Out of Hounds Read online

  Carry a good head. When hounds run well together to a good scent, a scent spread wide enough for the whole pack to feel it.

  Carry a line. When hounds follow the scent. This is also called working a line.

  Cast. Hounds spread out in search of scent. They may cast themselves or be cast by the huntsman.

  Charlie. A term for a fox. A fox may also be called Reynard.

  Check. When hounds lose the scent and stop. The field must wait quietly while the hounds search for the scent.

  Colors. A distinguishing color, usually worn on the collar but sometimes on the facings of a coat, that identifies a hunt. Colors can be awarded only by the Master and can be worn only in the field.

  Coop. A jump resembling a chicken coop.

  Couple straps. Two-strap hound collars connected by a swivel link. Some members of staff will carry these on the right rear of the saddle. Since the days of the pharaohs in ancient Egypt, hounds have been brought to the meets coupled. Hounds are always spoken of and counted in couples. Today, hounds walk or are driven to the meets. Rarely, if ever, are they coupled, but a whipper-in still carries couple straps should a hound need assistance.

  Covert. A patch of woods or bushes where a fox might hide. Pronounced “cover.”

  Cry. How one hound tells another what is happening. The sound will differ according to the various stages of the chase. It’s also called giving tongue and should occur when a hound is working a line.

  Cub hunting. The informal hunting of young foxes in the late summer and early fall, before formal hunting. The main purpose is to enter young hounds into the pack. Until recently only the most knowledgeable members were invited to cub hunt, since they would not interfere with young hounds.

  Dog fox. The male fox.

  Dog hound. The male hound.

  Double. A series of short, sharp notes blown on the horn to alert all that a fox is afoot. The gone away series of notes is a form of doubling the horn.

  Draft. To acquire hounds from another hunt is to accept a draft.

  Draw. The plan by which a fox is hunted or searched for in a certain area, such as a covert.

  Draw over the fox. Hounds go through a covert where the fox is but cannot pick up its scent. The only creature that understands how this is possible is the fox.

  Drive. The desire to push the fox, to get up with the line. It’s a very desirable trait in hounds, so long as they remain obedient.

  Dually. A one-ton pickup truck with double wheels in back.

  Dwell. To hunt without getting forward. A hound that dwells is a bit of a putterer.

  Enter. Hounds are entered into the pack when they first hunt, usually during cubbing season.

  Field. The group of people riding to hounds, exclusive of the Master and hunt staff.

  Field Master. The person appointed by the Master to control the field. Often it is the Master him- or herself.

  Fixture. A card sent to all dues-paying members, stating when and where the hounds will meet. A fixture card properly received is an invitation to hunt. This means the card would be mailed or handed to a member by the Master.

  Flea-bitten. A gray horse with spots or ticking that can be black or chestnut.

  Gone away. The call on the horn when the fox leaves the covert.

  Gone to ground. A fox that has ducked into its den, or some other refuge, has gone to ground.

  Good night. The traditional farewell to the Master after the hunt, regardless of the time of day.

  Gyp. The female hound.

  Hilltopper. A rider who follows the hunt but does not jump. Hilltoppers are also called the Second Flight. The jumpers are called the First Flight.

  Hoick. The huntsman’s cheer to the hounds. It is derived from the Latin hic haec hoc, which means “here.”

  Hold hard. To stop immediately.

  Huntsman. The person in charge of the hounds, in the field and in the kennel.

  Kennelman. A hunt staff member who feeds the hounds and cleans the kennels. In wealthy hunts there may be a number of kennelmen. In hunts with a modest budget, the huntsman or even the Master cleans the kennels and feeds the hounds.

  Lark. To jump fences unnecessarily when hounds aren’t running. Masters frown on this, since it is often an invitation to an accident.

  Lieu in. Norman term for “go in.”

  Lift. To take the hounds from a lost scent in the hopes of finding a better scent farther on.

  Line. The scent trail of the fox.

