The Eighty-Dollar Champion - Elizabeth Letts [77]
When Harry entered the ring, as nonchalant as a man out for a country ride, the crowd stilled. As Snowman circled the arena, there was no sound except for the thump of his cantering hooves on the sand and the trumpeting sound of his breath timed to each stride. There was a beat in silence as he passed over each fence, followed by the thump of landing. Approaching the last fence, the horse had no faults. Holding the spectators spellbound, the big gray galloped down toward the uneven wall of brush, then took off and soared, clearing the obstacle with daylight beneath him.
When his feet hit the ground on the far side of the fence, the crowd erupted in applause. But Harry did not hear. He was concentrating on the false step he’d felt as the horse landed. Snowman had overreached on the landing, clipping the back of a front heel with a hind shoe, scraping the hair and skin away. Harry looked down and saw bright crimson leaking from the horse’s foreleg. At almost the same moment, Johanna jumped up from the stands and ran to the fence.
Harry hopped off and led the horse quickly back to the stable, with Johanna and the children following nervously behind. Back in the stall, Harry bent down to examine the wound. It was a deep gash across the pastern, too wide to suture. The skin over the pastern covers only sinew and bone; there is no fat there to provide a cushion. Any wound can turn serious—and Harry knew from experience that a cut this deep on the foreleg would swell. The pastern, the slender part of a horse’s foreleg that joins his fetlock, or ankle, to his hoof, takes much of the brunt when a horse lands—any swelling there and the joint would stiffen up, making a jumping performance impossible.
Over a large spread fence, Harry reaches forward to give his horse full use of his head. (illustration credits 14.2)
Johanna saw Harry’s disappointment, but said nothing. Harry and Snowman were tied for the lead going into the final stakes, but now it was likely he would have to scratch.
Harry was adept at handling all kinds of equine emergencies. He gently probed the wound as the big gray lowered his head calmly and snuffled, as if to show that he knew Harry was trying to help him.
“What are you going to do?” Johanna finally said. “You won’t be able to ride tomorrow.”
But Harry was not licked yet. He knew that if he iced the wound, there was a chance, however small, that he could keep the swelling down. It was a long shot, however.
Chef stayed with his father while Johanna took the younger children back home. Harry and Chef climbed into the van and drove off to look for a gas station with an ice dispensary. Harry bought bags of ice, as well as an old inner tube.
Back at the stable, Harry fashioned a sock from the tire and filled it with ice. He slipped it around the injured leg, then sat down next to the stall to wait, his son perching beside him. Around dinnertime, Johanna came back to take Chef back home. The boy was reluctant to leave his father’s side, but Harry insisted. After that, it was just Harry alone with his horse in the dark, straw-filled stall. Occasionally, he muttered a word or two to the horse in Dutch, but mostly the pair were quiet, no sound but the faint rustling as the horse shifted his weight or moved around in the straw.
Each time the ice started to melt, Harry refilled the makeshift sock. Snowman calmly watched him and stood still when Harry tended to him. While the other riders were out at show parties or back in their motels asleep, Harry squatted in the stall and kept watch. When he ran out of ice, he drove to the filling station for more.
Through the night, Harry watched over Snowman, catching only snatches of sleep. His muscles ached. When, in the early morning, the grooms arrived, he awoke, stiff from the night spent hunched in the corner against the rough wooden barn walls. He looked out at the sky—it was barely dawn. Time to see how the wound had fared overnight. Harry cut the tire away. He cupped his hand and ran it along the back of the horse’s leg, feeling the groove between the tendon and