The smell of freshly mowed grass greeted Mick Ruis as he bounds out of the front of the house built in circa 1863 that once was owned by Star Trek’s William Shatner.

Ruis, in his go-to white T-shirt and jeans, wanted to hop on a four-wheeler and investigate the 163 acres of rural farmland he purchased sight-unseen from an online brochure for $2.5 million.

With less than 48 hours before the Kentucky Derby, where his horse Bolt d’Oro challenged early before fading to 12th, Ruis had bunked in Captain Kirk’s old digs for just two nights the weekend before. There was still so much to explore at stately Chestnut Farm, so much to survey and consider — on site and in life.

The farm, from the 3,700-square-foot home with a wrapping, multi-wall mural of the sprawling grounds to the airy, 19-stall barn, signals the commitment of Ruis to dive into the horse-racing game in bigger, bolder ways.

Over the guttural groan of the four-wheeler, Ruis said he planned to move almost all of his operations from his ranch in Bigfork, Mont., to his new base camp just 4 ½ miles from the storied race operations at Keeneland. That positions Ruis less than 8 miles from weighty industry giants Calumet, WinStar and Three Chimneys.

Will Ruis ever return to the Kentucky Derby to leave even more of his unconventional footprint on the first Saturday in May at Churchill Downs? No one knows, including Ruis.

The lone certainty: He’ll grind away at trying to be far more than a flash in the mint julep-lined-pan, just like he chips away at everything.

“Mick is smart and he pays attention,” said mega-trainer Bob Baffert, whose star Justify ran away with Saturday’s rain-soaked Derby to remain unbeaten in four starts. “He watches everybody really close. I did the same thing. I learned from people that way.

“He’s super-duper competitive. You’ve got to be competitive at this level. He was a wrestler. He wants to be the best. He’s got the right attitude.”

The humble beginnings of Ruis in rural El Cajon are well-documented: The high school dropout began poor, but found himself rich with business ideas and an unrelenting work ethic that fueled a pair of multi-million-dollar scaffolding companies.

Ruis once used $800 he earned washing dishes at a local pizza place to buy a carpet cleaning machine.

“I remember you charged $99 for three rooms, then you tried to sell them the ScotchGard like a car salesman, so their baby wouldn’t get sick or whatever,” Ruis recalled. “When the restaurant was closed, I’d do like $200 in carpets a day. That was big money then.”

The odds remain low that Ruis ever will choose from the dizzying Derby-contending options that nearly guarantee the annual returns of Baffert, Todd Pletcher and Chad Brown. Ruis, though, is wired to outwork anyone in his way.

“I’m little Mick Ruis,” he said. “I can live with that. I like being under the radar.”

Another edge Ruis can leverage: He works efficiently, without ego.

When he climbed off the four-wheeler last Thursday, just outside a formerly empty guest house on the far side of the barn operations, a casual conversation revealed an example.

Ruis was blown away at the costs of hotel rooms on Derby Weekend, saying the bill would soar past $16,000 to keep his contingent in Louisville. Instead, they moved more than an hour away from Churchill Downs to stay at the farm. Once there, Ruis picked up the phone.

“You know what, I’m going to save my money,” Ruis said. “I called up Furniture World (in Lexington). I looked it up online. A guy gets on the phone and I said, ‘I’m looking for some furniture.’ He said, ‘What do you need?’ I said, ‘Well, there’s nothing in it. I’ve got three bedrooms.’ He goes, ‘What color do you want?’ I said, ‘Don’t you work at the place? You can figure it out better than me. I’m making this easy for you, OK?’ ”

Rather than rubbing elbows with the horse-hoity-toity in Louisville, Ruis redeployed that money in a long-term way.

“I furnished the whole thing for $19,000,” Ruis said.

More money to funnel toward horse operations will arrive after Bolt d’Oro’s final scheduled race, the $16 million Pegasus World Cup at Florida’s Gulfstream Park. The deal to stand in stud at Spendthrift Farm is expected to earn Ruis a minimum of $2,375,000 a year.

If Bolt d’Oro wins a Breeders’ Cup race, the Pegasus or a stop along the way like Del Mar’s Grade I Pacific Classic on August 18, those payouts could soar.

In a sport’s imbalance of haves and have-nots, Ruis knows it will take a lot of sleeve-rolling to become a Derby fixture — or to return at all. He compared it to the trajectory of his own life.

“When you’ve never had money (and riches go away), you say, ‘I’ve just got to go to work tomorrow and make some more,’ ” he said.

For Ruis, the grass is green, Kentucky’s morning air is crisp and the work is just beginning.

bryce.miller@sduniontribune.com; Twitter: @Bryce_A_Miller

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