  Livery. The uniform worn by the professional members of the hunt staff. Usually it is scarlet, but blue, yellow, brown, and gray are also used. The recent dominance of scarlet has to do with people buying coats off the rack as opposed to having tailors cut them. (When anything is mass-produced, the choices usually dwindle, and such is the case with livery.)

  Mask. The fox’s head.

  Meet. The site where the day’s hunting begins.

  MFH. The Master of Foxhounds; the individual in charge of the hunt: hiring, firing, landowner relations, opening territory (in large hunts this is the job of the hunt secretary), developing the pack of hounds, and determining the first cast of each meet. As in any leadership position, the Master is also the lightning rod for criticism. The Master may hunt the hounds, although this is usually done by a professional huntsman, who is also responsible for the hounds in the field and at the kennels. A long relationship between a Master and a huntsman allows the hunt to develop and grow.

  Nose. The scenting ability of a hound.

  Override. To press hounds too closely.

  Overrun. When hounds shoot past the line of a scent. Often the scent has been diverted or foiled by a clever fox.

  Ratcatcher. Informal dress worn during cubbing season and bye days.

  Stern. A hound’s tail.

  Stiff-necked fox. One that runs in a straight line.

  Strike hounds. Those hounds that, through keenness, nose, and often higher intelligence, find the scent first and press it.

  Tail hounds. Those hounds running at the rear of the pack. This is not necessarily because they aren’t keen; they may be older hounds.

  Tally-ho. The cheer when the fox is viewed. Derived from the Norman ty a hillaut, thus coming into the English language in 1066.

  Tongue. To vocally pursue a fox.

  View halloo (halloa). The cry given by a staff member who sees a fox. Staff may also say tally-ho or, should the fox turn back, tally-back. One reason a different cry may be used by staff, especially in territory where the huntsman can’t see the staff, is that the field in their enthusiasm may cheer something other than a fox.

  Vixen. The female fox.

  Walk. Puppies are walked out in the summer and fall of their first year. It’s part of their education and a delight for both puppies and staff.

  Whippers-in. Also called whips, these are the staff members who assist the huntsman, who make sure the hounds “do right.”

  CHAPTER 1

  February 6, 2020 Thursday

  Wind carries messages. As Jane Arnold, “Sister,” flew across a large pasture sleeping under a light snow, the message hitting her face was a dramatic change in the weather. Jefferson Hunt started the day at ten in the morning under relatively balmy skies for early February. The temperature hung at a decent 42°F.

  Clods of earth, the grass brown mixed in with it and a smattering of snow, flew off Keepsake’s hooves, her marvelously balanced horse. Hounds screamed up ahead. They’d been running at top speed for twenty minutes.

  Sister passed low bushes festooned with stoplight red berries, took a sagging coop at the end of Beveridge Hundred, an estate from the late eighteenth century, and kept flying. These are the runs one dreams about on a torrid July day pitching hay. Tears filled her eyes from the speed. Up ahe
ad she could see the scarlet coat of her young huntsman, Wesley Blackford, “Weevil.” In front of him like a football team racing downfield to attack the offense waiting for the kicked-off ball, those tri-color American hounds ran, sang, stretched flat out.

  While she kept her pride to herself, she loved those hounds, hounds whose bloodlines she had known for over forty years. Her late husband’s uncle had known and bred them for forty years before that.

  The wind licked her face with a cold hard tongue. A storm would follow, but when? She couldn’t turn back. Nor was she going to twist her head around while galloping to check the northwestern sky. She was heading due south.

  Out of the corner of her right eye she saw her dearest friend, Betty Franklin, on the outside of the pack on the right. Betty had the good fortune to be running on a decent farm road. The other whipper-in, Tootie Harris, in her early twenties, no farm road but still pasture, kept apace. The women wore black, the old attire for a lady hunting. As this was America in the twenty-first century they were entitled to scarlet but both passed. Sexism wasn’t an issue for either of them and given that men hardly ever get the chance to be the peacocks that women can be, they wore their black or deepest navy, an especially attractive color.

  Keepsake’s ears, forward, flicked a moment. Sister slowed just a bit, rating him, for she trusted him with her life, as does anyone astride a horse.

