The Eighty-Dollar Champion - Elizabeth Letts [97]
The horse lengthened his neck—one stride, two, three—then drew his haunches underneath him. Harry seemed almost to disappear over the fence, his lithe frame so lightly balanced that it was hard to tell where man ended and horse began. In a flash, the gray landed with a thump. Harry’s eyes brought the line of the next fence into sight and then raised up above it. Like all good riders, he looked off in the distance beyond the fence, not at the ground in front of the fence or the ground behind it.
After he had sailed over the last fence, there was a hush, as though nobody could quite believe their eyes. Then came the sharp rat-a-tat of applause. Snowman was clean.
It was time for a second jump-off, the little gray David facing off against the mighty German Goliath.
Miss Sears’s ice-blue eyes watched intently from under her white fedora. A sportsman to the core, she was known to enjoy a good challenge, and no one could deny that this little nobody of a horse was allowing her prize horse to show off his skill. The white-clad fence crew tended to the grass and raised the fences once more. The bigger horse, who stood over seventeen hands tall, now had a clear advantage. Few jumper classes went to a third round of jump-offs. This class had become a grueling show of stamina. Each time a horse jumped a single fence, he was hefting twelve hundred pounds into the air. It was a one-on-one showdown, and now even the lowest fence was up over five and a half feet.
Electric excitement coursed through the air. People gathered as word circulated among the spectators that the eighty-dollar horse was still in the running. Chapot and Diamant had both performed in front of Olympic crowds—both had represented their countries, galloping under their country’s flags. Anyone with a passing knowledge of horseflesh would bet on the German invader. But a feeling of excitement was coalescing around the underdog horse and his smiling rider. As for Harry—well, he’d seen German invaders before. And frankly, now as before, he was not impressed.
In this round, Snowman’s turn came up first, and as he entered the arena, the well-mannered crowd again let out a smattering of applause. Still, it was not clear which horse was the favorite—Piping Rock took a dim view of outsiders, and Eleo Sears was horse show royalty. A poll of the crowd that day, no doubt, would have elicited mixed reactions. Wendy Plumb, one of Harry’s pupils from Knox, was competing at the show in the junior division. She was startled to see their lesson horse in the show ring going head-to-head against one of the most impressive jumpers not just in the United States, but the world.
But Snowman always had a look in his eye that said he would do anything for Harry. And Harry, for his part, seemed to be having a marvelous time. As the crowd watched with growing pleasure, Snowman sailed around the course, making it look easy. Over the last hurdle, Harry let go of the reins entirely, a spectacular sight over a nearly six-foot fence. Snowman had made a third clean round. Now it was up to Diamant to match the gray’s performance.
And match it he did. Galloping like a contained ball of fury, he rounded the course with panache. With his approach to each looming fence, the crowd fell silent, and as his hooves thundered down, leaving another clean jump behind him, the crowd took a collective gasp. As Chapot bore down on the last fence he looked as if he was almost home free—but not quite. On the big triple bar that had worried Harry, Diamant got sloppy and just nicked the pole with his hind leg. The white pole teetered, then fell. The crowd paused in silence for a moment before erupting. The eighty-dollar wonder horse had beaten the champion.
As Snowman paraded into the ring, the crowd went wild, clapping and cheering in a manner more befitting a baseball game than the manicured lawns of Piping Rock. Up in the press box, Marie Lafrenz tapped away on her typewriter.
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