The Tell-tale Horse

by Rita Mae Brown

  Henry Xavier ignored Ronnie Haslip’s taunts that his diet wasn’t working. It was, but slowly.

  Donnie Sweigart surprised everyone by showing up on a horse lent him by Ronnie Haslip. Donnie borrowed clothes from Shaker, since they were the same size; he even found a pair of boots that would fit. He looked quite nice.

  He’d fallen for Sybil Fawkes and knew the only way he was going to be in her vicinity was if he learned to foxhunt. He could ride some and Bobby Franklin, bearing that in mind, knew he’d have to keep an eye on him. If nothing else, Donnie had guts.

  Sybil noticed. She walked over on Bombardier. “Donnie, did you discover the hardest part of foxhunting is tying your stock tie?”

  He smiled shyly. “Did. Pricked my fingers too.”

  “I wish I could hold out hope that it gets easier but I’m forever fiddling with it, folding the ends over the wide center knot, pressing the stockpin through.” She glanced over to see where Shaker was in his preparation, for she had a job to do. “I’m delighted to see you out here.”

  “If nothing else, I’ll provide amusement.”

  “There will be plenty of that. Always is.” She reached down and touched his shoulder with her gloved hand. “Takes courage to foxhunt, and we all know you have that. Hope I’ll see you after the hunt.”

  “Sure thing.” Donnie was floating on air.

  Back at Ronnie’s trailer, a crop snaked out from the open tack room as Ronnie neatly stung Xavier’s bottom. “Could show a movie on that butt.”

  “You spend too much time looking at men’s asses,” Xavier growled.

  Ronnie feigned a falsetto. “What a big hairy-chested man you are.”

  Xavier never could keep a straight face around his boyhood friend. “Hey, at least one of us is.”

  “Remember when RayRay sprouted his first chest hair right between his pecs, and we threw him on the ground and yanked it out?” Ronnie laughed.

  Xavier smiled as he swung up on Picasso, built to carry weight. “I think of RayRay every day.”

  Over at the Harper trailer parked next to the Merriman trailer, Cabel and Ilona watched Vajay and Mandy chatting with Kasmir.

  “He’s cool as a cuke.” Ilona noted Vajay’s demeanor. “You’d never know he was under suspicion of murder.”

  “If I were Mandy, I’d—” Cabel stopped herself. “Look.”

  Ben Sidell, on his trusty Nonni, had ridden up to the three and passed a few pleasantries. Since nothing seemed untoward, the girlfriends sighed in disappointment.

  Sister pulled out her grandfather’s pocket watch. It was seven minutes to the first cast. “Seven minutes. I’ll go on over and say a few words, along with Walter. That will hurry up the laggards.”

  Betty waited on the ground, holding Outlaw’s reins. Her job would be to open the doors to the party wagon and then swing up on her horse. She and Sybil took turns performing this duty.

  Sister on Lafayette rode over to Walter on his wonderful Clemson.

  “Good morning, Master.” He tipped his derby.

  “Good morning, Master.” She touched her crop to her cap.

  “What saint’s day?”

  “A mess.” She smiled at the tall blond man whom she had grown to love. “Senan, an Irish abbot who died in 544; Felix of Dunwich, bishop of East Anglia, who died in 647. His task was to Christianize the East Angles, a work still in progress.” She paused, then added, “John of God, who founded the Hospitalers and lived from 1495 to 1550. There’s one more, but I forget.”

  “I don’t know how you remember what you do.”

  “I have a funny head for dates and numbers. Hey, it’s International Women’s Day.”

  “I celebrate women every day,” he joked.

  “Well, come on, let’s do the shake-and-howdy. I want to cast these hounds.”

  Walter said nothing because she was always eager to get on terms with her fox. So they rode over, called the crowd together, guests were introduced, the field master was pointed out—Sister herself—Bobby was noted as hilltoppers’ master, and without further ado Sister turned to Shaker and called out, “Hounds, please.”

  Betty flipped up the long latch, pulled open the aluminum door, and out bounded twenty couple of excited foxhounds.

  “I’m ready!” Trinity announced to the world.

