Fox Tracks: A Novel

by Rita Mae Brown

  CHAPTER 6

  Snows had been light that winter. The last day in January felt cold and damp. Leaves hadn’t mashed down enough to turn into humus. Dried leaves even this old sent off a distinctive odor.

  Atop her trusted thirteen-year-old gray Thoroughbred, Lafayette, Sister Jane watched as the hounds soldiered through the wind devil, a tiny tornado spinning upward for perhaps two minutes, then vanishing as quickly as it came. There was a cold, low-pressure front coming in, the ground was tight, the day held promise. A wide allée in hardwoods on the eastern edge of Old Paradise provided a little protection from the increasing wind. The heavens looked as though they might unzip at any moment.

  Sister Jane led First Flight, those riders who flew the fastest taking the jumps. Bobby Franklin led Second Flight, and he was welcome to it in Sister’s mind. She thought this group harder to lead than her own because the ability of the riders and their mounts varied. A good rider might be back there with a green horse, the best place to bring along the animal. Those members smart enough to have bought a made hunter, one who knew the sport, themselves not made at all, also filled the Second Flight ranks. An experienced horse took care of them so the rider could learn much faster. Hunting could be complex, especially for green riders on green horses, a mixture not conducive to confidence.

  Organizing a hunt was like producing an elaborate Broadway show, only you didn’t know if your star, the fox, would show up.

  Today, he sure appeared, and right on time. When hounds cast at ten o’clock, a glossy, medium-bodied, red, dog fox shot out from the sagging barn at Old Paradise, a once great estate. The dog fox headed straight for the sun.

  When he broke covert, Sister sighed with relief. Hunting forced human, hound, and horse to focus intently. The cares of the day vanished, providing the energy and hope to successfully address them in one’s own good time.

  Shaker Crown, Huntsman, urged the pack on. Sleek Diana took the lead, a most intelligent hound. Shaker barely had time to get the horn to his lips, for the pace was scorching. He blew “Gone Away” more for the humans than the hounds.

  On her beloved quarter horse, Outlaw, Betty Franklin whipped-in on the right while Sybil Hawkes, another long-serving staff member, covered the left on her Thoroughbred, Bombardier.

  The grounds at Old Paradise demanded cool judgment. The terrain varied from sweet rolling pastures to thick hardwoods, and then there were sudden drops into crevices. These invariably led to or fed little streams into one of two bold creeks. Every time it rained, the crossings deepened or filled up, the latter more dangerous than the former. Years ago, Sister and Keepsake, another one of her horses, sunk in almost up to the animal’s flanks. You don’t soon forget such an experience. Had the water been any deeper there would have been nothing to forget. She would have most likely drowned. Both she and Keepsake knew it.

  The wind played tricks on you here because Old Paradise backed up smack to the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains. While it might be 42°F and calm in Charlottesville, out here twenty miles west, the mercury could suddenly plummet like a crazed bobsled competitor.

  The wind, fifteen miles an hour at this moment, was already creating havoc. It switched directions and spun up wind devils. It slowed, then gusted.

  The scent from the dog fox blew away from him to the left so the hounds followed that line, even though the fox could clearly be seen thirty yards to the hounds’ right. But hounds knew their business. Foxhounds hunt by nose, not sight. Blessed with tremendous drive, the Jefferson Hunt pack would not surrender that line until the last molecule of eau de vulpus disappeared.

  Once the fox blasted into the eastern woods, the line of scent returned to the fox’s heels since the wind couldn’t sweep over the forest floor, though it sure could bend the tops of the trees.

  The hounds lost the scent. They cast themselves again. Sister held up and waited. Although a Tuesday, the field was large: thirty people, about half of them in Second Flight.

  An eerie silence was broken by the moans of the trees. Branches rubbing on their neighbors created long strange creaks.

  A hound of wisdom, Cora trotted over to the younger Diana. “It has to be here somewhere.”

