The Fox Hunt (11 page)

Stevie loved her friends very dearly, and she never wanted anything to hurt their friendship, especially not her brothers. However much it bothered her that Lisa and Carole had gone behind her back to talk to her brothers, it was nothing compared with her astonishment that her friends would actually believe anything that threesome had said to them!

“And what did you tell them?” Stevie asked, realizing that she was at last getting to the bottom of this all.

“Everything,” Lisa said. “We explained the differences between a mock hunt and a real hunt and a drag hunt—you know, that kind of thing.”

Then it all came together for Stevie. The last thing in the world she wanted was to have to admit the whole thing to Max, but there was no way to put a pretty face on it. She’d blown the fox hunt for everybody in Horse Wise and Cross County just because of her silly feud with her brothers.

Reluctantly she rode over to where Max, Chester, and Mr. Baker were about to come to blows.

“I know what it is,” she said. The three men stopped talking to one another and turned to Stevie. “It’s all my fault, because my brothers and Veronica are angry with me, and this is their way of getting back.” Then, as fast as she could do it, because she didn’t want to prolong the agony, Stevie explained. She explained about how her brothers had learned about drag hunts, and that she’d seen Veronica there earlier that morning.

“I’m sure what she did was to take a bag of something that would draw the hounds and pull it behind her, probably on foot, but maybe with a bicycle. Can’t you just see her laying the trail across Mr. Baker’s porch and through the laundry yard?”

Max nodded sadly. “I guess I can,” he said. “And I guess I owe you an apology,” he said to Chester. “It’s not your hounds after all.”

“I knew there was something fishy about it all,” Chester said. “These hounds will always follow a good line—unless something distracts them, like a fresh drag.”

The look on Mr. Baker’s face right then told Stevie she was about to be formally disinvited to the Cross County hunt. She knew she deserved it, but it made her very sad.

“Would you excuse us for a moment, Stevie?” Max asked. “We need to talk.”

Sure they did. They had to talk about what kind of humiliation and punishment they were going to impose on Stevie. She turned Topside around and rode away from the other riders and the hounds who milled around the parking lot waiting for something to happen. This was a sad day for her.

While the three men conferred, Stevie watched the activities of the Emerson Circus, deciding she might as well get an eyeful now because there was no way her parents would take her or her brothers this year. Nor did they deserve to go.

That was sad, too. It was small consolation that she had a chance now to watch the elephants at work. Elephants were wonderful animals, so big, yet so graceful. A big old bull elephant was working to set up the tent. First he picked up a long pole and carried it to the center of the parking lot, where the circus’s roustabouts set it upright. Then, using the elephant to
tighten the lines, the roustabouts secured the pole well. The elephant then carried another pole for the workmen. It was really fun to watch, and Stevie thought she could have sat there all day until the wind shifted, and she got a noseful of the unpleasant part of the circus. Then she leaned forward and patted Topside on the neck. It was a good thing she liked to ride horses instead of elephants, she told the horse. “Imagine what it would be like to muck out an elephant’s stall.” Topside didn’t seem to think that was funny. Stevie laughed all by herself.

“Uh, Stevie, would you come over here?” Max called her.

That brought Stevie back from her thoughts of elephants to the reality of the ugly situation she’d created. Now she was about to find out what her fate was.

“We’ve had a little talk,” Max said. “We agree with you that this has come about because of your actions, and you know we have talked in the past about the problems with practical jokes.” He glared at her. However, Stevie thought there was just the tiniest hint of a twinkle in the glare. What was going on? “One thing we know about you, Stevie, is that if there’s a tricky problem, you are always more likely than anybody else to come up with a tricky solution. We’ll give you a shot here. Can you think of a way to salvage this situation? To get the hounds back to Cross County and off the
scent of the drag so that they can pick up the line of a fox? One chance to save yourself, Stevie. This is it.”

One thing she could always say about Max was that he was fair. He was giving her an opportunity to make it up to the other riders. She didn’t want to blow it. She looked around. Her friends were regarding her curiously. The hounds were still barking wildly. No help there. Then she looked at the elephant again, being led back to his holding pen now that all of the poles had been secured. That’s when it came to her.

“What if we mask the scent of the drag with a stronger, more frightening and unpleasant smell?” Stevie asked.

Max, Chester, and Mr. Baker followed Stevie’s eyes to the elephant.

Chester summed it up in one word.

“Ingenious,” he said.

Mr. Baker’s face lit up brightly. “Ah, yes!”

Max spoke to his colleagues. “Would you excuse us, please? Stevie and I have some fast-talking to do.” Together Max and Stevie rode over to the elephant trainer.

Fifteen minutes later, the hunt was on again, only this time in reverse. And this time it was being led not by a huntsman and a Master, but by an elephant. The pachyderm, Jumbo by name, lumbered slowly and steadily along the edge of the road leading back to
Cross County, switching from side to side, erasing the scent of the drag with each step while it left its own pungent odor.

The Junior Master and huntsman were assigned to ride on either side of the elephant while it trod along the highway. Lisa and Phil found themselves talking to Jumbo’s trainer, who sat on the elephant’s back, right behind his ears.

“I wouldn’t usually do this kind of thing, you know,” the man said. “But that girl—what’s her name? Johnny?—she was so convincing. I bet she could talk anybody into doing anything!” He’d gotten Stevie’s name wrong, Lisa thought, but he sure had gotten her personality right!

A
FTER COMPLETELY MASKING
the drag trail, there was one more little job Jumbo took on for the hunt. He helped Mrs. Baker put the poles back up in her laundry yard.

Then Chester led twenty-five hounds and forty riders into a nearby field, far enough from the farm so that the hounds wouldn’t be confused by the scent of the drag or of the elephant and into an area where they were, in fact, likely to pick up the scent of a fox.

