We're looking for a group of horses. Mark asked his Amish friends in Pennsylvania for advice, and they told us what we needed was a certain kind of horse, a quiet, easy-going kind of horse, good with all kinds of farm machinery, who had seen a lot of farm work but could still do it for years. All things being equal, the gelding is better than the mare. The trouble with finding such a group of horses is twofold. The first is scarcity. The market for service horses is small and unique, not as rich as that for light horses. The situations in which the horse is used are for the purpose of showing off, such as the harness horses you see in parades or country fairs, or the giant horses you see in the short haul races. Horse breeders breed only what they can sell, so most of the working horses on the market fit both types. The former had long legs, swaggered, shone, and was full of energy; The latter are muscular and explosive in energy, but most are physically impaired and not always well treated, a combination that makes them unpredictable and potentially dangerous.

Calm, experienced and fit working horses are scarce and almost never for sale. An Amish or actual horse farmer who wants to "use a horse" for work will breed his own horses, not buy them from the market, and if he breeds a good horse, he will keep it with him for as long as he can. If a horse like this was for sale, there was something wrong, either a temper or a health problem. After dozens of phone calls, one promising lead was a horse dealer across the lake. We took the ferry to Vermont and drove to the Coopers' farm. They ran a large dairy farm, but were also often involved in the horse trade, and had a reputation for honesty, a trait rare among horse dealers. It was snowing when we stopped at the Coopers' farm, a low bungalow on the dirt road in the shadow of a rectangular red barn next to it. Jim Cooper came out to meet us, plainly dressed, with a flat cap and an interesting Mennonite beard. He led us into the barn, which was full of the biggest horses I'd ever seen, their burly hips protruding from the corrals into the aisles, black, brown, variety-colored, each one taller than me. Tied to the beam was a small horse, a stout Pershi with a shiny black coat like new boots. He wore a halter, tied to a bridle, with the rope fastened to the bit, and the belt wrapped around his body. The horse was holding the bit in his mouth, chewing it up and down, his ears stretched back, untaut but not completely relaxed. Jim's early twenty-something son unbuckled the crossbar and led the pony past us to the small pasture outside where a few horses were lounging. Jim explained that this was his way of treating his young horses, putting a bit on them and letting them get used to it on their own in the comfort of their fellow horses.

And when you're driving the horse, all communication -- all conversation with the horse -- is just through a few inches of leash in the palm of your hand, which is your connection to the horse's mouth. The two horses looked only at the road ahead and ignored everything else. Each horse weighs a ton, and you're tied to them from behind, and your fates are bound together. I used to think of service horses as the kind of horses I loved to ride -- hot, wild, throbbing, drag-racer horses, but that day I realized how wrong I had been. Sam and Silver came to the farm two weeks later. All week Mark and I had been busy hammering out a narrow stall for them in the west barn, the biting cold hitting our elbows with every swing of the hammer. We laid a thick layer of straw in the stable, filled the new manger with hay, and we were ready. They stepped out of the trailer, like Kings. I was very moved by the existence of this creature. They work for us, willingly and wholeheartedly, which is quite a wonderful thing.

They are Belgian geldings with chestnut fur and a flaxen-colored mane and tail. Their past was murky, but they must have been fourteen years old. They had been used for farming, marching and hauling. They had been bought at auction, and Jim Cooper had paired them up. Silver was the handsome of the two horses. Most stallions castrate at a young age, avoiding unplanned breeding and making the stallion easier to handle. Silver was a stallion until he was ten years old, Gary told us, and still has the typical stallion neck, thick, arched and muscular. He looked custom-made for hauling heavy objects, with a broad chest, bulging ribs, and a short back. His expression, if not clever, was always powerful and confident. Sam, on the other hand, was thin and smart. His movements were sharp, like those of a conscript soldier, upright but nervous. Sam's ears stick back when you talk to him. There's something about him that takes care of you the best he can, even if you do something stupid, and some horses are like that. They were six or seven feet tall, and I had to stand on a bucket and brush their backs.