On and on they ran as woods got thicker, the temperature slid downward.
Hortensia paused at an open meadow, then scorched the earth running to the other side, in which stood a two-acre crop of marijuana just ready to be harvested. She sped through plants as high as a horse’s head, laughing as she ran. On the other side of this botanical treasure, she, being a gray, easily climbed a tree, walked out on a thick branch, and dropped onto the heavy branch of another tree, where she flatted herself to watch the show.
Four minutes later, the entire pack blasted into the marijuana. Tootie rode to the right of the crop. Given the density of it, she couldn’t ride between rows so she rode at the edge. Betty, now on the other side of the creek, held up far down at the southern edge of the crop, in open pasture.
Sister held up as Shaker blew hounds to him.
“She’s here. The scent burns!” Twist was beside himself.
Hounds, baying, continued to thrash through the thick crop. Reaching the foot of the tree, no vixen.
Cora, wise, looked up. “How do you do?”
Hortensia grinned. “Lovely day.”
The conversation abruptly ended as a scythe of rat shot whooshed through the tall swaying plants.
The owner of this illegal crop, hearing the commotion, had been following it in his truck, now parked about forty yards back on the farm road.
Tootie, startled, as was Jujube, called out to the hounds, “Go to him!”
“Go to hell.” An irate, middle-aged man, cap pulled low over his head, cussed at her, then shot at the hounds again.
“Ow!” Tatoo screamed, blood now squirting from the rat shot in the hindquarters and leg.
The hounds melted into the marijuana to join Shaker.
Tootie dismounted and, reins in hand, walked to Tatoo, on the ground. “Good boy. Good hound.”
“I’ll kill that worthless cur!” The grower leveled the rifle at Tatoo’s head.
“No, you won’t.” A handsome blond man appeared behind the grower, wrapped both hands around his neck. “I’ll kill you first. Drop the goddamned rifle!”
The fellow did just that, choking for air.
“Hold hard, young lady. I’ll help you with the hound.” He then whispered in the grower’s ear, “If you ever harm a hound again or speak filth to a lady, I will kill you.” He tightened his grasp and the grower’s arms flailed. “Do you understand?”
All the man could do was try to nod his head.
Hortensia watched with great interest.
The handsome fellow pulled the man to the ground, picked up his rifle, and smashed the butt of it into his head as he, coughing, tried to crawl. Then he calmly wiped his fingerprints off the rifle, checked for a pulse, smiled at Tootie. “He’ll live, unfortunately. You walk your horse. I’ll carry the hound until we near the field. Are you all right?”
“Yes. Thank you.” Tootie, dazzled by this fellow, noticed he wore ratcatcher; a cowhorn on a rawhide string hung on his back, out of harm’s way.
Shaker sat still, worried, blowing hounds back. They hurried out of the field to him.
Sister, hearing the shots, held the field at a distance from the marijuana. Shaker couldn’t go into the crop because hounds would go where he did. Sister, keeping the people calm, resolved to go in if hounds did not come out and if she didn’t see Tootie. Hounds wouldn’t follow her. They would stay with Shaker.
Betty covered her ears. The sound of gunfire never proved reassuring. Sweat trickled between her breasts. Outlaw, ears forward, stood like a rock.
One by one, Shaker counted hounds. No Tatoo. No Tootie. He blew again.
Tootie, moving at the edge of the heavy crop, called out, “We’re okay.”
Nearing the open pasture, the man stopped, lifted Tatoo over her saddle. “I think he’ll stay. You’ll need to pick out the rat shot and wash him, but nothing’s broken.” He paused, smiled at her. “You’re a good whipper-in.”
Tootie, overwhelmed, simply nodded her thanks.
“Are you all right? That was a nasty shock.”
“I’m okay. I’m just worried about the hound.”
He lifted off his cap, faded, hard used, and kissed her on the cheek. “The hound always comes first. Go on now.”
Jujube, tractable now, slowly walked toward the pasture.
When she turned to look back, the man was gone.
Seeing her reach the corner, Sister began to dismount.
Gray rode up. “A master’s feet should never touch the ground. With your permission.”
