Every year, twice a year, the signs go up around town. They are starting to look old and worn, but no one seems to care. The Waverly Draft Horse Sale is a feast of bad coffee, stale doughnuts, manure, rusting machinery, and horses. Nervous horses—mostly Percherons, Clydesdales and other mammoths—waiting anxiously to be bought by the highest bidder. Some decked out in their finest black and silver tack, brushed, linimented, hooves filed and polished, purple bows in silky manes and tails. Others simply brushed and brushed again to reveal the strength that lies beneath the satin hide.

These are the kings of horses. They wait expectantly in a tense line before the auction floor, dwarfing the bidders and keepers milling about them. Hands appear patting withers and flanks. The air is thick with the smell of horse, to them perhaps the smell of human.

A number is called, a switch is flashed before the eyes—horse and master enter the arena. This is the moment when horse displays its heritage of both ultimate power and humble submission. A price is forged and the gavel falls.