Inky heard him pass as she snuggled in her den. Five minutes later she heard a second set of hoofbeats, only this horse wasn’t running. This horse moved at a deliberate trot. As the weather was filthy, her curiosity was dimmed. She wasn’t going out to see what was going on.
Ralph, breathing heavily, eyes wide, transmitted his terror to his horse as he urged the animal up to the right. They reached the flat plateau of Hangman’s Ridge.
“Oh shit.” Ralph shook his head. He hadn’t wanted to come up here, but his mind was fuzzy. Hands shaking, he reached down for his flask, flipped open the leather case, now slippery, and pulled out the heavy, handblown flask. He unscrewed the top and emptied the entire contents. The fire wiggled down his throat, into his belly. He took a deep breath.
Clutching the flask, he moved toward the giant oak, ignoring the warning snorts of his horse, a far better judge of danger than Ralph.
“Trooper, get a grip,” commanded Ralph, whose spirits were now stronger thanks to those he had imbibed.
The enormous glistening tree loomed out of the fog. A shrieking sound so unnerved Trooper that he shied, all four feet off the ground. Ralph hit with a thud, his flask rolling across the wet grass.
Trooper turned and fled back toward the farm road. The horse smelled another horse moving up through the narrow deer paths on the side of the ridge. He didn’t bother to whinny. He lowered his head and ran as if his life depended on it, the stirrup irons banging at his sides.
Ralph, cursing, picked himself up. Only then did he see, or think he saw, the hanging corpse of Lawrence Pollard, the fine lace of his sleeves drooping in the wet.
“And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross,” Lawrence quoted Philippians, chapter two, verse eight. Then he moaned, “Obedient unto death, even death on a hanging tree.” The wind that always blew on the ridge carried his voice away.
Ralph, sweat running down his face, his hands wet with sweat, backed away from the tree. He turned to follow his horse in flight. Running, slipping, sliding, falling, picking himself up—only to run smack into another horror.
“Oh God,” Ralph sobbed.
“You’ll see Him before I do.”
Down in the kennels, Sister and Shaker were removing collars from hounds who had hunted. The boys were then released to go to their side of the kennel, the girls to the other side. This allowed the master and huntsman to inspect each hound, making sure no one’s pads had been cut, no ears sliced by deadly Virginia thorns.
A crack brought hound and human heads up.
“What was that?”
“No one’s sighting a rifle today,” Shaker said, hands fallen to his sides. He looked toward the north.
“Sound plays tricks in this weather. Could have been a backfire on Soldier Road,” Sister said halfheartedly.
“Small caliber,” Asa told them.
“Handgun,” Diana added, her ears lifted, her nose in the air. Although there was nothing to smell inside the draw pen, she still trusted her nose above all other senses.
“All right, boys.” Shaker led the boys to their door.
“Come on, girls.” Sister did the same for the gyps.
Once the hounds were in their proper kennels, both humans, without speaking to each other, walked out the front door of the main kennel to listen.
Far away they heard hoofbeats, trotting. As the sound came closer, they walked through the intensifying rain to the stable.
The girls inside had finished cleaning the tack.
“Can’t see a bloody thing.” Shaker felt uneasy.
“We came in in the nick of time.” As Sister reached for a towel hanging on a tack hook, Sybil materialized out of the fog, leading Trooper.
“Sybil?”
“Sister, I found him wandering through the orchard. Guess he jumped the fence by himself.”
A shaking Trooper stared wild-eyed at the people. The other horses, munching hay in their stalls, stopped.
“Girls, gently, gently, put him in the end stall, take his tack off, and wipe him down.”
As Trooper passed the others, he rolled his eyes. “I saw the ghost. Ralph wouldn’t listen,” he kept babbling.
Keepsake, hoping to calm him, said, “There are a couple up there.”
Sybil dismounted as Jennifer took her reins. “Somehow Ralph became separated from the group, so I went out to look for him. Can’t find anything in this.”
Sister, worried, said, “He could be walking back here or to your farm. No telling.”
“Or he could be hurt.” Shaker said what she was thinking.
“Girls, take care of Sybil’s horse, too, please.”
“Yes, ma’am. Then can we help you look?” Sari asked.
She waited a moment, her mind racing. “Yes. Take care of Trooper and Marquise first.” Then, voice lower, as if speaking to herself, she murmured, “Trooper is a sensible horse.”
Shaker, his shirt soggy against his skin, touched Sybil’s elbow. “When did you last see Ralph?”
“At the gate between the cornfield and our line. The hand gate. Of course, couldn’t see anything, but that’s where I heard him last. Ken, Xavier, Ron, Ralph, and I decided to go through the gate to get back home. You couldn’t even see the coop anymore until you were right up on it. No sense getting hurt. But we got strung out.”
“The first thing to do is call your mother. It could be that everyone is back safe and sound.”
Sister hurried into the tack room, knowing in her bones that all was most emphatically not safe and sound.
CHAPTER 28
“And why weren’t you out hunting today?” Tedi, steaming cup of hot chocolate in hand, asked Cindy Chandler, the owner of Foxglove Farm.
The pretty blonde smiled. “I was going to go.”
“Sure, Weenie,” Betty Franklin, nursing roped coffee, teased. She’d roaded hounds back to the kennel and left her horse there. As a whipper-in, her concern was the hounds. And Sister never minded Betty putting her horse up in Sister’s barn. She’d driven Jennifer’s car to After All since Sister asked her to go on ahead and be her stand-in while she and Shaker removed collars.
“I really was. Cat Dancing and I are ready,” she mentioned her beloved mare, “but Clytemnestra and her calf, Orestes, broke down the back side of the fencing and escaped. Still haven’t found them.”
“Cindy, can’t you call that damned cow Bessie? Does it have to be Clytemnestra?” Betty checked her watch. “God, it’s terrible to have to work for a living. I’d better roll on.”
Tedi scanned her living room. “Sybil’s still not back.”
Betty frowned a moment. “Maybe she’s at the barn.”
Members had carried cakes, biscuits, and sandwiches they’d packed for a small tailgate into Tedi’s dining room. As with most spontaneous gatherings, it proved much more fun than the arduously planned variety.
Edward had shepherded the field back to his barns. Not often acting as field master, he had neglected to make a head count.
“Have any idea where the cow headed? Tracks?” Betty returned to the case of the missing cow and calf.
“I tracked her across Soldier Road but lost her trail in the wildflower meadows. This fog is unbelievable. Don’t know how you all were out there without getting lost.”
“Well, that’s another story.” Betty laughed.
“We were never lost. No, not the trusty Jefferson Hunt Club.” Ken sipped his coffee, a shot of Irish Mist adding immeasurably to his pleasure since he was wet and chilled.
“Rain dropped buckets on me, like the heavens had unzipped, so I went back home, took a hot shower, and then came over to ask Tedi and Edward to keep an eye out for Cly and Orestes. I’d better alert Sister, too,” Cindy thought out loud.
“Once this fog lifts, we’ll find her. She’s hard to miss,” Tedi said.