The Fox Hunt (2 page)

After she and Phil cleared the table, Mrs. Lake excused them and told them to be on their way to Pine Hollow. After all, she didn’t want the two of them to be late for the meeting.

Stevie couldn’t get out of the door fast enough.

It was a cool evening. Pine Hollow was a ten-minute walk from Stevie’s house, and both of them were glad nobody had offered to drive them over. They would get to be alone for a few minutes.

“I’m sorry about that—” Stevie began, slipping her hand into Phil’s.

He squeezed her hand affectionately. “Always remember, Stevie, I’ve got sisters where you’ve got brothers. Sisters can be just as mean and vindictive as brothers. Chad, Alex, and Michael don’t bother me at all.”

“Well, they bother me a lot and you can bet I’m going to get even with them for that! I mean the teasing is one thing and is usually fair, but they were being downright rude. Imagine making such fun of fox hunting!”

“A lot of people do,” Phil reminded her. “A lot of people think it’s an odd sport.”

“Then they just don’t understand it, do they?”

“Nope, they don’t understand it at all,” Phil agreed.

“So I suppose we just better keep it a secret to ourselves, right?”

He winked at her. “Sure thing,” he said. “Only it’s going to be hard when we’re riding across people’s fields and backyards in hot pursuit of a fox, isn’t it?”

“We’ll do it on tiptoe,” Stevie suggested. “They’ll never know we’re there.”

Phil laughed. Stevie liked it better when the two of them laughed about fox hunting together than when other people, like her brothers, were laughing at them.

It was exciting to see the crowd in Max Regnery’s office. Max and his mother, Mrs. Reg, ran Pine Hollow and the Pony Club, Horse Wise. It seemed that all of Horse Wise was there, but all of Cross County was there, too, along with Phil’s instructor, Mr. Baker. Stevie and Phil waved to Carole and Lisa and grabbed spots near them on the floor. Everybody was jammed and crammed into Max’s office. Nobody wanted to miss a word.

Mr. Baker spoke first. He explained that the two main purposes of a mock hunt were to have fun and to learn about hunting. Riders would be assigned jobs. One would be the fox, another rider would be the Master of the Hounds, one would be the huntsman, several would be whippers-in, quite a few would be hounds. The rest would be what he called “the field.” Then Mr. Baker took a few minutes to explain what
the Master, the huntsman, and the whippers-in were supposed to do. Stevie listened intently as the instructor told them that in a real hunt, the person who was totally in charge of everything except the actual tracking of the fox was the Master. The huntsman was in charge of tracking. The whippers-in were there to help the huntsman and help keep the hounds on the track. The best way to learn about how the real hunt was going to work was to have the mock hunt be as real as possible.

“And now Max has a few words for you,” Mr. Baker said, turning the meeting over to Max.

Max explained to the riders that they were expected to be at Pine Hollow by seven-thirty on Saturday morning, that the hunt would take place beginning at eight-thirty and they would need every minute of that hour for tacking up and final organizing. He went over the dress requirements and the equipment everybody should have with them. He also explained that he and Mr. Baker would assign the roles of hounds for the hunt. “We’ll appoint a Master, and that job will go to the person who has shown the most work on learning about fox hunts. We’ll also choose a huntsman, a few of the whippers-in, and someone devious to be the fox,” he said.

Max continued. “Now, there’s one final thing I can’t say too often, so I’m going to say it now, and I’m going to say it again and again until I’m sure all of you know
it. A fox hunt—even a mock one—is something we can do only with the permission of the landowners around Pine Hollow and Cross County. Mr. Baker and I have spent some time making arrangements with the farmers around Pine Hollow and his stable so that our hunts aren’t confined to our own land. We will be riding on other people’s property with their specific permission, and we must never forget that we are their guests. We will ride only where we are permitted, when we are permitted. We will leave all gates exactly as we found them; we will leave the land exactly as we found it. Anyone who violates these rules of conduct, who goes on land where we are not welcome, who leaves gates open or trash behind, will be dismissed from these hunts immediately. There will be no exceptions. Am I making myself clear?”

All around the room, the young riders nodded. One of the first things young riders had to learn was where they could ride and where they couldn’t. If a farmer or landowner permitted riding on his or her property, it was always essential to be a courteous and considerate guest.

“Any questions?” Max asked.

Veronica diAngelo raised her hand. Stevie grimaced, wondering what she was going to say. Veronica was just about her least-favorite person at Pine Hollow. She was a rich girl who was very selfish and much
more concerned with how she was dressed than how she was riding.

“Yes, Veronica?”

“Isn’t there traditionally a party after a hunt?” she asked. It was typical of Veronica to be thinking about a party instead of about the hunt.

“I was just getting to that,” Max said. “Horse Wise will be hosting a hunt breakfast following the mock hunt on Saturday. We’ll have our organizing meeting for that on Tuesday after riding class. Please plan to be here. That’s all for now. I’ll see my riders on Tuesday, and we’ll welcome everybody back here on Saturday for the mock hunt. Until then, well, tallyho!”

Just hearing the word, silly as it sounded, made Stevie feel the excitement of the upcoming hunt. She was thrilled by the idea of the chase—the ultimate game of hide-and-seek—riding wildly across the rolling Virginia countryside, under branches, over streams and obstacles, free of paths, accompanied by friends. It was going to be wonderful and exciting, and she could hardly wait.

First, however, there was something else she had to take care of. When she’d said good night to Phil, Lisa, and Carole, she set her mind to her next task: revenge.