  Cora disciplined her. “Will you kindly shut up.”

  Trinity hung her head for a moment.

  Asa simply said, “Youth.”

  Diddy, Darby, Dreamboat, Dana, Delight, and Doughboy stood on their hind legs but they didn’t babble. Pookah and Pansy came out today, the excitement doubled in the first-year entry.

  Calming, Shaker lowered his voice. “Steady now, relax.”

  Showboat, Shaker’s horse, ears pricked forward, exhaled out of his nostrils as two downy woodpeckers flew out of the mill.

  What in the devil are woodpeckers doing in there? Sister thought to herself.

  Only they knew, but a stream of invective flew between the birds as they battled about something.

  Shaker led the pack past the mill, the spray becoming a heavy mist, moistening faces, intensifying scent. A huge door allowed entry into the first floor, a small door with a small outdoor landing was at the second story, and a third wooden door opened over the very top of the waterwheel. If the wheel needed repairs, it was stopped and the workmen could use whichever door was closest.

  Foxes had lived at the mill since it was built, but that didn’t mean they’d give you a run. There was no way to bolt them from the lair, but often the pack could get one fox returning home for a bracing go.

  At the rear of the first flight, the Custis Hall girls rode through the mist and fog rising from the millrace.

  “Fog creeps me out,” Val whispered.

  “Because you got lost in it,” Felicity mentioned.

  “So did everybody else,” Val whispered, a bit louder.

  “Not everyone else, just us,” Tootie corrected her, as they rode over the bridge spanning the millrace.

  They emerged from the fog and took a simple coop into the first large pasture off the farm road. Hounds, on hearing, “Lieu in,” the old Norman words in use for over a thousand years, fanned over the pasture, the dew thick and cool.

  No fox scent rose up from the earth. They reached the back fence line, took the jump there, and moved into the woods.

  For thirty minutes hounds worked, the field walking along: nothing. Then they came into an area called Shootrough, one hundred acres, that used to be really rough but which Walter had cleaned up and planted with millet, winter wheat, switchgrass, and South American maize at the edges. The ground nesters flocked in, as did the foxes.

  Dana found the line first. “Red dog fox.”

  Other hounds ran over, putting their noses down. Cora opened on the line, and in a flash the entire pack was flying through the wheat and millet, the long stems swishing, the slight westerly breeze bending and raising the thin stalks as well.

  A stout timber jump led into true rough ground, covered in brambles, pigweed, and poke. A little path cut through that got them down to the creek, below where Sister thought the fox would jump in to foil scent. But he didn’t. He turned back, running right on the farm road by the north side of Shootrough. The entire field viewed him as they emerged on the road. Having a good head start on the hounds, he hadn’t yet considered evasive action.

  As Lafayette thundered down the road, clods of red clay flying up behind him, Sister noticed ice crystals on the north side of the road just catching the sunlight as the sun rose high enough to reach them from the east.

  The fox plunged into the woods on the right, a small patch off the farm road at the end of Shootrough, the larger woods being to the left. He ran over moss and through hollowed-out logs and then came back onto the road, where he ran right between Cabel and Ilona, who stopped and stayed put as did everyone else, once Cabel shouted, “Hold hard!”

  Within minutes the pack ran through the horses.

  Di
ddy stopped for one second, then ran on. When she came alongside Tinsel, she said, “I caught the scent again.”

  “We all caught it,” Tinsel replied, nose to ground, wondering what had happened to Diddy’s wits.

  “No, the perfume on Faye Spencer’s leg.”

  “Nothing we can do about it now,” Tinsel rightly answered.

  This time the big red dog fox did use the creek, running through it and climbing out a hundred yards upstream.

  Hounds lost scent where he jumped in, but Cora took some hounds on one side and Asa kept the others on the takeoff side as they worked in both directions until finally Tinsel, again demonstrating her fine nose, hollered “Here.”

  That fast they were all on again, threading through the woods as fast as they could, till they finally lost him at an outcropping of huge squared boulders, very strange-looking.

  Gingerly, Trudy dropped down on the other side to see if there was a den—but nothing.

  Once again the fox proved to all he had magic. Poof! He was gone, his scent with him.

