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The racing schedule Noah put in place for three-year-old Spokane included the Peabody Handicap on April 24, 1889, at Montgomery Park Racecourse in Memphis. The youngest of the seven entries, Spokane stood sixteen hands and looked to be a worthy competitor, “big frame, fine bone and an abundance of muscle and clean cut as a greyhound from muzzle to heels,” according to one horseman. Spokane raced well, challenging the favorite Strideaway through the homestretch and finishing runner-up to him. Noah, pleased with the performance, now focused on preparing the colt for the Kentucky Derby.

In Bluegrass Country, everyone was swooning over Proctor Knott. His arrival for the Kentucky Derby had created a sensation in Louisville. He was owned by stout, red-faced, red-haired Sam Bryant, who more than once pointed to his blaze-faced chestnut and declared unabashedly, “That’s the greatest hoss that ever looked through a bridle.” Bryant was not exaggerating. Proctor Knott had delivered multiple swashbuckling performances as a two-year-old in 1888, including a win in the Futurity Stakes, American horse racing’s richest event at the time. Knott’s share of the winner’s purse was an unheard-of $40,900, or close to $1.5 million in today’s dollars. 

On the morning of May 9, 1889, the Kentucky Derby was the main draw for opening day of the Louisville Jockey Club’s spring meeting. Proctor Knott was unquestionably the eight-horse field’s most accomplished racehorse, and the throng of turf scribes were likewise fascinated with Spokane, foaled and reared in the land of “tepee and tomahawk.”

The entire populations of Kentucky and Tennessee seemed to have wedged themselves into the Downs to see Proctor Knott smear seven rivals over the mile-and-a-half track. Spokane at 10-1 was fourth pick, and Proctor Knott, at 1-2, was the favorite. The racetrack bugler called the horses and jockeys to the post. Cassius pranced at the head of the parade, followed by Outbound, then Spokane, who gleamed like copper in the sunlight. Hindoocraft stepped out, and Sportsman, and Proctor Knott, whose sun-warmed chestnut coat glistened. Knott had no sooner stepped onto the firm russet soil than he kicked out his white hind legs and tugged at the bit with such force that he half lifted his jockey, Pike Barnes, from his seat. The fiery display of spirit delighted Tennesseans and Kentuckians, whose thunderous whoops and cheers were said to send frightened birds and rabbits scurrying across the grounds. Bootmaker and Once Again, the last two horses to parade, had to follow that.

The starter marshaled the field forward. They walked straight as a ruler. The drum tapped. The line surged forward to a perfect start. Hindoocraft sprang to the front, with Bootmaker lapping at his side. Spokane was along the inner rail, third, and almost immediately Proctor Knott steamrolled, his muscular, pumping legs, forcing a terrifically hot pace. Making the first grandstand pass, Knott led by five lengths. Sportsman, Hindoocraft, Bootmaker, and Spokane, in that order, chased him through the backstretch, where they narrowed the gap. 

Jockey Thomas Kiley’s voice and hands urged Spokane to pick up speed. The colt flattened his head and body lower to the ground before rushing ahead of Hindoocraft. Arching around the final turn, Spokane had cut Knott’s lead by a length but still trailed him by a length. On the homestretch and with a furlong to go, shouts of joy from the grandstand urging Knott on in an instant turned to shrieks when he veered toward the outside. Barnes straightened him within seconds, but nearly all the horses had flown past, with Spokane leading until he erred by wobbling to the outside. Kiley steadied him, but Knott, reengaged in his sweeping, rhythmic stride, was now nearly even with Spokane. Kiley swung his whip and lashed Spokane. Barnes answered by rapping Knott, and Knott on the outside and Spokane on the inside went at it, stride for stride, their necks thrust out and pumping, heads bobbing out of time and trading the lead. Sixteen thousand voices yelled hoarsely as the two horses passed under the wire as one.

The timekeepers’ watches stopped at 2:34 ½, record time, but the keepers were unsure of which horse had won the race. The crowd was unsure, as were the three judges perched on their stand above the finish line. The decision rested with their trained eyes. They deliberated quite a while before ruling in favor of Spokane, out bobbing Knott by “the shortest of heads.” Happy people swarmed in the winner’s circle where they congratulated Thomas Kiley and Noah, and Noah accepting the trophy and winner’s purse valued at $5,560. Spokane made out pretty good, too. When led back to the paddock and intercepted by a Bluegrass belle, she impetuously kissed him!

