In 1955, I got a letter from Bob Brislawn in Veterans Hospital in South Dakota. He said my old friend, Ilo Belsky, had given him my address as a mustang breeder. I had corresponded with Ilo since 1936, and at that time, his address was Tuthill, South Dakota. He had been breeding a strain of horses that came up from Texas trail to that country in 1885. By 1936, he had bred them up to perfection with conformation like the old Spanish Ginete of Spain. They were mostly grulla, blue roan and dun colors, and he called them Spanish Barbs. I had hopes of getting a stallion from him. Bob Brislawn stated in his letter that his oldest son, Emmett, was in the Army and would be out soon. He hoped to turn the Cayuse Ranch over to him and come down to New Mexico and inspect some mustangs. He also said he had hopes of starting a mustang registry to preserve and record what pure ones that were left for future generations to see. So, in September of 1956, Bob, Emmett, Colleen and Shane Brislawn showed up at my home near Tijeras. We went out and looked at my little band of mustangs. Bob pronounced the four-year-old Zebra Dun stud one of the best he had ever seen. Emmett went on back to the Cayuse Ranch (Wyoming) and Bob rented a house and started Colleen and Shane to school in Albuquerque. His oldest daughter, Dipper, also came down and stayed awhile. We saw the Brislawns every two or three nights in the week. For the next year and a half, they stayed at Tijeras. Bob had a box of pictures of his and other mustangs. Bob wrote to Ferdinand L. Brislawn, his older brother, living in Casper, Wyoming to bring down a small truck load of mustangs from Cayuse Ranch. There was no doubt that Ferdinand had, at that time, the biggest band of War Bonnet and Medicine Hat mustangs in the world. So in about ten days, Ferdy arrived with several mares and the stallion, Ute and later registered in the Spanish Mustang Registry as #2 stallion. Ferdy bought Buckshot, registered later as SMR #1, and Ute from Monty Holbrook, the famous mustanger who raised these two horses from the famous Montie stallion (and an Indian mare, registered as Bally, SMR #3), that he had caught in the Book Cliff Mountains of southern Utah.
|
|
|