The others picked up the line where he’d found it, and on they flew on a southeast line. They shot through the tiny graveyard, marked only by an upright stone. Legend was this was the last stop for suicides who could not be buried in consecrated ground. No one knew for certain. Hounds kept running again, coming out on another tertiary road, the gravel spitting up beneath their claws as they dug in for purchase. The top of the road darkened as dew sank into the bluestone. Lafayette thundered across it, plunging into the rows of cornstalks, leaves making an eerie rustle as the wind picked up.
They were at Alice Ramy’s northernmost border. She left the corn up for wildlife every winter. Hounds reached the end of the cornfield, hooked left, and forded an old drainage ditch, snow filling the bottom.
Sister and Lafayette didn’t even look down. They flew over the wide ditch as though at the Grand National. A soft thud on the other side as they landed, Lafayette reached out with his forelegs and on they ran, now turning northward, then northeast. Again, they crossed the dirt road, over the meadows, into another wooded area, land mines of rock everywhere, tough soil.
Hounds stopped. Searched.
Sister stopped, hearing the hooves behind her about a quarter of a mile. She figured the drainage ditch held some of them up. God knew, Edward would fly over it.
Hounds moved at a slow, deliberate pace, trying to pick up the scent. The coyote, pausing for a breather on the rim of a ravine a half mile away, heard them, judged the distance between himself and the pack, then trotted toward After All Farm.
He crossed the paved highway, a two-way road with a painted center line, walked down a steep embankment, and then loped toward his den at the southern edge of After All Farm, not a third of a mile away.
Hounds found his line. By the time they reached the den, he was safely inside.
Sister dismounted, blew“Gone to Ground” with what wind she had left. She studied the tracks. “Knew it, god-dammit.”
“Well, we knew they were here.” Betty, who had swung in, looked down.
“What a pity.” Sybil, also joining the pack, face cherry red, mourned.
“If we’re very lucky, they won’t run off our foxes. Still, I think we should shoot every damned one of them.” Sister bore no love for the coyote.
“Yeah,” Betty agreed.
Edward, top hat firmly in place, red hat cord ensuring it wouldn’t be lost, relaxed his shoulders a moment.
“What a run,” Crawford enthused.
Coyote did give glorious runs, but the play by play was much simpler. It was the difference between high school football and the pros. The coyote didn’t use the ruses the fox did, and most dyed-in-the-wool foxhunters wanted to pit themselves against the cleverest of creatures. The coyote might be wily, but he wasn’t sporting like the fox.
Hounds, jubilant at putting their game to ground, sterns upright, eyes clear and happy, pranced as they packed in back to After All Farm.
“Girls won.”Cora laughed.
Asa, generous, conceded, then said,“After a go like that,I’d say we all won.”
“Yes, well done, youngsters,”Diana praised the firstyear entry, who beamed.
As the field walked back, clouds filling half the western sky, a little spit could be seen coming from them: more snow.
“Mercury’s taking a nose dive,” Betty mentioned.
Sybil hunched up her shoulders.“What a winter we’re having.”
“Was Gabriel Daniel Fahrenheit who first put mercury in a thermometer. Born in Poland in 1686. Just think how every day we are enriched by someone who went before us,” Sister mused.
“It is pretty wonderful.” Betty smiled.
“Bet you by the time we get to the covered bridge, snow will be falling there.” Sybil furrowed her brow.
Sister studied the western sky.“Yep.”
Shaker and Lorraine waited at the turnoff to After All Farm. He rolled down the window of the truck, stuck his thumb up.
Sister stuck hers up, too.
He rolled up his window and drove down to the trailers, less than a mile away. He wanted to be at the party wagon when hounds arrived.
Sam, on Cloud Nine, chatted with Gray and Tommy Cullhain. His horse, the timber horse, has a long stride, but he wasn’t paying attention.
The horse bumped Xavier’s paint horse, Picasso.
Xavier turned around, beheld Sam, and snarled,“Drop dead.”
“You first,” Sam fired back.
CHAPTER 32
A towering bouquet, winter greens interspersed with rich red and creamy white roses, stood majestically on Sister’s front hall table, a long narrow Louis XVI, its gold ormolu gleaming against the deep black lacquer.
Sister opened the note, which read,“Who says flowers don’t bloom in winter? Beautiful. Gray.”
Her right hand touched her heart for a second.
Golly sat behind them, a feline part of the display.“Patterson’s delivered.”
“Spectacular!” Sister exclaimed.
She loved flowers—what woman doesn’t? One of the small disappointments of age was that men did not seem to send them as regularly as they once did.
She took the stairs two at a time, stripped off her clothing. She always took off her boots in the stable, and the girls would clean them. She’d slip into her Wellies, cold in the winter, finish the chores, then come into the house.
She hopped in the shower, Raleigh and Rooster pressing their noses to the glass doors. Then she toweled off, fixed her hair, threw on makeup, opened the closet door, and uttered those immortal words,“I have nothing to wear.”
“How can she say that?”Rooster, having lived with a man, was just learning that women were different in some respects. He was only in his second year with Sister.
Raleigh, nosing a soft pair of leather shoes, answered,“Color, season, fabric, she has to worry about all of thatand then when she picks the right thing, the shoes.”He rolled his eyes.“The downfall of women!”
“Peter would shower, shave, put on a suit or a navyblazer with some kind of pants, a tie, and off he’d go.Twenty minutes, tops,”Rooster informed Raleigh.
A red ball rolled into the large closet as Golly giggled.“Look what I have.”
“That’s not yours.”Raleigh snatched the ball.
“Pig.”Golly sat on a forest green pair of high-heel shoes, squashing them.
Finally Sister settled on a tailored suit, double-breasted, with a magenta pinstripe. She wore a pale pink blouse and a deep teal silk scarf. She was always putting together colors in odd ways, but they worked. After much deliberation, she wore shoes the color of the suit.
“Can you imagine wearing panty hose?”Golly wanted to snag the nylons.
“No.”Rooster wrinkled his nose.“Where’s she going,anyway?”
“Special party for Reading for the Blind. Kind of a fund-raiser, but more low-key than the dance stuff.”Raleigh knew his mother’s charities and special interests.
Golly shot out of the closet, cut in front of the dogs, and walked into the bathroom where Sister performed a last-minute makeup check. Golly hit the wall with all fours, bounced off, and turned to face the dogs.
“King of the hill!”
The two canines stopped, then Rooster said,“Golly,you’re mental.”
“I’m a killer. I can bring down bunnies twice my size. Ican face off a … a bobcat. I can terrify a cow. I am Kong!” She spun on her paws, flew the entire length of the upper hallway, hit the wall there, bounced off, and flew back, running right under the dogs’ bellies.
“She is mental,”Rooster repeated.
“I think she has to go to the bathroom,”Raleigh said.“She gets that way if she has to do Number Two.”
“I do not!”Golly was outraged.“But if I have to go, I’llgo in your bed because you have mortally offended me.” She turned in a huff, jumping onto the counter where the makeup sat.
“I don’t know how you’ve stood it for all these years,” Rooster consoled Raleigh.“At least when I lived with Peter, he didn’t keep cats. They’re horrible.”