Page 89 - March_2022

Pictured clockwise,
from top photo:
Tonto Bars Hank with his connections after
winning the 1960 All American Futurity.
Walter Merrick leased and trained Tonto Bars Hank as
a four year old and then stood him at stud.
Rebel Cause finished third in the second annual All
American Futurity.
My family’s trip from northern Oklahoma to Ruidoso, New Mexico, had something of a Dust Bowl appearance, our mini-caravan
headed by my father and me in a struggling 1950 pickup stacked sky high with stable equipment and towing a two-horse trailer. Next came a borrowed six-horse van driven by an immigrant groom, Jimmy. It, too, had equipment stacked on top. Bringing up the rear in a steaming Mercury station wagon was my mother Coke and my two sisters, Terry and Sharon. The first long day on Route 66 ended with us unloading the horses at the county fairgrounds in Amarillo for a brief night’s rest. We were loaded up and on the road the next morning long before that scorching West Texas sun appeared behind us. We began to see billboards depicting snow-covered pine trees and running horses bearing the simple slogan “Racing in the cool, cool pines.” But for hours all we saw was sand and cactus. Then finally, just past Roswell, we could see snow-capped mountains in the distance. The billboards had kept their promise.
The climb up the Hondo Valley on the winding two- lane road took forever. There was not a passing lane on the entire stretch, and you could practically hear the curses coming from the drivers of the vehicles stacked up behind us. But finally, the road widened, and we rolled into view of Ruidoso Downs racetrack. It had all the trappings of a magical place, and I hadn’t
even seen a race there yet. Pity the poor stall man. The sudden emergence of the All American Futurity a year earlier had made Ruidoso Downs the mecca for aspiring Quarter Horse owners and trainers and a steady flow of Texas, Kansas, Oklahoma and Colorado rigs poured into the dilapidated stable area. The poor stall man had to deal with dozens of frantic and overheated trainers, all wanting the best stabling and all willing to accept any stabling at all. I saw some trainers put two horses in the same stall. My father had to settle for four stalls in barn 17, two stalls across the river in barn four and two stalls in a saddle-horse shed on a hill just below the old Mitchell Motel. I was assigned this latter outpost, which had no plumbing. So, after cleaning the stalls out and bedding them down with grass hay, I had to dip a bucket into the fast-moving water of a nearby irrigation stream, wrestling the current for a half bucket at a time. A little black Sugar Bars filly named Sugar Horn and a Leo colt named Roleo were mine to care for until finally, a few weeks later, we
were able to move them down to barn 17.
And that’s where I first saw him. Tonto Bars
Hank. He was stabled on the other side of barn 17. His trainer, a small elderly man named Pat Simpson, would put this big red colt on a 60-foot rope and trot him in circles, first one way, then the other, for at least a half hour each morning. Then every few days he would saddle him and send him out for a gallop.
SPEEDHORSE March 2022 87
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