Free Seven Sisters by Earlene Fowler

three corrals, a separate tack room, a graded half-mile training track, and plenty of shade trees.
    “Are you full up?” I asked as we walked through the first stall row. A black-and-white long-haired barn cat followed us, darting between our legs, mewing loudly.
    “Almost,” she said. “We’ve got six free stalls, but they’ll be filled soon.” She bent down and picked up the complaining cat. “Figaro, you’re almost as big a nag as Giles. You don’t need one more saucer of cream.” The cat purred as she stroked his black head.
    I reached over and scratched under his chin. “He looks like he’s wearing a hood.”
    “He’s a criminal, all right,” Cappy said. “Stole our hearts a long time ago.” The cat purred a reply.
    “Grandma’s been taking in boarders this year,” Bliss explained, stopping to fondle the nose of a strawberry roan filly with a pencil-thin blaze. She put her face close to the filly’s and blew softly in the horse’s nostrils.
    “Quarter horse breeding isn’t what it was,” Cappy said. “Not since the early eighties when they took away the tax benefits for racehorse owners.”
    “JJ mentioned that this morning. How would that affect you?” I asked.
    Bliss jumped in with the answer. “It affects everyone involved with racing or breeding. If rich people can’t use racehorses as tax write-offs for their other businesses, then they don’t buy them anymore, and people lose jobs all the way down the line—trainers, grooms, pony girls, breeders, feed brokers, people who work at the racetrack, farriers and tack suppliers. I could go on and on. A lot of people are involved with the business of horse racing and breeding who don’t work directly with it and usually they don’t have the education or means to find jobs anywhere else so they end up on welfare or robbing liquor stores.” She smiled. “Which, of course, gives me job security. One thing about being a cop, there’s always bad guys.”
    Cappy smiled and passed me a handful of carrots. “Got her trained pretty good, don’t I?”
    “You sure do.” I took the carrots, breaking them in half as I followed her down the center aisle of the stalls. “I understand what she’s saying. It’s like when beef consumption goes down. It affects more than just the ranchers who raise cattle. And most of the jobs involving cattle are the same as with your industry, people who can’t get jobs in other industries. Not everyone can be a computer programmer.”
    “Exactly,” Cappy said. “I wish a few politicians understood that.”
    We walked from stall to stall, feeding carrots to the horses as she relayed their histories, showing me the ones she had high hopes for and the ones she intended to run in claiming races.
    “Claiming races?” I said. I’d been to a few horse races in my life, but didn’t know much about the intricacies or terminology of the industry.
    “That’s when the horse is basically up for sale in a race,” she explained. “People can make a bid for the horse by filing a claiming form and leaving a certified check on deposit before post time. The purse”—she paused and looked at me—“ . . . that’s the money awarded to the winners of the race, goes to the owner who entered the horse, but the horse will legally belong to the successful claimant so even if the horse gets injured during the race, it’s the responsibility of the new owner. It’s a gamble, though. But if you know your stuff and have a good working crystal ball, you can pick up some great deals in claiming races. We’ve bought two claimers that went on to become stakes horses and bred them into our line.”
    “What’s a stakes horse?” This was a whole new world to me. Good ranch horses only needed three qualities—excellent health, no fear of cattle, and a willingness to learn. Some of our best ranch horses were uglier than a bucket of mud, but they had a magic sense when it came to working cattle.
    “In simple terms, a stakes