Shaker kept trying to do chores until Sister finally lost her temper with him, banishing him to his cottage.
“He’s worse than a child,” she said to Betty and Sybil.
“They all are.” Betty kept working. “Overgrown boys.”
“But isn’t that what makes them fun?” Sybil, lonely for male companionship, winked.
“You’re right,” Sister agreed.
The phone rang in the office.
Betty hurried in to answer, then called for Sister.
After listening to Ben Sidell, Sister rejoined the others as they washed down the feed room.“Girls, they’ve identified the burned body. Donnie Sweigert.”
“Oh, no!” Sybil exclaimed.
Betty, too, exclaimed,“This is awful. What in God’s name was Donnie doing there?”
“Said he had a high alcohol content in his blood.” Sister thought Donnie not a very intelligent man, but how could he be dumb enough to be dead drunk, literally, in the middle of a fire?
“God, I hope there wasn’t hemlock in it,” Betty gasped.
“No.” Sister clasped her hands together.
“Well, he worked at the warehouse for years. Maybe he got drunk and fell asleep,” Sybil thought out loud.
“With a can of gasoline next to him?”
“Jesus.” Betty whistled.
“Before this is over, we’re all going to be calling for Jesus,” Sister said. “What is going on down there?”
“Doesn’t make any sense.” Sybil, too, was upset.
“It makes sense to somebody,” Betty rejoined.
“Yes—that’s what scares me,” Sister half whispered.
CHAPTER 29
“Old-fashioned,” Sister said, walking through the freshly washed-down kennels, water squishing under her ancient green Wellies.
Walter, having a light day this Friday, used the afternoon to check in on Shaker and to begin his hound education.“What do you mean by old-fashioned?”
“Oh, a little heavy boned in the foreleg, a bigger barrel than gets pinned in the ring these days, and a somewhat broader skull than is currently finding favor.” She closed and double-latched the heavy chain-link gate leading to the young-entry run. “You breed for the territory, Walter. You’ll get sick of hearing that from me, and truthfully, you breed the kind of hound you or your huntsman can handle. A lot of people can’t handle American hounds; the animal is too sensitive, too up for them.”
“Like house dogs? Some people like terriers; other people like golden retrievers.”
“In a sense, yes. But I swear there are more born liars in the foxhound world than anywhere else but golf and fishing.” She moved along to the hot bitch pen.
Sweetpea, having recently been bred, was already in the special girls’ pen, as Sister called it, the hot bitch pen and whelping area. A steady hound, not brilliant, Sweetpea, when crossed to Sister’s A line or Jill Summers’s J line, produced marvelous hounds. Mrs. Paul Summers Jr. was the long-serving master at Farmington Hunt. She’d bred a consistently fine pack for over thirty-five years.
“Hello.”Sweetpea wagged her tail.
“Sweetpea, you remember Walter.” Sister reached down and smoothed her lovely head, the eyes expressive, filled with intelligence.
“I do.”Sweetpea touched Walter with her nose.
Wanda, more advanced in her pregnancy, hearing voices, padded in from outside, where she’d been taking her constitutional.“I’m here.”
“This is Wanda: great drive, okay nose, strong back end, as you can see. That gives her a lot of power. Her shoulder angle could be better, but at least it’s not straight as a stick. So in breeding Wanda, I want to keep her good features, but see if I can’t improve the shoulder a bit and maybe refine her head just a wee bit. Again, I’m not too much into looks, but conformation is the key, as well as attitude. Same as with horses, of course. Both these girls are so easy to work with, eager to please and keen to hunt. And their offspring are even better. Wanda is bred to a Piedmont hound who actually goes back to Fred Duncan’s incredible Clyde—oh, that was back in the early seventies. That hound could follow scent on a hot asphalt road. Never saw anything like Warrenton Clyde.”
Walter, overwhelmed, sighed.“Sister, how am I going to remember all this? It’s Greek to me.”
Sister, who had a few years of Greek in college, smiled.“If you mastered organic chemistry, bloodlines will be a snap.”
“Can I read up on this?”
“The books start in the early eighteenth century. Well, actually, I think Xenophon even mentioned hound breeding, but don’t fret, Walter. I’ll give you a list of the classics. The MFHA has FoxDog: their computer software. I struggle with it, but Shaker’s got the hang of it. I’m not exactly a computer whiz, but I can send e-mail.”
“FoxDog?” He bent his tall frame over to pat both Wanda and Sweetpea.
“All the bloodlines for every hunt for each of the main types of foxhounds are on FoxDog. I can’t imagine sitting down and entering all that information. God bless the MFHA.” She paused. “But I’ll tell you, the best way to learn about hounds and breeding is to hunt, hunt, hunt, and watch. Go to any hunt you can, mounted or on foot, and observe. The great ones stay in your mind just like the great horses or movie stars.”
“That makes sense.”
“And you’ll soon know what I’m talking about when I say that Piedmont Righteous ’71 was bred to Warrenton Star, which gave us a bitch, Piedmont Daybreak ’79, and she produced Piedmont Hopeful ’83, a very great bitch. A lot of people will say they want Hopeful in the tail female line, and all that sounds impressive, but I just watch hounds. I don’t give a damn if the nick is on top or on bottom—”
Walter held up his hand.“Sister, what’s a nick? You’ve lost me.”
“Nick is a bad hound who hunts coons.”Wanda was referring to a neighbor’s hound, whom she didn’t much like. Although Nick was a good coonhound, he didn’t pay his proper respects to Wanda—a girl with a big ego.
“I think of a nick as a lucky cross. Funny Cide, terrific racing horse, a gelding, you know whom I’m talking about?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, he won’t be retired to stud, but people will study his pedigree and try the same or similar cross if they can. Nothing wrong with that, but I think you can get a good result playing with the template, if you will. Instead of just copying something that in the thoroughbred world would mean hundreds of thousands of dollars, reverse the nick or go back to the grandparent generation. If you study, Walter, there’s always a way. I study pedigree. I study hounds, study horses, too. And one of the great things about foxhunting is I can call another master in order to take a bitchto his dog; he or she is flattered. Of course, masters allow this and everyone benefits. You don’t pay for it. The opportunity is freely given. Foxhunting operates on generosity. We improve the animal if we’re careful. The operative word is ‘careful.’ ”
“What’s tail line and all that?”
“Oh. The tail line is the bottom of a breeding chart, the dam or bitch’s side. The top belongs to the dog hound or stallion. I’ll show you when we go in to the office, but you’ll see right what I mean when you check a pedigree. It’s a good thing to study and research pedigrees. It’sa better thing to see performance in the field and to talk to those who know the antecedents of a good hound.”
“I’ve got my work cut out for me.” He whistled. “Can’t wait. And Sweetpea and Wanda, I can’t wait to see the babies.”
“Mine will be better,”Wanda bragged.
Sweetpea, easygoing, just licked Sister’s hand.“I loveyou, Sister. I’ll give you good puppies.”
“Precious.” Sister kissed her head, then patted Wanda.
They left, closing the gate behind them, and walked the long outdoor corridor to the main kennel building. Once inside, she showed him Sweetpea’s pedigree of this year’s entry from Sweetpea and Ardent. Walter realized the format was exactly the same as a horse pedigree. He felt better.