Fox Tracks (7 page)

With that, Lafayette put on the afterburners, tears filling Sister’s eyes. He pulled away from the two runaway horses—neither Thoroughbreds—as though they had stalled in traffic.

Once he put enough distance between himself and the interlopers, Sister was able to get him back to a hand gallop, sixteen miles per hour.

The fox was giving them one hell of a run while the ground was becoming treacherous in spots. When they first started, the temperature was 30°F. It had since climbed to the low forties. Ice tinkled when they ran through a shallow puddle, and the ground was greasy in spots where one thought it would remain tight.

This is why, even in the summer, Sister worked on keeping her legs strong, riding fifteen minutes a day without stirrups, mostly at a trot. Even more than your seat, all you had in a situation like this was your leg. Leg. Leg. Leg.

Good she had it because the hounds streaming in front of her, in picture-perfect form, leapt over the narrow drainage ditch between Old Paradise and the westernmost border of Kasmir’s ever-expanding holdings. On the eastern side of this two-foot-deep
drainage ditch were the remains of dry laid stone. This retaining wall for the land slipped toward the east, measured three feet high in some spots, while sunken in others. Sister leapt the ditch, and there was just enough land on the other side so that Lafayette could stop, gather himself, and pop straight up and over the wall.

Those straight pop-ups were harder to jump than a four-footer with an easy approach, at least Sister thought so as every filling in her teeth rattled when she dropped to the other side. She’d known when she sailed over that there’d been daylight between her bottom and the saddle.

Mother was right: leg
, she thought, then laughed for the sheer joy of doing what she loved best.

On and on they flew, the sound of hoofbeats thrilling. Shaker rode well up with his hounds. Betty, feeling that water in her boots, on the right and Sybil, a swift-moving speck on the left, charged over undulating pasture. Sybil protected the road side, which fortunately carried little traffic, being a dirt state road. Depending on the state budget, stone would be put on the road about every three years. It never lasted long.

Sister heard gaining hoofbeats behind her. Turning for an instant, she saw that her field had diminished in number. Thank God for Bobby Franklin. As he passed them, he’d call back to his tail rider, the last person in his flight, to pick up the pieces.

Hounds disappeared over a swale. An old tobacco barn hove into view as Sister galloped down that incline, then up the other side. The hounds surrounded the old curing shed, some eagerly wiggling through spaces, logs deliberately built that way a century and a half ago. Other hounds found the open door and ran in.

Off his wonderful Hojo, who stood like a Life Guard’s horse, Shaker joined the hounds in the tobacco shed.

Betty stopped on the other side of the shed, but at a distance.
If the fox emerged, she would not turn the fellow back toward the hounds. A good whipper-in has to know these things, it has to become instinct. The last thing Betty wanted to do was kill a fox. Give him plenty of time to get away if he bolted.

Sybil also kept her distance on the left.

Sister stayed about twenty yards away, the remnants of the field behind her. From there she could still see the tier sticks in the shed where four to six plants would be speared to hang, ropes tethered to them to raise and lower the orderly lattice framework holding the valuable leaves. In the center of the dirt floor would be a dug-out firepit, charred, looking like a dirty navel. Even from a distance, one smelled the magical perfume: old hardwood fire mixed with the sweetness of tobacco. The aroma could still tingle the senses, even decades after this shed’s abandonment, more evidence of the destruction of the small tobacco growers due to antismoking legislation back in 1964.

Shaker emerged from the shed, a broad smile on his face after having blown “Gone to Ground” on his horn. The hounds dutifully followed him out, all but little Thimble, the runt of the second “T” litter. This was just too darn exciting. The fox was in that big hole in the corner and she couldn’t leave him.

“I have him. I have him,”
she sang out in her reedy voice, not a desirable booming one.

Outside, Sister laughed, and saw Betty and Sybil laughing, too. The three of them, along with Shaker, worked with the hounds year-round. Sister and Shaker lived with them, the graceful kennels with their brick archways forming a square, had been built on Sister’s farm. This was the first time Thimble had been in on a run that put a fox to ground.

Shaker, with big smile, cajoled little Thimble, “Come on, girlie, girl.”

“No. I did an important thing,”
Thimble sang some more.

