Riding Shotgun by Rita Mae Brown Page A

bounded forward to join the pack.
    Cig stared at her sister and wondered if she could keep from killing her.
    Another yowl from the woods and a call from Jane drew Cig’s attention away from Grace.
    “Found it,” was what her words sounded like, but then her voice faded away.
    “Grace,” Cig, relieved to have an excuse to be alone for a few moments to collect herself, called out, “I’m going back for a minute.”
    “Okay.” Grace answered, unaware of what had transpired.
    The hound’s voice pierced the air. Cig turned Full Throttle back into the woods. “Harley, tell them what Jane found. I’ll catch up to you if you move off.”
    She had to get through this hunt, get the horses back home and then think of how to kill Grace. Swiftly or a slow, wretched death?
    She rode back to the trunk. The bony hand seemed to reach out for her. She shuddered now, uncontrollably. Within seconds she was enveloped in mist. She had no desire to be in the fog with an oddly familiar skeleton no matter how old it was.
    “Poor bastard,” she thought and then as quickly thought the phrase applied to herself as well.
    She rode toward the cry of the hound, which suddenly stopped. She heard the sound of huge paws racing toward her. An enormous black and tan thundered past her. She’d never seen that hound before. Few people hunted black and tans in America. Some Irish hunts used them. She reined in Full Throttle, listened a moment as the footfall faded away. She started to turn then looked down past her left foot. Fattail looked right back up at her.
    “You little shit.”
    He seemed to smile. Why not? There wasn’t a thing she could do to him. With elegant insolence he walked in front of her.

PART II

7

    The mist thickened but Cig could see Fattail leading the way. She couldn’t see much else. She thought she was heading toward the James River and in an easterly direction. When Fattail pranced out onto the old canal road she knew her sense of direction hadn’t failed her. However, the silver fog made her think twice about cutting back up into the woods to try and rejoin her field. Common sense told her to stop and sit tight but she couldn’t resist following the fox, who strolled along as though her pet.
    She’d known Fattail for four years, as well as his mother and father and littermates. Born in a big den on George Lawrence’s property, he had possessed a noticeable tail even as a cub.
    Solon Deyhle and G-Mom taught her to learn the ways of the fox. If winter proved harsh she threw out dead chickens and rabbits for them. She’d put on her snowshoes or crosscountry skis and visit each den in turn. When foxes bred, then taught their cubs to hunt, she was sure to keep her hounds far away from them.
    During cubbing season, so-called because the fox cubsneed to learn to hunt just as the hound puppies do, she noted who remained with the dens, who was missing and who moved on to form new dens.
    As the fox preyed on rabbits and small game, so the larger predators preyed on him. Fattail survived his cubhood and quickly displayed that quirky intelligence for which foxes are famous, but he had something else, a kind of genius really.
    She’d seen him once at the kennels by moonlight, on a muggy July night. He appeared to be studying the hounds. After hunting season she often glimpsed him over by George’s cornfields where the pickings were rich.
    Cig, like most American foxhunters, never wanted to kill the fox, most especially reds since they ran true. Grays ran in circles. The death of a red fox, a cause for lamentation, could only mean that the quarry had grown old or was sick.
    She had witnessed amazing things in the wild. Only last year she came across two foxes, a male and a female, on the high field behind her own house. The male ran away, hoping to draw the pack after him. The vixen crouched in the pasture, hounds all around her, and not one hound found her. Her mate saved her and lost the hounds after a ten-minute