Mary and Jody in the Movies (5 page)

The saddle slipped onto Lady’s side and the girl landed

on her rump in the sand and rubber of the ring.

“Isn’t it funny how you can tell as soon as they walk up to the ponies whether they can ride or not? Willie can tell too.
He just tells the scared ones to walk along the rail and then dismount.”

But the girls had to admit to themselves that there were a few good riders in the group; three of the girls and two of the
boys. Then it was down to the last two in line, one of which was Annie.

“I wonder where she got her helmet,” Jody whispered to Mary as they watched Annie fasten the strap of the riding helmet under
her chin. Mary squinted her eyes at the helmet, and then she gasped.

“Jode, I think that’s my helmet!” she whispered back. “Isn’t that my helmet?”

“I don’t know, Mare, they all look alike, don’t they?”

“No, mine has that little tear in the velvet where Finnegan chewed it. See?”

Then it was Jody’s turn to squint, and she nodded when she saw the rip in the back of the helmet.

“Hmph, she could’ve at least asked me to borrow it!” Mary said indignantly.

“Shhh, they’re getting ready to mount up.”

Annie strode up to Gypsy with the confidence of someone who had already seen all the mistakes the others had made and was
determined not to repeat them. She checked the cinch, found it tight enough, and, putting her left foot in the stirrup, swung
herself up.

The girl riding Lady seemed sure of herself as well. Twister had the two of them walk, jog, and lope once around the ring.
Although she didn’t have the best riding form, Annie held her own, even at the lope.

“Do you think she’s ever ridden before?” Mary mumbled.

“If she has, she never told us,” Jody replied. “But you know how Annie is with animals. She seems to have some kind of gift
or something.”

Twister gestured for the girls to halt at the gate and watched as they dismounted. Then he turned and addressed the group.

“That ends the test for today. Mr. Will Riggins and I will get together with the casting director and give our opinion. Before
you leave, stop at the house and make sure we have all of your headshots and resumés and other paperwork. You’ll be hearin’
sometime next week if you were chosen.”

The girl who rode Lady handed the reins to Jody, and Annie led Gypsy to Mary.

“Thanks for letting me use your hat, Mary,” Annie said, unfastening the helmet and handing it to Mary.

“But, but…” Mary sputtered.

“I know you didn’t give me your official permission, but when they said I needed a hat, I ran down and got it from the stable,
and I was hoping you wouldn’t mind. Thanks for letting me wear it. Gypsy was good.”

And with that, Annie turned and was gone.

Before Mary could say another word,Willie was by her side, patting Gypsy on the shoulder. Mary’s mother joined Willie in the
ring while Jody’s father stood outside with his elbows propped on the rail.

“Well, I guess these old plugs did pretty good today,” Willie said. “I toldja they’d be fine, now didn’t I?”

Jody and Mary looked at Willie expectantly, trying to ignore him calling the ponies “old plugs.”

“Well, Willie?” Jody said breathlessly. “Which ones made it?”

“Which ones made it?” Willie repeated. “Now how am I supposed to know that?”

“Well…well…aren’t you and Twister supposed to choose?”

“All we do is give the casting director our opinion on who can ride and who can’t. Then they go through the pictures and decide
which ones look best for the part. You girls were automatically picked because they’re your ponies and we know you can handle
them. They need three more riders, and then they usually pick at least one extra just in case. We won’t know ’til next week.”

“Next week? Why does it take so long?” Mary asked.

“Next week’ll be here before you know it,” Willie replied. “And speakin’ of next week, have you asked your parents if you
can go to the horse auction on Monday?”

Mary and Jody gasped, realizing that they hadn’t asked permission for that trip yet. They turned in unison to their parents
and pleaded all at once.

“Can we? Willie said we could go and help him pick out horses for the movie. Twister’s going too. We’ve never been to a horse
auction before. Can we go? Please?”

“Hmm,” Jody’s father said, stifling a grin as he came around to the gate. “I think it would be all right if you stay home
tomorrow and get all your chores done. What do you think, Katherine?”

“The same for you, Mary. Your bedroom looks like a tornado went through it.”

“We will! We will! We’ll come up to the barn in the morning to take care of Lady and Gypsy and Star, and then we’ll stay home
the rest of the day,” Mary exclaimed, while Jody nodded vigorously in agreement.