  She faced another coop, this one newer and no sag. Over they went, hitting the slick earth on the other side. Keepsake, a Thoroughbred/quarter horse cross, was so handy he could turn on a dime and give you a nickel’s change. He slid slightly, pulling his hind legs up under him. Sister reminded herself to give him an apple cut to fit a peppermint inside, his favorite treat and one she made for him.

  Keepsake’s ears flicked again. As they approached the woods, a trail running through the middle of it, out lumbered an unamused black bear—a large, unamused black bear.

  “Jesus H. Christ on a raft,” Sister cursed under her breath.

  The bear, irritated, for the hound music was not music he liked, stopped, stood up on his hind legs.

  Keepsake swerved to the left, making a large detour. The bear looked at them and then decided to be the center of attention for the large field, perhaps twenty yards behind Sister, the forward part of First Flight now beheld the bear. Horses spooked, people hit the ground as their horses abandoned them to their fate.

  Pleased with himself, the large fellow, at least four hundred pounds, dropped down to all fours to saunter back into the woods.

  As master of this hunt and field master, Sister was in charge of the field, forty-four strong today. She might have stopped but she felt cleanup was the obligation of whoever was riding tail. Today it was her joint master, Walter Lungrun, M.D. She would stick close to hounds. The pace was too good.

  As times have changed, some First Flight masters will stop when someone bellows, “Rider Down.” However most of the older masters did not. It’s the way they were taught and the way they were going to ride.

  Fortunately, Keepsake, a lovely bay, was nimble and smart. But a true Thoroughbred had speed. Fast as Keepsake was, if Sister had been on one of her pure Thoroughbreds she might have nudged a bit closer, for her huntsman was on Kilowatt, a horse of blazing speed. Kilowatt had washed out on the track but not because he wasn’t blindingly fast. He did not feel compelled to run in circles even if they were big circles.

  He wasn’t running in circles now. That long, effortless stride, that magical reach from the shoulder backed up by a powerful engine in the rear, made Kilowatt look as though he wasn’t really going that fast.

  He was.

  Weevil, breathing hard as much from excitement as the long run, didn’t bother to blow his horn. Hounds were on. They knew they were on. He’d blown “Gone Away” when everyone hit. Snaking through the woods he emerged on the far side, passing a huge rock outcropping perhaps a story and a half high. All manner of creatures lived in there but the hounds did not veer toward it. Their hunted fox was moving, moving straight. Weevil felt certain this was a gentleman fox who had visited a lady in hopes of wooing her. Fellows will travel for miles to be in the company of a vixen. The vixens can take them or leave them. Those vixens look them over. No sensible girl wants a lazy bum, regardless of species.

  Now Sister rode by the rock outcropping, colder there, a deep chill, the water that seeped between the rocks froze ice blue, beautiful despite the cold.

  The tall six-foot woman, in her early seventies, long legs, could stick on a horse. Since she kept moving all her life, never indulged in smoking or much drink, she remained in fantastic shape. Good thing. She needed it now.

  She knew to the right of the woods, across the road, rested another old estate, a small Virginia farmhouse called Old Dalby. Like many farms and estates in central Virginia things remained in the family, passing through either the male line or the female line but the name of the estate stayed the same.

  Coming out of the woods, she slowed to a trot, for hounds lost the scent on a patch of running cedar, a scent killer known to foxes. They know every trick in the book. People who don’t have an acquaintance with them think all those stories about a fox’s superior mind are fanciful. Not if you’re hunting one.

  Grateful for the respite, rider and horse stopped to watch the hounds work. High, driven, frantic to pick up the scent, they cast themselves, pushing, pushing, pushing.

  The wind, stronger now that they were in the open, moved, as it usually does in this part of the world, from west to east, most often from the northwest down.

  Weevil studied the situation. Sister could have told him what to do but as this was his second year hunting the hounds she would not interfere. Nor would his two whippers-in, standing at a distance on the right and the left. If he wanted help he would have asked.

  Weevil did not suffer from false pride.

