“Go to the right. You’ll pick up Grace’s scent. We’ll make this a good day for Sister. After that, it’s business as usual.”
“To ground! To ground!” Dragon lifted his head back as he ran up and almost over Cora.
“Forget it.” Cora moved to the right.
“But I’ve put a fox to ground!” Dragon wanted to be a star.
“Scent is tough today, you fool. It’s warmed up. There’s a light breeze. The ground is drying out. Don’t spoil the plan.”
“I put a fox to ground,” he bellowed.
Lightning fast before the other hounds joined them, Cora leapt up and turned sideways like a marlin on a line. She crashed into Dragon. He hit the ground with a thud, the wind knocked out of him. Then Cora seized him by the throat and shook him. She dropped him and ran to the right, picking up Grace’s scent.
“Over here. Over here.”
The rest of the pack followed her as Dragon, choking, stood up, shook himself, coughed, then sullenly hitched up with the rest of the pack.
Sister and Lafayette leapt over a fallen tree trunk as a shortcut to the farm road. She’d heard Cora and then the pack turn. As she glanced behind her she saw her field strung out, the attrition rate rising.
“Stay with the hounds,” she thought to herself, and wondered when she’d had this long a run, this fast.
Grace ran back over Target’s evaporated scent, making a semicircle. She flew over Fontaine’s coop, not knowing the grays were in the trees watching her. She ran straight into the cornfield and then in a change of plan, because she was young and got confused, she blasted out the back of the cornfield with Uncle Yancy.
“What do I do?”
“Stay with me. There’s no den up here, Grace. You’ll have to run with me. You okay?”
“I’m not tired. I’ve only covered a half mile.”
Grace and Yancy skirted the fence line into the woods, a deep ravine in the far distance. Just to make life interesting, totally confuse the humans, they ran two large, loopy figure eights in the woods. The humans would think they were on grays until someone caught sight of them.
Lottie Fisher’s horse stumbled. Fontaine, who happened to be looking back, pulled up Gunpowder. Lottie, quite good-looking, brushed herself off as she checked her horse.
“You need company?” Fontaine reined in Gunpowder, lightly dismounting and removing his top hat. “Gets so lonesome in these woods.”
She blushed. “Thank you. I’m fine. He’s fine, too.” She patted the gelding’s sleek neck.
“How about a leg up, then?” He cupped his hand under her right leg. “One, two, three.” He pushed her up into the saddle.
Then he swung up on Gunpowder, top hat back on his head.
“Thank you so much, Fontaine.”
“The pleasure was all mine.” He grinned. “Shall we join them?”
Off they galloped on the last loop of the figure eight. The coop up ahead led into the meadow.
Lottie didn’t realize Fontaine was not behind her until she came right up on the rear of the first flight. She didn’t think a thing of it.
Together, Grace and Yancy dashed straight up the ridge, right to the hanging tree, dodging the screaming people, some of whom yelled “tallyho” to no avail. They scooted under Peter Wheeler’s truck.
Old Peter, on his feet, slapped his thigh with his hat. “Yip, yip yoo.” He belted out a rebel yell. “Yip, yip yoo. I never saw anything like this in my life. Two red foxes. Yip, yip yoo. Janie, where in the hell are you?”
Sister had just cleared Fontaine’s coop with Georgia Vann now riding in her pocket. But the entire field was feeling the effects of the long run. The staff horses, in fine condition, felt loosened up. But other horses who should have been conditioned but weren’t really began to labor, drenched in creamy white sweat.
Crawford stopped at the back of Hangman’s Ridge. “He feels lame.”
“Looks lame.” Martha confirmed his opinion.
“You go on. I’ll walk him to the trailers,” he instructed.
“Are you sure?”
“Sure. I’ll take the shortcut around to the trailers.”
“Crawford, you might want to stay in the meadow even though it takes longer. You don’t run the risk of fouling scent quite so much.”
He glared at her, for he hated to be told what to do. “Fine.”
“I’ll see you back at the trailers. Hope he’s okay.” She trotted off. Then, when far enough away from Czapaka, she broke into a canter.
Crawford thought all this talk about fouling scent was bullshit, hunters showing off. He headed straight into the shortcut.
Overhead, St. Just flew low, startling Czapaka.
By the time Sister reached the hanging tree she, as a show of respect, stopped to ask Peter what happened.
“Two! Two, Janie, and two different than the first one you flushed out of the cornfield. I never! I never!” Then he turned his aged body, pointed with his hat to the direction the two foxes ran, the hounds already on.
“Thank you. You’re my best whip.” She smiled, squeezed Lafayette, and they were off again.
She leaned back as she cantered, slowly, straight down the ridge. No time to fiddle with the old farm road and bypaths now. A few more people rolled onto the earth with a thud. Loose horses ran about, finally stopping to graze.
At the base of the ridge Sister swooped around, heading toward her house. A zigzag fence was to her left, a few old locust posts from the former fence still in place at the corners. She smelled the skunk as she neared the zigzag. She cleared the zigzag, started into the western woods then stopped. Hounds were all over the place like marbles rolling.
“Hold hard!” she shouted, raising her left arm.
People strained to pull back. They stood there, horses and humans panting like the hounds. The temperature inched into the low sixties. They were burning up and there had been not one check or slowing of pace for one solid hour.
Georgia Vann dropped her feet out of the stirrups, as did Walter Lungrun. They flopped onto their horses’ necks to relieve crying muscles. Even Martha, always in great condition, breathed heavily then leaned all the way backward in her saddle to stretch out.
The hounds, eyes watering, circled around one old locust fence post. Uncle Yancy and Grace snuggled down in the den, slowly making their way underground to the walnut, its canopy a cooling covering.
“Stay down. We don’t come out until the pack is off Patsy.” But as they inched toward the walnut they found Patsy still underground.
“What are you still doing here? You can’t go out now. You’d have to be as fast as Netty,” Yancy, upset, shouted.
“The pack split, Uncle Yancy,” Patsy explained.
“I hear them above us,” Grace said.
“Only half. I swear I was at the base of the walnut and I was ready to run but I heard a young hound go off back toward the east. Half the pack went with him.”
“If that damn little buster spoiled our plan, I’ll run him right out of the forest myself!” Yancy spat.
Sister waited. She heard half her pack. They rarely split and on a day like today such behavior would be quite unusual.
Cora milled around the fence post. “I can’t get through the skunk. Fan out again. Fan out, I tell you!”
The hounds obeyed.
Diana, timid, said, “I think I’ve got something here but it’s blood. Is it fox blood?”
Both Archie and Cora loped right over. They put their noses to the ground, then looked at each other. “Yes.”
“Follow me!” Cora commanded.
As Sister followed her hounds, running, but running more slowly, since Cora wasn’t certain about this just yet, she glanced around for the whips. Betty was off to her left. She could see Outlaw’s buckskin coat better than she could see Betty in her black frock. She saw no one on the right nor did she see Shaker. She couldn’t remember when they’d parted company. The pace, killing, would begin to tell on the older hounds.