USA > West Virginia > Tucker County > History of Tucker County, West Virginia, from the earliest explorations and settlements to the present time; > Part 18
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In 1859 his father took him to California. The passage was by water, and was long and rough; but at last the Golden Gate was reached, and the emigrants went out to try their fortunes in the new country. Their success in
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general has been given in the sketch of A. T. Bonnifield. Henry grew more adventurous every year. He soon com- menced breaking wild horses, and in a short time he became a skillful rider.
Before his fourteenth year, he left California and took passage for United States of Colombia, in South America. He was, also, in Mexico, Central America, and the Isthmus of Panama. He sailed upon the Caribbean Sea, among the West Indies, on the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean. He was two or three times in the harbor of New York, and one time went inland through Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, and into West Virginia, where he visited the home of his nativity. He staid a year in Tucker County. He was now nearly fourteen, and the spirit of adventure was in him as strong as ever. One win- ter day, when the snow was half knee-deep, he pulled off his boots and climbed barefooted to the top of Shafer's Mountain, because some boys said that he would not do it. He also came near being drowned by wading in water that he knew to be over his head, when he could not swim. He attended school in Tucker a few months. After a great deal of corporal punishment, the teacher gave him up as incorrigible. When he saw that all opposition had ended, and that there was no more romance in being obstreperous, he settled down to his books, and from then to the end of the school there was not a better behaved or more studious pupil than he.
The next year he left Tucker and sailed from New York. He visited his old ports in the West Indias, Mexico, Central and South America, and the next we hear of him he was in California. He never again went to sea; but he now turned his attention almost exclusively to breaking wild horses.
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Of course, he succeeded in this as well, if not better than anybody else. He made it, from that time till 1875, his profession.
Breaking wild horses in California is a dangerous opera- tion, and none but skillful and daring men can do it. The animals are allowed to run wild until their third or fourth year. By this time, never having been fed or tamed, they are little less wild than deer, and as vicious as lions. Wlien an owner desires to break his horses, he collects a company of men on horseback, and gives chase to the wild herd. The horsemen carry long ropes, at one end of which is a running noose, while the other end is made fast to the rider's saddle. This noose, or lasso, is thrown over the head of the wild horse, which is brought to the ground by the sud- den stopping of the herdsman's horse.
The horse is now caught. It fights like a tiger. It kicks, bites and strikes ; but the men keep the lassos tight, and the mad animal is soon choked into temporary submission. A halter is now forced on him, and a saddle is firmly strap- ped to his back. Bridles are not used in breaking horses in the far West. The saddles are very strong, and cost from twenty to one hundred dollars, and weigh thirty or forty pounds. The stirrup straps are strong enough to bear five hundred pounds each ; and the girth is much stronger. It is made of hair ropes woven together. The rider wears large spurs, which he digs into the girth and enables him- self to keep his seat in the saddle.
The art of riding these untamed mustangs is no easy one. It is easier to learn the management of a locomotive. No man who is not strong-breasted, fearless, active and perse- vering can ever hope to be even a tolerable rider of such horses. Many a man in the Eastern States, who considers
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himself an excellent rider, would be killed in ten minutes if placed on a wild mustang of California.
Henry Bonnifield made the training of incorrigible horses his trade. He charged five dollars a day for his service, and was seldom out of employment. Men many miles away would send for him when they had a brute that other men had failed to conquer. He never failed when he had once attempted to subdue a vicious animal.
On the San Joaquin River, in California, near Fort Mil- lerton, was a horse that had never been mastered, but had killed more than one brave man. It was a large, powerful beast, and had strength of endurance that seemed almost miraculous. It was fierce, relentless and had come to be looked upon as untamable. No rider could be found wil- ling to undertake again to ride the horse.
Here was a good field in which to win laurels; for the fame of the horse had gone forth over the whole country round about, and it was given up that he could not be rid- den. Bonnifield was invited to undertake it, and he never declined an invitation of that kind. He named a day on which he would ride the horse, and on that day a large crowd of stockmen, jockeys and rancheros came together to witness the performance.
Bonnifield was a man of one hundred and sixty pounds weight, light complexion, and deep blue eyes, and heavy built for his weight. He did not look to be a man of more than ordinary power; but, not two men in a thousand of his weight could equal him.
When the time for riding had arrived, the wild horse was lassoed and blindfolded. The halter and saddle were fast- ened on him, and he was held down till the fearless rider
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had mounted him. Then the blindfold was removed, and he was turned loose upon the plains.