While the race was praised by many as the “greatest, fastest and best Derby ever run,” a correspondent for the San Francisco Examiner wrote about the disappointed people. “The result was almost sickening to the vast throng of spectators. Most of them would rather have seen Spokane break his neck than break the record, and, least of all, win the Derby from Proctor Knott.”

Sam Bryant was drubbed for choosing Pike Barnes as Knott’s jockey. Bryant responded, “Was I disappointed? Well, I should say I was. Mind you, I haven’t any fault to find with Barnes, because the boy did his best, and an honester rider and a better lightweight never lived …. Would [Knott] have won with a strong jockey in the saddle? Don’t talk to me that way when you know as well as I do that he couldn’t have lost.”

Southerners were calling Spokane’s victory “dumb luck” and using Barnes’s poor ride to justify the slam. They repeatedly asked each other, “Would Knott have won if he hadn’t swerved?” Theories were advanced, but as Noah reminded everybody, “Spokane collared Proctor Knott at the head of the stretch, and Knott was beaten right there. . . . Everybody who saw [the homestretch drive] will never forget Knott’s rattling pace down that path to the grandstand. He made up a lot of ground, but not enough to win the race.”

The day came in 1886 when Interpose lay down in her stall inside of the red round barn at Doncaste Ranch and bore her colt. She began licking him, the equine way to learn each other’s scent and sounds. The colt’s coat gleamed like copper, but chestnut was the true color.

Noah Armstrong learned of the exciting news while in Spokane Falls, Washington Territory, where he attended to his mining interests there. His choice for a name, “Spokane,” translated to the poetic “Children of the Sun” of the Spokane Tribe. One day cowboy Joseph Redfern gently placed a saddle on Spokane’s back. “Didn’t have too much trouble, broke him without spur, and with a pancake [racing-type] saddle,” Redfern said. That was well and good, but the young racehorse could be lazy. “He’d run like all get out when he had to, but sometimes he had to be forced.” Spokane’s disposition was somewhere between affectionately shoving his nose into the “bosom” of those he liked and taking a nip at a stranger’s arm, but he was not mean.

On a warm day in March 1888, Noah selected the Thoroughbreds he wanted to represent his racing stable, the Montana Stable. Spokane and nine stablemates were walked from Doncaster Ranch twenty-eight miles south and entrained at the Dillon depot. 

Spokane made his debut as a racehorse at the Washington Park track in Chicago on July 5, 1888. Stepping onto the brown oval for the Hyde Park Stakes, open to two-year-olds only, he paraded with four competitors to the starting post. The starter’s flag twirled. Spokane broke slow, and he broke last, and nor did his position improve despite his jockey, whipping him the entire distance of six furlongs (one furlong equals an eighth of a mile).

Spokane made his second start on September 25 at Churchill Downs in Louisville, Kentucky, and earned ninth. At the Latonia track at Covington, Kentucky, on October 2 for the Maiden Stakes, Spokane’s performance over a wet, muddy racetrack was “remarkable,” according to the Cincinnati Enquirer. “He got off absolutely last in a field of fourteen, and by wonderfully good running passed one after another, and won as he pleased. He did not get to the front until in the last furlong, then he went up on Sportsman, took the lead, and left all the others as though they were tied up.”

On October 11, Spokane finished sixth in a Latonia race. A heavy racetrack and an increase in the weight carried likely underwrote the loss. While 118 pounds of impost was not excessive for a healthy two-year-old colt to manage, it was substantially heavier than the feathery 100 pounds he had shouldered in the Maiden Stakes. Racetrack handicappers, in the past as well as today, allocate the weight, or impost, a racehorse must carry in a race. Impost includes the weight of the jockey, tack, and lead slabs inserted into the saddle to make the required weight, say, 118 pounds. Weight is adjusted according to age, and fillies receive an allowance from colts. Weight carried is also based on past performances; superior performers are penalized for the victories they garner by having to carry higher weight in future races. Theoretically, if weight were perfectly distributed across the board to greater and lesser performers, all races would end in dead heats.

Spokane’s two-year-old campaign closed on October 23, 1888, at rain-soaked West Side Park in Nashville. Showing complete disregard for the unpleasant conditions, he picked off six rivals. A $300 purse capped off a moderately successful season of five starts and two wins. Noah returned to Montana, but Spokane remained in the East, resting and overwintering in temperate Memphis.

