She and the others usually recognized the scent of the fox they chased, but this was a stranger, a gray fox courting a little early, but then foxes display their own logic. The common wisdom is that grays begin mating in mid-January, reds at the end of January. But Cora remembered a time when grays mated in mid-December. Just why, she didn’t know. No great storms followed, which could have boxed them up, nor a drought, which would have affected the food supply then and later. All these events could affect mating.
Perhaps this gray simply fell in love.
Whatever, the scent warmed up.
“Showtime!”Cora spoke.
Dragon spoke, then Asa and Delia. Diana steadied the T’s when she, too, sang out and told them to just stick with the pack, stick together.
The whole pack opened. A chill ran down Sister’s spine; Lafayette’s too, his beautiful gray head turned as he watched the hounds.
Those members with a hangover knew they’d need to hang on: when the pack opened like that, they were about to fly.
A thin strip of woods separated the eastern meadow from a plowed cornfield, the stubble visible through the windblown patches. A slight slope rested on the far side of the cornfield. The hounds had gotten away so fast they were already there.
Sister and Lafayette sped to catch them. She tried to stay about twenty yards behind Shaker, depending on the territory. She didn’t want to crowd the pack, but she wanted members to see the hounds work. To Sister, that was the whole reason to hunt: hound work!
The footing in the cornfield kept horses lurching as the furrows had frozen, buried under the snow.
All were glad once that was behind them. A simple three-foot coop rested in the fence line between the cornfield and the hayfield. The bottom half of the coop, where snow piled up, was white.
“Whoopee.”Lafayette pricked his ears forward as he leapt over.
Lafayette so loved jumping and hunting that Sister rarely had to squeeze her legs.
Everyone cleared the coop.
Hounds could hear their claws crack the thin crust of ice on the snow. In a few places they’d sink in to their elbows, throw snow around, and keep going, paying no heed.
Within minutes, the pack clambered over another coop, rushing into a pine stand, part of Edward’s timber operation. The scent grew stronger.
The silence, noticeable in the pines, only accentuated the music of the hounds. As the field moved in, a few boughs, shaken by the thunder of hooves, dusted the riders underneath with snow.
Sam Lorillard felt a handful slide down his neck.
Crawford tried to push up front, but Czpaka wasn’t that fast a horse. Crawford hated being in the middle of the pack, and hereallyhated seeing Walter Lungrun shoot past him on Rocketman.
Jennifer Franklin and Sari Rasmussen giggled as the dustings from the trees covered their faces. Both girls loved hunting, their only complaint being that not enough boys their own age foxhunted.
On and on the hounds roared, turning sharply left, negotiating a fallen tree, then charging through the pines northward, emerging onto the sunken farm road, three feet down, the road used to service an old stone barn in the eighteenth century. The building’s crumbling walls remained. The field abruptly pulled up as hounds tumbled pell-mell over one another to get inside the ruins.
“He’s gone to ground!”Dragon shouted.“Let’s dig himout.”
“Dream on, you nitwit.”A high-pitched voice called out from inside.
“Uncle Yancy, what are you doing here? Where’s thegray?”Cora recognized the small red fox’s voice. He was not pleased with the visitation.
“You could be on a little red Volkswagen for all I know,Cora, but you haven’t been chasing me.”
Shaker dismounted and blew“Gone to ground.”
The hounds loved hearing that series of notes, but Cora, disgruntled to have been so badly fooled, sat down. Where had that gray gone?
“There’s nothing we can do about it,”Dasher advised.
“Oh, yes, there is,”Cora determinedly replied.“I knowthe difference between Uncle Yancy and a stranger. Somehow we got our wires crossed back there in the pines, andwe were all so excited we didn’t pay proper attention.”
Diana said,“Cora, if you’d switched to Uncle Yancy,you would have known.”She walked over and poked her head into the den.“Uncle Yancy, is he in there with you?”
A dry chuckle floated out of the main entrance.“He leftby the back door not ten minutes ago.”
“Damn you, Yancy!”Dragon frantically began searching for the back door of the den, which happened to be outside the walls of the old barn.
The sound of Dragon’s travails made Yancy laugh even harder. Infuriated, Dragon could hear the fox’s mirth. He ran for the opening where a door used to be to get outside the ruins.
“Dragon, come back here and pretend you’re thrilledabout this,”Cora commanded as Shaker finished the notes on his horn.“We can put up the gray once we’re out ofhere.”
And that they did. As soon as Shaker mounted back up, the hounds moved around the outside of the structure.
“Got ’im!”Asa called as he’d found the correct exit. With that he ran north, ever northward, as the scent was nowhot, hot, hoton the cold snow.
Asa lost the line for a moment when they reached a small frozen tributary of Snake Creek, a silver ribbon of ice. Young Trident put them all right when he crashed across the ice, the water running hard underneath, and picked up the scent on the far bank.
The fox zigzagged west. After fifteen minutes of flat-out flying, the pack, the staff, and the field soared over the stone fence, leading into After All’s westernmost pasture. Within minutes, they’d be on Sister’s farm.
Again the fox turned; grays tend to do that. He was running a big figure eight, but the scent stayed hot. The pack, in full cry, ran so close together they were beautiful to behold.
Back over the stone fence, across a narrow strip, over the old hog’s back jump, which looked formidable in the snow. Lost a few people on that one. On and on, then finally Cora skidded to a halt beneath a pin oak, its brown leaves still clinging to the snow-coated tree. Those leaves wouldn’t be released until spring buds finally pushed them off their seal.
Snow spun out from paws as the hounds abruptly put on their brakes.
“Got you!”Cora stood on her hind legs, her forepaws as high on the tree as she could reach.
“He climbed the tree! He climbed the tree!”Trinity was so excited she leapt up and down as though on a pogo stick.“I never saw a fox do that!”
Asa, thrilled but in control, said,“If we get too close,those grays will climb up neat as a cat. Can you see him up there?”
“Yes!”Trinity spotted a pair of angry eyes staring down.
“Go away,”the gray yelled, just as the snow again began to fall, the clouds now dark gray.
“Who are you?”Diana asked.
“Mickey. You should all just go away. Look at it thisway, you need me to come courting, don’t you? Meansmore foxes next year,”he said raffishly.
Shaker handed Showboat’s reins to Betty. He walked up under the tree. “Hey there, fella. Hell of a run.”
“Yeah, well, you can find your pleasures elsewhere,” Mickey barked.
Shaker lavishly praised his hounds for their excellent work, then mounted back up and called them along. He beamed.
The pack, in high gear, cavorted as they turned back east.
“I’ll find another fox!”Dragon bragged.
“You are so full of it,”Ardent, Asa’s brother, growled.“You aren’t the only hound with a nose, and furthermore,I suspect we’re going back.”
“Doesn’t mean we can’t run another fox if we find one,” Dragon sassed.
“True.”Cora would have liked another hard run.“Butwe’ve been out an hour and a half, the footing is deep—slippery in spots—and some of the horses are tiring. Sister’ssmart. She’ll end the day on a high note, and we’ll be back at the trailers in twenty minutes. Plus, it’s snowing again.”