“All right, then. Meet back here Monday mornin’ at nine o’clock sharp. Auction starts at ten,” Willie said. “Now I got to
get down to the barn. It’ll be milkin’ time before you know it.” And he turned and was gone.

8

The Horse Auction

AS IT TURNED out, Willie didn’t have to worry about Mary and Jody being late to the barn on Monday morning. Their parents
dropped them off promptly at eight o’clock so they would have plenty of time to feed the ponies before leaving for the auction.
They had just finished filling Star’s water bucket when Willie appeared in the back doorway of Lucky Foot Stable.

“You girls ’bout ready to go?” he asked. “The earlier we get there the better. Gives us more time to look around.”

“We’re almost ready, Willie!” Mary exclaimed. “We just have to put Star’s bucket out in the paddock for him. Is Twister coming?”

“He’s already at the truck waitin’ on us.”

“Oh gosh, Willie,” Jody suddenly said. “Are we all going to fit in your truck? Mary and I barely fit on the front seat with
you! Where’s Twister going to sit?”

Willie tugged on his earlobe and chuckled before replying. Then he simply turned and answered Jody over his shoulder as he
left the stable. “You’ll see,” he said mysteriously.

Jody hastily toted the full bucket of water out to the paddock and made sure the Dutch door was fastened securely. Then she
and Mary fairly flew out the stable doors and around to the barn hill, where they expected to find Willie waiting at his old
red pickup truck. But the truck was nowhere in sight. Without taking time to catch their breath, they ran back around to the
stable. Still no sign of Willie or Twister.

“You don’t think they left without us, do you?” cried Jody. “Where could they be?”

Just then, the girls heard the deep growl of a truck engine behind them on the lane. They spun around and gasped at the sight
of a brand new, shiny black double-cab pickup rumbling down the lane from the farmhouse. Hitched to the truck was a huge silver
horse trailer. Twister waved to them from the passenger seat. And behind the wheel, grinning like a teenager, was Willie.

“Oh my gosh! What in the world?” Mary yelped.

“Mary!” Jody exclaimed, grabbing Mary’s arm. “That must be the truck and trailer Mr. Gordon talked about the other day! Remember?”

Willie pulled up next to the girls and rolled the window down. Then he opened the door and gestured to the extra bench seat
behind the driver. “Well, git in,” he said.

Mary and Jody needed no more prodding. Climbing in behind Willie and Twister, they sunk down on the plush gray-and-black seat
and marveled at the spacious interior of the truck.

“Willie, is this yours? Where did you get it?” Jody asked breathlessly as Willie steered the big truck and trailer expertly
down the lane.

“Well, I wish I could say it was mine,” he said. “But it’s just bein’ rented by the film company so’s we can pick up some
horses. Pretty nice, huh?”

The hour it took to get to the auction seemed to fly by as the girls savored the beauty of the farm landscapes along the way
and the richness of the truck, compared to Willie’s rickety red pickup with the deep cracks in the seat. Before they knew
it, Twister was pointing at the sign for New London Sales Stable. The words were painted on the side of a white, barnlike
building at the end of a large parking lot filled with trucks and horse trailers.

“Here we are,” he said. “Pretty crowded today. But I think I see a parkin’ space.”

Willie pulled the big rig into the parking lot and maneuvered it into a space between two other trucks. Mary and Jody looked
out the window and immediately saw two horses being led toward the sale barn. Others were in the process of unloading from
the many trailers, and there were people riding horses in the parking lot.

“How many horses are there going to be?” Jody asked, watching as a pair of gray ponies was unloaded from one of the trailers.

“Oh, about two hundred or so,” Twister answered nonchalantly.

Two hundred horses! Mary and Jody could hardly grasp the enormity of it all. They stepped down from the truck just in time
to see a horse-drawn buggy driven by a man with a long beard enter the lot.

“Those are the Amish,” Willie explained as they watched the man drive the horse into a shed where two other buggies were parked
with the horses hitched to a long rail. “They still abide by the old ways, and they don’t have cars or tractors. They depend
on horses to do the farm work and provide their transportation. We’ll see a lot more buggies in here by the end of the day.”