  “I know, but the bear scent is overpowering.” Diana’s brown eyes nearly watered from the pungent signature of the bear. The younger “T” hounds patiently worked about a forty-foot area. These two litters, a year apart, were a new cross for Sister, who bred American foxhounds, a task she loved—but then if an animal had four feet Sister loved it, no matter what.

  Tattoo was from the second litter, a youngster with a broad chest. He put his nose down, lifted it and uttered a little yelp.

  His sister, Tootsie, joined him. She studied the scent. Her response was a clear signal.

  “We got him!”

  The other hounds moved toward the two young ones but they harbored some doubt.

  Cora ran over, Diana by her side. “Tattoo isn’t smart about bears yet. Better make sure.”

  A bit faster, Diana reached Tattoo and Tootsie first. She put her nose to the ground, inhaled deeply, her long nose warming the scent as it traveled to her brain.

  “Yes!” she bellowed.

  Cora seconded Diana’s cry. The whole pack flew behind them, singing as a choir.

  Right behind his hounds, Shaker encouraged them with rounds of “Yip, yip.”

  Betty could be momentarily glimpsed in her brown tweed bye-day jacket, as Tuesday hunts did not require a formal kit, then she disappeared down a slope. Being a saucy, confident fellow, the fox cut right toward her. He evidenced no fear of Betty or Outlaw. What’s one human and a horse?

  “Tallyho!” Betty yelled.

  The red fox lifted his head at her cry, picked up some speed, launching himself off the steep bank of the creek. Betty knew the best crossing was a good football-field’s length down the creek. No time for that.

  “Outlaw, let’s do it.”

  Without hesitation, the sturdy horse gathered himself at the bank’s edge to leap straight down about four feet. The cold water splashed up on Betty, some running into her boots. The footing—good, not rocky, as she’d looked for that—held up. They half walked, half swam in the deep spots to the creek’s other side, where an otter slide made getting out a whole lot easier than getting in.

  “You are the best horse in the world.” An invigorated Betty patted him on the neck as both horse and rider tried to keep the fox in view.

  “I know,” Outlaw replied.

  In the field behind her, Sister galloped down to the easy crossing. A four-foot jump down into water could dislodge some riders, even strong ones like her. Not every horse in the field was as bold or handy as Outlaw.

  Once on the other side of the creek, Sister stopped for a moment. Even with all the splashing behind her, she heard the hounds and kicked on. The easternmost forest of Old Paradise must have been where the glacier tired of pushing all that good topsoil down from Canada. Old rock outcroppings, some twenty feet high, appeared like a giant’s cast-aside dominoes. They didn’t seem to have evolved from the land but seemed to have simply been dumped in the spot. A few had shapes that could be mistaken for goblins. At least some of the horses thought so.

  Kasmir Barbhaiya, a wealthy Indian gentleman who had moved to Virginia, proved his leg on this day when his extraordinarily beautiful Thoroughbred, a big fellow at seventeen hands, literally jumped sideways—all four feet off the ground. His leg never moved, his grip remained steady.

  “It’s a monster!” the deep bay warned the horses behind him.

  Naturally, a few believed him so they shied from the odd stone formations.

  Three riders parted company from their mounts, who did not have the good grace to stand and wait for their riders to remount.

  Two scared horses thundered by the other riders, causing human cries of “Loose horse!”

  Sister heard them and thought to herself, Loose rider. Not that she herself hadn’t now and again provided entertainment for o
thers over her long life by, for example, popping off, sliding face-first in mud, or taking a fence while her horse did not. The list could go on and on.

  Sister’s mother told her when she was a little thing on a lead line that you don’t become a rider until you fall off at least seven times. Mother had seen many a spectacular crash, quietly proud that her daughter took it in stride: no excuses, no tears. Mrs. Oberbeck did not believe in raising wimps. She used to shout at Jane, “Leg. Leg, Janie!”

  The two horses who’d dumped their riders came up, blowing hard, by Lafayette.

  “You’ll not get by me, you field peons,” the talented gray snorted.

  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.