In the last post, Noah Stocks the Red Barn, Noah imported Interpose, in foal to Hyder Ali, from Meadows Farm in Illinois. Interpose was one of the broodmares I researched early. In time, my digging uncovered a curious trend in that little was written about broodmares, save the ones who earned a lot of money as a race mare or proved to be a “blue hen” in the stud. “Blue hen” is rooted in Thoroughbred racing and the term has since bled into other horse breeds. A blue hen mare produces winner after winner no matter the stallion she’s bred to, which alludes to her own genetic potency. Such mares influence genetic shifts within a breed.

Nineteenth-century Thoroughbred stallions producing winning daughters and sons commanded almost all the ink and glory. For instance, Antwerp and Lamplighter, compiler of American Thoroughbred pedigree tables, focused on “the male line in the most prominent horses of the day.” Antwerp lamented mares, and here’s an excerpt: “[Mares are] a necessary evil, only to serve as material to propagate the breed. Mares are never produced per se, for the purpose to serve as broodmares. They are only the sisters of their brothers and the daughters of their sires. Therefore, no consideration will be paid to mares in these tables.” Another example is the Doncaster Ranch narrative penned by Charles Armstrong. He mentions the “horse fathers” in the Doncaster Stud but not the horse mothers.

True to the standard, I found lots of material on Hyder Ali. His bloodlines were first-class, with turf writers noting his sire English-bred Leamington who was four times a leading American sire. Hyder’s dam, Lady Duke, was a daughter of Lexington, the greatest Thoroughbred sire the planet had ever seen. She foaled Hyder Ali in 1872 at the Erdenheim Stud, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. The bay colt grew to be a well-developed, powerful-looking racehorse standing 16 hands and so ill-tempered that one observer characterized him as “a man-eater.” 

“Fast as an arrow” and “game as a bulldog,” Hyder Ali was an “unlucky good horse” ruined by “provincial trainers and inferior jockeys.” By age three, he was broken-down and exiled to Toronto, Canada, until purchased by General Richard Rowett for the Meadows Farm Stud. 

Interpose was no blue hen. So, true to the standard, I learned little about her outside of standing 16 hands and gray colored. What of her bloodlines? She descended from notable sires such as Glencoe, Boston, Touchstone, and Lexington. I can only speculate about the female line. Presumably, it was strong, too.

The fourth mating of Interpose to Hyder Ali produced a chestnut-colored colt foaled in Doncaster Red Barn. The colt will be the subject of my posts in March and leading up to the stage curtain lifting on April 1: the official release date of my book!

Owing to steel-blue grass rooted in top of soil nourished by limestone and plenty of good water, the Bluegrass Country in Kentucky was exceptionally well suited for horse breeding. Nineteenth century Kentucky horsemen were passionate about breeding Thoroughbreds and would breed only the finest stallions to the finest mares. 

But American Thoroughbred breeding has its roots in Virginia. In 1730, a Virginian imported America’s first Thoroughbred stallion, Bulle Rock, from England. In July 1759, Andrew Burnaby remarked about Virginia racing, writing, “The horses are fleet and beautiful; and the gentlemen of Virginia, who are exceedingly fond of horse-racing, have spared no expense or trouble to improve the breed of them by importing great numbers from England.” Founding fathers George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were horse racing enthusiasts. The Civil War broke out in 1861, and as it raged, Virginians and Kentuckians, and other Southerners, watched both armies decimate their prized Thoroughbred stock. After the war, the Commonwealth of Kentucky would surpass Virginia as the yardstick by which to measure exceptional Thoroughbred horse breeding.

Noah Armstrong was so rich in silver that he could afford to import well-bred Thoroughbred and Standardbred horses, or “blooded” horses as the frontiersmen called them, from Kentucky. In May 1884, he imported the famous Thoroughbred racehorse, Tom Bowling. Winning multiple stakes races as a two- and three-year-old, at the apex of his career he posted fourteen wins in seventeen starts. The Helena Independent liked Noah’s choice of Tom Bowling to head the Doncaster Ranch Stud, stating that he was “much admired by [Kentucky] horsemen” and “This thoroughbred stallion is noted for the number of premiums he has taken in Kentucky, and during his racing career of three years, no horse that ever ran against him got away with the race.” Noah talked up the stallion too, calling him “the greatest racehorse in the world.” Tom Bowling stood in the Doncaster Stud seven years and according to Noah in 1890, “Tom Bowling has bred all my good colts.” Noah returned the stallion to Kentucky in 1891. Tom Bowling died there, in 1897, but not before passing through several stud farms. Among horseracing historians, Tom Bowling is generally recognized as undistinguished in the stud.

