other "boys" off on a merry chase or take them thundering up and down at full speed through the camp kitchen! Don’t tell the other burros but he is a tattle tale if the others fine a break in the fence he comes running to me braying that the others are running away from home and that I should go get them.
Disney (or Diz I call him because he is kind mixed up most of the time) and Dean are the remaining pair of burros in our six-up-hitch. They are both black with gray bellies and were born at the same time in the same place. I often tell folk, "These burros came from the wildest environment there is… ‘Los Angeles!’ “Their wild mothers dropped them at the adoption corrals that used to be a part of Disneyland.
Disney is inbred, his front knees knock, and he does a strange two-step walk, like a tightrope walker. He was foundered as a baby (over-fed almost to the point of death) so that his neck crest leans to one side and he has a flat-shelf back, but, he's perky, walks with his head up alertly, and works hard to please us, most of the time.
Dean, on the other hand, carries his head really low and does only as much work as we insist on when he is in the hitch. He'd rather be ridden or packed!
Like I said, these six animals really keep me on my toes - six fertile little brains (excepting Rags' maybe) working hard to outsmart me all the time.
The eight of us make up an interesting mix and just lately we completed a trek through eight western states. It took a couple of years to do it. If you'll settle back into that easy chair you're sitting in, I'll tell you the story of our remarkable journey
CHAPTER TWO
To get us lined out and headed in the right direction, I'll explain some of the events preceding the journey.
The whole adventure began when I gave my wife, Carol, two gray donkeys (Beef and Bean) for her birthday, because they were wild burros that had been used by a roper for roping practice: they were afraid of horses, people, and ropes. Carol fell in love with those two shaggy animals and quickly gentled them with grain and a curry comb. Where I had the job of out thinking and convincing them that what I wanted was their idea. Most people who don’t like donkeys: have been out smarted by one.
We were living in Furnace Creek Ranch in Death Valley, California at the time and one month after acquiring our two new friends Beef and Bean we took them out on a two-week pack trip into the Panamint Mountains of Death Valley National Monument. We had a great time exploring even though all did not go smoothly; Christmas Carol said: “let Beef follow us he will be GOOD.” Beef got away and went running and bucking away from us spewing our groceries and camp gear over a mile of terrain before we got him under control again.
We couldn't let a few difficulties stop us. That trip hooked us into a whole new lifestyle. Carol had swallowed the adventure of living life "on the move" hook, line and sinker and we returned home to Furnace Creek Ranch in Death Valley hungering for more.
Four months later we were back in those same mountains again for a four month pack-trip. The best parts of the trip were exploring old mines and ghost towns, hiking three hundred miles over some of the loneliest country still on earth and meeting a few fun eccentrics.
Those were the best parts. The worst parts were having to hike through the awful heat of a Death Valley summer, Carol's frightening bout with sunstroke, suffering through several dry camps without access to any water, and later being held-up by a rogue park ranger with a semi-automatic rifle. This government employee spent hours watching us burst in to camp with gun drawn flak jacket in place and screamed Park Police who thought we were “Gun Runners.” With Burros? He asked “what are you doing” Having lunch would you like some?” I said. Our government at work.
After those four months, we came out of the mountains as lean as wolves with a wild look about our eyes that frightened our friends. Carol gasped the first time she got a look at herself in a mirror and declared, "I look like I've just come out of a Nazi concentration camp! I don't ever want to be this thin again - it's horrible being so skinny and hollow-eyed!" Her friends thought we looked GREAT: “you’re so slim and trim maybe I should try your Jackass Diet.”
Even though we had suffered, we weren't about to give up on this new way of living we had discovered. It was too exciting. By the time Carol's Birthday was coming again I had decided that to solve our problems we'd go to the Bureau of Land Management (B.L.M.) Wild Horse and Burro Adoption Corrals in Ridgecrest, California to get "just one more" birthday burro for Carol? So we could haul more water.
We ended up adopting four matched blacks (Rags, Chaps, Diz and Dean) that had been gentled by previous owners and used as a four-up in draft work. Carol was excited about the new additions to our little family and it wasn't long before Carol was begging me to get her a wagon and harness so she could exercise all six at once.
The wagon came to us in November. It was pulled into Furnace Creek Ranch by four smart and eager Welsh dark red ponies with flaxen manes and tails as a part of the annual Death Valley Forty-niner Encampment Parade. A sign on the side of it declared, "MY DESERT HOME IS FOR SALE."
We followed the parade and talked to Bob Cornelius, the owner, about buying the miniature, green, covered wagon. He told us that Laverne Gentert built it in 1967 for a trip into Death Valley. He said he'd sell it to us for $850.00.
Every cent that we could get our hands on went into the purchase of that wagon and later that afternoon Bob's son, Chester, delivered it, via those high-stepping Welsh ponies, right to the front yard of the fifth-wheel trailer we were renting!
I started saving up money for harness. By our anniversary in March I was able to purchase one set of pony harness from Bob Cornelius, and two sets from his friend, Bob Cleveland. Carol said “Thank you for my Anniversary presents.”
Providentially for us though all sets are different they are all close enough in looks, i.e., black leather with silver "dots," that unless they are closely examined they all appear to be alike.
Now, we were complete with six willing donkeys who hate to stand unused in a corral, three sets of antique harness, and a miniature wagon. We mixed them all together and the wild rides began!
It was a hair-raising time. I'd load the wagon heavily with hay-bales, hitch up a span of just two burros at a time, give my wife a hand up and turn the team out into the desert sand of Death Valley. You'd think that a heavy load in soft sand would keep them slow - but not so. They would charge at full speed out through the humps and holes of the desert, swerving right, and left, as they tried to outrun the wagon.
Slow-minded Rags would just beat the front of the wagon to splinters, every time it was his turn. He would play a regular tat too drum beat on the old wood with his hind hoofs while I was thanking God for a wagon with a high seat and Carol was hanging on for dear life and praying out loud!
It wasn't long before the burros settled down and got used to the wagon and since their training was going so smoothly, I decided that traveling with the wagon was not such a bad idea.
We could carry more water, (of course we needed more now that we had more animals) and carry hay too. I figured that we'd start this new way of traveling by going up to Virginia City, Nevada and then come straight back to Death Valley before winter.
I'm sure we discussed division of labor before we left on our journey, even though neither of us remembers the chat. I do remember that I was expected to do the driving because Carol gets nervous when she has those important six ribbons in hand (so nervous that she forgets what to do with all six of them) and because she declares that it all takes more muscle than she's got. She would wrap the swing and wheeler’s lines around the post on the dash board and pick up the lines of the leaders and think she was in charge. The boys were good for her as long as there are no turns to be made.
I also remember that because I have a talent for camp cookery that I'd be cook and she'd do the clean-up.
As a jack-of-all-trades I had done plenty of cooking to earn my living and I had been used to driving a pair of Belgian Draft Horses four or five times a week as a part of my job wrangling horses at Furnace Creek Ranch in Death Valley, so I felt fully qualified for those jobs. However, I was soon to find