“Whenisthe first day of cubbing this year?” Crawford put his arm around her.
“September seventh, I think.”
“Time to leg up the horses.”
“Time to leg up ourselves.”
“Oh, honey, you look fantastic. In fact, you look better than when I married you.”
“Liar.”
“It’s true.”
“You can thank the business—and yourself.”
One of her demands for returning to Crawford, who had been unfaithful to her, was that he buy her the landscaping firm where she had been working to make ends meet. She’d fallen in love with the business. When the owner, Fontaine Buruss, died an untimely death in the hunt field, Crawford made a handsome settlement upon Fontaine’s widow. Marty had never been happier now that she was running her own business. She had a real purpose of her own.
He kissed her.“Funny how things work out.”
“You look pretty fantastic yourself.” She winked at him.
He’d lost his paunch, changed his diet, and worked with a personal trainer. He’d also endured liposuction, but he wasn’t advertising that fact.
The rain slashed at the windowpanes, and Crawford’s heart beat right along with it. When Marty winked it meant she wanted sex.
Crawford, like most people with business drive, also had a high sex drive. He adored making love on a rainy night, too.
He reached up and rubbed her neck.“Did I tell you how crazy I am about you?”
What he didn’t tell her was that he had not given up his long-standing goal of becoming joint-master of the Jefferson Hunt and that that very day he had put his plan in motion. By God, he would be joint-master whether Jane Arnold wanted him or not.
CHAPTER 5
Large, overhead industrial fans set high in the ceiling swirled, their flat blades pushing the air downward, and window fans also sucked in air from the outside and sent it over the sleeping hounds. This arrangement kept flies out of the kennels as well.
It was late afternoon, the day after Nola had been discovered. The rains had been followed by the oppressive heat typical of the South.
The Jefferson Hunt Club Kennels, built in the 1950s, were simple and graceful. The building’s exterior was brick, much too expensive to use now thanks to higher taxes and higher labor costs. The large square structure housed the office, the feed rooms, and an examination room where a hound could be isolated for worming or the administration of medicines. At the back of this was a150-foot-square courtyard of poured concrete sloping down to a central drain. The roofline from the main building gracefully extended over one side of this courtyard by about eight feet. Lovely arches much like those underneath the walkways at Monticello supported the overhang.
Open archways bounded the courtyard, again like the ones at Monticello. The dog hounds lived on the right side and the gyps on the left. Each gender had its own runs and kennel houses with raised beds and little porches. The puppies lived at the rear with their own courtyard and special house. A small, separate sick bay nestled under trees far to the right.
The design—simple, functional—was pleasing to the eye. Doorways into the sleeping quarters were covered with tin to discourage chewing. The center sections of the doors to the runs were cut out and covered with a swinging heavy rubber flat, like a large mud flap on a truck, so the hounds could come and go as they wished. Eventually someone would get the bright idea to chew the flap, but a large square of rubber was easier to replace than an entire door.
All sleeping quarters were washed down every morning and evening. Painted cinder-block walls discouraged insect infestation. The floors sloped to central drains.
Many hounds slept in their raised beds, the wash of refreshing air keeping them cool. Others were dreaming in the huge runs, a quarter of an acre each, filled with large deciduous and fir trees. Some hounds felt the only proper response to blistering weather was to dig a crater in the earth, curling up in it. Fans whirling over kennel beds was sissy stuff.
Two such tough characters, Diana and Cora, faced each other from their shallow earthen holes, now muddy, which pleased them.
“Hate summer,”Cora grumbled.
“It’s not so bad,”the beautiful tricolor replied, her head resting on the edge of her crater.
“You’re still young. Heat gets harder to handle as youget older,”Cora said. She had recently turned six.
Six, while not old, gave Cora maturity. She was the strike hound, the hound who pushes forward. She sensed she was slowing just the tiniest bit and knew Dragon, Diana’s littermate, would jostle for her position.
Cora hated Dragon as much as she loved his sister. Quite a few hounds loathed the talented, arrogant Dragon.
Being the strike hound didn’t mean that Cora always found the scent first. But she worked a bit ahead of the rest—not much, perhaps only five yards in front, but she was first and she wanted to keep it that way.
If another hound, say a flanker, a hound on the sides of the pack, found scent before she did, Cora would slow, listening for the anchor hound, the quarterback, to speak. If the anchor said the scent was valid, then Cora would swing around to the new line, racing up front again. She had to be first.
If the anchor hound said nothing, then Cora would wait for a moment to listen for someone else whom she trusted. All she waited for was“It is good.”If she didn’t hear it soon, then she’d push on.
For years the anchor hound of the Jefferson Hunt had been Archie, a great American hound of substance, bone, deep voice, and reliable nose. Archie, a true leader, knew when to knock a smart-ass youngster silly, when to encourage, when to chide the whole pack, and when to urge them on. He died a fighting death against a bear, ensuring his glory among the pack as well as among the humans. They all missed him.
Diana, though young, possessed the brains to be an anchor hound. No one else exhibited that subtle combination of leadership, drive, nose, and identifiable cry. Cora knew Diana would become a wonderful anchor, but her youth would cause some problems this season. Like a young, talented quarterback, Diana would misread some signals and get blitzed. But the girl had it, she definitely had it.
In fact, the whole D litter, named for the first letter of their mother’s name as is the custom among foxhunters, oozed talent. And in Dragon’s case, overweening conceit.
Puppies taunted one another, their high-pitched voices carrying over the yards drenched in late-afternoon sunshine.
“Pipe down, you worthless rats,”Cora yelled at them.
They quieted.
“Too bad Archie can’t see this litter. He was their grandfather. They’re beauties.”Diana watched one chubby puppy waddle to the chain-link fence between the yards, where he studied a mockingbird staring right back at him from the other side.
“Babblers.”Cora laughed.“They are beautiful. Butthe proof is in the pudding. We’ll see what they can really do two seasons from now. And don’t forget”—she lowered her voice because gossip travels fast in close quarters—“Sweetpea just isn’t brilliant. Steady, Godbless her, steady as a rock, but not an A student.”
Sweetpea was the mother of this litter.
“I wish it were the first day of cubbing.”Diana sighed.
“Don’t we all. I don’t mind the walking out. Really. Theexercise is good, and each week the walks get longer. You know next week we’ll start with the horses again, which Ienjoy, but still—not the same.”
“Heard the boys in the pasture yesterday.”Diana meant the horses.“They’re excited about starting back to work so long as Sister, Shaker, and Doug go out early,really early.”Diana sniffed the air. A familiar light odor announced the presence of Golly grandly picking her way through the freshly mowed grass toward the outdoor run.
Diana rose, shaking the dirt off.
Cora, too, smelled Golly.“Insufferable shit.”
Diana laughed.“Cora, you’re crabby today.”