There has been little dodging. With so many dogs plunging up both sides of the creek, and picking up its trail as he crossed and re-crossed, the cat had finally to adopt a straightaway program as the cover would permit. If it dodged once in this little bit of small cane it was lost. It did not dodge. It went straight into the end of the other arm of the Y and to the astonishment of all the hunters apparently went out again and across a sedge field toward the hills.
It was then a straight race of half a mile and the dogs won. They snarled and pulled and fought around the carcass, when Lorna went directly over them and was "sawed up" at the edge of the woods 50 yards further. One of the hunters jumped down and plucked the carcass from the dogs and held it up. It was a gray fox. The dogs had run over him in the little cane and indulged in a view chase. The cat was elsewhere!
Exclamations of disgust were heard on all sides and Evan looked anxiously among the gathering dogs.
"Where is Carlo?" he asked of several. "Has anybody seen Carlo?" Nobody had, apparently; but at that moment in the distance, down the arm of the Y which Reynard had crossed, they heard a sharp, puppyish cry, interspersed with the fuller voicings of an old dog.
"There is Carlo!" shouted the old gentleman in a stentorian voice. "And Leader," interpolated Montjoy.
"Come on with your English dogs! Ha, ha, ha!" and Evan was gone. But Lorna was done for the day. She distinctly refused to become enthused any more. She had carried her rider first in at the death in one race and the bush had been handed to Mary. Lorna responded to the efforts to force her, by indulging in her absurd half-moon antics. Barksdale and Edward turned back.
"It will come around on the same circuit," said Barksdale, speaking of the cat; "let us ride out into the open space and see it." They took position and listened. Two miles away, about at the fork of the Y, they could hear the echo of the tumult. If the cat went down the main stem the day was probably spoiled; if it came back up the other branch as before, they were in good position.
Nearer and nearer came the rout and then the dogs swarmed all over the lone acre of cane. The animal had dodged back from the horsemen standing there and was now surrounded.