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Two of the Ross herd are stallions, one a deep bluish gray and the other a glossy chestnut. Bay is the only other common color; now and then a white one is foaled, and very, very rarely, a pure black. They are always solid colors with occasional white feet and white markings on the head.
In the clean brick stable Harry Thomas and his eleven-year'old son, Jimmy, led the stallions out from their individual stalls. The 3 -yearold gray was still in process of being trained. Yet he was as tractable as a housecat and a sight more responsive.
"His name is El Ahmar," Walter Ross told us. "His sire is owned by the King of England. His dam was an Egyptian mare."
"Look at him," said Harry Thomas, and he stroked the long shining tail. "He has bloom!"
Bloom according to horse breeders and trainers is style; it's the flowerlike emergence of wonderful form in the horses, so that their decor is pretty and their carriage magnificent. But bloom is the right word for it, and the only one.
Harry explained that Arabians are economical to keep. On the deserts feed was scarce, and the horses evidently got used to it. At times, even, when mare's milk was scarce for the feeding of the foals, camel's milk supplemented the diet. They can stand almost any sort of weather — the heat of the deserts, the cold of a mountainous country. One breeder in Boulder, Colorado, keeps his herd during the summer high up in the
,ln^ September, 1945
Rockies near Netherlands, not too great a distance from the Divide at Milner Pass.
Arabians have three principal gaits — walk, trot, and canter. "But," Harry added, "they can do all of 'em." To Harry Thomas, Arabians can do no wrong. He loves them. And he knows them well. Harry once received a degree in Physical Education at the University of Illinois. But he gave up that career for horses. He was with Ruth Hanna McCormack until her death last year, when he came down to Graceland and Walter Ross, bringing his wife and three children to live in the neat brick bungalow within sight of the stables and the small sleek horses.
Harry reads up on his horses, too. There's a writer called Carl Raswan of New Mexico whom he mentions from time to time. Raswan is the author of "Drinkers of the Wind" and several other books, and is himself the owner of Arabians. "He puts bloom in a book," Harry Thomas said, "the way a horse has bloom."
"Say anything that's good about any horse," Harry will tell you, "then you can double it and it'll be true of Arabians. . . . What I like about 'em is they're so smart. You can look in their eye and see things! And they're docile. Now you take Burka — Mrs. Ross rode Burka the second time that horse'd ever been ridden!"
In the pasture the seventeen mares and the two foals gathered softly around us. There was Sabdaan, called by the experts the best bred