Turning to look at Sam, whom she greatly respected, she remarked, “Aptly named. A lot of wasted money. Who needs cast-iron lampposts lining the drive? That’s like Custis Hall.” She cited the expensive private girls school over the mountain, founded in 1812 by the founder of Old Paradise. The school grew after the war was won. “Chandeliers? I could make out a chandelier in the office.”
“Mmm. Waste, yes, but intelligence, too. Every single paddock had frost-free waterers. The hay was stored in rows with space for air to flow in the hay barn, and that was sort of behind the main stable. So no hay overhead. Makes for more work but also makes for safety. Few can afford that extra hand to move the hay every single day.”
She considered this. “You’re right. But I only saw Parker Bell.”
“To run a place like that, Sabatini has to have a lot of people to drive the tractors, plow the roads, move the hay, keep the fences painted. The man has white fences. Nonstop labor. Washing the windows. Then there’s the Olympic trainer who also has to have an assistant. Who will muck the stalls? Sabatini has about a two hundred thousand dollar nut to crack to keep all perfect. Well, let me drop that back because I don’t know what he pays the Olympian. He’ll have to house him.”
“Her.”
“Ah.” Sam pulled off his gloves, walked into the stall to feel Sugar’s pulse. “Should have thought of that.”
“Sugar looks fine.”
Counting, he stopped and smiled. “She is.”
“She really is beautiful, but pretty is as pretty does,” Skiff repeated the old horseman’s phrase; truer words were never spoken.
“Funny, isn’t it? How money impresses most people?”
“Yes, but in your figuring remember Showoff probably gets at least seven hundred fifty dollars a month board, plus money for trailering to shows if the owner doesn’t have a trailer. Then the client pays for shoeing, probably directly to the farrier. If there are special foods, he or she will pick that cost up. The annual shots, etc. So there is money coming in for board and whatever else is needed. I expect the trainer is paid directly by the student, horse owner for lessons, plus her base salary, plus her living. So add the cost of electricity and heat to the house, which I expect is the small clapboard house in the rear there just visible.”
“Okay, so maybe he has to crack a one hundred and fifty thousand dollar nut. If he has it, why not? Think of the hay dealers, the truck dealers, the workmen, etc. Money is useless sitting still. And if he sells a horse, good.”
“I still think it’s crazy,” Skiff, a New Hampshire girl and tight with the buck, said.
“I wouldn’t do it but you only live once. Why do we think a so-called purposeful life is the way? If someone wants to spend their life showing off, what is it to me so long as he doesn’t harm anyone? I don’t know that I have a purposeful life but I like what I do, I pay my bills, and I get to foxhunt. If I had graduated Harvard, wound up in D.C. like my brother, would I have a better life? No. I’d have more money. My brother now is the happiest I have ever seen him.”
She smiled. “He is a kind man.”
“Mom taught us manners as well as the usual. Plus we still have Aunt Dan to keep us on the straight and narrow.”
“You know, Sam, I wouldn’t use straight and narrow. Aunt Dan lived large.”
They laughed again then Sam thought a moment. “What did you think of Parker Bell?”
“He did his job.”
“That doesn’t answer the question.”
“I’m glad you didn’t go to Harvard law school.” She then answered, “I didn’t like him. I couldn’t tell you why.”
Sam grunted low, “Me, neither.”
CHAPTER 6
February 11, 2020 Tuesday
Shelby County, Kentucky, blessed with good soil, sat east of Louisville by twenty-five miles. Abutting Shelby County was Oldham County. Long Run–Woodford Hunt territory and wonderful territory it was, as long as it could last, for Louisville fast encroached on surrounding counties.
Jane Winegardner, MFH, of old Woodford now merged with Long Run, sat on a hill. As Sister Jane was one of her oldest friends and she was younger than Sister, she was known as O.J., the Other Jane.
At this moment the Other Jane felt her sixty-odd years, for the wind, nine miles per hour, blew from the west to the east. The Ohio River divided Indiana from Kentucky. Even thirty miles away, the touch of water filled that wind. The Ohio was a mile wide between Louisville and Indiana. With the mercury sitting at 38°F one’s pores tightened, the skin glowed. Who needed a face-lift?
The hard-riding master chose to flank the hounds today. Much as she loved running and jumping, sometimes as a tune-up, a master ought to sit and watch, moving from good view to good view. In this way she or he could judge how well the pack was working together, how good the communication was between huntsman, staff, and hounds. Since hounds could not carry a cellphone or walkie-talkie, there had to be that invisible thread that marks a person with the horn from a person truly hunting hounds. Fortunately, the huntsman, Spencer Allen, truly hunted hounds.
Many packs, especially those crisscrossed by highways where formerly the roads were dirt, used walkie-talkies. Sister Jane, thanks to the vastness of her territory for an East Coast hunt, refused this prop for her whippers-in and huntsman. If you hunted with Jefferson Hunt you hunted as was done in the seventeenth, eighteenth, nineteenth, and most of the twentieth century. You used your five senses.
The great maw of Louisville added to the dangers of hunting. All those paved highways, all the new people, lots and lots of new people, innocent of country ways, demanded constant communication between staff. One couldn’t trust a new person to slow if he or she observed hounds hunting. Then, too, there needed to be a road whip equipped with a radar screen that showed the tracking collars of the hounds. This allowed the driver to speed, and he did speed, to the spot where it looked like hounds would cross one of these hateful highways. Also, the road whip could hear the communication between huntsman and his staff. In this manner hounds were saved from accidents. Of course, the quarry could care less and many a clever fox and sharp-witted coyote learned to use the roads.
O.J. had seen a mother coyote teach her young how to cross the highway, to look both ways, to shrink back if needed, to surge across when safe.
One does not hunt dumb animals. The dumb animals are the ones on two feet.
So she sat, fingers tingling despite good gloves, to behold the pack, surging across a wide lower pasture, the coyote well in front, seemingly unstressed. Her keen eye noted which hounds were forward, who was in the middle, who was tailing.
Like any good master or good huntsman, O.J. knew your pack is made in the middle. A brilliant hound is a thrill but it’s the good soldiers that keep it right. Then, too, it’s easy for a huntsman to draft from the rear, but hell to draft from the front. Yet if your forward hounds are so fast they pull away, you now have two packs, so it must be done. She hated that, of course. Sister Jane could never do it. She’d keep the speedsters in the kennel, pay for their food herself, but eventually breed to a hound a step slower. Sister never wanted to blunt drive. Her deep love for hounds was both a strength and a weakness. She simply could not draft a speedster or a senior citizen. She and O.J. would talk for hours about hounds, hunting, management of territory, shifts in quarry. They could empty a room, so they only spoke of such things when together with staff from other hunts. Foxhunting is a blinding passion like skiing, surfing, you name it. Logic gets in the way of the emotional release, and release it is. You have not a second to consider the cares of the day. If you do you will soon be entertaining others with an involuntary dismount.