  CHAPTER 28

  Shaker reined in, cast hounds in a wide net, but that yielded not a jot.

  He noticed that the bit of wind died and a stillness muffled sound in the woods. He could hear horses breathing about half a football field from him but no birds flew, no deer appeared.

  Not only are there dead spots where wireless phones can’t receive transmission, there are dead spots and dead times, period.

  Sometimes this presages the edge of a low pressure system. Other times it’s just a calm moment or calm spot, just as there are spots where little wind devils forever spiral upward.

  Shaker turned, casting back toward Shootrough. Given conditions, he thought it better to head toward food sources like the ground nester paradise. Usually he didn’t draw the same covert twice, but this time he thought he’d draw toward the north, then move out of Shootrough where, once through the woods and skirting a ravine, an array of fenced pastures beckoned, little coverts stuck here and there, all rich in game.

  Back in the wheat and millet, a bobwhite flew up, then another. Asa moved to the edge of the large area where the switchgrass formed a border. He lifted his head, flared his nostrils, then lowered his head. Patiently, he worked this old line as it grew warmer. A gray fox came for breakfast, feathers everywhere as though the vixen played with them, which she well may have done. Finally, he had enough fresh scent to open in his deep basso profundo, a sound to send shivers up one’s spine.

  Hound ran a half circle around the edge of Shootrough, staying in the switchgrass; then, to the field’s delight, the gray vixen burst out, making a straight blast across the fields, tall grass bent down from winter’s snows.

  Betty, to the left of the beautiful fox, jumped a deep ditch, new, thanks to runoff. Clods of red clay flew up behind Outlaw’s hooves.

  Sybil, on the right, moved into the edge of the woods because the gray swerved, heading for the woods; then she turned again, making a straight shot toward Mill Ruins, two miles away as the crow flies.

  Close to their fox, hounds grew more excited, as did the field.

  The vixen knew her territory, moving over a large patch of running cedar that baffled scent just long enough for her to put more distance between herself and hounds. She ran another quarter mile, then launched straight up, grabbing on to the rough bark of a mighty walnut tree. By the time hounds reached her, she was grooming herself on a thick limb, tail held in front paw.

  “Come down here! Come down here!” Doughboy leapt up and down.

  “Cheater! Cheater!” Pookah was beside herself.

  The gray looked down and smiled. “When pigs can fly.”

  Shaker rode up, Showboat lifting his gorgeous head to behold the fox.

  Sister brought the field up close so they could see the vision. Bobby had room to come up too, as no saplings grew around the spread of the walnut’s branches.

  Shaker laughed. “Is there a call for Climbed a Tree?”

  Sister laughed too. “Well, give Gone to Ground a few doubling notes.”

  He did, and the young horse that Sam rode just blew up.

  “Brother, I’d better head back,” Sam said quietly. He knew the animal had had enough.

  “I’ll go back with you.” Gray wanted to keep hunting but Sam should have company. “I’ll tell Sister we’re heading back.”

  Gray rode up and spoke quietly to Sister, who nodded, and the two men turned to pick their way toward the farm road on a well-worn deer trail.

  Deeper in the woods than they realized, they kept pushing toward the southwest. Sooner or later they would find the farm road. The steeplechaser calmed down with the leisurely walk and the fact that Gray’s stalwart foxhunter stayed low-key.

  The deep ravine to the right helped them get their bearings. Neither Sam nor Gray had the best sense of direction, unlike Sister and Shaker, two human homing pigeons.

  Gray sighed. “Whew. Know where we are now.”

  “Yeah, I was getting a little worried too.”

  “Sister would have put out drinks and a cooler with food. She’d feed us like the foxes, figuring we’d smell out the food,” Gray teased.

  “Wouldn’t put it past her. Remember the time Ronnie Haslip sank in the bog? The horse struggled but Ronnie couldn’t move for the mud sucking him in. As everyone tied their stirrup leathers together to throw him a line, she calls out, ‘Don’t worry, Ronnie, if you go under we’ll throw a wreath on the spot.’ Took his mind off his predicament.”

  “Funny, isn’t it, how the mind controls the body?”

