“Come on, Dasher. Good work, boy.” Shaker called the hound back.
The big fellow hurtled off the opposite bank and swam again, the current carrying him downstream. He emerged, shook himself, and trotted back to the others, working in vain.
“Helicopter.” Dasher laughed.
“Yeah.” Trident agreed that the fox must have stepped into a helicopter to be lifted right up.
Nothing remained. Not the tiniest scrap of scent.
“I hate this!” Cora, filled with drive, kept searching.
“Come along.” Shaker called them together. “Good work. I’m proud of you. We’ll hunt back.”
As they turned to hunt on the south side of the fixture, moving in an arc toward the trailers two miles distant, Sister heard a siren.
As the crow flies, they were little more than three miles southwest of Chapel Cross. By road it would take fifteen minutes, but the sound carried.
Sister wondered if one of the DuCharmes had finally met his Maker.
No, but one of the DuCharmes was deeply troubled.
Ben Sidell stepped out of his squad car. Margaret, in shearling coat, came out of the small dependency in which she lived.
“I’m so glad to see you. You made good time.”
“I was going against morning traffic.” He noted the rich seal-brown color of her hair falling over the shoulders of her coat.
“Look at this.” She walked to her Subaru Forester and opened the door.
Ben touched nothing but carefully noted Iffy’s wheelchair on its side, blood spattered over the backrest.
CHAPTER 20
Although his partner accused him of clutter, Uncle Yancy hotly denied this. Target collected possessions just sitting under a rosebush. Uncle Yancy believed his treasures had been carefully selected, not just picked up in collector’s mania.
True, he built little caches into which he stored the odd mouse part, chicken wing, or rabbit. He used to push corn, even fat millet heads, into his cache piles. Lately, though, he kept the grains in his den. For one thing, he couldn’t always find his caches under snow. He could hear mice two feet under snow. They’d burrow through if snows hadn’t packed down hard. There was plenty of oxygen for them. He’d hear those tiny claws, and he could pounce. But caches made no noise, so he’d learned to keep a grain bank account.
Since he had taken over the pattypan forge, storage space was ample. He’d lined his main sleeping quarters with grasses. He’d bedded down his storage chambers, although not as deep. Some foxes didn’t mind sleeping with frost in their dens. He did. That’s why he insulated his sleeping quarters.
The quiet pleased him. The only thing that didn’t please him was returning to find a glob of blood near his den. Human footprints clearly stood out in the snow. The blood carried an odd odor, so he didn’t touch it.
He’d returned from desultory hunting that morning. The two-mile trot down to the main house at After All had invigorated him. He’d intended to hunt, but Tedi had left out corn oil–soaked kibble behind her stable. He’d stuffed himself.
Sister would refill the special feed buckets Thursday night. One was tied to a tree perhaps a quarter of a mile from pattypan.
At eleven, his restorative sleep was interrupted by Aunt Netty.
“Wake up, you lazy ass.” She pushed him with her dainty paw. “Filthy, as always. Frozen blood by the den entrance. You are disgusting.”
He opened one eye. “My precious.”
“Don’t precious me. I’d heard you took over pattypan. Knew you wouldn’t stay over there at the old Lorillard place. Boring over there. Besides”—she paused, half closing her eyes to savor her imagined triumph—“too far from me.”
Uncle Yancy, no fool, smiled. “You’re right.”
“It’s beautiful here. I always wanted to live at pattypan, but the minks—well…” She shook her head disapprovingly.
Minks, little weasels, possessed ferocity in inverse proportion to their size. They had run out the foxes who’d lived at pattypan years ago and then had bred more minks. Squabbles increased with the population. The younger minks left, heading west. Many now lived on Hangman’s Ridge, but they usually kept out of view. Others pushed on to Mill Ruins, where vigorous mouth battles with other animals, especially squirrels, were daily dramas. The older minks at pattypan flourished until they challenged Athena. Like most arguments, silly though it was, it illustrated the incompatibility of both parties. Furious, Athena systematically killed them until there wasn’t one old mink left.
Their celebrated courage couldn’t help them when death came from the skies. Fearing the younger minks might return, other burrowing animals still did not take over pattypan.
Uncle Yancy had hit it at the perfect time. Everyone else had settled in a den, young foxes usually establishing themselves in early November in central Virginia.
“I’m not far from a feed bucket, which is nice in bad weather.” He hoped she wasn’t going to get pushy.
“See that you don’t get fat.”
“I’ve never been fat.”
“You’ve never been old. We’re getting on, Yancy. Which brings me to my point. I’m not breeding this year. Not just because of my age, but something tells me it will be a hard spring and summer. We must be wise about these things.”
Uncle Yancy, like most males, deferred to the female. They just knew. He asked, “What about the younger girls? Charlene, Grace, Inky, Georgia?”
“Georgia will wait another year. For one thing, she’s not far from her mother, so if Inky should produce a litter, Georgia will help. I haven’t spoken to Inky. Charlene, in her prime, will chance it. As for Grace, haven’t talked to her either.”
“What about the deer and the squirrels? Have you talked to them?”
“Some will, some won’t; most are cutting back. Bitsy isn’t.” She grimaced.
Uncle Yancy’s jaw dropped. “Bitsy’s never laid an egg in her life.”
“That’s just it. She says she wants to do it, and furthermore she’s ensconced in Sister’s barn, so there’s plenty to eat. Can you stand it, husband? More screech owls. As it is she wakes the dead.” She sniffed. “Athena can’t even talk her out of it.”
“Earplugs,” he laughed.
“Not me. I want to hear the huntsman’s horn.” She settled into the sweet grass. “This really is beautiful. I could make this even better. Why don’t you go out and clean up that blood if you aren’t going to eat it?”
Uncle Yancy’s heart skipped a beat. How was he going to get out of this? “When it comes to decorating, I lack your talent, but”—he heaved a huge mock sigh—“I’d bring in a shiny can and you’d be upset. Or I’d snore.”
“U-m-m,” she hummed. “Before I get comfortable I brought you a housewarming present.”
He stewed while she scooted out of the main entrance, returning with a lacquered mechanical pencil. “Here.”
He pushed the deep burnt-orange pencil. “It’s gorgeous.”
“Long hunt last night. Restless. Anyway, I wound up at the old Lorillard place. The graveyard enticed me. Lot of Lorillards there from way back, centuries back—and, you know, there was a fresh grave, covered in snow. I could smell the fresh earth underneath. We had that bit of a thaw. God knows, you can’t dig up frozen ground, so whoever dug the grave knew that much. Well, I started digging because I thought it might be a cache. Something we could use. But no, too deep. I did find this. Under the snow, on top of the packed earth.”