Tivington Nott (16 page)

‘He’s okay . . . I think,’ I say, that nervous snigger slipping out again. If we don’t go soon, however, Kabara’s going to take off anyway. What a sight that’ll be! Something else for Cheyne and Mrs Grant to remember me by. The fastest second-horseman in history! And a few other flighty ones might decide to bolt with us.

‘Don’t try anything clever,’ the Tiger says, sounding quite concerned—for the horse I suppose.

‘Okay, Boss. Nothing clever.’

‘You’re not to think you can follow Harry Cheyne.’ He’s worried about my good judgement in these matters.

‘I promise.’

‘If you want a pilot, pick someone steady who knows the ground. Charley White’s the man for you to watch.’

‘Right!’ Who’s Charley White?

‘Whatever you do, don’t foul the line! Keep your place and hunt!’

‘Okay.’ Why don’t I tell him? Right now before it’s too late? Why don’t I just yell it at him?

He’s the master. He should know.

There’s a whimpering cry up ahead, then the whole pack opens strongly on the hot scent of the stag. The amazing sound of over sixty hounds all howling and yelling at the same time. A moment of confusion, with some going in the wrong direction, and we’re off down the hill, crashing out over the poor hedge of the stubble-field and pouring over the steep decline beyond. It’s a race to the rocks and the water below! A cavalry charge! Panic! Every man for himself! A solid pounding mass of riders hurtling after the dogs. We couldn’t stop if we wanted to. Where’s the enemy?

We hit the water in a compact body and lunge blindly for the other bank. There’s some floundering and staggering going on among the rocks—someone down I think—but Perry and his hounds are cleanly away, the leaders up already and crossing the road just above Mrs Allen’s car. She’s in the perfect spot. Not another car in sight. It looks steep up there. The youngest hounds are stretching ahead, competing for the lead, their voices mad and out of control with the desire to go. Sorting themselves out.

Now that he’s been released Kabara’s moving well. He’s watching his step, making intelligent decisions and picking a good line through the crowd of hazards. He sidesteps, lunges and leaps and we make it through the water. A hundred yard steep upward pull and we cross the road, losing ground rapidly to the leading hounds, and we charge into a chest-high stand of bracken, picking a twisting sheep path. The stag must have flown over this stuff, hardly touching it. The dogs have disappeared. A riderless horse tries to overtake us, crashing dangerously alongside, eyes wild, straining and struggling up the hill, not seeing where he’s going, then clipping Kabara’s heel and going down with a terrific crash. As if he’s been shot. Spewing up a shower of bracken chips and wet earth. But we’re out of range. Going hard. Kabara taking the slope with great energy. Loving it. Putting his strength into this hill. Ducking and weaving around the sharp twists and turns of the meandering sheep track. I’ve no time to check on who they are, but there are other riders close by; intent, silent, working at this big hill, making hard for the rolling ground on top. The crying of the hounds has settled almost to a melody and I glimpse them every now and then appearing and disappearing through breaks in the stands of bracken, a snaking line of black and white going unchecked for the summit. The scent must be burning on this drying ground after last night’s rain.

A cooler breeze in my face makes me look up, and we’re coming over the steep flank at last and on to the top. Kabara’s drawing breath in great gasps but showing no sign of slowing. We burst out of the last band of bracken and gallop on to the sure, firm going of the low windswept heather and whortleberry—hurtleberry! There’s a dozen others with us and we charge for the skyline, as if we’re obeying someone’s orders, the wind rushing against us, the vast distant rolling hills of the upland moor coming into view. But at our feet, almost a canyon, between us and those remote heights, is the deep wooded valley of the Exe. And there they are! Perry’s red coat! And ahead of him the trailing line of hounds. Flying down along a steep spur and singing and calling and blowing his horn; and the dizzy drop below theml There’s no turning back now. Here we go. Death or glory!

Out on my left someone yells, a challenging call, or a warning to get out of the way, and a blood-red horse pounds through to the lead. No sign of hesitation there! It’s Harbringdon going full tilt for the valley! What a sight! His rush draws us in behind him, giving us a lead we can’t refuse. He’s our leader and we’re a mad tribe of wild savages galloping headlong down the narrow spur into the peaceful valley below! If we fall we’ll roll forever!

I’ve never done
this
before.

