Riding Shotgun

by Rita Mae Brown

  The loneliness of the fierce New World struggle to survive could be dispelled by gossip, laughter and the chase.

  Here among these people she felt the bonds of community, true communion. It surprised her for she thought she lived in a fairly tight-knit community. She began to realize that she was compressed, her life had been squeezed into artificial blocks of time. Everything had to fit. Harried by numbers, from the clock to her social security number to her credit cards to her mortgage, she had been lulled into believing life was finite; after all, numbers are. But experience isn’t measurable and friendship can’t be squeezed into fifteen-minute intervals of telephone exchanges. She’d fallen into the trap of her epoch: frantic activity just to keep one’s head above water. She wanted out of that trap as much as she wanted to return to her children.

  She began to dream—could she bring them here?

  She felt oddly infused with light. She grasped a tiny truth for herself even as Lionel grasped her hand. She wasn’t a number. She might mean nothing to her government other than a yearly tax payment, but the impersonality of large institutions could be resisted, could perhaps even be changed, if people like her declared, I’ll live my life as I please. I’m not a silent victim. I might lose the battle for individual freedom but I’ll surely lose if I don’t fight.

  She’d never in her forty years entertained the idea that she could affect her time or the future. Yet looking at these people who endured more than she ever had or probably ever would, she felt gratitude and courage. If they could build a new world, some of them carried here against their will, if they could work, love and live, what in the hell was the matter with her? She could do whatever she had to do and a lot of what she wanted to do. The choice was hers.

  “Dearest lady, where did you get that horse?” One young man, long-faced and blond, grinned as he rode toward her, snapping her out of her reverie and causing Lionel to squeeze her hand even tighter.

  “Abraham Boothrod, Daniel’s son,” Margaret said out of the corner of her mouth for she rode on Cig’s near side.

  “Mr. Boothrod—you’ve grown into such a handsome fellow!”

  He glowed. Abraham was a young man in his father’s shadow. “You do me a great honor to flatter me so.”

  The sound of the hunting horn cut off conversation as all eyes turned toward the hounds. Cig gasped, for moving around the side of a barn was a pack of black and tans, big-boned, handsome hounds. She’d always heard that black and tans were stubborn, hard to control. She’d expected a pack of English foxhounds, heavier than the American foxhounds she ran.

  “Good hunting!” Abraham saluted her with his crop.

  “Good hunting to you, sir.” She returned the wish then asked Lionel, “Black and tans?”

  “Aye, a new man from Ireland brought the whole pack over last year. The fellow has a gift with hounds. They’re in fine voice and so is he.” He dropped her hand at last.

  She looked from the glistening pack to the other riders. Most rode in flat, saddle seat-type saddles. The stirrup irons were just that, irons, although she saw a handful of black men riding with wooden stirrups.

  “Grooms?” Cig asked.

  Tom nodded as Lionel was reluctantly called away by their host.

  Margaret added, “Some are slaves. That fellow over there wearing the blue coat is a freeman.”

  “Slave trade is picking up.” Tom rubbed his chin. “The more hands a man can put in his field the richer hell become. Of course, you have to be rich to buy a slave in the first place.”

  Cig half-listened, overwhelmed by the spectacle and by Lionel’s presence. She studied the other hunters who wore clothes comparable to her own. The coats, woven of sturdy fabric, were cut longer as were the waistcoats. Her waistcoat had contracted into a vest. All the men wore folded-over boots, which some were in the process of unfolding over their knees. Most of the ladies rode sidesaddle although a few did not. The women wore shorter boots and most wore skirts of practical fabrics, though a few wore silk, which they arranged on either side of their horses if riding astride. One young woman had wedged the ends of her skirt under her stirrup leathers. Most of the ladies looked comfortable in the saddle.

  Except for Daniel Boothrod’s attire, the predominate colors of the coats were dark blue, dark green, or black. The waistcoats were white silk or cotton, a few were canary or buff. The breeches were all buff-colored and the young Huntsman wore deerskin breeches, a French hunting horn over his left shoulder. His close-cropped hair was curly blond, and his thick eyebrows were blond with a tinge of red. His jaw was strong, his nose straight and his teeth unusually white. He was perhaps a lean five foot seven. His smile could melt a heart of stone. It haunted Cig. He was a gorgeous flash of lightning.

