out of the way.”

As he motored off, Arlene then said, “Really, it should be dumped out in the open so hounds and people can get around it.”

“I’ll go west,” Harry volunteered.

“East.” Arlene picked her direction.

“South.” Susan nodded.

“North.” Mary checked her watch. “Let’s synchronize and be back here in a half hour.”

“Mary, will it take Jason that long?” Susan asked.

“Might. The kennel people are using the tractor. With luck, they will have gotten most of their work done, but he’ll need to talk them out of it and bring it back if there’s a question.”

Arlene then questioned Mary. “But what about the equipment in the shed?”

“Not all of that is available to us.”

“Right.” Harry agreed with Mary, checking her watch. “Four-thirty.”

“Four-thirty.” Arlene looked at hers.

Susan checked her Fitbit. “Right.”

Off they went. Each woman headed for where she remembered an open space. Some were true meadows, others smaller but open areas. The trick was not to clog up an area where rabbits might congregate. This wasn’t as easy a task as it appeared to be.

A half hour later all reconvened, discussing what they’d found.

“The bit of a level at the bottom of the ridge, below the high trail, it’s more or less out of the way.” Arlene pushed for her spot.

Mary, who hunted the Ashland Bassets and knew Aldie well, countered. “It is out of the way, but the creek runs close by. The creek area will hold scent.”

Arlene didn’t refute this, as she respected Mary’s acumen. Mary had hunted hounds longer than Arlene had, so she deferred to what in effect was a senior master.

“If Jason drags this thing down the main path, there’s a turnaround, a kind of dead end. No water close by, but the wind whips through there,” Harry spoke.

“Possible.” Mary looked west. “Susan?” Mary looked at Susan, whose work boots were caked with heavy mud.

“I found open areas but they’re grassy, bush by the edges. Bunnies are edge feeders,” Susan wisely noted. “I can’t say that I found anything suitable.”

“You know where we cross the creek down there? Once across, if you go about one hundred yards, there’s scrub. It’s not really so flat, but the roots could be dragged there. They’re so big, if anyone moved into that area, full of burrs, too, they’d see it,” Harry said.

They batted things back and forth, finally deciding that Harry’s spot sounded the most promising. Mary, who had walked north, kept encountering a series of low ridges, sort of like terraces, and the creek below would hold scent on the side facing the creek. The scent could literally bounce back. Scent, tricky always, moved with the wind, held on rich soil.

People who hunt, whether on horseback or on foot, enjoy watching hound-work, seeing the beautiful country as they ride or walk through, but they need not learn about scent. The huntsman must. Any huntsman, to which Mary could testify, looks great on a good scenting day. And huntsmen can hold their heads up on a terrible day, say, a drought or high winds.

It’s the in-between days that are the true test of a huntsman and his or her pack.

They decided Harry’s turnaround would do it. This lively discussion ate up another half hour. Still no Jason.

They sat on the rolled-over big trunk pieces.

More time slipped by.

“Does he have a cellphone?” Susan asked.

“He does. I’ve seen it in his pocket. He has a leather case.” Arlene figured everyone had a cellphone these days. “Does anyone have the number?”

None did.

“Let me call Amy. She’s down there at the kennels.” Mary dialed Amy, who immediately picked up. Mary asked if she had seen Jason.

“Yeah. He took our tractor about half an hour ago and said he’d be right back. Clare told him he’d better be back. We need that tractor, too. Where the hell is he?”

“That’s what we’re trying to find out,” Mary replied, then clicked off. “Maybe he had tractor trouble.”

“Why don’t we walk back? We’ll probably meet him on the way,” Arlene suggested. “If the tractor has acted up, we can all walk back together.”

“But we’ve got to move the roots.” Mary was adamant.

“We’ll have to do it later,” Susan sensibly replied.

“We have to get this done.”

“Mary, the light will fade soon enough. It’s Sunday and we all need to go home. Come on.” Harry sounded firm, then whistled for the dogs, who had been checking out every smell they could.

They dumped their chain saws into a wagon, which Harry pulled. Then Susan took a turn, then Mary, then Arlene. The Institute was a good mile away, probably more, but they didn’t want to think about it. They were tired and the mud on their work boots just dragged them down.

Finally, a quarter of a mile from the Institute, sitting on the path, was the old Ford tractor.

Harry climbed up, fired it up. “Nothing wrong with this baby.”

“Well, he can’t be far.” Mary was irritated.

He wasn’t.

Susan had walked up a small rise by the roadside. “Girls!”

Harry, knowing Susan, ran to her immediately, as did Tucker and Pirate, close on her heels. “Oh no.”

Now all four women were running. Tucker reached Jason first, followed by Pirate.

Flat on his back, eyes upward, Jason lay there, his throat slit ear to ear.