The Fox Hunt

by Bonnie Bryant

  “Help!”

  Stevie thought she heard something.

  “Help!!”

  She definitely heard something. She shortened Topside’s reins and sat down in the saddle. The horse drew to a walk. Stevie stood up in the stirrups so she could look to see where the cry came from.

  “Where are you?”

  “Here!”

  Stevie turned. There, sitting in the grass with tears streaking down her cheeks, was one of Pine Hollow’s young riders, May Grover.

  Stevie and Topside hurried over to May. As soon as she reached the little girl, she dismounted. “What happened?” she asked.

  “My pony threw me,” May said, rubbing the place that hurt the most—her seat. “One of the big girls was supposed to look after me, but she just rode on. She didn’t even notice.”

  Stevie didn’t have to ask which “big girl” that was. May’s description clearly applied to only one “big girl.” That was Veronica diAngelo.

  Stevie crouched down and examined May carefully. She could tell that the little girl had hurt herself, but it was even clearer that the part of her that hurt the most was her feelings. May stifled her snuffles and her tears while Stevie looked her over. When Stevie was convinced nothing was broken and standing up would be good for May, she helped the little girl to her feet.

  “Where’s your pony?” Stevie asked.

  “Luna ran away!” she wailed. The tears started spouting out again. “I’ll never catch him—and I really, really love him!”

  Stevie gave May a great big hug. “Don’t worry,” she said. “I’ll find him for you. He won’t go very far—not as long as he knows there’s going to be some good breakfast for him soon. Let’s see if Topside can help us find Luna, okay?”

  “Would you do that for me?” May asked.

  “Of course,” Stevie said.

  “But you’re the fox!”

  Stevie had been so concerned about May that she’d almost forgotten that fact. When she’d left Pine Hollow that morning, it had seemed to her that the most important thing in the world was outfoxing the other riders. Now, she realized, taking care of May was actually higher up on the priority list. Besides, who was to say she couldn’t do both at the same time?

  “I’ve got an idea,” Stevie said. “You know foxes sometimes travel in pairs, don’t you?”

  “Max says two foxes are called a brace of foxes.”

  “You’ve been studying,” Stevie accused her.

  May smiled. “I wanted to know everything,” she explained. “I like to know everything.”

  “Then you’ll make a great partner for me,” Stevie said. With that, she climbed back into Topside’s saddle and then reached down, offering May her left arm for a boost. Stevie took her left foot out of the stirrup, and by using her arm and the stirrup, May was able to climb on board. She sat comfortably in front of Stevie in Topside’s saddle.

  It took Stevie only a few minutes to figure out that May’s pony was hiding behind a small stand of trees where some sweet grass remained uncut. Stevie picked up the pony’s reins. One look at him, and she knew why he’d been named Luna. He was a bay with a perfect half-moon on his face. She clucked her tongue, and the pony came along obediently.

  Just before they reached the paddock, something made Stevie look back over her shoulder. What she saw was none other than Veronica diAngelo, waving wildly and screaming triumphantly at Stevie and May.

  “Wouldn’t you know it?” Stevie said.

  “That’s the girl who was supposed to take care of me,” May said. “Now it looks like somebody ought to take care of her. What’s wrong with her?”

  “She just thinks she’s so smart because she saw us first. That’s why she’s waving her arms.”

  “I didn’t mean that part,” May said. “What’s wrong with her that she’s riding across Mr. Andrews’s field?”

  May was absolutely right, and it was the best news Stevie had all day. She gave May a big squeeze. “You’re quite a fox!” Stevie declared.

  USUALLY STEVIE FOUND it quite boring when she had to walk her horse to cool him down after a ride. She and May were circling the indoor ring at Pine Hollow on foot, leading Topside and May’s pony, Luna. They walked quietly so they could hear every word Max and Mr. Baker were saying to Veronica. There was nothing boring about it.

  “Veronica, you are very familiar with the rules,” Max said.

  “But I saw Stevie. I just had to catch up to her.”

  “It wasn’t your job to catch up to her. That’s the huntsman’s job. It was your job to inform the huntsman that you’d seen her.”

  “Well, she shouldn’t have been where she was, and there was no way I could have told anybody else. If she’d been in the woods where any sensible fox would have been, it wouldn’t have been any problem. Instead, she was dashing for home—and stopped to help that little girl—”

  “Who you were supposed to be looking out after,” Max interrupted. Veronica ignored that.

  “—so I did the most logical thing because I was so much closer than anyone else,” Veronica protested.

  “The riders on a hunt are along to watch, not to do the work of others,” Mr. Baker said sternly. “The fox-hunting rules are well-known and well-established. If participants don’t follow the rules, there will be chaos. By following the fox on your own instead of informing the Master and the huntsman, you made a serious breach of fox-hunting etiquette. It cannot be permitted.”

  Veronica gave him a look that Stevie had seen before many times. It was a look that said, “I hear what you’re saying and I don’t agree with you, but I’m going to pretend that I do just so you’ll stop complaining.”

  What her mouth said was, “I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.”

