Outfoxed by Rita Mae Brown

Author:Rita Mae Brown
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780345485960
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2005-07-25T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 34

The weatherman had lied. A thin band of pale pink deepened to salmon, then scarlet, over frost-covered fields, washing them in dawn’s hope. The rim of the sun peeped over the horizon illuminating maples, oaks, hickories, black gums, sycamores, beeches, black birches, dogwoods, willows, all the great varieties of the deciduous trees of the piedmont, garbed in rich colors.

This would be a perfect early November day, crisp, clear, leaves still on the trees, pumpkins still being plucked in a few southern-exposure fields, drying cornstalks tied in stocks in other fields. Acorn, walnuts, chinquapins, beechnuts dropped, rat-a-tat, onto fields, outbuildings, cars.

Diana, Dasher, and Dragon, bursting with excitement, stood outside the kennel. The experienced hounds slept soundly inside, not even lifting their heads when the three litter mates walked through the magnetic flap door. The tin roof on the equipment shed shone with the coating of frost. A light breeze from the northwest rustled the leaves.

“I hope this is a good day,” Diana whispered.

“Me, too,” Dasher echoed.

“I’ll be leading the pack. Of course it will be a good day,” Dragon bragged.

“You can’t be the strike hound. You don’t know enough. Stay behind Cora.” Piqued by his egotistical brother, Dasher grumbled.

“Cora’s too slow.”

“No, she’s not. She doesn’t pop into fifth gear until she’s sure. You just run flat out with your mouth running, too. If you overrun scent, you don’t know it until it’s too late, Dragon. I’d think by now you would have learned your lesson.”

Turning his well-proportioned head to face his brother, Dragon replied, “The snake could have bitten anybody. It just happened to bite me.”

“Target knew a sucker when he saw one.” Dasher longed for the day when he would see the flashy bold red. “And Reynard saw him do it to you, which means all the foxes know you for what you are.”

“Dachshund.” Dragon threw the worst insult he could think of at his brother.

“At least that’s a hound. You’ve got the brain of a Jack Russell,” Dasher replied with gleeful malice.

Dragon bared his fangs.

“Chill.” Diana bared her own formidable fangs. “If you two get in a fight, you’ll sit right here in the kennel. Neither one of you is thinking too clearly. If you can’t get along, then shut up.”

“He started it.” Dragon pouted.

“Did not.”

“Did too.”

“I’ll grab you by the ruff, throw you down, and sit on you! Now leave it. I mean it.”

The brothers respected their sister even if they did not respect each other. Snarling under his breath, Dragon pranced back into the kennel.

Dasher sat down next to Diana. They both stared at the sun, clear of the horizon now.

“About time for Shaker and Doug,” Diana remarked.

“Lights on at Doug’s.” He lifted his black nose, sniffing the wind. “Deer.”

“Strong. Just watch. If Dragon can’t get up a fox, he’ll go off again. I know it.” She thought a moment. “But I have to give him credit. He really doesn’t go off on deer. He just finds another fox. He’s so hardheaded.”

Dasher stood up as Doug emerged from his cottage.

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