The Fox Hunt

by Bonnie Bryant

“Don’t know why not,” Carole said.

  “Oh, he’s a sweetie,” Stevie said. “And I remember Max saying that he used to belong to someone who did a lot of hunting with him. I bet he’ll be great in the field. It’s important to have a horse with experience—one who won’t bolt off when he hears the hounds barking and baying. Say, what is baying, anyway?”

  “Oh, it’s sort of a howling sound hounds make,” Carole said. “But what we want to hear from them is ‘full cry.’ ”

  “Is that one of those terms?” Lisa asked. Carole nodded. She had obviously been studying the list that Max had given all the members of Horse Wise, which was a sheet of fox-hunting terms. He’d just said that they were expected to be familiar with them. A lot of them seemed odd, and some were downright silly.

  “My favorite thing from the list was ‘couple,’ ” Lisa said.

  “Like Phil and me?” Stevie asked. She obviously had not been studying the list.

  “Not unless you and Phil are dogs,” Lisa teased.

  “Hounds,” Carole corrected her. “They are always called hounds, never dogs, unless you mean only a male. And a couple is a pair of hounds. They are counted in couples because they are trained in couples and often work in couples. So, if our fox hunt has forty-five hounds in the pack, we call that twenty-two and a half couples.”

  “Strange,” Stevie remarked.

  “Tradition,” Carole explained. “Fox hunting has more traditions than Pine Hollow.” She tugged her list of terms out of her jeans pocket and glanced at it. “Here’s another one,” she said. “Capping fee.”

  “Oh, I know that,” Lisa said. “It’s what the riders pay to go along on the hunt. Originally, back in the old days, the hunt secretary would collect silver from the riders in his riding cap, and that’s where the name comes from.”

  “Let me look at this list,” Stevie said, borrowing the paper from Carole. She studied the words. “Here’s one. ‘Holloa.’ ” She pronounced it as if it rhymed with the Hawaiian greeting, “aloha.”

  “No, that’s pronounced ‘holler.’ ” Carole said.

  “All right, then, what does it mean?”

  “Holler,” Lisa explained.

  “It’s the call a whipper-in makes when he spots the fox breaking cover.”

  “And breaking cover means running out into the open,” Lisa told Stevie.

  “I didn’t realize how much information there was on that list,” Stevie said a little sheepishly. “I guess I’ve got some work to do for the fox hunt, and I guess it’s not going to be done in the girls’ room at Fenton Hall.”

  Lisa felt some relief, and the look on Carole’s face said that she shared the feeling. As long as Stevie spent time concentrating on the list Max had given the riders, she wouldn’t have time to put up any more notices in the girls’ room at Fenton Hall. That might not get her out of the hot water she was already in, but it would keep her from getting into any more. For now, that was as much as The Saddle Club could hope for.

  There was the sound of a car horn outside Stevie’s house. That meant that Carole’s father was there to pick her up. The Saddle Club meeting was over. Lisa and Carole piled up the wrappers and cans from their snack, loaded them all onto a plate, and took everything down to the kitchen, calling farewells to Stevie as they went. Stevie barely acknowledged them, though. She was too intent studying her list of hunting terms.

  IN SPITE OF everything Stevie had said to Carole and Lisa, she was nervous. Since everybody at Fenton Hall, to say nothing of everybody in all of Willow Creek, seemed to know exactly what she had done to her brothers, it seemed a certainty that it had come to their attention. Still, there was no reaction from them.

  Stevie stood in front of the mirror in her room, giving her hair a final comb, and asked herself the Sixty-Four-Dollar Question: When? Then there was the Sixty-Four-Thousand-Dollar Question: What? The mirror didn’t answer her. Was it possible, she wondered, just barely possible, that they wouldn’t retaliate in some form? Would they let her get away with her mean notes based on the idea that those notes were just desserts for the teasing she and Phil had suffered?

  The mirror didn’t have to answer that question. Stevie could do it all by herself. The answer was: no way.

