“Well, that’s good. I was worried.”
“I was, too. It’s an awful feeling. And when I listed what I ate those mornings, what I could remember, I mean I don’t think about what I eat, but I ate white bread or rolls, stuff like that.”
“Can you eat any bread?”
“Dark. Pumpernickel. It’s weird.”
“You’re weird.” Tootie punched her.
CHAPTER 27
The party wagon swayed slightly as Shaker turned from the Roughneck Farm road right onto the state road.
“Wrong direction,” Cora wondered.
Ardent, who along with Asa and senior members of Sister’s “A” line was resting on the top tier, said, “Changed the fixture.”
“How do you know?” Delight asked, not impudently.
“Heard Shaker when he called me out of the Big Boys’ run. Trouble at Little Dalby.”
“What kind of trouble?” Diana, curious, lifted her head off her paws.
“Human trouble,” Ardent responded.
“That’s better than rabies.” Dasher, eager to hunt, paced in the medium-sized trailer.
“True enough,” Cora said, “but human trouble has a way of rolling back on us.”
Sister, with Betty in the cab, pulled the horse trailer to Foxglove Farm.
Straight as the crow flies, the distance was two and a half miles, a booming run on a straight-necked fox. Going around the land by available roads, it took fifteen minutes to arrive at the lovely farm, where nothing was done to excess, all in proportion.
“I hate to overhunt my foxes.” Sister slowly cruised round the big circle in front of Cindy Chandler’s barn. She parked, truck nose out, so other trailers could park alongside.
This crisp January 19 morning, Thursday, more people came than Sister expected. She had a very respectable midweek field of twenty-five.
Pleasing as that was, being forced to shift the fixture at the last minute plucked her last nerve. Anselma Wideman had called at nine last night to inform her that Crawford Howard had chosen to hunt Little Dalby on her, Sister’s, day. Crawford knew full well this would inconvenience Jefferson Hunt.
She changed the information on the huntline, simple enough. She sent out e-mails, also simple enough, and she called her staff to make certain they knew. Hunt clubs have phone lines that members call two or three hours before the appointed time in case a fixture needs to be changed because of weather or other events.
Needing all her wits to chase foxes, Sister held her emotions in check. She was wondering whether she could get away with murder. Crawford would be such a juicy, satisfying target. However, one murder was enough.
Walter juggled last-minute questions from visitors. He lent one an extra stock tie. The Custis Hall quartet along with Bunny, their coach, and Charlotte, the headmistress, were there.
Sister led Rickyroo off the trailer. Betty followed with Outlaw.
Sybil helped Shaker so Betty could assist Sister if she needed help.
Folding back her deep green blanket with dark orange piping, Betty, to lighten the mood, asked, “Perhaps we’ll have an epiphany, late as usual.”
“January 19 is a big day. Feast days of Branwalader, Canute, and Henry of Finland.”
“Think we might have to call on them?” Betty folded the blanket over, then stepped into the tack room to place it over an empty saddle rack.
“We might need to do that, but none of them are called upon by hunters.”
“I don’t have your head for dates, but I am a Virginian. Birthday of Robert E. Lee, 1807.”
“Yes, it is. And Edgar Allan Poe, 1809, and Cézanne in 1839. A lucky day.”
“Think there was an epiphany?”
“I do.” Then Sister laughed, her gloom lifting from the fixture problem. “But the Wise Men didn’t find Jesus. Their camels did.”
“Ha. Imagine hunting from a camel.”
“Think I’d throw up. Couldn’t take the motion.” Sister checked her horse’s girth and gathered the reins in her left hand, holding the left rein shorter than the right so if Rickyroo should take a notion he’d turn inside toward her instead of outside, which would throw her out like a centrifuge.
Betty did the same, and both women mounted up without a grunt.
Sister rode over to Cindy Chandler, who was on her tough little mare, Caneel. “Thank you so much for allowing us here on short notice.”
Cindy, a true foxhunter, smiled. “I love having you here.” She stepped closer to Sister, which pleased Rickyroo, as he was fond of Caneel. “Would you like me to speak to Anselma and Harvey? If you do it’s official, and you scare people sometimes.” Cindy could say this, being a trusted friend. “The Widemans don’t know hunting. They might finally understand territory conflict, but they won’t grasp overhunting foxes.”
“Do talk to them. Use all that deadly charm.” Sister joked gratefully. “I’m not upset with them.”
“I know that. It’s Mr. Ego.”
“We seem to have a few of those.” Sister cut her eyes toward Jason, resplendent in a hacking jacket made expressly for him by Le Cheval in Kentucky so it fit perfectly.
“Peacock.”
“M-m-m,” Sister touched Cindy’s arm. “Thank you many times over for everything. I always feel better when I see you or talk to you.”
“Go on.” Cindy smiled at her.
Sister saw that hounds were ready and everyone was mounted except for Ronnie Haslip, usually one of the first up. He’d dropped his crop and dismounted, and was swinging up again.
To give Ronnie one extra second, Sister quietly said to Walter, facing her, “You ride tail today. Do you mind?”
“Not at all.”
“Take Jason with you. If he wants to learn, then he can learn service first.”
“Ah.” Walter sighed, but he didn’t argue.
How could he? She was right. The look on Jason’s face was not one of a man being honored by a position of responsibility. It was that of a spoiled person who wants to ride right up in the master’s pocket.
Millions he might have, but Sister was damned if she’d be bought. She had kept Crawford in line for ten years, succeeding in getting him elected president—a good place for him in many ways. The boob ball, which is how she thought of the hunt ball, had put an end to all. Bobby Franklin, who had resigned his presidency, submitted to an emergency general election. Bobby, a good leader, had accepted with grace, tabling his ideas of a long vacation this coming summer. Betty was thrilled. Vacations bored her to tears.
There they were. Frost heavy on the ground. The sun kissing the horizon. Puffs curling from horses’ nostrils, hounds eager.
The horrid cow, Clytemnestra, and her equally enormous offspring, Orestes, had been bribed and barricaded in two stout stalls in the small cattle barn. Sweet mash liberally laced with decent bourbon contented the holy horror, who had gleefully smashed fences and chased people in times past.
Given the heavy frost, the mercury still below freezing, Shaker walked hounds up the slow rise to the two ponds, one at a lower level than the other, a long pipe and small waterwheel between them. Cindy had added the waterwheel in the early fall. Formerly the water had cascaded from the pipe in the upper pond to the lower pond. Now the pipe fed directly onto the wheel, whose sound as it turned was one our ancestors had heard for centuries untold, one lost now to the roar of turbines and internal combustion engines.
Those who had never before heard the mating of gears, the slap of the paddles, the sound of the water rising and falling off the paddles discovered the peacefulness of it. Those who had ridden at Mill Ruins had heard it before in deeper register.
The cascade produced a spray of droplets, arching out over the pond and turning to thousands of rainbows as the sun rose high enough to send a long, slanting ray to the wheel.