  “Who’s the Huntsman?” a mesmerized Cig asked.

  “Patrick Devlin Fitzroy. He’s the fellow who brought over the black and tans.”

  “Handsome,” Cig said.

  “Him?” Tom shrugged.

  “You never think any man is handsome but yourself,” Margaret teased him.

  “As long as you think that, my love,” he replied.

  “What happened to Edward Hill’s pack?” Cig correctly assumed a man of such property would keep a pack of fine hounds.

  Tom frowned. “They rioted on deer.”

  “Well, if it’s in the blood, forget it” Cig, at home in the hunt field, responded. A foxhound should never chase a deer.

  Fitzroy blew the horn. The notes were deeper, rounder, than the straight, short hunting horns Cig knew, but the calls were identical. And the first sound of the horn always gave Cig goosebumps.

  Fitzroy wore no cap or hat. The other riders wore broad-brimmed hats, which a few had pinned up to one side in cavalier fashion.

  Tom, excited, edged up to the front of the field. Cig decided she’d stay back to watch people ride. Politeness overcame curiosity because they were watching her, too. Her habit was different enough to cause comment and her forward seat appeared precarious.

  Fitzroy blew deep staccato notes, three times in succession to cast his hounds. Quiet in the saddle, he moved behind his obedient pack.

  Cig noticed that Edward Hill’s groom, the African, Marker, fanned out to the left of the pack, and a giant of a man whom she didn’t know worked over on the right. Fitzroy worked like Roger with two whippers-in to keep the hounds in line.

  As they moved away from the barns the country road opened up before them. There were fewer meadows than Cig remembered in this territory and fewer fences.

  A lone, deep voice called. Others answered. No matter how many times Cig heard hounds find, it thrilled her. Full Throttle, accustomed to leading the field, complained about being stuck in the rear. “Behave yourself,” she chastised him. He swept his ears back, snorted once, but obeyed.

  They picked up a trot and then the cry, full, burst out of the hounds’ throats like a canine Magnificat in C Major. Mrs. Boothrod, face flushed with excitement, rocked back and forth in her high-sided sidesaddle, her skirt draped over to one side. Abraham Boothrod sat straight up in his saddle, feet forward, heels down. His father’s insistence on haute école showed, for the son was a much better rider than the father.

  Although not a dressage rider, Cig recognized the very same dressage principles that had been drummed into people’s heads throughout the centuries. The field of riders evidenced those principles. A good rider was a good rider no matter what discipline—or the century.

  Within seconds the whole field exploded down the road, flat out. Cig forgot to stay behind. The pace was too good. She passed Margaret, loping along on Pollux, enjoying himself tremendously. From Pollux’s point of view this beat plowing. Cig blew past Lionel deVries and his acolytes. He spurred his horse to keep up with her. One minion slid off lüs horse trying to keep up, too. Daniel Boothrod became a blur. He called out something but she couldn’t hear him. She did hear Lionel though, drawing alongside her.

  “No mortal rides like that! You are the goddess o
f the hunt.”

  “Lionel,” she replied, exhilarated, “you can ride.”

  His hands followed the motion of his horse’s head and neck. He fell in behind her. “I just want to keep my eyes on you.”

  She naturally took the lead. She didn’t mean to be rude but no one appeared to be acting as Fieldmaster. She zipped right in Patrick Fitzroy’s pocket, staying close in behind him and the hounds. He looked around in amazement then delight.

  The hounds, longer-legged but much heavier than her hounds, couldn’t cover ground as quickly as her pack. Still, they were wondrous hounds.

  The pack, running tight, swerved left into a wood filled with massive black walnut trees. No one had cut trails so the riders picked their own way through. She glanced around to check on her field, as she thought of them, and discovered that Tom on Helen was behind Abraham Boothrod and behind him, riding hard, was Daniel. Many of the ladies in their velvet seats elected to go around the woods but they knew their hunting etiquette and were careful not to cross the line of the fox.

