The other thing about having young people ride in the rear was that everyone in front had also performed these services, watched the experienced riders, prayed for the moment when they, too, would be one of them: the hunt’s colors proudly worn on their collars, hunt bottoms sewn on their frock coats.
Hunting was a chain stretching back thousands of years. Tootie, Val, Felicity, and Pamela profited from the wisdom of the ages.
Tootie, fond of history, particularly responded. She never felt alone when she hunted. Ghosts rode with her.
Walking behind her hounds, still searching, Sister noted she’d seen no deer hunters. This was the last day of deer season, which could be as frightening as the first. Harvest had been good this season, many hunters reaching their bag limits. Anyone out today was most likely from the city. Not one orange cap or jacket flashed human presence.
A hunter needed a good memory for the seventy-three firearm regulations in the state of Virginia. Adding to the burden was the fact that each county also had specific regulations.
Hunting generated income. First, the state raked it in from the licenses, and then if the sheriff or animal control officer cited a hunter for a violation, there was that tasty fine, which was dumped into the county coffers. Without hunters of all stripes, states would go bankrupt.
Usually Sister could focus on the hounds, but when the going was slow, her mind wandered a bit.
She woke up, though, as Dasher opened, followed by Diana and Tinsel. They had picked up a line along the large creek bed.
Betty, on the right side of the large creek, loped along on Magellan and cleared a large tree trunk, keeping hounds well in sight.
Sybil, on the left, paralleled an old cart road, its ruts frozen. She passed a stack of pallets used during apple picking. A packing shed in serviceable condition sat near the pallets. The apple orchard covered the lands to the west, rising upward for fifty acres on the west side of the creek.
The fox kept straight as an arrow, but he was well ahead of hounds. He’d been courting, and having been unsuccessful in his designs had turned north, which meant he headed back toward Chapel Cross, where the tertiary gravel roads formed a perfect cross.
The field galloped through the western orchards and passed into the wide hay field with the one-hundred-thirty-year-old sugar maple of epic proportions in the middle.
The fox veered further north, picking up speed. The field, sweating now, cheeks flushed, cleared coops, rail fences, and a line of brambles entwining a disintegrating three-board fence. On they ran, hounds in full cry, ground beginning to soften in spots, for they’d been out an hour.
The fields, frost shining gold as the sun rose ever upward, rolled onward. The Blue Ridge Mountains provided a spectacular backdrop, the ice on deciduous trees and on pines flaming in the climbing sunlight.
“What the hell!” Dreamboat cursed as an eight-point buck shot right past him.
However, hounds smelled no hunters.
As they ran on and on, scent intensifying along with their cry, Sister and the field noticed deer moving past them or cutting at angles. No deer ran away from the direction of the hounds. If anything, they were running to the hounds. Four miles past Chapel Cross, galloping flat out, they thundered into Paradise.
Bobby Franklin, leading the hilltoppers, pulled up on a high hill for a moment. He’d fallen behind because the old gates, rusting on the hinges, had taken some doing to open. The youngsters in the back of the hilltoppers dismounted to open the gates. This was done in twos so no one would be alone at a gate, everyone rushing off, their horse eager to join them.
Bobby heard Shaker’s horn, piercing. He saw his wife flying across an open meadow with Sybil on the left. The hounds, tightly together, dashed over the meadow. Shaker next hove into view. He was followed by Sister on Rickyroo, his long stride eating up the ground. Behind Sister the field strung out, some already succumbing to the pace. The four Custis Hall girls were passing those who faltered or were pulling up, which was their right to do.
Just before Bobby squeezed his horse, a big fellow, something told him to wait.
More deer appeared, then a black and tan hound, followed by another and another. They looked like black jellybeans tossed over icing. To their credit, they weren’t chasing the deer. A few had their noses down, but others had come up on the line that Dasher, Cora, Diana, and the others were following. The black and tans had been running backward on the line.
Within a minute they smashed smack into the pack.
“Pay them no mind!” Cora ordered.
“Cur dogs!” Dragon yelled to the young ones.
“Be damned if I’m a cur dog, sir.” A black and tan snarled at Dragon, who snarled back.
Shaker, coming up hard, tucked his horn into his coat between the first and second buttons. Clear and loud, he commanded, “Ware riot!”
“Don’t worry,” Diana said, her nose down.
“Who are they?” Young Delight, baffled, yelped.
“Deerhounds. Pay them no mind,” Ardent counseled.
One black and tan, reversing herself to join the Jefferson hounds and run in the right direction, replied, “We’re foxhounds. We’re out here with a human who is a perfect fool.”
Dana, littermate to Delight, was about to reply, but the scent grew stronger. She stretched out, pushing off with her powerful loins supplying smooth power.
One by one, the black and tans reversed to fall into the tricolor pack. All the voices sang a crescendo of happiness that echoed off the mountains.
Sister now came up. Without faltering, she pushed Rickyroo on. “Jesus H. Christ on a raft.”
“Yeah, but isn’t the sound great?” Rickyroo flicked his ears back, then forward.
She laughed out loud because she loved him, because the pace was searing, the sound divine, the situation unique.
Just as Bobby moved out again, Jason Woods, perfectly turned out, galloped toward Betty. Hounds had turned toward him, so he pulled up, reversing with them.
Jason’s Kilowatt, though beautiful, was no match for Magellan, who pulled alongside, then sped by him. Jason labored to keep up.
Crawford appeared, hanging onto Czpaka for dear life. Marty, a better rider than her husband, rode on his right as a whipper-in, a position she had no burning desire to fulfill.
Crawford blew into his reed horn. A thin note escaped. Within seconds the doubled pack blasted right by him, as did Shaker, then Sister, then the field.
Sputtering, Crawford turned, only to find himself between first flight and the hilltoppers. As he tried to blow again, Bobby rode by him and hollered, “Don’t!”
“Who the hell are you to tell me how to handle my pack?”
“You look fool enough, Crawford. Don’t sound like a sick hen and make it worse.”
Furious, Crawford threw the reed horn onto the ground.
He had no choice but to fall behind Bobby, since he couldn’t catch up to first flight, now flying at Mach speed.
A fence row ahead, sagging, had a gap where one rail had long since fallen off. Hounds soared over, followed by Shaker forty yards later, then Sister, then the field.
Hounds screamed.
The fox, safely ahead, heard the music. This pack could wake the dead.
He cut sharply right, dipped into a wide ravine, popped back up, and skedaddled to the ruins of Paradise, its Corinthian columns majestic under gray, cottony clouds.
He slowed, flicked his impressive tail, and sauntered into his main entrance under the marble steps.
Four minutes later, all the hounds, jubilant, announced they had put their fox to ground.
Betty rode over but didn’t take HoJo when Shaker dismounted to praise hounds and blow “Gone to ground.”
Walter had ridden up to hold the reins, having been told to do so by Sister.