Breeding Ground by Sally Wright

jockeys.”
    â€œYou do?”
    â€œYep. But one thing I know for sure is that what a horseman needs, man
or
woman – trainer, groom, or jockey – on top of the hard work, is some kind of instinct. Some blood-born feeling for the horse itself. For who each one is, and what they feel and think. I’ve seen some who have it for a lotta horses. Others for only one or two. Whether you got that, I don’t know. I don’t have it like I’ve seen with some folks. I just got enough to do what I do pretty good. Great trainers, they got lots, and it don’t get passed on in the blood. You study the stud books?”
    â€œSome. Over to Keeneland, at the racecourse library.”
    â€œYou better study ’em plenty. We got stacks in Jo’s house in the study. You can borrow ’em in the evenings if you bring ’em back in the morning.”
    â€œThank you. I’ll do that. There’s one other thing, Mr. Watkins.” Buddy was looking worried again, shifting from one foot to the other, his lank sandy hair blowing across his eyes.
    â€œYeah?” Toss stopped and looked at him, trying not to smile.
    â€œI got me a four-year-old mare. The barn I worked at before this last one, that barn went belly-up, and the owner give me the mare ’stead of my back pay. Could you see your way to me bringing her here, and letting her run with the broodmares? You could take something out of my pay. She’s over at my dad’s now, and it’s real inconvenient if I move clear over here to go back and forth to take care of her. She’s got real good ground manners, and better breedin’ than I ever thought I’d own.”
    â€œWell… I reckon that’s okay. I won’t take your pay, but I’ll give you extry to do. There’s something else I meant to tell ya too. The manure spreader’s been acting up. The power take-off’s goin’ bad. The shaft’s starting up too easy. Engaging too quick. Spinning the blades sooner than you’d expect when you’re trying to set it in gear. I’ll be working on it later this week, but you need to be real careful.”
    â€œYes-sir, I surely will.”
    â€œYou see Josie when you got here?”
    â€œStopped by the house to ask where you was. She’d been typing at the kitchen table, but it looked like she was fixin’ to leave.”
    â€œNuts. I meant to ask her to pick up pig wire. I want to put a second layer up above the siding in Tuffian’s aisle-way wall.”
    Because of Buddy, Jo hadn’t had to help feed horses, or turn them out, so she fed the puppy she’d decided to call Emmy, and watched her run around the side yard, while she phoned the neighbors to find out if they’d lost her, and found out none of them had. Then she made up her mind to call Alan Munro.
    She hated to bother him at Equine Pharmaceuticals, and she hated to be the one to phone first to begin with (though why she wasn’t sure), but she didn’t see that she had a choice.
    She felt awkward, but she got it done. And he was perfectly reasonable about it. He seemed glad to hear from her, and happy to meet with Jack, and asked if she’d have dinner with him that night to tell him what she knew about Jack before he went to meet him.
    She thought about Jack herself while she saddled Sam, but forgot about him while she and Sam wandered cross country. But when she was standing in the small broodmare barn shortly before five, having just put Sam in his stall, she was back thinking about Jack.
    She’d found a scrap of paper in the tack room, and was writing herself a list of questions she’d like to get Jack to answer – when Sam reached over the stall door and took her sleeve in his teeth, gently pulling her toward him.
    She laughed and rubbed his face – before Sam grabbed her paper and rushed to the back of his stall. He looked over his shoulder at her, the small piece of paper