The Eighty-Dollar Champion - Elizabeth Letts [55]
The boy’s eyes widened, but he didn’t protest, just circled around to take the fence one more time.
“Don’t flap your wings like a chicken!” Harry called, signaling the boy to tuck his elbows in closer to his sides. He could see Louie’s hands stiffen up on the approach, throwing the big horse just slightly off his stride, but then Snowman gathered up and cleared the fence with room to spare. Louie’s face broke out into a huge grin. Harry smiled to himself.
“That’s all,” Harry said. Louie looked at him again. Three fences were not much of a warm-up. But Harry wanted the horse to stay sharp.
Snowman didn’t go until late in the lineup. The course was not difficult—a simple round of eight fences, each set to three and a half feet—but so far, only one horse had gone clean. When the gray entered the ring, Harry thought the horse glanced back at him for a moment. Then they were off. Snowman headed toward the first fence at a placid canter.
Harry trusted Snowman to make no sudden moves. But he didn’t know if he’d bother to pick up his feet. He couldn’t bear for the horse or his young rider to be a laughingstock.
Steady and sure, the horse circled the course, ears pointed forward, as though this were just another day at Knox. With each fence, he gathered, tucked up his knees, and jumped.
At the end of the round, Snowman had no faults. When the class finished, he had the only clean round. The tall, skinny boy from Astoria trotted out of the ring with Snowman, carrying a blue ribbon. A huge grin almost split Louie’s face. Harry stood at the in-gate, beaming as if Louie were one of his own children.
Finally, it was time for Harry to get on board Snowman. Harry had entered his horse in the two green jumper classes, and here, too, he did not expect a ribbon. His goal was simple: to make it around the course without being eliminated. Snowman needed to show that he was more than a paddock jumper. Jumping a competition course required more than just raw athleticism—it required a horse to marshal every one of his strengths, and to bring those strengths together in an artificial situation over a manmade course of obstacles. Nothing in the life of any horse, much less a horse who had spent most of his years on an Amish farm, would help him navigate a jumper course, nor would instinct or innate skill. Without the rider, the horse would be lost, confused, and overwhelmed. Either the horse would shut out all of the sights and sounds around him and tune in to his rider—or he would give in to the stimuli and be paralyzed.
Trainer Cappy Smith was known for his acumen about horses and his movie-star good looks. (illustration credits 12.1)
When Harry entered the practice ring aboard Snowman, he noticed Cappy Smith standing near the fence. Six feet tall, with dark hair and a suave Tyrone Power look, Smith had a track record of national jumper championships spanning from 1938 to 1954. A stylist in the saddle, he had a sharp eye for horseflesh, and he was not easily impressed. He watched as Harry and Snowman circled the schooling ring, where Harry had set the practice jumps high, hoping to signal to Snowman that now it was time for business. In the junior jumper class, which Louie had won, the fences had been only three and a half feet high, and the course had been a simple sequence without too many turns. Now Snowman was going to face fences a full foot higher. Harry circled around, flew over one big fence twice, then slowed to a walk. No point in overtraining. After a few minutes, he sat astride Snowman near the railing to watch the other horses.
Cappy Smith came up behind him. “Looks like you’ve got a horse that can jump high,” he said to Harry.
Harry smiled and chuckled. “Yeah, he can jump … but, you know, he’s just a lesson horse. I use him for the kids.”
Smith tipped his head and smiled knowingly. An old hand like Cappy could see past the plow horse’s modest appearance.
Aside from Cappy Smith, nobody paid attention to Harry de Leyer when he entered the class riding a school horse. Harry even saw people