This time everything was different. This time the hounds circled eagerly, not frantically. Chester watched proudly. He knew when things were going right. Soon enough, one of the hounds started barking loudly. Then all the others joined in.

“He’s got the line!” Chester announced. They were off—for real!

Stevie, Carole, Lisa, and Phil all rode together, the Master, the huntsman, and two whippers-in had a good excuse to stay together. Right there, too, was May. She was more than game and didn’t want to miss anything.

Lisa had been riding long enough to begin to be sort of matter-of-fact about it. She loved it, but it usually didn’t have the thrill that she remembered from her first few experiences. Today it had that thrill. Diablo seemed to feel the excitement and urgency of the hunt. A few of the horses were a little skittish around the hounds, but not Diablo. It was as if he understood the important part the hounds were playing in the fun. No matter what else was going on with him, his eyes never seemed to leave the pack of hounds who scurried forward through the field. Diablo wanted to be right there, in the middle of it all.

At first the hounds moved cautiously forward, sniffing the ground for the fox’s scent as they went. Then their heads rose, and they began running faster.

Lisa knew what that meant. It meant the scent of the fox was breast-high so that the hounds could smell it without putting their noses down. It also meant the scent was stronger, likely more recent. And finally, it meant that the horses were going to canter or gallop. She looked at her friends and saw that they understood
what was about to happen. Then she looked over her shoulder at the other riders. Some of them weren’t paying much attention to the pack of hounds and were just enjoying the ride. That was fine, up to a point. If most of the horses started cantering, all of them would soon enough, with or without their riders’ permission. At the very least, the riders needed to know.

Lisa tried raising an arm. Nobody noticed. She tried waving. That didn’t work, either. Then she tried calling out. There was no response. The trouble was that the riders were just having too much fun.

She was getting really concerned when Max came to her rescue. He pulled the horn out of his pocket and raised it to his lips. A few notes sounded, and everybody was looking at him.

“Prepare to canter!” he hollered.

And they did.

The hounds bolted then, racing across an open field and then down into a glen. The horses followed at an incredibly fast rate. Lisa tried to concentrate on the horse beneath her, carrying her across the field, but it was hard not to notice the thundering field of other horses that surrounded her. She glanced this way and that, trying to see everything at once, and then decided that the only thing she could possibly focus on was where she was going.

It was a good thing, too, because where she and everybody else was going was over a fence! The hounds
scooted over, under, and around it, but the horses wouldn’t have as many choices.

Lisa shortened Diablo’s reins and shifted her own weight forward and up in the stirrups. Diablo didn’t hesitate. He knew exactly what was expected of him, and Lisa knew how to tell him to do it. As they neared the fence, a low wooden divider, she rose in the saddle and leaned forward, giving Diablo as much rein as he would need. Keeping herself well balanced and her weight centered above his withers, she let the horse do what she had told him to do. His front legs rose up off the ground, and then she felt the powerful surge of his rear legs impelling them forward and upward. They lifted off—two beings working as a single unit—and seemed to float over the fence. Diablo’s front legs struck the ground first, and then his rear ones followed, seeming to be cantering even before Lisa realized they had landed. It was as if the horse hadn’t missed a beat of the gait. Lisa sighed with pleasure. She had never felt anything so wonderful in her life as jumping with Diablo. From that moment on, what she most wanted to do on her fox hunt was to jump. Fortunately for her, it appeared that the fox was cooperating. The hounds led the riders over six more jumps before temporarily losing the scent.

Lisa wasn’t sorry for a little time to rest while the hounds figured out what had happened to their quarry.
She’d discovered that exhilaration could be exhausting.

“I can’t believe how much fun this is,” Carole said, drawing close to Lisa, Stevie, and Phil. “But I’m having a problem.”

“What is it?” Stevie asked, concerned.

Carole took a deep breath. “Well,” she said. “As you, my best friends, know, I’ve been unable to decide what I want to be when I grow up. I can’t decide among being a veterinarian, a show rider, a breeder, or a trainer.”

“So?”

“Now I have to add fox hunter to the list,” Carole said. “That’s going to make it even tougher to decide!”

“Poor girl!” Stevie teased. “What a decision you’re going to have to make
in ten years
!”

“So, in the meantime, you’re going to have to spend all your spare time trying each of them—over and over again,” Phil suggested.

“Isn’t that just terrible?” Carole said, trying to hide her smile.

Stevie clapped her on the back. “It’s a tough job, but somebody’s got to do it,” she said.

“For my part, I think I’ve made a decision,” Lisa said. Her friends looked at her. “I want to jump horses—specifically Diablo.”

“Oh, I forgot to mention that when I recommended
him to you, didn’t I?” Carole asked. “He is a wonderful jumper, so he’s perfect for fox hunting.”

“It’s like flying.”

“That’s the way good jumping should be,” Carole said. She patted Starlight’s neck as she spoke. Carole thought Starlight was a great jumper, certainly a very strong one, if not quite as smooth as Diablo. She didn’t want her horse to have hurt feelings.

“Don’t worry,” Stevie said, seeing what she was doing. “He may appear to be nearly human sometimes, but I don’t think he can understand what we’re saying.” Starlight lifted his head and seemed to give Stevie a dirty look as if she’d just insulted him.

Lisa and Phil laughed. So did Carole. Stevie wondered briefly if Carole had given Starlight a signal with the reins that made the horse look at her, but it didn’t really matter. It had been funny, and she didn’t mind being teased a little. She pretended to sulk and looked away from her friends.

It was a good thing she did because just at that moment, she spotted some motion in the grass about a quarter of a mile across the field. She squinted and shaded her eyes, wondering if the bright sunshine was playing tricks with her vision.