Hotspur by Rita Mae Brown Page B

also had the wit to repair to Virginia in 1748, where he had been granted an estate of 5 million acres—the Northern Neck. The entire Northern Neck between the Potomac and Rappahannock Rivers was his backyard. And he brought his passion for foxhounds with him. Young George Washington hunted with Fairfax, his cousin Col. William Fairfax, and the Colonel’s son, George William Fairfax. When George William Fairfax married the enchanting Sally Fairfax, young Washington fell in love with her, an unrequited love. But foxhunting repaid his passion by giving Washington a lifetime of pleasure.
    Then, as now, foxhunting imparted a certain social cachet, and men eager to rise found a good pack of hounds was one way to do so. Ripe arguments continually erupted about who had the best hounds. Some argued for the French Bleu hound; others said the large Kerry beagle was best for the New World. The black and tan had many admirers, and any white hound was always claimed to go back to the medieval kennels of King Louis of France.
    Out of this mix came an American hound much like the American human: tough, quick, filled with remarkable drive to succeed. The American hound was of lighter weight than his English and French brothers. His clear voice could be heard in the virgin forests covering Virginia and Maryland even if he couldn’t be seen, and this remains a prime virtue of the American hound.
    The Revolutionary War slowed down the remarkable progress that had been made up to that point. After 1781, foxhunters returned to their passion—a passion undimmed even at the dawn of the twenty-first century.
    When Sister took over as the fifth master in the hunt’s history she was grateful that she inherited a great pack and she didn’t have to start from scratch. She knew her hound history. She simply had to be reasonably intelligent so as not to screw up Double H’s original plan.
    The home fixtures—Roughneck Farm, Foxglove, Mill Ruins, After All, and Beveridge Hundred—nourished the diverse creatures who had been living there since before the white man settled in Virginia in 1607. Decent soil, a wealth of underground and overground water, and the protection of the Blue Ridge Mountains a few miles west conspired to make this a kind of heaven on earth.
    Not even a hot, muggy, buggy day like today diminished the glory of the place. Each and every resident believed that she or he lived in God’s country. To make it even sweeter, most of them liked one another. And those few who qualified as flaming assholes were appreciated for providing ripe comment and amusement for the others.
    As Sister’s mother used to say, “Nobody’s worthless. They can always serve as a horrible example.”
    One such specimen was just puttering down the road.
    Alice Ramy stopped her Isuzu truck with a lurch. The four workers sitting under the chestnut tree looked up, composing their features so as not to look discomfited at the lady’s arrival.
    Alice’s unhappiness seeped through every pore, marring her pleasant features.
    â€œSister, if you or your hounds come near my chickens I am taking out a warrant!”
    Alice delivered this message at least twice a year. It was usually the pretext for something else.
    â€œNow Alice, my hounds have never so much as glanced at your fine chickens.”
    â€œNo, but that damned dog of Peter Wheeler’s killed three of them. Dog should have followed Peter to the grave.”
    Rooster, Peter’s harrier, had chased Aunt Netty, an especially fast and sneaky fox, into and then out of Alice’s chicken pen. But poor Rooster—the pen door slammed shut and he was stuck with the corpses of two Australorp chickens. Netty, a small fox, dragged off the other one. No easy task since the beautiful black chickens were quite plump.
    â€œHello, Mrs. Ramy.” Shaker smiled.
    â€œMrs. Ramy.” Doug touched his head with his forefinger in greeting.
    Doug, skin