Hotspur

by Rita Mae Brown

  “Oh, thank God!” Marty exclaimed.

  No one else said a word, they just panted for breath.

  Hounds found the den, digging and claiming victory for all they were worth.

  Target, safe inside, made a mental note that Dragon, in his second year, had learned a great deal from his first year’s experiences. He wasn’t going to be easy to fool anymore. The ferocious drive that misled him last year had become more disciplined. Target would need to take this fellow more seriously. He would have to be more clever and he would have to teach him a lesson. Today would only build the handsome hound’s confidence. Dragon needed to be knocked down a peg or two. Aunt Netty had been right.

  Target also thought he’d better tell his offspring, especially the youngest over at Mill Ruins.

  Hojo stood quietly while Shaker walked to the den, stood, and blew the notes of triumph. He praised each hound, then led them away with Betty’s and Sybil’s help.

  “Another excellent day,” he said, reaching for the reins.

  “I didn’t think we’d do much today.” Sister smiled and turned. The faces behind her, flushed with heat and excitement, radiated happiness as well as relief. Ralph breathed hard, laughing at himself for being a bit out of shape. Xavier huffed and puffed.

  “Well, what do you think?” Shaker, back in the saddle, asked the master.

  “I think we call it a day.” She turned to Marty and asked, “And what were you thanking God for?”

  “That you didn’t jump the wrought-iron fence into the graveyard.”

  Tedi and Edward flanked Sister as they rode back across her lawn, the pathetic remains of her garden testifying to the fervor of the chase.

  “Janie, winter is coming. You’ll just prepare the new beds early.” Tedi made light of it.

  “You’re right.”

  “You’ll need a new window.” Edward nodded toward the gardening shed. “I’ve got an extra. I’ll have Jimmy bring it over and put it in for you.”

  “Thank you, Edward. You are the most generous soul.”

  “Well, he is, but don’t be too impressed. You know we have the top of the old bank barn filled with Edward’s treasures. Old windows, mantels, heart pine flooring. You name it, Edward’s got it.”

  Edward smiled. He was a pack rat by nature, but he had compromised early in their marriage by storing his finds outside the house. When he’d swear these items, such as cartons of old Esquire magazines, the large kind from the forties and fifties, would be worth something someday, Tedi would always reply, “Yes, dear.”

  Sybil had inherited the pack rat gene. Nola, on the other hand, never saved anything.

  As people dismounted at the trailers, talking about the terrific run, sharing a thermos of coffee, a cold beer or a ham sandwich, Sister rode with Shaker, Sybil, and Betty to the kennels. Once the hounds were inside she turned toward her own stable. Shaker would be busy with the hounds, washing out cuts and scratches from the gardening shed episode.

  Jennifer and Sari, with no prompting from Betty, met her as she dismounted. “Sister, we’ll clean up your horses for you.”

  “Why, girls, thank you so much.”

  “And Mom says I can work here on weekends if that’s okay with you.” Jennifer wanted desperately to work with Sister. She wanted to learn everything about hunting.

  “Jennifer, you’ll be a big help to me.” Sister could never refuse a young person in love with hunting.

  Sari, her dark eyes almost black, timidly spoke up. “Master, I could work, too, if you need an extra hand.”

  “Why, yes. You can start right now. I’ll pay you for the day.”

  “No, we’ll clean the stable because we want to,” Jennifer said just as her mother joined her. Magellan was now tied to the trailer.

  “Tell you what, I’ll accept your generous offer for today. And you can ride Rickyroo, Lafayette, and Aztec. Ask Shaker about Showboat and Gunpowder. At least a half hour of trotting for those guys.”

  “Okay.” The two girls were thrilled.

  “Ten dollars an hour.”

  “Sister, that’s too much,” Betty protested.

  “Good help is hard to find. Ten dollars an hour.” Sister, feeling fabulous, winked at them all.

  Jennifer took Keepsake into the stable as Sister joined the gang at the trailers for an impromptu breakfast. She liked these tailgates better than the big affairs.

  She complimented Sybil on her second day as first whipper-in.

