By JOHN HENRY WALLACE, JR.
’Twas the Christmas season and the air was soft and balmy, sweet with the fragrance of the soft southerly winds.
The next day, much to our delight, promised to dawn bright and clear. Colonel Malcolm Gilchrist, of Courtland, and Major Otis Hennigan, of Leighton, had done me the honor to be my guests at “Kittikaskia,” my home, and to bring along their superb packs of hounds, it being our intention to go in quest of “Old Blaze,” a big red fox that lived in the Jarman fields four miles to the west. This crafty red had for several years eluded hunters and hounds by seeking refuge in the caves of the Tennessee River hills, but we had planned for the morrow a scheme to change his course, and to put him on his mettle to outstrip the hounds, or else succumb in the brave attempt.
“Old Blaze” always ran through the same stand on his unerring way to the river hills, and so, in anticipation of this, we had secured half a hundred dusky denizens of the cotton fields to go to his crossing, form a line, and yell after the lusty manner of their kind, when they heard the hounds coming. We believed that the bedlam they would raise would divert the fox from his beaten track, and turn him toward a level, open country, where the chase could be followed with ease, seen and enjoyed.
It was an eager anticipation of sport most glorious that infused our hearts with happiness as we donned our hunting regalia that eventful morn.
The South is the natural home of the true fox hunter. The lords and ladies of the British Isles who came to this country settled along the Atlantic Coast. And as westward the star of empire wended its unrelenting way, their posterity cut through the forest and founded here a happy, a peaceful and a prosperous land—where oftentimes one man’s estate rivals in area and grandeur a modern principality. Descended from these grandees who brought to America the best strains of race horses, hounds and gamecocks, the sport-loving fraternity of Dixieland still retain in their pristine purity the same strains their noble ancestors Imported and loved.
The Southern fox-hunter loves his hounds. He enjoys seeing the individuals of his pack race together. And we were to see tested the speed and endurance of the prides of our respective packs—Colonel Gilchrist’s “Fashion,” Major Hennigan’s “Prompter,” and the writer’s “Alice.” Three faster and gamer hounds were never before matched in Alabama (and the fastest and gamest hounds on earth are here), and the coming struggle for victory was intensified most thrillingly by our natural love for the hunt.
As we rode toward the foxes’ rendezvous, o’er the distant hills frolicked the resonant tones of the hunter’s horn, its plaintive notes awakening the sleeping echoes that set the woodland dells ringing with the sweetest of mellow music.
The shafts of the new-born day quivered high in the heavens, as the stars one by one paled of silvery lustre as the sun kindled the eastern forests with flames that swept and glowed away the dawn. The hunters were splendidly mounted, and their horses bounded away with a spirit that thrilled the hearts of the riders, for oft before had they been ridden in the chase, and each horse seemed instinctively to know that excellent sport was ahead. The frost sparkled on the Bermuda, bespangling it with tiny icy prisms, while not a cloud in the heavens marred the perfect glory of an ideal hunting morn.
The hounds were held in check until the vicinity of the foxes’ lair had been reached, when the hunting signals were given to forty fearless hounds that eagerly bounded away to search field and fell for traces of Sir Reynard. The course was directed up the ivy-bedecked banks of Kittikaskia, whose clear waters flow into those of the murkier Tennessee. Soon the course was changed toward the Jarman fields and “Morgan,” the Nestor of the packs, sounded the first tocsin of game. Singly, and in pairs, the hounds chimed in, for they knew that Morgan never cried a false track, and all confidently and diligently worked to solve the problem of a very cold and indifferent scent. Now all the hounds join in, the scent grows warmer, and Prompter has given tongue. When he cries the trail, the fox is sure to be rousted.