  Stevie slipped into her jacket, picked up her backpack, and headed downstairs and out the door. As usual, she was late. Her brothers had all left for school, so she didn’t have to worry about retaliation on her way. All she had to worry about was the fact that they would have gotten to school earlier than she had, so they would have had time to plan something really vicious to greet her.

  Stevie walked quickly, but it wasn’t easy since she spent the entire trip looking over her shoulder, wondering when the retaliation would hit. But there was nothing. No sign of any brothers, no sign of any trouble. That made her even more nervous.

  “Hi, missed you this morning!” Chad said cheerfully, dashing to his first class as Stevie entered the school.

  Stevie waved and smiled in return. That was odd. Chad usually didn’t say anything to her, much less something nice.

  Before she had a chance to worry about that too much, Alex tapped her on her shoulder. “Hey, I picked up your Spanish workbook by mistake. Sorry about that, but when I checked the work you’d done last night, I saw you made a few mistakes. I corrected them for you. Okay?” He shoved the book into her hands and dashed off to his first class.

  Expecting the worst, Stevie opened her workbook to see what he’d done. She was surprised to find that he’d done exactly what he’d said he’d done. She had forgotten to make her adjectives and nouns agree. He’d made them all agree. Stevie was astonished. Her Spanish teacher would be, too.

  Stevie had three classes before the midmorning break, the first time she saw Michael that day at school. She wanted to buy herself an apple at the snack cart, but she’d been in such a hurry that she’d left her wallet at home.

  “Here, I’ve got a quarter you can have,” Michael said when he saw his sister’s problem.

  “You do?”

  “Sure,” he said, handing it to her.

  “Do you want me to sign an IOU or something?” Stevie asked.

  “Nah,” Michael said. “I trust you.”

  Stevie was speechless. She accepted the quarter and bought the apple, thinking all the while about the hundreds of IOUs Michael had made her sign for him over the years.

  Something was up.

  One of Stevie’s classmates came up to her while she was chewing thoughtfully on her apple.

  “Wasn’t that your brother?” the girl asked. Stevie nodded. “The one who wears Spiderman underwear?” Stevie nodded again. “He’s so sweet!” Stevie nodded once more. “So how could you do something so mean to a little boy who is so sweet?” the girl asked.

  Stevie gave her a withering look. “He’s not always that sweet. And besides, I think the reason he gave me the money for the apple is to see that I stay healthy. See, I already owe him over twenty-three dollars. He sees this as protecting an investment.” Stevie tossed the remains of the apple into a garbage can and headed for science. It was going to be easier to look at the insides of a frog than to figure out what her brothers were really up to.

  “WHAT’S THE MATTER with you?” Lisa asked Carole as they stood next to one another in the outfield of a softball game. Carole had such a pained look on her face that it was clear she would be unable to catch the merest pop fly, much less a tricky line drive.

  “It’s Stevie,” she said.

  “I thought so,” Lisa replied.

  “Look, even though her brothers didn’t say or do anything last night when we were at her house doesn’t mean that they aren’t ever going to do or say anything to Stevie in retaliation.”

  “I’m afraid you’re right.”

  “I am right,” Carole said. “After all, they are Stevie’s brothers, and her skills at practical jokes and revenge are so well developed that they had to come from somewhere. I mean, you can’t just learn that kind o
f stuff. It’s born in you.” Carole glanced up. “Why is that boy waving at me?” she asked.

  There was a thump as a softball landed on the ground in front of Carole.

  “That’s why,” Lisa said. She picked up the ball and tossed it toward the infield, totally oblivious to the classmate of hers who was dashing madly for third base. “But back to Stevie, remember the time Chad got so tired of Stevie not putting her laundry away that he washed all of her riding clothes with too much bleach?”

  “Exactly!” Carole said. “Her jeans were white, and her breeches got all shredded because they were made of synthetics.”

  “And her mother was so mad at Chad for ruining all those expensive clothes that she made him wear his underwear, even though it had turned pink when Stevie washed it with her new T-shirt.”

  “We just heard about the underwear,” Carole reminded her. “But everybody could see the pink socks.”

  “He wasn’t a very good sport about it, was he?”

