"Sure we do." The two cats grinned in unison.

"I could run after them. I could catch up and show my stuff."

"And have a whipper-in on your b.u.t.t." Pewter laughed, mentioning the bold outriders responsible for seeing that hounds behaved.

"Wouldn't be on my b.u.t.t. Would be on a hound's," Tucker smugly replied. "I think Mom should whip-in. She'd be good at it. She's got hound sense, you know, but only because I taught her everything she knows-about canines."

"Pin a rose on you," Pewter sarcastically replied.

Tucker swept her ears back for a second, then swept them forward. "You don't know a thing about hunting unless it's mice and you aren't doing so hot on that front. And then there's the bluejay who dive-bombs you, gets right in front of you, Pewter, and you can't grab him."

"Oh, I'd like to see you tangle with that bluejay. He'd peck your eyes out, mutt." Pewter's temper flared.

"Hey, they hit a line right at the creek bed." Mrs. Murphy, a keen hunter of all game, trotted out of the barn, past Poptart and Gin Fizz, angry at not hunting themselves. She leapt onto the fence, positioning herself on a corner post.

Tucker scrambled, slid around the corner of the paddock, then sat down. Pewter, with far less enthusiasm, climbed up on a fence post near Mrs. Murphy.

"Tally Ho!" Tucker bounded up and down on all fours.

"That's the Tutweiler fox. He'll lead them straight across the meadows and dump them about two miles away. He always runs through the culvert there at the entrance to the Tutweiler farm, then jumps on the zigzag fence. I don't know why they can't get his scent off the fence but they don't." Mrs. Murphy enjoyed watching the unfolding panorama.

"How do you know so much?" Tucker kept bouncing.

"Because he told me."

"When?"

"When you were asleep, you dumb dog. I hunt at night sometimes. By myself since both of you are the laziest slugs the Great Cat in the Sky ever put on earth."

"Hey, look at Harry. She took that coop in style." Pewter admired her mother's form over fences.

"She would have taken it better with me," a very sour Gin Fizz grumbled. "Why she bothers with Tomahawk, I'll never know. He's too rough at the trot and he gets too close to the fence."

As Gin was now quite elderly, in his middle twenties, but in great shape, the other animals knew not to disagree with him.

Poptart, the young horse Harry was bringing along, respectfully kept quiet. A big mare with an easy stride, she couldn't wait for the day when she'd be Harry's go-to hunter. She listened to Gin because he knew the game.

As the animals watched, Miranda drove up with church ladies in tow. She cooked a hunt breakfast for Harry once a year and Harry made a nice donation to her Church of the Holy Light. Each lady emerged from the church van carrying plates of food, bowls of soup, baskets of fresh-baked breads and rolls. Although called a breakfast, hunters usually don't get to eat until twelve or one in the afternoon, so the selection of food ranged from eggs to roasts to biscuits, breads, and all manner of ca.s.seroles.

The enticing aroma of honey-cured Virginia ham reached Tucker's delicate nostrils. She forgot to be upset about the hounds. Her determination to trail the hounds wavered. Her left shoulder began to lean toward the house.

"I bet Miranda needs help," Tucker said in her most solicitous tone.

"Sure." Murphy laughed at her while observing Sam Mahanes lurch over a coop. "That man rides like a sack of potatoes."

Sam was followed by Dr. Larry Johnson, who rode as his generation was taught to ride: forward and at pace. Larry soared over the coop, top hat not even wobbling, big grin on his clean, open face.

"Amazing." Pewter licked a paw, rubbing it behind her ears.

"Larry?" Murphy wondered.

"Yes. You know humans would be better off if they didn't know arithmetic. They count their birthdays and it weakens their mind. You are what you are. Like us, for instance." Pewter out of the corner of her eye saw Tucker paddle to the back door. "Do you believe her?"

"She can't help it. Dogs." Murphy shrugged. "You were saying?"

"Counting." Pewter's voice boomed a bit louder than she had antic.i.p.ated, scaring Poptart for a minute. "Sorry, Pop. Okay, look at you and me, Mrs. Murphy. Do we worry about our birthdays?"

"No. Oh boy, there goes Little Mim. She just blew by Mother. That'll set them off. Ha." Murphy relished that discussion, since Harry hated to be pa.s.sed in the hunt field.

"Tomahawk's too slow." Gin Fizz, disgruntled though he may have been, was telling the truth. "She needs a Thoroughbred. Of course, Little Mim can buy as many hunters as she wants and the price is irrelevant. Mom has to make her own horses. She does a good job, I think." Gin loved Harry.

"But I'm only half a Thoroughbred," Poptart wailed. "Does that mean we'll be stuck in the rear?"