Senior hound Cora returned to the shed.
“Thimble, I will bite your tail. Come on. Time to go.”

Thimble sat down right next to the den, hearing the fox squeak.
“Why don’t you move your sorry ass?”

Her ears pricked up. She peered into the den to see two bright eyes peering back at her.

“He’s right,”
said Cora.
“We’ve done our job. Come on, Thimble.”

She trotted out, puzzled, finally asking Cora,
“Are foxes allowed to sass us?”

Cora laughed that dog laugh where they expel air in a short puff.
“All the time. Wait until you meet Aunt Netty. My God, that vixen’s tongue could rust cannon. Come on now, young one. You did well.”

Thimble accompanied Cora back to the pack, patiently waiting, glad for the rest.

“Well done,” Shaker praised his pack.

A sensitive man, Shaker knew his hounds. Far better for Cora to correct the youngster than for him to make a big deal out of it. If he had had to go in and bring her out, he would have. But the hounds live together, establishing their own society. Like nearly all pack animals, there is a clear leader. It’s a peculiarity of humans, who are pack animals, that they so often fail to develop effective leadership. Neither hounds nor horses, who are herd animals, had any such problems.

Shaker easily swung up into Hojo’s saddle, his dexterity a source of envy for many watching him. He walked over to Sister, their two horses touching noses for a moment.

“Didn’t they do splendidly?” Sister glowed.

Also high from the successful chase, Shaker nodded. “Tell you what, Boss, they just get better and better.” Looking fondly at the hounds, he said, “These youngsters are special.”

“Yes, they are.” She pulled her grandfather’s pocket watch out of the watch pocket. “We’ve been out here a little over two hours. Doesn’t seem like it. We’ll have about a half hour walk back. Let’s lift them. The ground’s getting dicey. Let’s get them back in the kennels and rub a little bag balm on those who need it.”

Lifting hounds meant taking them off a line or ending the day’s sport. The hounds literally lift their noses.

“Righto.” Turning, he called the pack to them. They headed west at a leisurely pace.

Sister and Lafayette passed Bobby. “Got everyone?” Sister asked.

“Do. They had a soft landing when they popped off.” He smiled. “What a go!”

“Was.” She smiled back.

They reached the stone fence with the drainage ditch. Sister rode alongside it to find the fence’s lowest point and stepped over it. She gave Lafayette a second, then they jumped again over the ditch. The field had jumped a lot that day, run a lot, no point pushing it. As it was, a few horses didn’t find good purchase on the other side of the ditch, their riders having to stand up and lean forward to help the animal. It’s easy to misjudge a ditch, especially for many riders since so few hunts had ditch jumps in their territory. Jefferson Hunt had only one other one, which was a whistling bitch. People learned.

The horses knew what to do. It was the rider who sometimes miscalculated and looked down. Never a good idea.

Once both fields were on the other side of the ditch, they hung together and entered the heavy woods. The clouds dipped lower now, the sense of moisture was heavier, too, and that respite where the mercury climbed to the low forties ended. The silver liquid plunged in the thermometers.

Eager to pull off her boots and wet socks, Betty rode along praying they’d get the hounds into the trailer quickly. Her feet were killing her.

In the woods, the trees swayed more as the wind increased. Dasher, a littermate of Diana’s, stopped in his tracks. Diana, seeing her brother stop, put her nose down.

“Bear!”

When no fox scent is around, many hunts consider bear, bobcat, even cougars fair game. Jefferson Hunt was one of those.

For a brief moment, Shaker studied his hounds, milling around, then they took off. And with a roar so did everyone else.

Scent led south, and bears tend not to circle back or play tricks. They run in a straight line. Foxes can, too, if the mood strikes them.

No one had heard the bear crashing about, but his scent was relatively fresh and the hounds screamed.

The staff’s horses were fit, and more than up to another hard run. As the day was so cool, that also worked in their favor. Had it been a hot day, such as one finds at the end of a cubbing run, cubbing being early in the season, Sister might have led the field back. In the old days, everyone hunting knew horses. They knew when their horse was tucked up, had enough. These days, a field master couldn’t count on that. Those in the First Flight could ride, to be sure, but a rider is not necessarily a horseman. Sister kept a close eye on her field and if she saw a horse’s flank draw up, a chest heaving, or an animal laboring in any fashion, she sent its rider back, ordering them to walk. Sometimes she had to tell them to get off and walk their horse back. Too many didn’t know to do that. Sister always gave her orders with kindness, never treating the person badly. She knew many of these riders had come to horses late in their lives. Depending on natural ability and guts, one can learn to ride in a year or two, at least good enough to go Second Flight. Yet
it takes a lifetime to make a horseman. Old as she was, Sister was still learning.