We haul in and string out single file, as the backbone of the spur narrows, shelving off steeply each side, weathered here and there to the bare red rock. Far below us, Perry and the hounds have disappeared into the woods. A minute later and we crash down the last, almost vertical, incline with most of our mounts sitting down and slithering on their haunches, forelegs stuck out and propping. But not one of us gets off and leads by the reins. It must be the way we feel. Reckless. A band of outlaws. A raiding party from the hills! Leaping and sliding off the final steep bank, through an oak coppice that whips and lashes our faces, we plunge into the river. Straight across and out the other side on to a grassy flat, lunging through breast-high water. The lead pulls up.

What now? Where did Perry go? Not a sign of him or a sound of his dogs either.

The last dripping horse clambers out of the river and we all stand there listening, or trying to, the horses grunting and blowing and wheezing, shaking themselves and rattling the gear, too winded to stand still. We are uncertain. Have we come the wrong way? If it were up to
me
from here, I wouldn’t know which way to go. But
they’re
sorting something out. Harry Cheyne’s agreed to head off downstream while Harbringdon and a few others take a look upstream, when Tolland trots into view through the trees, looking unconcerned, his mount considerably fresher than ours, despite the fact that he’s somehow got here ahead of us. But where did he come from? He’s after a couple of hounds that have cast down the water, he says, touching his cap to Harbringdon—no mockery in his acknowledgement—and trotting on, calling over his shoulder that Perry and the rest of the pack have cast up the water on a sure thing. Something about a huddle of startled sheep being spotted in that direction.

So that’s the way we go. Trotting along single file again, by a riverside track through the dense thicket of trees. There must be nearly twenty of us altogether now, though not all from the original hilltop ‘band’. Quite a few others came down the spur behind us. The Tiger was among them, and the girl on the buckjumper too. Mrs Grant, I noticed, was with us all the way. We’re moving quickly, no one talking or wasting any time. We break out of the trees after a hundred yards or so and cross a grassy glade—the sort of hidden place I love to discover on my solitary explorations—flanked and protected by the hill on one side and by the river on the other, it is sunlit and secluded, entirely enclosed by these coppiced oaks. Normally it must be a little world of its own. But today I’m with this platoon of cavalry trooping through. Keep your heads down till we’ve gone. We may not be friendlies!

Kabara’s ears jerk forward and there’s the horn! The hounds begin to speak too. They must be on to him! It sounds like they’re about half a mile ahead. We speed up, diving into the whippy oaks again, everyone watching out, getting into a fast canter, ducking and weaving along the narrow path. No chance of passing here. Though look at that! There goes Harry Cheyne, cutting off to the right on a diagonal, spurring his horse and crashing through the untracked coppice like a charging beast. And he’s right too. He must have picked it early. There is only a thin band of scrub remaining between him and open ground in that direction. I can see the purplish grey of the hill ahead of him from here.

We stick with the track and emerge from the trees some distance behind him, scattering for the hill ourselves. But he’s snatched the lead from Harbringdon. He takes an extremely steep line, further to the right than us. Then, having got up some way, he cuts back along the inside slope of the hill on the precarious thread of a sheep track, which heads in to the narrow neck of the combe above us. He’s obviously hoping to make a short cut across to the first terrace on the farther spur, and so get on to the stag’s foil that way. And sure enough, there’s Perry on the skyline now, sitting down and fairly cantering up the steep incline, just going in to the terrace that Cheyne’s making for! Cheyne’s guessed it right, but will he get to it? He must negotiate the head of the combe first, round the sharp inside elbow of it, and from here that looks dangerously boulder-strewn and steeper than the roof of a house. One slip there and he’ll be down here again! None of us tries to follow him. But if he makes it he’ll be almost up with Perry.
If
he makes it! His voice floats down to us from the hill, urging that big grey horse along as he gets into the slippery angle of it. Moor sheep, tracking along single file, have bunched up as they reached the rocks and have poached the ground, creating a mud trap just this side of them. A horrible spot to be sitting on the back of a mettlesome horse! If that grey refuses there’s no room for him to turn round and retreat from it. It’s no wonder the Tiger said not to follow Harry Cheyne! He’s out of my sight for several seconds. I can hear him swearing but I’m too busy riding the hill myself to keep watch.

As soon as I get the chance I glance over that way. And there he is! Clambering out just above the boulders. With sound turf, by the look of it, ahead of him all the way to the terrace on the farther spur. Almost a flat run to get there from where he is. And the rest of us still with a stiff head-on climb to reach that spot.