  He looked up, watched treetops swaying back in the woods. Taking a deep breath, he asked Kilowatt to walk thirty yards to his right and forward. The woods somewhat shifted the wind but not too much.

  “Get ’em up,” he encouraged them.

  Aces, a young hound, eagerly followed, as did the others. The other twenty-three couple of hounds, which is to say forty-six hounds, for hounds are always measured in couples and have been since the days of the pharaohs, followed. Cora, a brilliant hound, started feathering, that tail picking up speed like a windshield wiper.

  “Got him!” she shouted as she took off.

  Within seconds the pack moved off, Weevil behind. Again, the pace was blistering.

  The brief wait allowed Sister to check the field. Some had fallen behind. Not all horses were as hunting fit as they might be, and then again, not all horses were fast. A few would finally bring up the rear or fall back to Second Flight, which took small jumps but often used gates, a time-consuming process.

  The wind bit now. Glad she wore her white cashmere sweater under her heavy Melton coat, a white stock tie covering the neckline, Sister again moved out.

  On and on they rode, the pace faltering then picking up again until hounds reached Bishop’s Court, formerly the only Catholic church in Albermarle County in the early eighteenth century before, as the population grew, the economy finally soared after we had paid our war debt and other Catholic churches cropped up. In those days being Catholic was no advantage, as most of the settlers came from the British Isles where, with the exception of Irish ones, if one was Catholic, they often hid it. Henry VIII and the Dissolution saw to that as well as mass deaths from turning out the monks, nuns, hunting down priests like vermin.

  Sister saw the quarry, a healthy large male red fox who sped to the church, ducking into a den he’d dug under it. Hounds reached the spot perhaps four minutes after he’d gone to ground.

  Weevil hopped off Kilowatt, his legs the tiniest bit shaky, for it was a long, long, hard run, wh
ere he blew “Gone to Ground.” Patting each hound’s head he praised them by name as Kilowatt patiently stood.

  Finally Weevil turned to his horse, stroked his head, and kissed his nose. He loved animals and they loved him. Swinging up in the saddle, he smiled at his whippers-in.

  The hunt had to turn back, as this was the last fixture before the end of the road, the southern spike from Chapel Cross, each road called by its direction, north, south, east, or west. The road ended before an odd ridge, left by the glacier, prevented further travel by car. The ridge was thick up there and steep. It was also full of game and perhaps a few illegal activities, for the waters ran crystal clear down to creeks below.

  Sister rode up to Weevil. “The best.”

  He grinned. “The breeding season runs are always the best.”

  “So they are.” She turned to indicate the field. “We have about a seven mile walk back and I think we do need to walk. They look tuckered out but happy.”

  “It was a test.” He nodded.

  “I wouldn’t admit this to too many people but I feel it. This was the longest continuous run of our season. It’s been a spotty season.” She looked up and west. “And we’re about to get more snow. Okay. Let’s go.”

  As the horses, hounds, and people turned to walk along, Sister joined the field, chatting with people as they walked. No need to be silent now. One does not speak in the hunt field, but the hunt was over so, of course, everyone wanted to weigh in on the bear. Death defying.

  She smiled, listened, enjoying what she thought of as her people.

  Their goal, Tattenhall Station, would take a good forty minutes at this pace but that was fine.

  First Flight and Second Flight merged, more fun for all.

  Crawling along on the road, driving her big BMW 5 SUV was Yvonne Harris and Aunt Daniella Laprade with, in the backseat, Kathleen Sixt Dunbar, an antiques dealer who had moved here when her husband died last year, leaving her his business. Kathleen, Daniella, and Yvonne became dedicated car followers, and soon good friends. Tootie waved to her mother, Yvonne, as she kept her eye on the hounds, just as happy as the people to return to water and a biscuit. Once at the kennel they would be given a warm mash after such a day. Sister would pour in a bit of whiskey. She claimed it was her secret ingredient for a terrific hound. It was a secret, or not-so-secret, ingredient for many in the field as well, for they drained their flasks. It may not have slaked thirst but one felt warm.