She smiled. He rode off and she thought, Now there’s a foxhunter. She also thought to herself what a divine man Gray was: calm, collected, in control, and hers, all hers.
“Hold hard, Tootie.” Gray rode up, swung his leg over, and lifted Tatoo, who whined, off the saddle.
Tootie, ashen, breathed deeply. “There’s a crazy man in there. He shot at the pack. I’m lucky he didn’t shoot me.”
Gray put his arm around her shoulder. “All’s well. Let’s get Tatoo back.”
Shaker, on sight of Tootie, rode up, dismounting. The pack followed. Gray put down Tatoo, Shaker knelt, examining the rat shot.
Tootie filled them in. She said she had help but she didn’t know who it was. Someone well turned out.
Neither man paid too much attention to this. “Ronnie!” Shaker bellowed.
Ronnie Haslip left the field, hurrying up to Shaker, Tootie, and Gray.
“Ride back to the trailers, will you? The key to the party wagon is in the truck. We’ll get out to the road. Bring it up, will you?”
“Of course.” The trusted fellow nodded and turned, riding off.
“Let’s not broadcast too much. Sister will know how to handle this. If it were up to me, I’d find the bastard and throttle him,” Shaker said as Gray lifted Tatoo in his arms again.
“The fellow who helped me choked him, threw him on the ground, then hit him in the head with the butt of his rifle. He took his pulse—he’s not dead.”
“If I find him, he will be.” Shaker on foot, leading Kilowatt, walked, the pack with him, while Gray continued to carry Tatoo. Tootie led his horse and her own.
Gray, to the other two, quietly said, “We can tell Sister what occurred once hounds are on the trailer. Or Tootie, you can tell her, and Betty and Shaker can get hounds back. The less people know of details, the better. God only knows what will be on Facebook.”
“Jesus Christ.” Shaker spat. “People have no sense.”
“You just figured that out, did you?” Gray lightly said.
Reaching the road, Gray gratefully put down Tatoo, who stood up, wobbly. Blood trickled out of a few rat shot holes.
“Digging out the rat shot will sting. Some of this will have to fester out.” Shaker again examined the sweet hound. “Goddammit. Goddammit it to hell!”
They waited as Sister took the field back in. Betty joined the pack just in case someone took a notion, plus there was no reason to stand at the far end of the marijuana patch now.
Tootie filled her in.
“Think we should call 911?” Betty asked.
“Hell no. Let him suffer.” Shaker smiled, then added, “And I bet you fifty smackers that marijuana crop will be burning soon. Someone will call Ben Sidell from back at the trailers.”
“Ah.” Betty blinked.
“That’s where Sister is different. She’d find the fellow, speak to him about foxhunting, and pay him off. Woman would have made a great old-time politician,” Gray commented.
“What’s the phrase, ‘Better to have them inside the tent pissing out than outside the tent pissing in’?” Betty remembered it correctly.
“Now everyone is morally pure.” Shaker laughed.
“Right.” Gray laughed also.
They chatted, petting hounds, loving on Tatoo. Famous Amos, Ronnie’s horse, regaled Outlaw and Wolsey with tales of Ronnie trying to tie his stock tie in the trailer.
Kilowatt listened. “Why doesn’t he do it at home? Shaker
does. Mirror’s better.”
“Because my human is always late. He needs a wife.”
“Famous, Ronnie’s gay.” Outlaw giggled.
“You think I don’t know that? I said he needed a wife; I didn’t say that poor soul had to be a woman. She should hear Xavier”—he mentioned a childhood friend who had been out of town for two weeks on business—“who says to him to go online and look for a date. It gets worse.”
“Can you imagine if we could go online?” Kilowatt wondered.
“You’re cracked.” Jujube finally said something.
“That Lucille Ball is a babe. What a beautiful mare.” Outlaw half closed his eyes
“Redhead. She’ll run you crazy. Push you away from your feed bucket on the fence line. Squeal if you even brush by her. Too much work,” Kilowatt sensibly spoke.
The conversation didn’t finish because Ronnie drove right up.
“Quick work.” Shaker, leading Kilowatt, loaded hounds.
