“How can I make friends with her if she’s chasing me?” Earl sensibly asked.
“She’ll be back, now that they have this fixture. She’ll probably be on horseback or in an ATV, and she might be with the huntsman, who has dark red curly hair, or she’ll be with her friend, Betty, who rides on the edges. It’s complicated, this foxhunting.” Bitsy puffed out her little chest.
“It’s a sacred thing to the humans.” Athena opened wide her fearsome beak. “Holy. You do your part and Sister will care for you.”
Way off, all the animals could hear hounds, a ghostly sound at this distance.
“Sounds like they are coming our way.” Bruce glanced at his family.
“Will they hurt us, those nasty hounds?” a youngster inquired.
“Hounds stick to fox scent. They won’t fuss you up.” Bitsy used a colloquial expression.
“It’s not the hounds you need to worry about; it’s the humans.” Athena burst out laughing. “The horses will be slipping and sliding. The humans will be lurching around up there, and you might even see a few go splat.”
“Oh, my, my, yes,” Bitsy seconded her heroine.
Hounds moved closer.
Lisa called to Bruce, who was still bodysurfing, “We’d better go home.”
“One more slide!” He quickly climbed out, graceful in his fashion.
“No, I don’t want to take any chances,” she insisted.
“You’re right.” He genially agreed, having learned it’s better to agree with your spouse.
Earl watched as the happy group walked to their den, which had overgrown entrances near the base of a large tree hanging over the creek. Thick roots, eight to twelve inches in diameter, burst through the banks where the water had eroded the soil. Entrances and exits were hidden under the roots on the bank side, too.
“You might want to head toward your den or a den you’ve seen along the way. The hounds track your scent. They don’t need to see you,” Athena told Earl.
“How far away do you live?” Bitsy asked.
“Mile and a half, southwards.”
The horn sounded closer now, perhaps a mile away.
“If you’re lucky they’re on a vixen, and she’ll duck in somewhere between here and where she is now. Then you won’t have to go far to find her.” Athena looked on the bright side. “But Bitsy is right; you’d best be going.”
“Thanks for the advice.” Earl used the otters’ slide and swam across the creek. Given the current, he climbed out thirty yards downstream.
“Worried about him?” Bitsy asked.
“A little.” Athena frowned, opened her wings, dropped off the branch, and with one downward sweep of her enormous wings glided over Earl. “If you encounter problems, run with deer. Use any other animal. You can’t mask your scent. It’s a good day for scent.”
Bitsy, needing many more flaps, caught up with the great horned owl. “Maybe we should stick with him?”
“Might bring those damned crows. You know how they like to mob foxes. Of course, I’d be happy to kill a few.”
Bitsy, saying nothing, stayed with Athena. She’d not forgotten her close call at pattypan forge.
Athena and Bitsy passed over a gray vixen, who raced through a large expanse of running cedar, much of it partially exposed from last night’s wind. Although it was calm enough now, with gentle flakes coming down, the scent would be true, not blown yards off. The vixen made use of the terrain, then ducked into a den, a few bones on the low pile outside announcing her gourmet tastes.
Cora reached the den first, and within half a minute everyone else crowded around.
Betty, on the right, stayed over in the meadow to the edge of the woods where the den was located. Sybil, on the left, stopped on ground level with the den as Shaker rode up.
The field, seventy people, enjoyed the spectacle of thrilled hounds, the blowing of “Gone to ground,” and the happy knowledge that hounds had accounted for their fox.
Sister, on Aztec, smiled.
The Custis Hall girls rode in the rear with Walter. Sister had asked Tedi and Edward whether they would mind if Jason rode behind her. She wanted to observe him to see whether he knew as much as he said he did. If nothing else, she’d be seeing his hunting manners close up.
Knowing that the club always needed money, the Bancrofts graciously rode behind Jason. As one of the main benefactors of the club, the Bancrofts hoped others would come through, especially now that Crawford had bagged it.
Sister nodded to Shaker when he remounted to go forward, then quietly turned to ask Jason behind her, “What do you think, red or gray?”
“Gray,” he replied, a smile crossing his handsome face.
“I do, too.” She smiled back.
If one studied fox tracks it didn’t take too much to discern the difference between a red’s foot and a gray’s, especially in winter. The red’s prints could be about two and a half inches long. The hindprint might be smaller, but the heavy fur around the paw would register on the ground or on snow. The toe marks and lobe of the pads would be a little indistinct.
The gray’s prints were an inch and a half long for a mature fox, the print sharper. The toes dug in deeper, it seemed, and if it weren’t for the toe marks, one could mistake the print for an overfed, much-loved pet cat like Golly.
She gave Jason credit for making the right call, but if he had studied prints all he had to do was look down at the snow. Still, thousands foxhunted and couldn’t recognize footprints or fox scat. He had done some homework.
She twisted all the way round to see if the field was together. They were, thanks to Walter and the girls pushing them up. If someone straggled, Walter sent them back to Bobby. No one in the field would disobey a master’s command if they wanted to keep hunting—not just with Jefferson Hunt but with any hunt. The masters would pass on who was a butthead as readily as they passed on who was a true foxhunter.
Bobby, hands full with green riders, green horses, and occasionally treacherous footing, just joined them as Shaker moved off. It seemed to go in spurts, the numbers of green riders or green horses, but shepherding them always fell to the hilltoppers’ master, the most unsung staff position in foxhunting.
Few would dream of going first flight if they couldn’t ride, especially at Jefferson Hunt. Sister enjoyed a formidable reputation—and who wanted to look a fool under her eyes?
The whippers-in usually rode hardest, but they were alone, an advantage under the circumstances. If they weren’t riding hard or trotting forward, they’d be immobile at a prime spot, and that spot always seemed to be the coldest damned place on earth.
The huntsman stayed with hounds as best he could. He, too, rode hard, but he rode straight behind the pack. Chances were, the whippers-in covered more territory than he did. This wasn’t to say he didn’t do things that Sister and the field would not. He did, but often no one saw him take a four-foot drop off a creek bed into the water. He stayed with his hounds if possible.
While Sister could do anything on a horse, her first responsibility was the field, not the hounds. Very few fields today were well mounted enough, with fearless riders, to do things that were routinely done thirty years ago. The reason was that so many people had taken up foxhunting who hadn’t grown up with horses. It wasn’t that they couldn’t clear the four-foot jump if they had the right horse, but only a few had the right horse. The right horse, nine times out of ten, was a thoroughbred or a thoroughbred cross, depending on territory. Those arriving late to the glories of riding often feared thoroughbreds. If you knew the animal, you loved its sensitivity and forward ways. If you didn’t, you thought you were on a runaway that would spook at a white stone pebble. The change in the field was as big a shift in foxhunting as the rise of the automobile, the sickening encroachments of suburbia.