  Sam snorted. “In my case it’s usually the reverse.” He looked toward the ravine. “Damn, sure are a lot of crows over there.”

  “Probably a deer carcass left over from deer season.”

  “Hate that. Hate it when they wander off and die.” Sam grimaced.

  “Well, a good hunter will track his deer when wounded, but sometimes they can get away. Come on.”

  They rode to the lip and looked down to see St. Just and his flock merrily feasting on a corpse. St. Just had an eyeball in his yellow beak. The cold weather had preserved the body, and the slight thaw allowed the crows to really dig in to this unexpected treat.

  “Jesus Christ!” Sam exclaimed.

  Gray discerned the dead was male but the crows so covered the body he couldn’t tell much else. “We’ve got to get Ben Sidell.”

  “Try this first. Yell. I’d like to spare this horse if I can. You’ve got a voice that carries.”

  “Worth a try,” Gray agreed, cupping his lips with his hands. “Yo! Yo! Yo!”

  Country folk know three shouts is a signal of distress. When it comes to yelling there’s no formula, but Gray continued using three repeats.

  Sound carried well today and the field three-quarters of a mile away heard him.

  Shaker had already cast hounds back toward the mill so they were coming in that direction but on higher ground.

  Sister paused a moment. “Edward, take the field.”

  “Yes, Master.” Edward Bancroft touched his top hat with his crop.

  Sister cantered up to Shaker. “That’s Gray. Either he’s seen a fox or there’s something else.”

  Often times, if at a distance with no hounds near, someone will tally-ho. As it is, one shouldn’t tally-ho if hounds noses are down. Then, too, how does a field member, who lacks the view up front that the field master has, know if the fox viewed is the hunted fox?

  The protocol of foxhunting is grounded in common sense.

  “I can hunt that way.” Shaker took his boots out of the stirrup irons to wiggle his cold toes.

  “I rarely ask you to do this, but given today’s conditions, which are pretty darned good, please lift the hounds and cast them forward when we reach Gray. We might get a popping run out of it. If not, I’ll bear the blame.”

  “Yes, Master.” He didn’t like it but Shaker as a hunt servant did what his master told him to do.

  Then, too, Sister
and Shaker had worked together, cheek by jowl, for nearly twenty years; usually she was right. He tormented her mercilessly when she wasn’t but all in good fun.

  Within four minutes at a relaxed trot they reached the Lorillard brothers.

  The second Sister and Shaker saw their faces they knew a fox had not been viewed.

  Seeing the crows fly up, Cabel Harper couldn’t resist walking toward the edge of the ravine to look down.

  Shaker held up hounds.

  Ilona hissed at her. “Cabel!”

  A moment before Cabel reached the precipice, St. Just, possessed of a wicked sense of humor, flew right over her head and everyone else’s with that juicy eyeball.

  Cabel screamed bloody murder, looked over the edge, turned her horse and rammed High Vajay so hard she unseated him, and then almost trampled the hounds.

  Diddy said loudly, “That’s the lady with the perfume.”

  Cabel flew through the woods toward the farm road.

  Ilona, ignoring Ramsey, rode up to Sister, astonished at both Cabel and what she had seen deep in the ravine.

  “Master, please allow me to go after Cabel. I think she’s quite lost her mind.”

  “Go,” Sister simply said.

  Ben Sidell, already making his way down on foot, confirmed what Sister and Shaker had suspected, as crows lifted up when Ben drew closer. The crows’ lunch was Clayton Harper.

  In the distance, receding, people could hear Cabel screaming.

  Ben climbed back up; his cell wouldn’t work in the ravine. He called the department and flipped the phone back, leaving it on.

  Kasmir helped Vajay back up. The horse was fine but Vajay had fallen flat on his back, knocking the wind out of him.

  Mandy held the horse’s reins, feeling an unspecified sense of dread. She shrugged it off, deciding that Cabel’s screams were unnerving. Then again, St. Just’s display of the eyeball certainly ruined the appetite.

  “Sister, take everyone back, will you?” Ben turned to Walter. “When my team comes, will you bring us back here? You know the terrain better than I do.”