All in Jest by Carl Douglass

Author:Carl Douglass
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Publication Consultants

CHAPTER SEVEN

2013 was a good year for Sybil Norcroft, M.D., PhD, F.A.C.S. George and Dolly’s four year old filly, Moccasin Walker, sold for $28,000 and their young horse, three-year-old Walking Conquistador, sold for $74,500. Two foals from Ring Pride by Beautiful Girl, a Middleton Stables mare from Stratford, Missouri, netted $81,000 each and would have brought in more if Sybil and her Mexicans had been able to provide proper training. Sybil and her partners held on to the oldest and best of George and Dolly’s progeny, the golden auburn five-year-old, Sun Walker, that won its fourth best in show championship trophies in 2013 and the deep reddish brown, Bai Walker. The two Tennessee Walker champions and Ring Pride were insured for a million dollars each. All of her Tennessee Walkers had luxuriant black manes and tails and one right foreleg that was a gleaming white stocking. They were, if nothing else, beautiful. The Mexicans trained them lovingly, and all of the horses were becoming champion smooth-gaited animals.

The contrasting silver grey Paso Finos were flourishing, still too young to be sold, but would be broken to the saddle this year and their gaits perfected in another year. Then they would become a mainstay of the ranch’s income base. Like the Tennessee Walkers’ training, the Mexicans were infinitely patient with the Paso Finos. The men used only Pelham polo bits and had advanced beyond the use of cavessons by the time the horses were three years old. They never used martingales or harsh bits. Whips were not permitted on the ranch. If a horse was so unruly or skittish that a whip was necessary, Sybil and the Mexicans sold it at a minimal profit and concentrated on the horses whose temperaments and fine training, along with their silken gaits made them of great value.

The ranch was now paying its way, and in another two years would be operating at a profit, having paid off its substantial start-up debts. The Mexicans were now serious and well informed business people. They had reinvested their profits, and Sybil had allowed them to buy a total of 30 percent of the ranch. The men, women, and children held their Patrona in veneration, and they were held in true affection by her. Whenever she came to the property, she was treated with the respect that had once been accorded the grandees of Spain by their forefathers.

Sybil invited Paul Bel Geddes and his fourth wife, Sophronia, an attractive, but abrasive African American woman, to her victory dinner celebration after Sun Walker won his championship.

“How nice of you to come,” she cooed when Mrs. Bel Geddes entered Sybil and Charles’s foyer.

The tawny skinned beauty had scarlet nails fully an inch long, wore five large diamond rings, and her neckline plunged below her umbilicus. She had a tattoo of a mythical African god-woman on her sternum with flares of a cloak wafting out onto the swells of her breasts.

“You look lovely,” Sybil said.

Sybil personally showed the couple into the dining room.

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