What a manoeuvre!

Struggling upward, it soon becomes obvious that this hill is more massive and imposing altogether than the one we crossed to get into the valley. Except where the ground has been broken by sheep, beneath the hooves of our mounts there’s a secure footing, a springy turf of tough ground-grasses with, increasingly in dense tussocks as we get higher, the coarse purple-flowering flying bent again—that primitive species which the Tiger and I first encountered early this morning when we came over the hill above Wiveliscombe. The real Exmoor grass, now in its late summer finery. The higher slopes above us must be the first of those great rolling undulations of open country that we saw from the peak back there. As well as being more massive, the hill is deceptive too, being not a continuous even upward slope, but presenting us rather with a series of steep inclines that level off abruptly in to terraces, or saddles, so that as we breast the upper bulge of each, with nothing visible but the blue sky above us, we keep thinking we’ve reached the real summit, only to be confronted by yet another mass of hill towering above us.

After what must be several hundred feet of this, the sheer toil of it begins to dishearten even some of the strong ones. Finisher sticks with Kabara for a surprising distance, the Tiger urging him to his best effort, no doubt measuring the gelding against this splendid stallion, but finally being forced to drop back, sobbing for breath. He’s not on his own in that. A good deal more than half the field are knocked out by this gruelling stretch and they drop out one by one along the length of the hill, forming a scattering—like the remnants of a defeated army—toiling up the slope. Many riders get off and attempt to lead their mounts, but soon find that the smooth leather soles of their riding boots, giving no grip at all against the steep grassy slope, make leading a nearly impossible task. Some of them stop, no doubt wondering if there isn’t an easier way of doing it, or maybe even thinking about giving up altogether. Looking back I can see the Tiger. Not much chance of
him
getting off. He’s standing in his stirrups, leaning forward over the neck of Finisher, one hand gripping the thick mane, the horse lurching doggedly upward. He stops for a breather as he reaches a terrace. The Tiger will do it by good management.

Ahead of me I can’t actually
see
anyone. Though, apart from Perry and the hounds, I know Cheyne and Harbringdon, are up there somewhere. And I think Mrs Grant and one or two others might have got an early break on me, while I was preoccupied waiting for Harry Cheyne and his grey horse to fall off the rocks. Kabara’s reduced to a rolling, lunging stagger by the time we come over the final crest, gasping for his air but not thinking of giving up, laying back his ears instead and snorting with an aggressive desire to get the hill behind him.

One minute we’re still struggling up this seemingly endless series of hills, and the next we’re there. Out on the open upland, the landscape dropping away from us in gentle undulations, falling, then rising and falling again as far as the eye can see. I’ve never approached the moor in this way before and for a moment I forget the hunt, gazing over this wonderful sudden prospect. Kabara’s chest is heaving and he is content to stand.

Way past the high distant cairn on Dunkery Beacon, even beyond the moor and across the Bristol Channel, I can make out the coast of Wales. And beyond that, a final backdrop, the remote dark shapes of the Black Mountains of Glamorgan, grey shadows through this summer haze, mysterious and foreign. No way of getting there from here. I wonder what’s there? I wouldn’t mind going some day. Across the water. Just to have a look. There is a cool northwesterly breeze blowing steadily into our faces. I can smell the Atlantic.

Kabara is extremely fit and recovers his wind within a minute. He begins to look around at once for more action. Restless. Distracting me from my day-dreaming.
He
hasn’t forgotten we’re hunting, nor the other horses ahead of him. I get the feeling he doesn’t much like the idea of that red stallion being out there. He wants to go.

But which way?

There’s not a living soul in sight. Where are they all? They’ve vanished. The vast sweep of wild moorland before us is still and empty and silent. Not a thing. Not even a tree or a house or a road breaking the natural undulations of the hills. No startled birds flying up. Nothing obvious. They can’t possibly have run to the horizon in that time. They must be hidden from our sight, down in one of the draining chines which I know cleave off in all directions from this top country. These heights have deceived me before into thinking I could ride straight across from one peak to another, only to find between them a deep wooded cleft snaking down to the valley below and barring my way. The moor is riddled with such puzzling seams, hidden, difficult places, where the gentle gradients of the open high country fall away abruptly into deep water-worn and thickly wooded combes, scrub and rocks in places, making them inaccessible to horses. The hunt could be entangled in any one of them by now. But which one?