Running low to the ground, hounds covered ground quickly. They reached a deep ravine, the sun’s rays long and slanting in winter, darkness gathering in the defile. The minute Sister picked her way down the narrow path, a deepening cold hit her. Hounds started up the other side, then turned back to run in the crease of the ravine. A narrow, often rocky trail rested alongside the crease, which turned into a thin hard-running stream emerging from underground.

Horses could trot but not much more. The ravine’s end opened into a wide, fast eastward-running creek, its waters swollen with runoff from the mountains. Here, the first snowflakes fell.

The hounds leapt into the creek. Sister and Lafayette followed, the going slow, as the current was swift and the water about three feet high at that entry point. On the other side, hounds continued south, still on Old Paradise property. Suddenly they stopped, surrounding an old locust tree.

A small black bear nestled up in its branches, looking down. Small though he was, if he chose to come down, one swat from his paw could break ribs or the neck of a hound.

Lafayette loathed the bear, but he behaved himself. Some of the other horses got nervous.

“Chicken,”
the hound Dasher called up to the bear.

“I’m a bear, not a chicken,”
the young fellow sensibly replied.

“All right, let’s go.” Shaker looked up. “For a fat little fellow, you can move.”

The fat little fellow clicked his jaws, a snapping sound that could be heard all the way back to Second Flight.

Sister looked down the creek west, then east. “If we follow the creek, there’s a decent crossing farther down. We’ll come out on the old farm road that leads up to the barns. Mmm, maybe a twenty-minute ride. Best to walk.”

Which they did. By the time they reached Old Paradise, the ground was dusted white like a sugar cookie. The snowflakes, small, could even be heard as they hit tree branches.

Everyone put up their horses. Betty, boots and socks off, old muck boots now on, had a big thermos of coffee. Sister had tea. Most everyone had something. The weather was worsening and, much as Jefferson Hunt relished an impromptu tailgate or even a planned one, this wasn’t the day.

Tariq Al McMillan, who rode out with the Custis Hall girls whose classes allowed them to hunt on a weekday, came up to Sister. “Thank you, master, and good evening.”

She always enjoyed hearing his lovely British accent. “Wonderful day,” said Sister. “Will I see you next hunt?”

“On Saturday. Thursdays I teach.” He tapped his crop on his hard hat, slightly bowed, then turned to leave.

“Did you ever hunt in the Shires, Tariq?” she called after him.

“I did. America is wilder.” He smiled, enhancing his handsome features. “At first, hunting outside of England was so different. I wasn’t altogether sure if I would like it. But now, of course, I can’t live without it.” He turned to join the students at the Custis Hall van, who were calling to him.

Once back at Roughneck Farm, Sister untacked Lafayette, wiped him down, put him in a stall with fresh warmish water, three flakes of alfalfa, and an orchard grass mix. She topped this off with a big kiss on the nose, which he endured.

Her other staff horses, Keepsake, Rickyroo, Aztec, and Matador, watched this from their own stalls.

“You’re such a suck up,”
teased Keepsake, a nine-year-old Thoroughbred-quarter horse mix.

Lafayette then filled in all of them on the day’s hunt, which he knew would create waves of envy.

Up in the barn’s rafters, Bitsy, the screech owl, usually outside,
fussed over her nest. She peered down, ruffled her feathers, wiggled her butt into her nest. It was going to be a long, cold night.

Knowing that, Sister checked everyone’s blankets, cleaned her tack in the heated tack room, then threw on her father’s old fleece-lined flight jacket from the Army Air Corps in World War II to trudge across the way to the kennels. Snow fell steadily.

On Saturdays and some Thursdays, Betty helped her with those chores, leaving her horse in Sister’s barn. But on Tuesdays, she and Bobby needed to hurry home and get back to business.