Gin Fizz consoled the youngster. "No. You can jump the moon. As the others fall by the wayside, you'll be going strong as long as you take your conditioning seriously. But on the flat, well, yes, you might get pa.s.sed. Don't worry. You'll be fine."

"I don't want to be pa.s.sed," the young horse said fiercely.

"n.o.body does." Gin Fizz laughed.

"Am I going to get to finish my thought or what?" Pewter snarled. She liked horses but herbivores bored her. Gra.s.s eaters. How could they eat gra.s.s? She only ate gra.s.s when she needed to throw up.

"Sorry." Gin smiled.

"As I was saying," Pewter declaimed. "Humans count. Numbers. They count money. They count their years. It's a bizarre obsession with them. So a human turns thirty and begins to fret. A little fret. Turns forty. Bigger. Is it not the dumbest thing? How you feel is what matters. If you feel bad, it doesn't matter if you're fifteen. If you feel fabulous like Larry, what's seventy-five? Stupid numbers. I really think they should dump the whole idea of birthdays. They wouldn't know any better then. They'd be happier."

"They'd find a way to screw it up." Murphy looked over at her gray friend. "They fear happiness like we fear lightning. I don't understand it. I accept it, though."

"They're so worried about something bad happening that they make it happen. I truly believe that." Pewter, for all her concentration on food and luxury, was an intelligent animal.

"Yeah, I think they do that all the time and don't know it. They've got to give up the idea that they can control life. They've got to be more catlike."

"Or horselike." Gin smiled wryly.

"They've got to eat some meat, Gin. I mean they're omnivores," Pewter replied.

"I'm not talking about food, I'm talking about att.i.tude. Look at us. We have good food, a beautiful place to live, and someone to love and we love her. It's a perfect life. Even if we didn't have a barn to live in, it's a perfect life. I don't think horses were born with barns anyway. Harry needs to think more like a horse. Just go with the flow." Gin used an old term from his youth.

"Uh-yeah," Pewter agreed.

Harry may not have gone with the flow but she certainly followed her fox. Just as Mrs. Murphy predicted, the Tutweiler fox bolted straightaway. Two miles later he scurried under a culvert, hopped onto a zigzag fence to disappear, ready to run another day.

The hounds picked up a fading scent but that fox didn't run as well as the Tutweiler fox. He dove into his den. After three hours of glorious fun, the field turned for home.

Harry quickly cleaned up Tomahawk, turning him out with Poptart and Gin Fizz, who wanted to know how the other horses behaved on the hunt.

Her house overflowed with people, reminding her of her childhood, because her mother and father had loved to entertain. She figured most people came because of Mrs. Hogendobber's cooking. The driveway, lined with cars all the way down to the paved road, bore testimony to that. Many of the celebrants didn't hunt, but the tradition of hunt breakfast was, whoever was invited could come and eat whether they rode or not.

Bobby Minifee and Booty Weyman attended, knowing they would be welcome. The Minifees were night hunters so Bobby would pick a good hillock upon which to observe hounds. Night hunters did just that, hunted at night on foot. Usually they chased racc.o.o.ns but most hunters enjoyed hunting, period, and Bobby and Booty loved to hear the hounds.

Sam Mahanes had parted company with his horse at a creek bed and didn't much like Bruce Buxton reminding him of that fact.

Big Mim Sanburne declared the fences were much higher when she was in her twenties and Little Mim, out of Mother's earshot, remarked, "Must have been 1890."

Everyone praised Miranda Hogendobber, who filled the table with ham biscuits, corn bread, smoked turkey, venison in currant sauce, scrambled eggs, deviled eggs, pickled eggs, pumpernickel quite fresh, raw oysters, salad with arugula, blood oranges, mounds of almond cake, a roast loin of pork, cheese grits and regular grits, potato cakes with applesauce, cherry pie, apple pie, devil's food cake, and, as always, Mrs. Hogendobber's famous cinnamon buns with an orange glaze.

Cynthia Cooper, off this Sat.u.r.day, ate herself into a stupor, as did Pewter, who couldn't move from the arm of the sofa.

Tussie Logan and Randy Sands milled about. Because they lived together people a.s.sumed they were lovers but they weren't. They didn't bother to deny the rumors. If they did it would only confirm what everyone thought. Out of the corner of her eye, Tussie observed Sam.

Tucker snagged every crumb that hit the floor. Mrs. Murphy, after four delicious oysters, reposed, satiated, in the kitchen window. Eyes half closed, she dozed off and on but missed little.

"Where's Fair today?" Bruce Buxton asked Harry.

"Conference in Leesburg at the Marion Dupont Scott Equine Medical Center. He hates to miss any cooking of Mrs. Hogendobber's and the Church of the Holy Light but duty called."

"I think I would have been less dutiful." Bruce laughed.

"Mrs. H.," Susan Tucker called out. "You said you and the girls had practiced 'John Peel.'"

