Excerpt
But Joel had a feeling that even that would be considered a
steal, and if he had agreed, those two would be in a bar before the
end of the day sucking back beer and chirping about how they
took the dude out at Circle H for a ride.
Since he had the briefcase open, Joel thought that now was as
good a time as any to take a closer look at the parentage of his
livestock. After separating out the remaining older mares, he lay
all of their registration papers from the American Quarter Horse
Association in front of him on the kitchen table. Although he
didn’t know it, he was looking at the living history of some of the
greatest breeding ever.
Just like the old mare that he had just sold, the other matriarch
of the remuda was also a daughter of the legendary Doc Bar out of
a Peppy San mare called Peppy Jane. Her own name was Doc’s
Peppy Jane, confirming the identity of the other older mare.
If that kind of breeding was so valuable in a twenty-one-year-old
mare then the daughters had to be equally valuable. Especially if
they were young enough to still be putting colts on the ground.
And as he scanned the papers, that is exactly what he saw. Absolutely
every one of the other ten mares in the remuda were daughters
of either of the original Doc Bar mares that his dad had
brought up from Denver. With only ten mares besides the other
own daughter of Doc Bar, Joel’s guess would be that his dad had
chosen to keep just the absolute best fillies to include in the
broodmare band.
After clearing the table of the registration papers for the
broodmares, he turned his attention to finding the papers for the
three-year-olds that he and Harry were currently training. After a
little more rummaging through the briefcase, Joel found the
papers for each of the dozen three-year-olds. The first one he
spotted was the filly out of the old blonde mare, and sure enough,
it was the pretty palomino he had just finished the morning with;
Joel had a feeling about the way she was handling herself. He had
convinced himself that when he had a chance to look at the
papers that he would discover that the last three-year-old …
Manolis Aligizakis 