  Margaret, keenly listening for the hounds, rode in the middle of the field. Many people were mounted on draft horses, draft crosses, or carriage horses, heavier-boned and slower than Full Throttle who among this crowd was an animal of surpassing beauty. But then Cig thought him beautiful even if he’d been among Olympic show jumpers. Throttle, all heart and a good brain, relished his position. He was in front. He knew his job: stay close to the hounds. Running at a slow controlled canter behind a draft horse, clods of dirt flying in his face, would never do.

  With everyone crashing about in the thick woods Cig thought the black and tans would lift their heads or become distracted. Noses to the ground they pressed on, jumping obstacles, but as she feared, getting more entangled in underbrush than her own pack simply because they were so much bigger.

  One hound twisted a leg in a vine and howled bloody murder. Cig, seeing the field slowed by the underbrush, pulled up, quickly dismounted, and freed the hound. He crashed about on his way. She swung back in the saddle as Tom, Abraham, and Lionel watched approvingly. Fitzroy, turning in his saddle as he rode on for he had to keep up with his pack, touched his whip handle to his brow in thanks.

  “The fox will find a creek if there is one or he’ll run over deer tracks,” she said.

  Tom pointed to his left. “There’s usually a current of strong cold air along the run there.” Cig recognized the word for creek.

  “Follow me,” she quietly said.

  The field did as she told them because she was a natural leader—and they were having great sport.

  Cig lifted her head, feeling the cold air on her cheeks. Tom knew this territory. She did, too, but it sure didn’t look like this. There were forests where she knew miles of pasture. Once she hit the creek, though, she knew she wasn’t far from the edge of Shirley Plantation as she knew it. They were heading northwest.

  The hounds straggled out of the woods. She pursued, plunging into the creek, clambering up on the opposite bank. The field followed her. Soon they arrived at a huge pasture, one end marked by snake fencing.

  The sidecar ladies, as Cig thought of them, were nowhere in sight. Cig raised her hand to halt the group. Lionel rode past her.

  “Hold hard.” Command drenched her voice.

  Lionel halted, raised a bemused eyebrow and said, “Yes, your Highness.”

  Without missing a beat Cig shot back, “Better than your Lowness.”

  Abraham Boothrod guffawed and Margaret’s jaw hung on her ample bosom.

  Cig turned to the field. “If you follow me I promise you the hunt of your life.”

  Edward Hill, blood hot for the chase, held up his silver-headed crop. “We’ll follow you to the gates of Hell!”

  “You might have to.” She called over her shoulder for the hounds, in full cry again, stretched out their longs legs, eating up the ground. A flock of extremely fat turkeys flew up out of the edge of the woods. A horse in the rear shied, the rider hitting the turf with a thud.

  Cig soared over the snake fencing. Lionel, not to be ou”I’d one, followed suit although it wasn’t easy for him. Tom and Abraham leaned way back in their saddles to clear the chestnut rails. The rest of the field ran around the fence, costing them time.

  “Close up!” Cig instructed them.

  The tail hounds, clearly in sight, held steady on the line. The pack worked efficiently. Cig reined in and slowed to a trot behind the last tail hound. He wasn’t off course but something had caused him to slow down. He lifted his sensitive brown eyes to Cig then picked up speed.

  She could see Fitzroy, relaxed in the saddle, horn to his lips, up ahead. The hounds slowed a moment, then opened again with one collective cry. They swept into a bit of woods only to turn and charge right back out of them.

  Cig turned with them, galloping back in the direction from which they came. They wound up on the road where the sidecar ladies had been following. Without hesitating or slowing her pace Cig jumped the drainage ditch by the road, thundered by the ladies, one of whom—smart woman—had stood up in her stirrups, hat off, pointing in the direction of the fox.

  “Gray or red?” Cig asked as she blasted by.

  “Red!” came the resolute reply.

  They know their foxes, Cig thought to herself.

  She lost a few more riders as they attempted to negotiate the drainage ditch. Straight ahead squatted a stone fence, gate closed. She recognized neither the fence nor the gate but figured it must be the back entrance to a plantation with a lot of livestock.