  Thump! Another ball landed nearby. Carole moved aside so another classmate could run over and pick it up. Talking about Stevie seemed a lot more important than playing softball.

  “And that was just the laundry wars,” Carole said. “Remember the time Alex took Stevie’s book report and handed it in, saying it was his?”

  “Who could forget?” Stevie asked. “Stevie was so angry that she took a book report Michael had gotten a poor grade on and handed it in to the same teacher with Alex’s name on it—for extra credit?”

  “And remember the time Stevie accidentally dropped a piece of bubble gum on Chad’s pillow when she was listening to his tape deck, and he got so angry that he stuck a wad of bubble gum on her pillow, and Mrs. Lake had to cut Stevie’s hair off so she could get to school without the pillow attached?”

  “Yes, I remember that one, too.”

  “None of this is making me feel any better,” Carole said. “This is a family of vindictive practical jokers.”

  “I know,” Lisa said. “But what can we do about it?”

  Thump!

  Nothing was going right.

  STEVIE GOT A sinking feeling right before lunchtime. It came from her vivid recollection of the nice brown lunch bag she’d seen on the kitchen counter that morning as she’d flown by it on the way out to school.

  She slunk into the cafeteria and sat glumly at her usual place. She stared at the empty table in front of her. She tried to imagine what a nice bologna-and-cheese sandwich would taste like—if she had one. She thought about the nice Cranapple juice she was sure her mother had put into the lunch bag—at home. She closed her eyes and dreamed about the sweet red grapes—that were just getting warm and soft on the kitchen counter. This was no fun at all.

  “What happened? Where’s your lunch?”

  Stevie looked up. It was Alex. She shrugged. “I left it at home,” she said.

  “Oh, that’s too bad,” Alex said. “Let’s see what your brothers can do for you.” He disappeared.

  Here it comes, she told herself. She decided that this was when they would get even. One of them would get something really disgusting—maybe even from the biology lab—and would pretend it was delicious. Another might even find a half-eaten dessert from the garbage. And to drink? She didn’t even want to think about it.

  “Oh, hi, Stevie!” a familiar and unwelcome voice said sweetly. It was Veronica diAngelo. Just what she needed on an empty stomach. Veronica pulled out a chair and sat down next to Stevie. This wasn’t like Veronica. She usually steered very far from Stevie, and that was usually just fine with Stevie. Now her brothers were being nice, and Veronica was being friendly. Her whole world was turning upside down.

  “Hello, Veronica,” Stevie returned.

  “Can I ask a question?” Veronica said.

  “You just did—and that’s your limit,” Stevie said. She knew that sounded really rude, but Veronica was really rude, and Stevie wasn’t in the mood for her.

  Veronica laughed sweetly, the tinkling sound of her giggles filling the air. Stevie couldn’t believe it.

  “You’re so funny!” Veronica said.

  Stevie simply stared at her.

  “What I wanted to ask you was what happened between you and your brothers? I mean you guys are fighting all the time, but what did they do to you that was so bad you decided to put up those signs in the girls’ room?”

  “It’s a family matter, Veronica,” Stevie said. There was no way she was going to tell Veronica about the teasing she and Phil had gotten from her brothers.

  Veronica was about to speak, and Stevie knew what she was going to say: How could anything that resulted in public signs in the girls’ room be considered a private matter? Instead of listening, Stevie turned her back to Veronica.

  Another classmate and a Pine Hollow rider, Lorraine Olson, sat down next to her.

  “What’s up between you and your brothers?” Lorraine asked.

  Stevie was only too happy to explain it to her—a particularly nice snub for Veronica, who was still sitting right there, to hear Stevie tell the whole story to somebody else when she’d been unwilling to share any of it with Veronica. Maybe this lunch period wasn’t going to be so bad after all.

  She’d just gotten to the part about their making fun of a mock hunt when Alex arrived.

  “Here you go, Stevie,” he said, offering her a lunch bag.

  “Thanks,” she said, accepting it because she was curious to see if he had actually managed to talk the biology teacher into donating something that had been soaking in formaldehyde for months. Alex disappeared into the crowd. Stevie peered into the bag.

