We went to an auction that was held an hour’s drive from our ranch. “We’re going to need another stud one of these days,” Kelly said as we drove. “With all these daughters of Levi, who are we going to breed them to? Not all of them would be a good match for Whiskers.” We had decided against breeding Tumbleweed or Poco any more, due to minor flaws.

“Want to look around at the auction and see if anything turns up?” I asked.

“Well, yes, but we don’t really have much money to spare right now. I don’t think I’d want to go over about fifteen hundred dollars.”

“That might be enough. It seems like more people want llamas with long wool. I’ve heard of people getting good bargains at auctions, especially later in the day.” We liked llamas whose wool was short enough that they were suitable for packing. I kept thinking that I would learn to spin, so I was also interested in animals with soft wool.

We strolled among the llamas, with our friend Stanlynn Daugherty. Kelly’s artistic training and Stanlynn’s experience with llamas helped the two of them to spot Roman noses, slightly turned out feet, knock knees, and other flaws much more quickly than I could.

After a couple of passes around the stalls, we had narrowed it down to an Eclipse son. As Eclipse was a famous stud at a famous ranch, I thought this llama could be out of our price range, but he wasn’t fantastically woolly. So that might put him back in. I liked looking at him. He was on the small side; that was fine with me and could keep his price down.

“I like him,” Kelly said. “He has something of the presence of his father.” We both thought that Eclipse was a magnificent animal.

That day there was a llama show. This llama placed fourth or fifth in his class, below several woollier animals. In the evening, there was a ranch dispersal auction.

Just before we left to drive home, I wandered back into the stalls to take another look at the llama. There was a man working around the stalls. He was one of the owners, so I asked him to tell me more about the llama’s temperament and background.

“I’ll be honest with you, we really haven’t worked with him much at all. Just these past couple of weeks, getting ready for the show, grooming him and training him some. And I’ve really been surprised at his intelligence. I bet I could have taken him through that obstacle course they had in the show ring without any practice.”

I noted on the registration that he was three and half years old. “Has he had any babies?”

“None on the ground, but he’s bred two females at our place, and they acted pregnant, spitting him off after a few weeks. ”

“Do you know if he was bottle fed, or handled a lot as a baby?”

“No, nothing like that. We’ve had him about a year. He’s really a good guy.”

“Well, maybe we’ll come back and look at him again in the morning.”