This 1935 foxhound classic, reprinted by
The Derrydale Press in 2001, is cloth bound,
128 pages, $18.95, in the Foxhunting Life Shop.Although we can’t hunt in the summer, we can read about hunting! Here’s an excerpt from a foxhunting classic, the first of two slim novels, the second of which, Daughter of Bugle Ann, we featured six months ago.
Her voice was something to dream about, on any night when she was running through the hills. The first moment she was old enough to boast an individual voice, Springfield Davis swore that she would be a great dog, and within another month he had give her the name she carried so proudly.
One of her great-grandfathers, many generations removed, had followed Spring Davis away from home when he went off to join General Claiborne Jackson and his homespun army among the prickly-orange hedges, so there was logic in the inheritance which put that trumpet in her throat.
She was slender, like hounds of the Spaulding line, and not as sprawling or cumbersome as the good-natured, long-tongued Walkers. Anyone in Missouri who knew anything about foxhounds had heard of the Davis dogs, but somehow there never came to be a Davis line. It was all in the family, and there existed a haughtiness in the old man which wouldn’t permit him to have Davis dogs running anywhere except in the ranges along Heaven Creek. That was why Bugle Ann was still a maiden at five years, long after old Calhoun Royster or the Lanceys would have seen to it that she carried on her business in life.
And Spring Davis was prudish past the point of ridicule, though no one would have dared to laugh at him. He hated the common word for a female dog, and would not let it touch his tongue. He called his she-dogs ladies or girls, and there was a firm beauty about him when he spoke to them. You wouldn’t think that a man like that could ever be tried for murder, or become a convict.
Those things did happen to Spring Davis at eighty-two. They didn’t affect him as they would have affected most men of eighty-two. Whenever he heard the gongs and whistles which sent him about his gray routine at Jefferson City, he must have banished those sounds from his consciousness. He must have imagined instead that he was sitting by a fire at the edge of Bachelor’s timber, listening to the dogs as they hunted out of Chilly Branch Hollow, with Bugle Ann’s cry echoing against the blackness of the sky.
Posted June 26, 2013
MacKinlay Kantor (1904-1977) had a distinguished writing career. Primarily known for his book, Andersonville, which won him the Pulitzer Prize in 1956, he was also the best-selling author of Long Remember, Turkey in the Straw, and Gettysburg. Reprinted in 2001 and 2003 respectively by The Derrydale Press, The Voice of Bugle Ann and Daughter of Bugle Ann are both available in the Foxhunting Life Shop at $18.95 each (less 10% automatic discount for FHL Subscribers).