The Eighty-Dollar Champion - Elizabeth Letts [123]
You would not have known, spending time with the de Leyers, that they now had in their stable one of the best-loved horses in the country. At home, life continued unchanged. As usual, the family did everything together, from barn work and chores to meals and riding. And Snowman, back in his stall at Knox, took up his life as a lesson horse again.
After the Garden, the season went on hiatus through the winter months, but Harry was as busy as ever with the schoolgirls. He kept them riding straight through the depth of winter, bundled up in woolen jackets, heavy scarves, and thick mittens. And when he set them aboard the big gray, Harry raised the jumps a bit higher than they were used to, cheering them on and reminding them to grab Snowy’s thick mane to help them keep their balance.
In March, he put his student Bonnie Cornelius on Snowman and sent her through the jumping chute in the covered alley in the stable courtyard. Perhaps remembering her disappointing performance on the horse the previous year, this time Bonnie flew over the fences without the slightest difficulty. At the end of the lesson, Harry had raised the highest fence up to five feet, six inches—the height of fences in an open jumper class. Snowman and Bonnie sailed over it with ease, a moment she still remembers: the gathering rush of the takeoff, the heady instant suspended high in the air, and the long, long distance back to the ground. Encouraging and tenacious, the two-legged teacher and the four-legged teacher worked together to bring out the best in everyone.
The older children were in school, the foxhunting season had ended, and life returned to its usual rhythms. The family would soon move from the chicken farm into a slightly larger farm on the corner of Edgewood Avenue, a quiet street a little closer to the center of St. James. The house was smaller, but the barn was a little bigger, with more room for the horses. Johanna got busy trying to get the house ready for her family.
As spring drew near, Harry made plans to take Snowman out on the circuit again—maybe they could even repeat the performance of the year before.
But even if life had returned to normal, signs abounded that things were not the same.
At the stable, reporters came around, asking to see the wonder horse. An equine vitamin company offered Harry’s horses a free supply of supplements, and put a now-familiar picture of Snowman soaring over a fence in an advertisement.
The headmistresses of the Knox School, who had at first seemed uninterested in the young riding master’s successes, began to sing a different tune. It seemed that everyone wanted his daughter to train with the man who had won a national championship. The phone in the admissions office was ringing off the hook, and the school was establishing a terrific reputation as a wonderful place for horse-minded girls. Harry was happy with his job, and his bosses were happy with him.
One day, a 1958 Cadillac pulled up in front of the school, and three men wearing sunglasses and fancy suits got out. One was an actor named Edmon Ryan, currently the star of a hit Broadway comedy; next was Ryan’s agent, Robert Lantz; the third was the Broadway financier Tom Orchard. None of them was comfortable around a stable. They were not horse people, but smooth talkers who were tossing around big numbers, numbers with six figures in them. They came with a pitch: this horse, they said, belonged in the movies.
Harry was polite to the visitors, but he didn’t put much stock in the conversation. He wasn’t sure how to read these men. He said he would discuss it with his wife and get back to them.
Harry and Johanna talked it over. Both of them had seen the way children lined up to see the horse, the way his story seemed to inspire