  “I got behind at the stone wall.”

  “You made up for it. Whipping-in is a lot different from riding in the field. You can never stop thinking, reaching.” Sister popped a deviled egg into her mouth.

  When she walked back to the barn later, the two girls were cleaning away. Tack was hanging from hooks. Keepsake, washed, was content in his stall, telling the other horses just what a fine day it was.

  Sister loved having young people around. She walked outside, listening to the girls talking, laughing. She heard the big diesel engines of the vans fire up, detected the throaty roar of the pickup trucks for those pulling goose-necks. People called good-bye to one another, called “good night” to her, which was proper. One said “good night” to the master at the end of a hunt even if it was ten in the morning—which it was.

  She walked across her desecrated lawn thinking the destruction was worth the fun. Golliwog, Raleigh, and Rooster sashayed alongside her. They had been very upset at the goings-on. Golly, of course, bragged about how she faced down Target just spitting at him, her claws unleashed.

  They followed Sister under the hickories and hollies, past the scarlet maples that would turn flaming red in another month. They could smell the apples on the trees in the far orchard. Sister walked through the wrought-iron gate. Under the walnut tree in the middle of the graveyard was a graceful stone statue of a hound running. On the front was inscribed: REST, DEAR FRIENDS, WE’LL HUNT AGAIN SOMEDAY.

  Bronze plaques, each bearing a hound’s name, were attached to the base, representing forty years of Jefferson Hunt hounds. Although the hunt was founded at the end of the nineteenth century, the graveyard was only forty years old. Newer plaques were affixed to the wrought-iron fence. A special tombstone had been erected for Archie, her great anchor hound, a hound she had loved as no other.

  “Archie, you missed quite a day. And that pup whom you hated, Dragon, actually did very well, very well indeed.”

  As they left, Rooster asked why Archie had his name on a plaque and a tombstone, too.

  “Her fave,” Raleigh answered.

  “Will we be buried here?” Rooster asked.

  “No, we’ll be buried up under the pear trees behind the house.” Raleigh liked the idea of being by the house close to Sister.

  “Not me,” Golly bragged. “I’m going to be cremated and when Sister dies she’ll be cremated, too. We’ll go in the ground together.”

  “You are so full of it.” Raleigh laid his ears back.

  Sister walked on over to the den. “Target, quite a show.”

  He stuck his nose out of the largest opening. “I am the greatest.”

  Raleigh and Rooster knew not to do anything or Sister would tell them, “Leave it.” She always told them what to do, and since she didn’t give a “whoop” they looked down at the fox, even larger than he was last year.

  Golliwog huffed up and spit, and as they walked away she bragged, “He’s afraid of me.”

  The two house dogs thought it better not to answer or a nasty fight would explode.

  Sister stopped again at the hound graveyard. Leaning on the iron fence, she remembered something about the first day of cubbing in 1981. She just now recalled a check at a remote part of After All Farm. They’d had a good hard run and finally lost scent at the estate’s easternmost border where an old, well-tended slave graveyard reposed, small, smooth worn tombstones standing out against deep green grass, the whole bounded by a low stone wall. Most old graveyards were marked off by stone walls or wrought-iron fences
. This graveyard belonged to the Lorillards, an old central Virginia family, both black and white. These were the original black Lorillards.

  She’d stepped a bit away from the field, listening for Shaker or a hound. The hounds were casting back into the covert by a narrow creek bed. She’d turned to look back at Nola, Sybil, Guy, Ken, Ralph, and Xavier, off from the others, a small group of the younger set. Now she remembered seeing Nola, radiant from the run, at the center, the object of all male eyes, while Sybil cast her gaze down, then looked back into the Lorillard graveyard.

  She remembered thinking to herself at the time that that tableau moment said it all.

  CHAPTER 24

  A cool jet stream of Canadian air dipped over Virginia in the middle of the night, bringing with it a breath of fall.

  At five-thirty in the morning, heavy fog like gray cotton candy wrapped the earth. Sister rose and felt the chill, for she had forgotten to turn on the heat in the upstairs section before going to bed. She threw on her heavy robe, slipped on her sheepskin slippers, and clicked the thermostat to seventy degrees.