Mary and Jody were speechless as they walked across the parking lot toward the sale barn. All manner of horses and ponies,
mules and burros, and even a pair of llamas were traveling with them to the wide entrance into the building. But once inside
the cavernous structure, an even more astounding sight met their eyes. In the first section of the building, to the right
and left, on either side of a wide aisle, stood a long, continuous row of horses. Their halters were secured by short ropes
clipped to rings on the wall, and their hindquarters faced outward to the aisle. Some were munching on the hay provided in
a long trough at their heads, some were stomping or shaking their heads nervously, and others whinnied impatiently to each
other.

“Now be careful walking down the aisle—stay right in the center,” Willie warned. “Some of these horses are kickers, and there’s
not much room to get out of the way. We’re goin’ to walk you through the whole barn, and then I want you to take a seat in
the risers along the sale ring. Me and Twister have work to do.”

Mary and Jody tried to follow Willie and Twister down the very center of the aisle, but it was difficult not to bump into
all the other spectators who were attempting the same route. The awestruck girls, elbowing their way through the crowd, gazed
from right to left at the array of horses of all colors, shapes, and sizes. They finally made their way to the end of the
barn, where a wide exit opened into an outdoor courtyard. In this long rectangular space were even more horses, these with
riders showing off the horses’ abilities to prospective buyers. Willie and Twister stopped for a moment to watch, then continued
around the corner to the second section of the barn, which looked much like the first, with two rows of horses tied in the
same manner. The one difference was in the size of the inhabitants.

In the long row on the left were donkeys, miniature horses, and ponies of all colors. On the right stood the draft horses:
Belgians, Clydesdales, Percherons, and Shires, their enormous hindquarters towering above the heads of the girls.

“Oh my gosh, they’re huge!” Mary exclaimed. “Look how big their feet are, too!”

“And their heads,” Jody marveled. “I think that one’s head is as big as half my body!”

“The Amish use them in the fields to work up the ground and harvest the crops,” Willie explained. “They hitch them up four
across.”

“And look how cute the ponies are!” Jody continued, turning to the other side of the aisle. “Oh,Willie, can’t we squeeze in
next to one of themand pet him?”

“No goin’ between two ponies,” Willie warned. “But you could pat that one at the very end of the row there.”

The pony on the end was the color of butterscotch with a cream-colored mane and tail and odd-shaped white patches on various
places over his body. When Mary reached out and patted him on the shoulder, he turned his head as far as his rope would allow
and rested his chin in the crook of her arm, gazing up at her with liquid brown eyes.

“Oh, Willie, can’t we buy this one?” Mary beseeched. “He’s adorable!”

“I knew this was gonna happen,” Willie mumbled to Twister. “Mary, we can’t buy everything we see that looks cute. We’re lookin’
for some real specific horses here today, and that ain’t gonna be one of ’em.”

“Ooh,” Mary and Jody cooed, stroking the neck and muzzle of the butterscotch pony. “Well, maybe we’ll get something else just
as cute.”

“Speakin’ of that, the sale’s about to start. You girls git a seat up in the risers by the ring there, and me and Twister
will be along shortly. We have to do some more lookin’ around.”

Mary and Jody made their way with much of the crowd to the rows of wooden bleacher seats rising along either side of another
long, rectangular space, this one inside the building. A thick bed of sand covered the floor inside the space and a four-foot-high
fence separated the ring from the potential buyers. Mary and Jody found a seat about halfway up the risers, across from a
raised platform where the auctioneer sat.

“Look, Mare, there’s a lot of the Amish people here that Willie told us about,” Jody observed, looking around at the crowd.
“The men all have beards and straw hats and wear black pants and jackets.”

“And the women all have their hair pulled back with those little white hats on,” Mary added. “Look, even the little girls
wear the bonnets.”

Before Jody could reply, the girls’ attention was drawn away from the wardrobe of the Amish to the voice of the auctioneer.

“Test, test,” he said into the microphone and then cleared his throat. Mary and Jody searched the faces in the crowd standing
along the ring fence, trying to spot Twister and Willie, but they were nowhere to be seen.

“I wonder if Willie is out back watching the…” Mary began.

