Sister, heart racing, a grin from ear to ear, rode Keepsake over both coops and was thankful they’d just rebuilt them. Behind her she heard the rap of hooves as someone got in too close. Mostly she heard the “oomph,” “oomph,” “oomph,” of humans exhaling as they landed safely.
She kept about forty yards behind Shaker, fighting the urge to go right up with him.
“Squeeze him over,” she heard Marty Howard calling behind her. Sister glanced back to see that Crawford had gotten stuck on the farm road between the two jumps.
Under these circumstances, a rider is supposed to circle and go to the rear or wait, if he can’t circle, and let everyone else by. Crawford, however, bottled up the rest of the field. No one wanted to thunder past him for fear of spooking Czapaka or, worse, crashing into him. He didn’t have sense to go down the road and get out of everyone’s way.
Finally, with a terrific squeeze and smack of his crop, he lurched over the second coop. Ronnie Haslip, not deigning even to look at Crawford, effortlessly sailed over both coops, flying by Crawford perched on his big, beautiful warmblood. Ronnie was followed by the two high school seniors, Jennifer and Sari, who didn’t want to get stuck behind Crawford again, just in case.
There was an old stone fence line on the south side of the hayfield. After that pretty jump it was open country, Soldier Road, more open country, and up Hangman’s Ridge or the long way around it at the bottom.
Betty, thinking ahead, was already over the stone wall on Magellan, a horse who had a tendency to stand back and leave a half step earlier than her trusted and true Outlaw. She and Magellan were still getting accustomed to each other, but she was thrilled at having two horses to hunt.
The day was turning out to be so good, she felt half guilty about leaving Bobby at work—but not so guilty she wouldn’t do it again.
Sybil didn’t move fast enough, and Shaker preceded her over the stone wall at a low point where a few gray stones had fallen down. She swung in behind him, then tore out to his right side. He didn’t criticize her since he knew she already understood she was not in the right position.
Keepsake, a handy fellow, thought the stone wall a lark. He liked taking different types of fences and he really liked having Sister on his back. She was much lighter than his former owner. Sister felt like a feather on his back.
This time Crawford took the jump last and cleared without incident.
Hounds streamed across the sunken meadow filled with the last of the black-eyed Susans and the first of the Jerusalem artichokes. Pendulous blackberries marked its eastern boundary.
Sister paused a moment at Soldier Road. She couldn’t hear or see any motor traffic. She trotted over, jumped the old sagging coop—it needed replacing—and rode into the sunken meadow on the north side of the road. She galloped past more black-eyed Susans, Jerusalem artichokes, cornflowers, Queen Anne’s lace, and white morning glories, their magenta throats pointing to the sun. Purple morning glories tangled through the grasses.
Hounds screamed. Their music gave her goose bumps.
Target, putting on the afterburners just to prove a point, shot straight up Hangman’s Ridge, which at its summit was seven hundred feet above the watershed meadows below.
“Force those damned hounds to climb—and the people, too, if they’re dumb enough,” he thought.
Sister, however, wasn’t going to push anyone that hard quite this early in the season. If it had been December, the air cool, the horses 100 percent fit instead of 85 percent fit, she would have climbed up. Today she circled around to the old rutted wagon path. It cost her precious minutes and she’d have to hustle once she reached the ridge to make them up. This she did.
Target, for effect, had raced to the hanging tree, left a mark at its base, then charged straight down the other side. He could now hear Dragon behind him. The hound was fast. Target had indulged in too much chicken the previous evening. A straight shot to his den might not be the best plan after all.
So he hatched a diabolical new one. Once at the base of the ridge he crossed the farm road there and dashed through Sister’s old apple orchard.
Sister, now on the ridge, saw the last of her hounds go by the hanging tree, then straight down the ridge. The wagon path on the other side of the ridge connected to her farm road. If she pushed Keepsake toward it, they’d have to cover a quarter mile to reach it.
The wind, always stronger on the ridge, whipped at her face. As she passed the ancient oak, its heavy branches moaned in the wind, as if the souls punished there were crying for release.
She banished that thought, slowed to account for the steeper grade down. The footing was slick in spots. At the bottom she pressed on into the apple orchard.
Target ran right up to the kennel. “Wake up!”
Diana lifted her head, as did Cora, Trinkle, Trudy, Trident, Asa, Dasher, and all the others.
“Target! Fox! Fox!” everyone screamed at once.
Golliwog, on her way to the kennel to remind the benighted canines there that they were lower life-forms, saw Target scurry around to the front of the kennel. She was between the stable and the kennel, and the big red ran straight for her.
Golly puffed up and jumped in the air as high as she could go. She looked like she’d sucked on an air hose, she was so big.
Target flew right under her, laughing.
As she came down she cursed, “You stupid ass!” As the hounds weren’t far behind she considered it wiser to get out of their way than to continue to upbraid Target, who was never properly deferential to her. She did not like the attitude of the reds. She hurried to the bending hickory near the barn, unleashed her claws, and reached the lowest limb just as Dragon appeared by the kennel yards.
“Target! In the stable!” All the kenneled hounds ran back and forth, the hackles on their necks up, their sterns fluffed.
Dragon sped toward the stable. Target was already through it and could hear the hounds getting a little closer than he preferred. Well, he had other tricks up his sleeve.
The whole pack roared through the stable, knocking over buckets in the aisle, even slamming into the hay bales stacked at the aisle’s end to be distributed for the evening’s feedings.
Target reached Sister’s colorful fall gardens, ran smack through them, then into the gardening shed, and leapt out the open window on the back wall.
No chance of turning back toward his den now. But there was a good hole with lots of entrances and exits just behind the hound cemetery. He sped through the cemetery.
Zinnias were squashed, red and yellow petals sprinkling the ground as the pack chased Target. Shaker trotted Hojo between the flower beds, cursing as he rode.
“Damn that sly son of a bitch!” Then he heard the crash of breaking glass and moved faster over the manicured lawn only to see the pack jammed into the gardening shed, howling their frustration.
Sister came up behind just in time to see Dragon jump through the window, followed by the others. They tore the window clear out of the jamb, the sound of tinkling glass a counterpoint to their cries.
Across more beautiful lawn, through an allée of locusts and hollies, curving through another allée of still-green scarlet maples into the usually peaceful hound cemetery bounded by a wrought-iron fence.
The gate, open as always, let hounds in. The line of the scent went out the other side, which had no such gate. Dragon in his fury turned and literally ran through and over the pack, out the gate again, and around the other side. With some confusion and cussing, the rest followed, running around the sculpture of a hound in the middle. It was as though the stone hound was running with them. Sister pulled up hard behind Shaker by the iron fence.