The Eighty-Dollar Champion - Elizabeth Letts [122]
He approached Harry after the show with an offer: he wanted to buy Snowman, and Harry could name his price. Up until now, Harry had not been involved in the wheeling and dealing that went on with expensive horses—horses like Diamant, whose prices were speculated on in hushed conversation. The last time he had sold Snowman, the price tag had been $160 dollars. Now the horse’s prize money had paid for his purchase price many times over.
Bert Firestone was a big man with broad shoulders and a round face. He looked Harry in the eye—and he saw the hesitation there.
“Thirty-five thousand dollars,” he said. “I’ll pay for him right now. Take him home with me.”
Thirty-five thousand dollars! Enough to buy a new farm outright. Ten times more money than Harry earned in a year. A horse was lucky if he won several hundred dollars at a horse show, minus the expenses of caring for him throughout the year. Even a prizewinning jumper barely earned his upkeep.
But for many of the champions’ owners, thirty-five thousand dollars was play money—the sort of money these men spent on their yachts and their Rolls-Royce automobiles.
Bert Firestone was a nice fellow—not a bully, not one to throw his weight around. He waited, smiling, with an expectant look on his face.
Harry was thinking. He still remembered leaving the Garden the year before with an empty horse van behind him. He remembered watching Sinjon walk away from him into the shadowy basement stabling.
Harry shook his head. Not for all the money in the world. Not even for life-changing money, like the kind Firestone was talking about. Snowman had earned his place in the family. Harry had promised never to let him go. He had been foolish enough to sell him once. But the horse had known better, and had come back. Harry was not going to make the same mistake twice. Bert had a check in his hand. He held it up for Harry to look at.
“The check is signed. You can fill in the amount.”
Bert extended his hand, as though expecting a shake. He was reading Harry’s hesitation as hard bargaining, which was the furthest thing from the truth.
Harry shook his head slowly. Even with so astronomical a sum, he knew he did not have to ask Johanna. There are things a man cannot put a price on.
“He’s not for sale,” Harry said. “My children love him.”
Harry saw that Firestone was starting to understand. The businessman was not only a rider, but would later prove his sound instinct as a judge of horseflesh when he picked out the filly Genuine Risk, an eventual Kentucky Derby winner, from a yearling sale. Harry knew that if he was going to sell the horse, he’d want to sell him to someone like that.
Firestone repeated his offer: “But I want you to know, there’s a blank check with your name on it. You fill in the price, I’ll pay it.”
Harry smiled. “Well, I’m not planning to sell him, but if I ever do, I promise I’ll come to you first.”
The two men shook hands, and as the magnate walked away, leaving Harry to his work, Harry turned and looked at his plow horse without a single trace of regret.
The morning after the win, the newspapers told and retold the story of Snowman’s rags-to-riches triumph. The Chicago Tribune related the story of the “sad-eyed horse” in an article titled “DOOMED HORSE LEAPS FROM KILL PEN TO FAME.” The Schenectady News crowed that the horse had been “saved from execution.” Reporters, photographers, and television crews all wanted to talk to Harry. They had to follow him around the barn while he was working in order to get some of his time. But his horse seemed to enjoy performing in front of the camera. One reporter noted that “Snowman paws the ground, arches his neck, to see if the boys are really catching his best qualities.” Harry and Snowman seemed to capture the pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps approach Americans admired, especially now, with the Cold War threatening those very