"And so we have." A flushed, happy Miranda held up her hands, the choir ladies gathered round, and she blew a note on the pitch pipe. They burst into song about a famous nineteenth-century English foxhunter, a song most kids learn in second grade. But the choir gave it a special resonance and soon the a.s.semblage joined in on the chorus.

Mrs. H., while singing, pointed to Larry Johnson, who came and stood beside her. The choir silenced as he sang a verse in his clear, lovely tenor and then everyone boomed in on the chorus again.

After the choir finished, groups sporadically sang whatever came into their heads, including a medley of Billy Ray Cyrus songs, Cole Porter, and various nursery rhymes, while Ned Tucker, Susan's husband, accompanied them on the piano.

Many of the guests, liberally fueling themselves from the bar, upped the volume.

Tucker, ears sensitive, walked into Harry's bedroom and wiggled under the bed.

Pewter finally moved off the sofa arm but not to the bedroom, which would have been the sensible solution. No, she returned to the table to squeeze in one more sliver of honey-cured ham.

"You're going to barf all over the place." Mrs. Murphy opened one eye.

"No, I'm not. I'll walk it off."

"Ha."

Coop grabbed another ham biscuit as people crowded around the long table. Larry Johnson, uplifted from the hunt and three desert-dry martinis, slapped the deputy on the back.

"You need to hunt with us."

"Harry gets after me. I will. Of course, I'd better learn to jump first."

"Why? Sam Mahanes never bothered." He couldn't help himself and his laughter sputtered out like machine-gun fire.

It didn't help that Sam, talking to Bruce, heard this aspersion cast his way. He ignored it.

"Harry would let you take lessons on Gin Fizz. He's a wonderful old guy." Susan volunteered her best friend's horse, then bellowed over the din. "Harry, I'm lending Gin Fizz to Coop."

"What a princess you are, Susan," Harry yelled back.

"See, that's all there is to it." Larry beamed. "And by the way, I'll catch up with you tomorrow."

Before Coop could whisper some prudence in his ear-after all, why would he need to see her-he tacked in the direction of Little Mim, who smiled when she saw him. People generally smiled in Larry's company.

Mrs. Murphy had both eyes open now, fixed on Coop, whose jaw dropped slightly ajar.

Miranda walked up next to the tall blonde. "I don't know when I've seen Larry Johnson this happy. There must be something to this hunting."

"Depends on what you're hunting." Mrs. Murphy looked back out the window at the horses tied to the vans and trailers. Each horse wore a cooler, often in its stable colors. They were a very pretty sight.

24.

Miranda stayed behind to help Harry clean up, as did Susan Tucker. The last guest tottered along at six in the evening, ushered out by soft twilight.

"I think that was the most successful breakfast we've had all year. Thanks to you." Harry scrubbed down the kitchen counters.

"Right," Susan concurred.

"Thank you." Miranda smiled. She enjoyed making people happy. "When your parents were alive this house was full of people. I remember one apple blossom party, oh my, the Korean War had just ended and the apple trees bloomed like we'd never seen them. Your father decided we had to celebrate the end of the war and the blossoms, the whole valley was filled with apple fragrance. So he begged, borrowed, and stole just about every table in Crozet, put them out front under the trees. Your mother made centerpieces using apple blossoms and iris, now that was beautiful. Uncle Olin, my uncle, he died before you were born, brought down his band from up Winchester way. Your dad built, built from scratch, a dance floor that he put together in sections. I think all of Crozet came to that party and we danced all night. Uncle Olin played until sunup, liberally fueled by Nelson County country waters." She laughed, using the old Virginia term for moonshine. "George and I danced to sunrise. Those were the days." She instinctively put her hand to her heart. "It's good to see this house full of people again."

"They step on my tail," Pewter grumbled, rejoining them from the screened-in porch and, hard to believe, hungry again.

"Because it's fat like the rest of you." Mrs. Murphy giggled.

"Cats don't have fat tails," Pewter haughtily responded.

"You do," Murphy cackled, then jumped on the sofa, rolled over, four legs in the air, and turned her head upside down so she could watch her gray friend, who decided to stalk her.

Pewter crouched, edged forward, and when she reached the sofa she wiggled her hind end, then catapulted up in the air right onto the waiting Murphy.

"Banzai. Death to the Emperor!" Pewter, who had watched too many old movies, shouted.

The cats rolled over, finally thumping onto the floor.

"What's gotten into you two?" Harry laughed at them from the kitchen.

"You know, I've heard people say that animals take on the personality of their owner," Miranda, eyes twinkling, said.

"Is that a fact?" Harry stepped into the living room as the cats continued their wrestling match with lots of fake hissing and puffing.

"Must be true, Harry. You lie on the sofa and wait for someone to pounce on you." Susan laughed.