S
TEVIE HARDLY SLEPT
a wink that night or the next. Her mind was so filled with wonderful ideas of things to do to her brothers that she simply didn’t have time for sleep. By the time Monday morning came, her plan was complete. Her goal was to humiliate her brothers totally without letting them know—for sure—who was responsible. The only way to do that was to do it where they would never find out. For that, Stevie chose the girls’ room at her school.

Stevie and her brothers all went to a private school in Willow Creek called Fenton Hall. A lot of the girls who rode at Pine Hollow also went to Fenton Hall, including Veronica diAngelo, a fact Stevie preferred to ignore most of the time. That Monday morning as she walked to school, putting the finishing touches on her
plot, she particularly tried to ignore it. It wasn’t easy, though, since Veronica was walking right next to her, talking a mile a minute about something Stevie was sure she didn’t care the slightest bit about.

“All the best people do it, you know,” Veronica said. “I mean, I’ve been trying to convince Max to do this for years.”

“What are you talking about?” Stevie asked.

“Why, the fox hunt, of course. I mean, it’s been a tradition among the finest families in Virginia since colonial days.…” Veronica let the thought hang.

Stevie groaned inwardly. Veronica was actually a pretty good rider, but her interest in riding ran much more toward what “the finest families” did than toward the hard work and fun involved. She cared more that her outfit matched the saddle pad worn by her purebred Arabian mare, Garnet, than she did that Garnet was comfortable with the bit she’d chosen for her. She cared a lot more about her horse’s pedigree, which was considerable, than she did about her own performance. As Stevie considered these facts about Veronica, she once again concluded that she really despised Veronica.

“Finest families?” Stevie echoed innocently. “Well, I guess that lets you out. After all, you just come from a tiny little family with one spoiled daughter. In my family, we’ve got four fine children. That’s got to make us a fine family, doesn’t it?”

Veronica gave her a withering look and then began walking faster to catch up to a group of girls walking ahead of Stevie. Stevie sighed with relief. Veronica was a complete pain, and every time Stevie could put her in her place, she was pleased. Today, she thought, was going to be a wonderful day in spite of the fact that she hadn’t quite completed the reading assignment for English and absolutely didn’t understand the word problems her math teacher had assigned over the weekend, so they weren’t done at all. She’d find a way around those trivial issues because anyone who was as good at revenge as Stevie was could surely talk two teachers out of detention!

It turned out that Stevie’s English teacher was sick. In an instant, all of her problems were solved. Instead of English, she had a study hall. In the first place, that gave her an extra day to finish the reading assignment—plus the additional reading that was assigned. It also gave her time to look over the word problems, which, when she actually
looked
at them, didn’t seem so tough. Finally, it gave her time to put the finishing touches on a few little signs and then make an extended visit to the girls’ room.

“I’m feeling a little funny in my stomach,” she said to the study-hall monitor.

“Do you want to go to the nurse’s office?”

“No, just to the girls’ room. Okay?”

“Should I come with you?” the nice woman asked.

That, of course, was the last thing Stevie needed or wanted. “No, no, I’ll be fine. I may just be a little while.…”

The woman smiled. “Take your time,” she said.

That, of course, was the first thing Stevie needed and wanted. She practically flew out of the study hall.

From her backpack, she brought out the signs she’d typed neatly on her mother’s computer the night before, when she told her mother she was working on her English assignment.

ATTENTION ALL NINTH-GRADE GIRLS

Stevie had used some of her study-hall time to draw a picture of Chad’s lacrosse stick, before and after, at the bottom of the page. She thought she’d done a pretty good job of it. She took some tape out of her backpack and posted it high on the mirror where everybody would see it. She was pretty confident it
would stay there all day long. The teachers all used a different girls’ room; her note wouldn’t be discovered until the cleaning people got there at night.

Next, it was Alex’s turn. That was easier, though there was a good chance one of the girls would tear the note down. It informed anybody who cared to read it that Alexander Lake was undecided which one of his classmates—Stevie’s classmates, too—he liked best, Andrea or Martha. He was currently leaning toward Andrea, but Martha
might
be asked to the upcoming middle-school dance because Alex had been talking about how great she’d looked doing jump shots in basketball the other day. Stevie was especially proud of the part about the jump shots. It was absolutely true, too. Alex hadn’t been able to stop talking about it at dinner on Friday.

Finally, Stevie had a note for all the fourth-grade girls. It told anybody who cared to read it that her little brother, Michael, wore Spiderman underwear.

Just as she was zipping the pocket on her backpack and preparing to return to the study hall and her math word problems, the girls’-room door opened, and in walked her least favorite classmate, Veronica diAngelo.

“Well, hello,” Veronica said sweetly and insincerely. Stevie grunted in response. Part of Stevie wanted to flee from the girls’ room. Another part of her really wanted to know how Veronica would react to her anti-brother
plot. She hesitated for a second, weighing the benefits, and then decided to wait. She turned on the water and washed her hands, very carefully.

Veronica read every word of all three of Stevie’s notes. She couldn’t contain her surprise. When she was done, she looked at Stevie, who was by then meticulously drying her hands with a paper towel.

“Girlfriends’ initials carved into a hockey stick? Spiderman underwear? Is this what you meant by describing yours as a fine family?” Veronica smirked. Then, without waiting for a response, because none was possible, she brushed past Stevie and out into the hall.

Stevie fumed. It was one thing for her to dump on her brothers and make fun of them and try to wreak revenge on them. It was another thing, entirely, when Veronica diAngelo did it. Stevie would get even with her, too.

Four girls were going into the bathroom as Stevie left it. It gave her great pleasure to hear gasps and giggles from the foursome a few seconds later. Her scheme was working already.