  The house was divided into zones, each with a separate thermostat. The intention, to save money, never panned out and the need to check all four thermostats irritated Sister.

  By the time she reached the kitchen she was wide awake—which could not be said for Golly. Nestled deep in the pillow, she still snored lightly. Both Raleigh and Rooster dutifully followed their master downstairs.

  Sister put down kibble for “the boys,” as she called them, then ground coffee beans and soon had a pot percolating. She couldn’t see a thing from the kitchen window. The outdoor thermometer in the window read forty-nine degrees.

  She poured coffee into a big mug, then hurried upstairs by the back stairway. She put on two pairs of socks, one thin, one heavier, jeans, and her work shoes with rust and yellow around the laces. Layers worked best in changing weather. She slipped on a thin undershirt, a T-shirt over that, and topped it off with an old navy pullover. Then she was down the stairs and out the back door with Raleigh and Rooster scampering to keep up.

  The hounds would fuss if they heard her, so she gave the kennel a wide berth, moving slower than usual because of the fog. Blurry shapes would suddenly appear, then, as she neared, transform into the hay barn or an ornamental pear. She reached the farm road and headed without hesitation toward Hangman’s Ridge, as though drawn there.

  Inky, returning to her den at the edge of the cornfield, smelled the approaching human and two dogs, then heard their footfalls on the dirt road. She shadowed them, curious, keeping downwind.

  Raleigh wouldn’t chase her, but every now and then Rooster wanted to prove a harrier could hunt a fox as well as a foxhound. Sister would walk out with Rooster and let him hunt rabbits, making a big fuss over him. She’d call him back if he picked up fox scent, which was easy to tell since the fox covered more territory than the rabbit, but if the line was good and he was slow to obey she didn’t get angry at him. Can’t punish a hound for hunting.

  Inky enjoyed being a few yards behind everyone. She could turn on a dime and give you a nickel’s change. Even if the wind shifted and Rooster got a whiff of her, she could literally spin and run right under his belly. Hounds were agile as far as dogs go, but the only creature as quick and nimble as the fox was the cat. As they both hunted the same game this made sense. They had developed the same strategies for killing mice, moles, rabbits, and the occasional lazy bird.

  A soft whoosh alerted Inky to Athena’s presence. Another swoosh meant Bitsy. They passed low overhead.

  Sister looked up but saw nothing through the fog. Rooster opened his mouth, but she swiftly put her hand around his muzzle, putting her finger to her own lips. All her pets knew the sign. Rooster said nothing.

  The dampness of the fog made Sister wish she’d put on yet another layer. Rooster lifted his nose, then put it down on the farm road. Comet had passed that way, the dampness holding down scent. But he said nothing, keeping close to Sister.

  They reached the base of Hangman’s Ridge in twenty minutes. Mimosa trees near the farm road would appear and disappear in the fog, their beautiful pink-gold blossoms adding color to the gray mist.

  The climb to the top, not as steep on this side of the ridge, proved steep enough to make them breathe heavily.

  A soft light in the eastern sky, gunmetal gray underlined with dove gray, announced the sun would rise in another thirty to thirty-five minutes, but Sister knew fog this thick would not lift for hours after that. Only when the sun had sufficiently warmed the thick blanket wrapping the meadows, ridges, and mountains would it evaporate, leaving slivers lingering just above the creeks and rivers, tongues of silver gray.

  Once on the ridge, Sister paused to catch her breath. Inky ducked off the dirt road, slinking under a clutch of mountain laurel, slick with dew.

  The mild breeze on the ridge tousled Sister’s hair. Ahead, the huge outline of the hanging tree took shape, its massive silhouette mute testimony to its centuries of life. What a pity such a magnificent oak had been used to kill.

  Hanging, not a pleasant way to die, could at least be quick if the length of rope was correct and the drop proper. But those criminals executed here were strung up to dangle and choke to death, which could take four or five minutes. Occasionally the convict’s windpipe would be broken by the violence of the initial jerk and lift as the horse on which he sat was slapped out from underneath him. Death came with merciful swiftness then.