Betty and Tootie, on foot, also helped.
Gray laid Tatoo on the passenger seat in the truck.
“I can sit with him on my lap,” Tootie offered.
“He’ll be fine. They’ll be glad to get to the kennels. You all go in to the breakfast.” He slid into the driver’s seat, drove off.
Tootie, Betty, Gray, and Ronnie, on the ground, reins in hand, looked toward the mill, which seemed so far away.
“Anyone need a leg up?” Gray offered.
“Not yet,” Ronnie replied.
Once in the saddle, they walked back, talked about Audrey hitting the line, older hounds honoring, what a good day it had been until hitting the weed.
“How much marijuana do you think is out there?” Gray asked.
“Government flies over in helicopters,” Betty replied. “Infrared photography, right?”
“Waste of time and money.” Gray’s legs lightly hung on Wolsey, a fine horse, very kind. “They get a photo, cops are on the ground. They rush over to destroy the crop. Someone else goes to who owns the land, and half the time the owner is absentee. Big deal. Here’s the way it works. Why is one form of relaxation—or self-destruction, if you feel that way—legal and another is not?”
“Got me there.” Ronnie nodded.
“Because some people think smoking a joint is a gateway drug. Next come heroin and cocaine.” Betty provided the usual argument.
Tootie, patting Jujube’s glossy neck, said, “No, what comes next is an opioid crisis. It’s got nothing to do with marijuana.”
“A fine mess, isn’t it?” Ronnie felt tired, although they hadn’t hunted more than an hour and a half. The half was standing in the pasture.
“Sometimes I think our entire country is just one big contradiction.” Gray liked things to make sense.
“You know, it probably always was. Now we have news, non-news, and fake news twenty-four hours a day. The contradictions jump right out at you.” Ronnie half laughed.
“The trailers.” Gray, jubilant, headed for Sister’s rig, as did Tootie and Betty.
Ronnie and Famous Amos walked onto Ronnie’s trailer, not far from Sister’s.
Horses tended to, the four finally made it to the breakfast. Walter pressed a drink in Sister’s and Betty’s hands. Ronnie grabbed an ice cold beer, one of the craft brews from Route 151, remembered his manners, and brought Tootie, in the middle of a group questioning her, an iced tea.
Sister broke up the group, put her arm around Tootie’s shoulder. “Let’s sit for a minute. We can go into Walter’s tiny reading room.”
She pointed to the reading room. Walter nodded and they walked in, Sister closing the door.
The room, about the size of a big stall, ten feet by twelve, was tiny but perfect. A chintz sofa with green pillows to match the leaves from the print invited them. The walls—bookshelves, top to bottom—testified to Walter’s abiding interest in medical history as well as regular history, especially medieval England. The walls were painted hunter green; a fireplace with a mahogany surround took up one wall, with a glorious Heather St. Clair Davis painting over it. The two women fell onto the sofa.
Tootie tried to remember everything.
“I should know who owns that land, but I don’t.” Sister finally tasted her drink, a gin rickey.
A gin rickey is a summer drink, but it tasted perfect at that moment.
“I didn’t recognize the guy with the gun. Maybe he’s not from this county. The weed growers cover a lot of ground. Then again, he could be a Washington lawyer out for an extra buck.” Tootie raised her shoulders.
“Walter told me one marijuana plant sells for twelve hundred dollars right now. A lot of money back there. Tell me again about the man who helped you. I want to make sure I’ve heard things correctly.”
“He walked up behind the guy, the farmer, and he put his hands around his throat. He must have been strong because the man dropped his rifle, threw it down, really, which he was told to do. He choked. He tried to get away. My savior”—she smiled—“was strong. He told me he’d help me with the hound. He said to the farmer if he ever hurt a hound he would kill him and if he was ugly to me, he’d kill him. Then he threw him on the ground. The farmer had had his own hands on his throat, and he was coughing. The blond man picked up the rifle and smashed the butt into his head. Then he picked up Tatoo and walked with me until we got near the field.”
“Tell me again what he was wearing.”