“Good morning. Welcome to the New London Sales Stable,” the auctioneer interrupted. “We have a big crowd here today, so we’d
like to ask that you keep the noise down so we can all hear what’s going on. We’re going to start today with riding horses,
then drivers around noon, and finish up with ponies. In between, we’ve got a few llamas coming in and a shipment of wild horses
from out west. Keep your bidding numbers handy.”

“Oh, I wonder if Willie knows he has to have a bidder’s number?” Jody wondered aloud.

“I’m sure he does, Jode. I think Willie’s done this quite a few times before.”

“Now we’re going to get started,” the auctioneer continued. “If we guarantee a horse to be sound, and you take him home and
he’s not, you bring him right back here, and we’ll take him back. If we say a horse is ‘as is,’ that means you take a chance
on what you’re getting. No complaints.”

The auctioneer took one last look around the crowd to make sure his message was understood. As if from nowhere, a short Amish
man with a long gray beard appeared in the center of the ring.

“I wonder what he’s doing there?” Mary wondered aloud.

The auctioneer tapped his gavel and raised his hand. “Let’s go. First horse.”

The first horse to enter the ring was a short, stocky chestnut in Western tack.

His rider, a thin man with a handlebar mustache wearing jeans and a plaid shirt, reined the horse to a halt opposite the auctioneer’s
platform. Mary and Jody strained to hear above the din of the crowd as he described his mount to the auctioneer.

“This is a twelve-year-old registered quarter horse, quiet, sound, used on trail rides and in Western lessons. He has all
his shots and was just de-wormed. Good for any kid to ride.”

The auctioneer repeated the description into the microphone and began the bidding.

“Six hundred!” he shouted. A woman sitting directly across from the girls immediately raised her hand. When she did, the Amish
man in the ring hopped in the air and yelled, “Yep!”

“See, she don’t know what she’s doin’,” came a voice from behind the girls.

“Twister!” Mary exclaimed. “We didn’t see you coming. Where’s Willie? And why doesn’t that lady know what’s she’s doing?”

“Will’s standin’ down there by the ring so’s he can see better. And the woman don’t know what she’s doin’ because she should’ve
waited for the auctioneer to come down a little bit from six hundred before she put her hand up.”

Mary and Jody looked at each other, confused by Twister’s explanation, but didn’t pursue the matter. They were more interested
in watching the Amish man hop up and down, shouting “Yep!” each time someone’s hand went up to bid. Then, as the bidding continued
on the first horse, another horse and rider entered the ring.

“Twister, why are they letting the next horse in before the first one is even sold?” Mary asked as the auctioneer’s voice
droned on. Three people were bidding on the chestnut quarter horse, and the price was up to eight hundred dollars.

“Makes the sale move along faster. This way people can get a look at the next horse before they start the biddin’ on it. It
also gives people a chance to see if the horse is going to act up in the ring.”

In that instant, the auctioneer’s gavel came down with a bang at nine hundred dollars for the quarter horse. But when the
gavel came down, the second horse in the ring went up, rearing so high that it seemed he might fall over completely. Mary
and Jody gasped along with the rest of the crowd as the rider grabbed for the saddle horn and managed to stay on.

“See what I mean?” Twister said calmly.

“Twister, does that horse belong to the man riding him?” Jody sputtered.

“Probably not. The sale barn has people who ride the horses into the ring. The owners usually just pay the riders to ride
in for them. That man’s probably never seen that horse before.”

The horse was down on all four legs then, and the rider had him under control, cantering him up and down the small enclosure.
Although the horse was a nice-looking gray, the bidding started at only three hundred dollars, probably due to his “acting
up” in the ring. Still, there were two people bidding, willing to take a chance on him, and the price was steadily going up.

“Twister, isn’t it really risky to buy some of these horses for the movie?” Mary asked worriedly. “How do you know they’ll
be good? Maybe we’ll get them home and they’ll misbehave like that one just did.”

“You’re right, Mary. When you buy a horse at auction, it’s always a chance you take. The movie people normally wouldn’t allow
it. But this time they are, and it’s all because of Will.”

“What do you mean, Twister?” asked Jody.

“Well, they trust him. He’s known for having the best eye in the country for horseflesh. If anybody can pick out a nice, quiet,
steady horse, even out of this rangy bunch, it’s goin’ to be Will.”

Mary and Jody nodded in admiration, remembering that Mr. Crowley had said the very same thing about Willie.