Meanwhile, the Meadows Farm was a bit of an anomaly in the nineteenth century Thoroughbred breeding because it operated not in Kentucky, but in south central Illinois, near Carlinville. The exquisitely bred bay stallion Hyder Ali nicked with Interpose, an exquisitely bred, strikingly gray colored broodmare. She foaled their colt in 1882, and in late 1883 or early 1884, Noah imported Grey Cloud as a yearling.

In September 1884, all of Helena was eager for the Seventh Territorial Fair and its showcase of horse races. The region’s turfmen with their fleetest racers descended upon the town. On Main Street, Dan Lawrence from Doncaster Ranch herded six fine horses for the races,” the Helena Weekly Herald reported. People on the sidewalks paused to watch the “noble animals as they passed in review.” On the avenue was two-year-old Grey Cloud whose smoky-colored coat always drew attention.

Grey Cloud made his first start as a racehorse on September 10 in the Pioneer Stakes, finishing third in the five-horse race. On September 17 in a three-horse contest, Grey Cloud finished first. Those two races were the extent of his two-year-old season. Next, on the eve of the 1885 season, Noah and Samuel Larabie worked together to arrange transportation for their racehorses. Grey Cloud’s campaign was spread across Latonia (KY), Chicago, St. Louis, and Louisville. All told, the gelding won four of thirteen starts and finished in the money six times, a pretty good record. Aside from his racing, little was reported about the gelding, things of interest to horse people, like his temperament, or what racing style did he like? Twentieth century turf historian John H. Davis wrote that Grey Cloud rarely lost when “the going was to his liking,” adding, “Much might be said regarding this celebrated horse, but Gray [sic] Cloud was a good one and was able to impress the beholder wherever he was raced.” 

That would explain why Noah returned to the Meadows Farm in 1885 for the express purpose of purchasing Interpose, in foal to Hyder Ali a fourth time. He paid $1,000 for her and her unborn foal, and the suckling filly at her side. At an Illinois depot, railroad workers carefully entrained the pregnant mare and her pretty filly. When satisfied that the little family was comfortable and secure, the workers heaved the stockcar door shut and the train chugged west. 

Noah Armstrong, one of the characters in my book, laid his foundation for breeding expensive horses by first becoming a mining success. He and his wife were raising three children on their Minnesota farm when hearing news reports of gold seekers by the thousands rushing to California, to the Pacific Northwest, and the Rocky Mountains to make a quick fortune. At age 40, Noah felt a sense of urgency to join the West’s roaring mining frontier. I wonder how understanding his wife was when he told her he wanted to exchange his established life as a farmer for adventure in prospecting.

I found little information about his first ten years as a prospector, except that he made occasional trips back home. Then, the summer of 1872, prospectors in the Pioneer Mountains, Idaho Territory, discovered a valuable lode of silver. When Noah learned of the discovery, he moved the crew prospecting for him to Lion Mountain where the crews struck multiple high-grade silver lodes. Noah must have been thrilled with these valuable discoveries even though silver was less lucrative than gold and far more difficult to extract. Now he faced the perplexing proposition of mining silver, which required a sophisticated and labor-intensive mining endeavor. 

For that he’d need piles of money. Multitudes of men would have to be hired to tunnel into the earth to mine the silver. Mills and smelters would have to be constructed to separate the silver from its protective rock before it could be refined. 

In search of a partner with money, Noah traveled to Virginia City where he convinced Charles L. Dahler, a banker, to finance construction of a forty-ton capacity smelter at Trapper Creek, completed in 1877. The camp of Glendale that grew around the smelting works thrived under Noah’s thumb. He owned the bank, co-owned the town’s two stores and was postmaster. At his assay office, the order was to assay his minerals before anyone else’s. 

Noah had also formed The Hecla Consolidated Mining Company with several investors. Appointed as superintendent and with large amounts of money at his disposal, he purchased all Lion Mountain properties not already under company ownership. He updated and expanded existing infrastructure at multiple properties. Ambitious improvements included snow sheds and a narrow-gauge rail tramway to access the mines existing almost as high as the clouds. The tramway alone cost $96,000. Hecla Company stockholders were jittery. When they received smaller dividends than expected, they fired Noah as superintendent in late 1878. Under his management, the Hecla Company mines had released more than $1 million ounces of silver annually as well as thousands of tons of lead and copper.

Noah’s massive silver mining enterprise had made him a fortune. Having piles of his own money to spend, he began laying the groundwork for a new pursuit.