“He had to have been in the field, although I didn’t notice him. He wore ratcatcher—a bluish tweed, beige britches, old brown hunt cap, tails down, which was odd because tails down is only for staff. And the cowhorn was odd. He had it slid behind his back. Oh, his tie was, I don’t know, one of those regimental ties.”
“And he was blond?”
“Blond. Six feet, at least. Gorgeous. Sister, he was one of the most gorgeous men I have ever seen. You think I would have noticed him in the hunt field but I pay attention to the hounds. I don’t know how he got behind that farmer but I’m sure glad he did. The farmer said he’d shoot the pack and shoot me. I said that before, didn’t I?”
“You did. When something like this happens, details come back bit by bit, I think. And this man, how old?”
“I’m not good with age. He wasn’t middle-aged. Young, but not as young as I am. Sister, he was gorgeous. Didn’t you see him?”
“No. He wasn’t in the field.”
“He was in hunt kit.”
“I believe you. It’s just he wasn’t in the field. I think you encountered the man who is blowing his cowhorn after our hunts.” She paused, took another drink, thought a moment. “You liked him?”
“I did. He was a real foxhunter. I could tell that just by how he handled Tatoo.”
“Yes.”
“But why would he follow the hunt and blow his cowhorn? I’ve heard it.”
“I don’t know.”
“Thank God he was there, Sister. I don’t know if that guy would have killed me, but I think he would have killed Tatoo. The blond man really did save me, and he was so kind, kind eyes.” She blushed a moment. “He said I was a good whipper-in.”
“He would know.”
“Who is he? You know him? I want to meet him, thank him properly. I should do something after what he did for me and for Tatoo.”
“He is—or was—a huntsman. I believe you saw Wesley Carruthers. Weevil.” She took a long, deep breath. “He’s been missing since 1954.”
CHAPTER 22
Hounds and horses were washed, wiped down, put up by Betty and Tootie. Sister and Shaker cleaned out Tatoo’s rat shot wounds.
“What a good boy.” Sister praised him as she used the long narrow tweezers to pick out a bit of lead.
“Ow,” he murmured, but stood still as Shaker held him.
The poor fellow, riddled with the tiny pellets, would get a breather, cookies given to him. After one hour, they wiped him down with bluecoat, literally a blue coating that staved off infection. The colors of antiseptics r
anged from silver to orange to blue. As Sister sprayed this on it did sting a little.
“All done.” She beamed. “Shaker, when that marijuana patch is burned, we should celebrate. This sweet fellow didn’t deserve to be peppered.”
“Sooner or later we’ll figure out who is growing the stuff.” Shaker lifted up the tractable animal, carrying him back to the special room with its own stall walkout.
Sister followed, opening the chain-link door.
Zane, goldbricking about his claw, immediately put on his sorrowful look. “A cookie would help me so much.”
Sister laughed at Zane. “You’ve been in here long enough for heart surgery.”
He took a few steps with a pronounced limp.
Tatoo, made of sterner stuff, chided the youngster, “Will you stop?”
“I am seriously injured. We’re making sure my paw doesn’t become infected. See?” He held up a healed paw, the claw clipped very short but no swelling anymore around it.
“I need to sleep. You can shut up at any time.” Tatoo shot Zane a sharp look.
“Well, we can walk out Zane tomorrow and put him back with his group.” Sister observed the young hound, who curled up next to Tatoo.
Tatoo didn’t growl, but he did ignore him. Zane smacked the raised bed box, nicely stuffed with soft blankets. That tail was going.
“Zane, go to sleep if you’re going to be next to me.”
“I will. I’ve been in here for days all alone. Oh, I have suffered. I need a friend.”
“Dear God.” Tatoo lifted his head, looked at the young dramatist, then flopped his head back down. He was asleep before Zane could think of another play for attention. So the youngster decided to sleep as well.
As Sister and Shaker walked back to the office, she remarked, “Isn’t it something how there is such a variation in one litter? Zorro and Zandy are not little mimosas. Zane will just close up with a touch.” She smiled. “His grandmother was like that. Ever notice how certain qualities jump a generation? You see it in horses, hounds, and humans. Ace is a dead ringer for grandpa Asa.”
Crazy Like a Fox Page 18