The Hounds and the Fury Read Online Free Page B

hound, Asa, Diddy, Dasher, and Dragon hurried over. All hounds put their noses to the bluish snow. Just enough
eau de Vulpes,
fresh on the surface, kept hounds moving. Their long wonderful noses warmed the air as it passed through.
    As hounds, sterns waving, eagerly pushed this line, Sister passed the brambles. Her sharp educated eyes noted the tiny red flag. She observed the fresh prints, fur showing around the pad, preserved in deep snow as perfectly as fossils in stone.
    “Close.” She thought to herself, echoing the assessment of her hounds.
    Shaker still did not lift the horn to his lips.
    “Let the young entry come up to the scent,” he thought to himself as four couple of first-year students joined the pack today, their very first hunt in snow.
    Both Shaker and Sister liked hounds to figure things out for themselves, to be problem-solvers, a trait natural to foxhounds in general. It was one thing to call out in heavy coverts, or in ravines to give a toot just to let the hounds and whippers-in know where he was, but in open ground, he liked to be silent, with a word or two of encouragement to a youngster.
    Both master and huntsman loathed noisy, showoff staff.
    The “A” young entry looked ahead as the pack lengthened their stride.
    Shaker smiled down at the gorgeous tricolored hounds and quietly said, “Hike to ’em, young ’uns.”
    Picking up their pace, ploughing through the snow, within seconds they filled in the pack. As yet no hound opened, spoke to the line, but all those gifted noses kept down.
    Cora, the richness of years and high intelligence to her credit, wanted to make certain the line was growing stronger and fresher before she sang out. She didn’t much like poking around old lines of scent when fresh ones could be found with diligent effort. Being head bitch as well as the strike hound, she occasionally needed to chastise younger hounds who, in their excitement and desire to hunt, opened too early. Sometimes they would babble on the wrong quarry. That would never do.
    Dragon, proud, competitive, and desperately wanting to become the strike hound, pushed ahead of Cora and called out,
“Come on.”
    Cora, livid that the younger dog hound had challenged her authority, bumped him hard, knocking him in the snow. As she passed him she bared her fangs. Even Dragon, arrogant as he was, knew better than to start a fight during hunting and certainly not with Cora.
    The pack opened, the young entry lifting their voices. Mostly they knew what they were doing, but sometimes the excitement of it overcame them and they’d
“Yip, yip, yip”
in a higher pitch than the other hounds.
    Target, hearing the hounds, picked up his handsome head and looked around. The wind, light, blew away from him in a swirl. Once out of the shallow bowl he happened to be in at that moment, the wind would revert to a steady breeze from west to east. He realized he hadn’t smelled the hounds because of where he was. The little wind devils didn’t help. Being lighter than the hounds, he could run on snow with a crust on it, but this fresh powder slowed him. Target was not in an enviable situation.
    Perched high in a two-hundred-year-old walnut, St. Just, king of the crows, peered down with relish. Perhaps this would be the day when he would watch Target die. He hated this fox with a vengeance, for Target had killed his mate.
    Also observing the hunt was Bitsy, the screech owl. Curious and tiny, but big of voice, she was returning to her nest in the rafters of Sister’s barn when she heard the pack. Bitsy, social, liked to visit other barns and other owls. She’d enjoyed a night of feasting on various tidbits at Tedi and Edward Bancroft’s barn with a regular barn owl who lived there. That particular bird also lived for gossip, just like Bitsy.
    None of the owls liked St. Just or any of the crows. Crows sometimes mobbed them in daylight. The battle lines were clearly drawn. St. Just and his minions feared Athena, the great