  “You’re right about that,” Mr. Baker said. “And it certainly won’t happen in any hunt that I have anything to do with. Turning around and getting ahead of the huntsman and the Master was thoughtless and rude, but crossing Mr. Andrews’s land was simply unforgivable. As of now, Max is withdrawing his invitation to you to participate further in this mock hunt, and I am formally disinviting you to the junior hunt at Cross County next week.”

  “You—what?” Veronica exploded. Nobody had ever disinvited her to anything. After all, she considered herself to be from one of the finest families. Veronica simply couldn’t believe her ears.

  “Good-bye,” Mr. Baker said. He turned his back to her.

  Stevie could hardly believe her ears or her eyes either. It was too wonderful. She could have imagined dozens of ways to play tricks and try to get back at Veronica, but not one of them could possibly measure up to what Mr. Baker had done with a few sharp words. As far as fox hunting went, Veronica was history.

  “Isn’t it great?” Stevie whispered to May.

  May nodded conspiratorially. “She deserves it.”

  The girls gave one another high fives. Max glanced up sharply when he heard the clap of their hands. Without further ado, the girls returned to the job of cooling down their horses. The last thing they wanted was to draw the attention of Max and Mr. Baker when they were in any kind of disinviting mood. Their worry turned out to be unnecessary.

  “Looks like those horses might be ready for a rest now,” Mr. Baker said. “Why don’t you girls—I mean foxes—dig into the hunt breakfast?”

  “As long as nobody’s serving fox!” May said.

  “Don’t worry,” Stevie assured her. “I think the main course is crow.” She just couldn’t take her eyes off Veronica, who appeared to be slinking out of the ring.

  As usual, Veronica had forgotten all about Garnet. She’d left her horse standing alone in the middle of the ring with his reins trailing on the ground. Max was about to yell after her.

  “Don’t bother,” Stevie said. “It’s not worth it and she won’t learn anything from it. May and I will put Garnet away along with Topside and Luna. Then we can really enjoy our breakfast and wait for the frustrated hunters to return.”

  �
�Thanks, Stevie,” Max said.

  Together the girls took the horses back to the stalls. They would have time to do a complete grooming later. For now, they just wanted to remove the horses’ tack, give them some well-deserved water and hay, and let them rest.

  Stevie carried Topside’s and Garnet’s tack to the tack room. On the way back from there, she passed a window that opened onto the driveway of Pine Hollow and the street beyond it.

  Veronica was standing by the edge of the road. Stevie figured she was probably waiting for her mother, or the chauffeur, to pick her up. It was only a fifteen-minute walk to Veronica’s house, but that was always too much for Little Miss Perfect. In spite of the fact that Veronica had just been totally humiliated by Max and Mr. Baker, she stood tall with her nose in the air. Stevie mused about what she saw and decided that Veronica was one of a kind—fortunately. Then, as she watched, something very curious happened. Her brother, Chad, happened by, on his bicycle. Veronica waved hello to him, and he drew his bicycle to a stop. Whatever else could be said about Veronica—and there was a lot—she was a pretty girl. Chad never failed to notice a pretty girl who waved at him.

  “You two deserve one another,” Stevie told the pair, though of course they couldn’t hear her. Just to prove her point, she slammed the window shut. They couldn’t hear that, either. Stevie didn’t care. She picked up three flakes of hay and took them to Topside, Garnet, and Luna. Then it was time for everybody to have breakfast.

  Stevie and May were into their second helpings of bagels and cream cheese when the first shouts came from outside the stable.

  “Here’s some more confetti!”

  “No, it can’t be! She must have dropped that on the way out!”

  “No way! It wasn’t here before. I just know it.”

  “It wasn’t. Definitely.” That was Phil’s voice. “I’m telling you. She’s done the sneakiest thing possible! She’s inside right now eating a bowl of cereal.”

  Stevie grinned uncontrollably. She turned to May. “And they think they know me. Shows how much he knows if he thinks I’d have cereal when there are bagels around!”

  May giggled.

  “Are you sure?” Lisa asked. “There are still dozens of hiding places on that hillside that we haven’t even begun to explore.”

  “Woof! Woof!” one of the pretend hounds barked.

  “What are you barking about?” Carole asked.

  “That,” the “hound” said, pointing. All the riders looked where she pointed. What they saw was the window to Topside’s stall, and inside was Topside.

  “She is a clever one!” Carole said proudly. “But I’ll bet you she isn’t eating cereal in there—”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She likes bagels best,” Carole said.

  “Ah, they do know me,” Stevie said. With that, the doors to the inside ring burst open, and in came all of the Pony Club riders, led by Lisa and Phil, with the “hounds” milling at the head of the pack.

  Stevie and May stood up and toasted the riders with orange juice.

  “Gotcha!” Stevie said. Everybody laughed, and then Max began clapping.

  When the cheering and congratulating died down, Max and Mr. Baker got the riders to cool their horses and put them in the stalls and vans. When the animals were tended to, all the riders gathered at the breakfast table and helped themselves to the delicious food.

