Puss 'N Cahoots by Rita Mae Brown Page A

so much we’ll never know. You figure horses started coming over sometime after 1607. Not everyone kept good records.”
    â€œNot everyone could read and write.” Harry paused a moment. “Although I read somewhere that our literacy rate was higher at the time of the American Revolution than it is now. Boy, that’s a smack in the face.”
    â€œDoesn’t surprise me.” Joan shrugged. “But what we do know is that Thoroughbred blood, Morgan blood, and even Old Narragansett blood is in the Saddlebred.”
    Narragansett blood is the blood of pacers, a type of racehorse that pulls a sulky. A pacer’s legs, unlike a trotter’s, move in parallel, so the right side—fore and hind—will move in unison, as will the left. The movement of the legs for a trotter—in fact, for the trotting gait in any horse—is diagonal.
    â€œWho were the great foundation mares?” Harry asked as she watched a robin swoop down on a wriggling worm.
    â€œUh, Stevenson mare, Saltram mare, Betsey Harrison, Pekina, Lute Boyd, Lucy Mack, Daisy the Second, Queen Forty-eight, and Annie C.”
    â€œYou could teach a class.”
    Joan smiled as she poured tea for Harry, coffee for herself. “You know your Thoroughbred lines, I know Saddlebred. The American Saddlebred Association, ASHA, started in 1891, helped concentrate breeding information.” She paused a second. “But when you close the books the problems arise.”
    â€œMeaning you run out of blood?”
    â€œYes. Horses, dogs, whatever, can become inbred. I linebreed. I’m not saying you shouldn’t, but you shouldn’t even dream of it if you haven’t studied and looked at a lot of horses—a
lot
of horses.”
    In linebreeding, one dips back into the same bloodlines, the theory being it reinforces the strong points of that blood. Do it too close and one can breed weak animals or idiotic humans. It takes an incredibly intelligent human to successfully linebreed horses.
    â€œRight.” Harry gratefully drank her tea once Joan sat down. “I shy away from it, but I lack your gift.”
    Joan waved off this compliment as they both attacked the coffee cake.
    â€œI should make you a real breakfast, but you know me.” Joan wanly smiled since she never had time nor much inclination to cook.
    â€œI’m the same way. Fair usually brings something home after his last call, and he likes to grill.”
    â€œDon’t they all. I mean, have you ever seen anything like men hovering over their barbecue? They’re even competitive about the sauces, and if they marinate the meat—” She rolled her eyes heavenward.
    â€œDidn’t you say they were just as bad in Australia and even South Africa when you visited there?”
    â€œHoney, they’re probably attacking one another with tongs in China. Show a man a grill and a piece of steak and he loses his mind.”
    â€œTrue, but we get to eat it.” Harry winked.
    â€œEver notice how we’re cooks but they’re chefs?”
    Both women laughed at that.
    â€œYou’ve got a couple of Thoroughbreds.” Harry noticed how moist the crumbs were on top of the coffee cake.
    â€œI do, but I don’t breed them. Paula Cline and I run a couple. My older brother Jimmy’s usually got a few on the track, too.”
    â€œIf you hear of a good youngster, good mind, a little too slow, and the owners want out, let me know.”
    â€œI will. For you?”
    â€œMake it into a foxhunter for Alicia Palmer.”
    Because Joan knew Harry’s friends, she needed no biography of Alicia. “Still hot and heavy with BoomBoom?”
    â€œâ€™Tis.”
    â€œI’d never thought that of BoomBoom, not that I care. She just mowed men down like a scythe.”
    â€œBoth did. That may be why they found each other. They got bored.” Harry laughed.
    â€œOr maybe it’s truly love.” Joan hoped it