  Lawrence Pollard, the first man ever to be hanged from the tree, had so enraged his enemies, they hauled him up without benefit of a horse in 1702. His executioners believed he had swindled them in land speculation— which he had. By all accounts a dark-haired, handsome man, a smooth talker, an elegant dresser, he seduced the few hardy families who had settled this far west, the Wild West at that time, into putting up money to purchase tens of thousands of acres in what is now Lewisburg, West Virginia.

  He did buy thousands of acres in that area, but he also kept a portion of the money for dissolute living in Philadelphia, the largest city in the colonies. Word of his profligacy filtered back to the Tidewater and even there leached out to the farthest borders of civilization, this particular county at the base of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Through guile, the irate investors lured Lawrence back to his death.

  The last man hanged in this spot was Gilliam Norris, a Confederate veteran, a brave and well-respected man who lost his mind, killing his mother, father, two sisters, and brother with his service revolver.

  In between 1702 and 1875, eighteen men were hanged, all murderers with the exception of Lawrence.

  Two shapes in the tree startled Sister until she drew closer and recognized Athena and Bitsy. Neither flew away as she approached them.

  The sound of a moan stopped her in her tracks. Both Raleigh and Rooster swept their ears forward.

  Inky, behind them, stepped out of the fog.

  Sister saw her and said to Rooster, “Leave it.”

  But Rooster paid no attention to Inky, as something by the trunk of the tree had his full attention.

  “I’m here to find something. I don’t know what it is,” she said as if to reassure the animals, but mainly to calm her own fears.

  When the swirling fog momentarily parted in front of her, she thought she saw the form of a man by the tree, disfigured, wearing silk breeches and silk stockings, his neck horribly twisted.

  She tried to blink the apparition away. This spot could arouse even the most phlegmatic person’s imagination.

  But then she heard a hoarse whisper and recognized a verse from Psalm 42:

  “My tears have been my meat day and night, while they continually say unto me, Where is thy God? . . . all thy waves and thy billows are gone over me. My soul is bereft of peace.”

  Raleigh growled, putting himself right in front of Sister.

  Shaking, she backed away. She might be crazy as that hoot owl in the tree, but whatever she was seeing looked real enough
to her.

  As the fog swallowed the form back up, it let out a howl of pure anguish. Wind swept over the ridge with a slashing gust.

  Sister turned and ran through the fog, only able to see three feet in front of her in a good patch. She was glad she lived a physically active life. She might be seventy-one years old, but she could run like the devil.

  Skidding, slipping, sliding down the ridge, she didn’t stop until she reached the base.

  “Goddamn, I swear that really was Lawrence Pollard’s ghost!”

  “It was,” Inky said. “I’ve seen him before. There are a couple up there. They can’t go to ground.” She meant they couldn’t go to their den, her concept of home.

  Sweat rolled down Sister’s forehead, between her breasts, down the small of her back. She hadn’t been so scared in years.

  “His tongue was hanging out.” Rooster, too, was a little shaken by the apparition.

  Then Athena and Bitsy swooped by in the fog, and that startled Sister.

  “Dammit!”

  “Don’t swear at me!” Athena laughed because she’d scared Sister.

  To Sister it sounded like “hoo, hoo-hoo, hoo-hoo.”

  Of course, Bitsy had to let out one of her bloodcurdling shrieks, which nearly caused all of them to have heart attacks.

  Bitsy thought she was singing “The Ride of the Valkyries.”

  Even Inky’s ruff stood up on end.

  “God, that’s awful.” Raleigh blinked.

  Sister got hold of herself and started back toward home.

  Inky headed for her own den. “Sister, those spirits up there got what they deserved. They can’t hurt you.”

  “Why don’t they leave?” Rooster asked.

  Athena, her voice ghostly and deep in the fog, answered him. “They can’t let go. They can’t find absolution or redemption. You know there’s a stag like that. It’s not just humans. He leads deer hunters to their death. He sets them up so they shoot each other. Kills two or three a year.”