The Eighty-Dollar Champion - Elizabeth Letts [3]
“What about that one?” Harry asked.
The man was already loaded up and ready to drive away. “You don’t want that one. He’s missing a shoe and his front is all cut up from pulling a harness.”
“I just want to take a look,” Harry said.
Knackers generally paid sixty dollars a head. Was Harry prepared to pay more than that?
Harry hesitated, then nodded. The horse was still watching him.
Grudgingly, the man backed him out of the trailer. Scrambling down the steep ramp, the horse almost fell, but then righted himself.
Once the animal was off the trailer, Harry got a better picture, and it wasn’t a pretty one.
The big horse was male, a gelding, as Harry had expected. His coat, the dull white color that horsemen call gray, was matted and caked with mud. Open wounds marred both knees. His hooves were grown out and cracked, and a shoe was missing. The horse was thin, but not completely undernourished—not as bad off as the horses normally seen on a killer van. The marks across his chest showed that he’d pulled a heavy harness. He had a deep chest; Harry noticed the strong gaskins and well-muscled shoulders, probably developed by pulling a plow. The man dropped the rope on the ground, but the horse made no move to run.
His teeth showed that he was “aged”—not younger than eight years old, and quite possibly older. Harry scanned his legs—pasterns, fetlocks, cannons, hocks—and found no obvious flaws. The auction roster sometimes read like an illustrated veterinary primer: bowed tendons, bone spavins, strangles, laminitis, swaybacks, broken wind—a compendium of ways that a horse can be lame, contagious, or otherwise unfit. But this horse had no such ailments: he was just undernourished, beat up, and broken down, an ordinary horse who had hit hard times.
The unfamiliar setting of an auction made most horses jittery, but this one seemed calm. He followed Harry with his eyes, and when Harry spoke a few words to him, he pricked his ears forward: they were small and well formed, curving inward at the tips.
Purebred horses are bred for looks and certain characteristics—thoroughbreds for speed, Arabians for their dished faces and high-set tails, Tennessee walking horses for a gait so smooth that a rider can carry a wine glass without spilling a drop. A horse’s ears are an indicator of refinement. Harry took a harder look at the horse underneath the caked-up dirt.
This gelding, even cleaned up and well fed, would never be beautiful. He was as plain-faced and friendly as a favorite mutt—wide-eyed and eager to please, a man’s-best-friend kind of horse.
The horse stretched out his neck and blew a soft greeting.
Harry reached out, sorry that he had nothing to offer but the palm of his hand.
Despite his sorry condition, a spark of life lit up the gray’s eyes. He had a strong body that would fill out with proper care. Any horseman can recognize an animal whose spirit has been broken, from the listless head and dull eyes, the slack lips and shuffling gait. But this horse was not broken—he had an air of self-possession. All he needed was someone to care for him. Harry was sure that if he was given affection, this horse would return it in abundance.
But Harry knew he couldn’t be that person. The de Leyers counted every penny. There was no room in his life for whims.
“You want him or not?”
Making it in the equestrian business meant being hard-hearted. For every prospect that might become a riding horse, a dozen nags were too old, too lame, or too ornery to stand a chance. Common sense told Harry he should cut his losses, keep his cash in his pocket, and head home.
The slaughter truck yawned open behind them. The horses were scrambling against each other; a few more minutes and a fight might break out. One sign from Harry and the truck driver would lead the big gray back up that ramp. The story would end quickly. First, a cold, crowded, terrifying ride. Then the short, brutal end: a captive bolt through his head. The thought made Harry flinch.
Back in Harry’s village in Holland, the day