  Everyone began talking at once. First of all, the hunters wanted to know what had happened to May and Veronica. Stevie was only too happy to oblige and filled them in on all the details. Max and Mr. Baker tried to remain totally impassive while Stevie did imitations of Veronica and Mr. Baker, but Max had trouble stifling his laughter. Stevie was very good at imitations and had, of course, remembered every word spoken by Veronica and Mr. Baker. It was so funny that soon all the young riders were laughing as well. Stevie suspected that one of the reasons Mr. Baker let her continue her imitation was that his disinvitation to one young rider would serve as warning to anybody who had any ideas about breaking hunt rules.

  “So, enough about Veronica. Tell me what you all did on the hunt while May and I did our part,” Stevie said.

  “We chased you,” Lisa said.

  “Yeah, only what we ended up chasing was our own shadows,” Anna complained. “I think we searched every single corner of that hillside.”

  “Oh, no,” Carole assured her. “There are lots of hiding places we didn’t even get near. Remember the gully where the foal got stuck? And remember the time we decided some pirates were hiding in a cave? And then there is the rock that juts out over the creek, where you tried to get Veronica to jump into the water?”

  “Oh, right, where it’s only about six inches deep?” Stevie said.

  “That’s the place,” Carole said. “Anyway, we never began to look in any of those places.”

  “Too bad,” Stevie said. “Because if you had, May and I would have had time for a nap before you got here! You must be really angry with me.”

  “Not at all,” Phil said. “It’s a great way to ride—not following a real trail, just following our instincts and being with our friends. We had a blast organizing ourselves into hunting parties so we could cover as much of the hillside as possible in as short a time as possible. It was fun!”

  “It was?” Stevie asked. She’d hoped they’d all be just slightly angry with her for being so clever and making it impossible to hunt successfully.

  Phil pulled out a chair and sat down next to Stevie. He put his arm across the back of her chair. “In fact,” he said to her quietly, “the only thing that would have made it more fun was if you were along with us. I missed you.” He smiled warmly. It made Stevie feel funny in her stomach—a nice kind of funny.

  Stevie was never quite certain what to say when Phil said nice things like that. Probably the best thing was just to smile back. Still, she was a kidder, and she couldn’t help herself.

  “You sure did miss me!” she teased. Phil laughed. That was one of the things she really liked about him.

  Lisa picked up a knife and began tapping it on her orange-juice glass. She stood up. “Attention, everybody, attention!” she ordered. There was quiet. She picked up her glass. “I would like to propose a toast,” she began. “This is for the person who made this hunt so difficult—and so much fun.” Everybody looked at Stevie. “To the cleverest, cagiest, wickedest fox there ever was.”

  “Brace of foxes,” Stevie interrupted her, nodding acknowledgment to May.

  “Brace of foxes,” Lisa said, catching on quickly. May beamed proudly. “And all I can say is that I’m relieved to know that next week, on the junior hunt, we’ll have a much easier task. There’s no way a real fox can be as devious as this pair—unless, of course Stevie and May try to give them some pointers during the week!”

  With that, she held her glass up to Stevie and then drank. Everybody joined in.

  LISA WAS BUSY grooming Diablo inside his stall when the door slid open. The horse had gotten his coat very dirty in the course of the mock hunt, and there was a lot of work to do. She didn’t want to be distracted from her work, but when she saw it was Carole, she relaxed. Carole entered and closed the door quietly behind her.

  “We’ve got to do something,” Carole said.

  When the subject was horses, Carole was always as sharp as could be. When the subject was anything else, she had a tendency to be a bit flaky, and she didn’t always make herself clear. Right then, Lisa didn’t have any idea what she was talking about. She said so.

  “It’s Stevie,” Carole said. “Not only is she in trouble with her brothers, but she’s gotten Veronica even madder at her. The girl’s in trouble, big trouble, and she can’t even admit it!”

  Automatically Carole picked up a brush and began working on Diablo’s coat. There was always so much work to be done around horses that all of Max’s riders learned that if they wanted to talk, they’d have to do so as they worked.

  “I was thinking,” Carole went
on, “that we should find a way to make up to the Lake boys so that they’ll think it’s Stevie apologizing to them.”

  “They’d never buy it,” Lisa said, gently tugging the mane comb through Diablo’s thick black mane. “Anybody who knows Stevie knows that the one thing she can’t ever do is admit that she was wrong. They’ll think it’s some sort of hoax. No way.”

  “Then what?”

  Lisa crinkled her brow. The person who was the best at figuring this sort of thing out was Stevie, and she was the one person they couldn’t turn to. That meant they’d have to use their own strengths.

  “Why don’t we just talk to them?” Lisa suggested.

  “Talk?” That wasn’t what Carole had in mind at all.

  “Yeah, talk. Maybe we can get them to agree to meet us somewhere and we can talk, you know, like lay our cards on the table.”

  “Won’t that just let them know how worried we are and make them even more interested in getting back at Stevie?”

  “Maybe,” Lisa conceded. “However, it might also give us an idea of how serious they are at revenge—if we can read them right. The real question is, can it hurt? I don’t think so.”