  It held a sandwich—clearly bologna and cheese on white with mayonnaise, just the way she liked it. That was the way Michael liked it, too, so it had to be his sandwich. There was also some apple juice. She would have preferred Cranapple, but Chad’s drink was apple juice. This was his drink container. Unopened. Then there was a large orange. Alex always had an orange in his lunch. Stevie crinkled her eyebrows in confusion. Each one of her brothers had contributed something he really liked to her lunch. Each one of them had done something very nice for her. That was odd—very odd.

  Stevie opened the sandwich and the apple juice and began eating slowly, thinking about the very weird things that were going on. Around her, her friends talked about other things: the history test coming up next week; the Emerson Circus; and the fox hunt.

  Stevie concentrated all her thoughts on her brothers. They’d been mean to her and Phil, and she’d been very angry with them. She’d gotten even. And now that they were even, her brothers were being nice to her, saying they got her joke and didn’t want her to play any more practical jokes on them. That’s what being even meant.

  Stevie was pretty sure she understood now. After all, they were her brothers and they were a good lot, even if they were sometimes hard to take. Brothers and sisters had to stick together most of the time, and the Lakes were all good brothers and sister. There was nothing to worry about at all.

  Or was there?

  “ISN’T THIS WONDERFUL?” Carole asked Stevie and Lisa. Her friends had to agree. In spite of the fact that it was seven-thirty in the morning, it was definitely wonderful. They were at Pine Hollow, and the riders from Cross County had just arrived, accompanying vans filled with their own ponies and horses. Everywhere anybody looked, there were horses and riders, tack and equipment. There was a flurry of activity, riders tacking up, grooms grooming, mothers and fathers delivering unnecessary instruction, and Max and Mr. Baker scurrying around. Both carried clipboards and were busily making notes about everything they saw—and didn’t see.

  “I can’t wait for it all to begin,” Lisa said.

  Carole looked around and smiled. “It already has begun,” she said. “Remember that riding is more than being on a horse. It’s also taking care of the horse and preparing for being on the horse.…”

  Sometimes Carole could be almost too serious about horseback riding. When that happened, her friends
thought it was their responsibility to remind her about it. “Oh come on, Carole,” Stevie teased. “We know that as well as you do. But the mock hunt won’t really begin until we’re all here and on our horses. That’s what Lisa and I can’t wait for.”

  “Me, neither,” Carole admitted graciously.

  The three girls had been at Pine Hollow for more than half an hour. They were each dressed in proper hunt attire, which meant that they were wearing riding pants and boots, white shirts and ties, and jackets, as well as their usual safety helmets. Their horses were tacked up and ready to go. Carole was riding her own horse, Starlight. Stevie was on Topside, the show horse she usually rode. At her friends’ suggestion, and with Max’s approval, Lisa had agreed to try Diablo, the tall bay gelding who had gotten his name because of his unusually small pointed ears.

  While the three of them were all ready to go, it seemed that nobody else around them was—or for that matter ever would be. Everywhere was mass confusion.

  “Isn’t that my saddle?”

  “The horse tried to bite me!”

  “Where’s my horse?”

  “Does anybody have a crop I can borrow?”

  The Saddle Club secured their horses to the paddock fence and joined the fray. They figured that if they helped the other riders get ready, it might actually speed up the entire process so they could begin the mock hunt sooner. It seemed to work. Within about fifteen minutes, just about everything was done for all the riders.

  There were more than forty Pony Clubbers from Horse Wise and Cross County who were there for the mock hunt. The Saddle Club thought it was exciting just to see so many riders all saddled up and ready to go at once. Stevie looked over her shoulder. Phil was behind her. He smiled at her. She winked at him. That made him smile some more.

  “Pony Clubs come to order!” Mr. Baker commanded. Everybody was quiet. Then Max spoke.

  “I am now ready to assign parts to all of you,” he began. He explained that most people were going to be in the field, but that some would have special jobs. “First of all, we need a Junior Master of the Hunt. This job is going to the person who has been the most serious student of fox hunting—the person who worked hardest at understanding all the aspects of it.”