Out of Hounds

CHAPTER 1

February 6, 2020 Thursday

Wind carries messages. As Jane Arnold, Sister, flew across a large pasture sleeping under a light snow, the message hitting her face was a dramatic change in the weather. Jefferson Hunt started the day at ten in the morning under relatively balmy skies for early February. The temperature hung at a decent 42°F.

Clods of earth, the grass brown mixed in with it and a smattering of snow, flew off Keepsake s hooves, her marvelously balanced horse. Hounds screamed up ahead. They d been running at top speed for twenty minutes.

Sister passed low bushes festooned with stoplight red berries, took a sagging coop at the end of Beveridge Hundred, an estate from the late eighteenth century, and kept flying. These are the runs one dreams about on a torrid July day pitching hay. Tears filled her eyes from the speed. Up ahead she could see the scarlet coat of her young huntsman, Wesley Blackford, Weevil. In front of him like a football team racing downfield to attack the offense waiting for the kicked-off ball, those tri-color American hounds ran, sang, stretched flat out.

While she kept her pride to herself, she loved those hounds, hounds whose bloodlines she had known for over forty years. Her late husband s uncle had known and bred them for forty years before that.

The wind licked her face with a cold hard tongue. A storm would follow, but when? She couldn t turn back. Nor was she going to twist her head around while galloping to check the northwestern sky. She was heading due south.

Out of the corner of her right eye she saw her dearest friend, Betty Franklin, on the outside of the pack on the right. Betty had the good fortune to be running on a decent farm road. The other whipper-in, Tootie Harris, in her early twenties, no farm road but still pasture, kept apace. The women wore black, the old attire for a lady hunting. As this was America in the twenty-first century they were entitled to scarlet but both

Rita Mae Brown is the bestselling author of the Sneaky Pie Brown mysteries; the Sister Jane series; the Runnymede novels, including Six of One and Cakewalk; A Nose for Justice and Murder Unleashed; Rubyfruit Jungle; and In Her Day; as well as many other books. An Emmy-nominated screenwriter and a poet, Brown lives in Afton, Virginia, and is a Master of Foxhounds and the huntsman.

Praise for Out of Hounds

[Sister Jane] and her friends are now in their sixties and early seventies, but they remain as spry as ever, as shown in bestseller [Rita Mae] Brown s stately thirteenth mystery set in Virginia hunt country. . . . Animal lovers and those curious about the elite world of foxhunting will be rewarded. Publishers Weekly


Praise for the mysteries of Rita Mae Brown

Scarlet Fever

Genial, smoothly written . . . Series fans will welcome the wealth of detail. Publishers Weekly

Homeward Hound

With deep and broad knowledge of the sport, the area and the people and animals who inhabit it, [Brown] infuses Homeward Hound and the entire series with unmatched authenticity, Southern charm, beloved characters and engaging storylines. The Free Lance Star

Crazy Like a Fox

Without a doubt, Crazy Like a Fox is [Brown s] best mystery to date . . . and earns top marks for everything from plot to pace to characters. In & Around Horse Country

Let Sleeping Dogs Lie

Cunning foxes, sensible hounds and sweet-tempered horses are among the sparkling conversationalists in this charming series. The New York Times Book Review

Fox Tracks

[Brown] enlivens a timely tale with . . . amusing accounts of her four-legged creations and delightful descriptions of the central Virginia countryside. Richmond Times-Dispatch