  She checked over her shoulder; her brother and Lionel kept close. Daniel was falling behind. Abraham passed him. No horse in the field possessed Full Throttle’s speed, in her excitement she didn’t realize that this was the first time she’d thought of Tom as her brother.

  “If you can’t jump get the gate and close it when everyone is through,” she bellowed at Tom.

  “I’ll clear the fence if I have to jump it myself.”

  She laughed as Throttle lifted off over the fieldstone fence. My God, he feels good, she thought.

  Tom wrapped his hands in Helen’s mane, squeezed with all his might and the mare launched herself over. Tom flopped back a little but stayed on. Lionel, bold and supple, never flinched, nor did his horse, a solid roan, hunting fit. Abraham made it over as well.

  Daniel stopped, turned right and shouted to a groom to open the gate. This he did and the field barreled through, the thinning frost still heavy enough to hold down the dust. Daniel Boothrod stood in his stirrups to catch sight of the frontrunners.

  Edward Hill, panting by his left side, called out, “Daniel, are my eyes deceiving me?”

  “They’ve no fear!” Daniel replied.

  “That’s the way to live, by God.” Edward enviously smiled.

  “’Pon my soul.” Daniel laughed.

  Cig pushed her little band along another verdant pasture. The hounds abruptly stopped their music.

  A few confused yowls bespoke their frustration. Fitzroy blew on his big horn. The hounds gathered together then fanned out again.

  Cig held up her arm. The field knew enough by now not to run past her. She shifted in her saddle to see who’d survived. More than she’d anticipated.

  A tough bunch, she thought with pride.

  Edward and Daniel came alongside of her, breathing hard, happy for the check.

  Daniel, in particular, gasped. “Still as a statue, yes, still as a statue when you jump that animal. Magnifique!” He accented his French.

  “Thank you. Gentlemen, if you sit still for a moment I’m willing to bet another red fox is going to burst out”—she pointed to a gentle grade by the meadow that rolled toward the forest stream—“right over there. I believe our first sprinter has gone to ground and passed the baton.”

  Before they could comment, sure enough the hounds gave tongue. The strike hound, a spectacular compact bitch with tremendous drive, moved toward the forest.

  “Shall we?”

 
; Lionel nodded, catching his breath. Abraham and Tom exchanged glances then fell in behind her. Daniel floated off to the right hoping for sight of the fox. Margaret remained in the middle of the group, her legs clamped to Pollux’s broad sides.

  Lionel rode eight strides back. He knew better, now, than to crowd Pryor.

  They trotted along a thin slice of creek, the stones slick as patent leather. The hounds worked steadily, the terrain slowing them. Cig picked an easy spot to ford.

  She motioned to Tom. “How far to the river? A mile?”

  “Not even.”

  “Is it all wooded?”

  “Most ways,” Tom replied.

  “If we could head straight out we’d reach Ranke’s cornfield,” Abraham added.

  “Okay,” she said and smiled as he shook his head at her peculiar speech. “Reynard has lots of choices.”

  Full Throttle carefully picked his way through the woods. Eventually they reached the cornfield. The hounds fanned out into the field, the corn swaying as they moved through, their voices rising and falling. Fitzroy rode with them, his whippers-in spreading out on the sides.

  Cig reached a slight rise in the pasture along the cornfield. The group gathered on the hill. They waited about five minutes for the sidecar ladies to join them for they circled around the woods.

  Edward asked her, “Have we cornered Reynard?”

  Cig noticed his clear light eyes, kind eyes. “He’s having as much sport with us as we are with him. When he’s ready he’ll shoot out of that cornfield like a hot cannonball unless he’s got a den in there. Usually, though, a fox doesn’t want to live where we traffic.”

  “I don’t want to live where we traffic,” Edward replied.

  Daniel dabbed his forehead with his lace handkerchief. “Now, don’t decry rude Jamestown.” He mocked Edward’s voice.

  “You live there, Daniel” Edward jabbed at Daniel’s paunch.

  A sleek vixen, at a dogtrot, emerged from the end of the cornfield. With saucy eye she perused the humans and horses on the low hill. She considered them species of low degree.