He at first tried to dismount his rider by the ordinary process of plunging and kicking. Leaping high in the air and coming down stiff-legged, or "bucking" as it is called in western countries, is the most common device of wild horses to get rid of their riders. It is, too, in many cases, and among the inexperienced, quite efficient. For, at times, it is almost impossible to keep from being thrown. The horse throws his head down, leaving nothing but the saddle for the man to hold to, and leaps upward, to left and right, and leaves nothing undone to get the rider from the saddle. The greatest danger is not that of being thrown to the ground, but that resulting from the jolt which must be re- ceived when the horse comes down stiff-legged. It is liable to burst the rider's blood-vessels, causing hemorrhage and death. To avoid this as much as may be, the stirrup-straps are made strong enough to bear the weight of the man and he throws his whole weight into his stirrups.
When Bonnifield mounted the horse, it kicked and reared until it seemed to learn that he was not to be gotten off in that manner. Then it circled two or three times round the field, leaped the fence, and dashed off across the plains with whirlwind speed. Bonnifield was powerless to stop or curb the enraged animal. He could only hold on to his saddle, and go where the horse chose to go. This was across a plain three miles to the foot of a rugged hill, called Miller- ton Mountain. No rider and horse had ever gone up its rugged sides. Such a feat was thought to be impossible, if, indeed, it had ever been thought of at all. The bluff was bare of trees, and was cut up with steep gullies, some of which were twenty feet from side to side and twice that
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deep. In places the ground was strewn with rocks and bowlders ; and at others the hill rose almost perpendicular for hundreds of feet.
Bonnifield thought that the horse would change its course when it reached the base of the hill; but such it did not. It passed up the rugged slope with the ease and rapidity of an eagle; nor steepness, nor rocks, nor ravines, nor any- thing checked the speed of its flight. Before it could scarcely be realized, the summit was reached, where, before rider and horse, extended a wild and broken plain, so thickly strewn with bowlders as to hide the ground. Across the plains, among the rocks, ran deep ravines, which the rains and floods of ages had worn in the granite formation. They wound zigzag and at random, and were invisible until their very brinks were reached.
When the horse arrived at the edge of the plain, he boomed across it with swiftness that increased rather than diminished. The rocks were nothing in his way. He leaped from one to another, or cleared them at a leap. Scarcely might one observe that he touched the ground. He was a powerful animal, and his spirits and animosity were getting fully aroused.
Through the middle of the plain ran a dangerous gully, so hidden that it could not be seen until its very brink was reached. The horse knew not and cared not that it was there. He cared not for anything; and the rougher the way the more reckless he ran, and the more vicious were his efforts to unhorse his rider.
Bonnifield saw the ravine just as the horse reached its brink, and it was too late to turn. He must go headlong into it. No bottom could be seen; but it is now known that it was over forty feet deep. As the fearful leap was
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made, Bonnifield threw his feet from the stirrups, ready to spring from the saddle just as the bottom should be reached. This was to avoid being caught under the falling horse and crushed. It was a flight through the air, and a long one; but, instead of going to the bottom, the horse cleared the chasm, and slacked not his speed. Further on were other ravines equally dangerous; but none were wide enough or deep enough to stop the horse or to turn him from his course. He reached the furthest limit of the plain, and was ready for the descent, if descent were possible.
It looked impossible. The plain ended on the brow of a bluff which, seen from above, looks perpendicular; but it is not quite vertical. The horse had now run five miles, yet showed no sign of stopping or of giving up. He turned obliquely along the mountain side, and thus made descent possible. This was the most dangerous part of the course. The jolting started the blood from the nose and mouth of the rider. But there was no alternate but to leap from the saddle, which probably would have been fatal. So, down, down, down, as they had a few minutes before gone up, up, up, went rider and horse. Rocks, gullies and ravines were passed, none know how, for no other horseman has ever passed them and lived. It looked like going down into the Valley of Death.
The horse, from the first, had been beyond control, and by the time the foot of the mountain was again reached, he was more furious and curbless than ever. The halter, which, at best, was of little use, was now broken, and one stirrup was torn away. Bonnifield still kept in the saddle, although it was doubtful how long he might be able to do so. He could have ridden better without a saddle than with a broken one. He crossed the plains with a speed that
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slackened not. Already he had ridden nine miles, and the blood was flowing fast from his nose and mouth. He knew not when the perilous race would end.
At this crisis some horsemen came to his rescue, and tried to stop the runaway animal; but still it was the fleetest on the field and led the race across the plains. Finally, a man on a swift horse succeeded in getting near enough for Bon- nifield to seize the horn of the saddle, and he was thus dragged from the wild brute, which dashed on and was las- soed on the prairie some miles away. It was some weeks before Bonnifield was again able to ride; for the jolting had seriously injured him, and he has never fully recovered from it. But he again undertook the horse, and staid with it until the untamable beast killed itself by breaking its neck.
This was Bonnifield's longest ride of so savage a nature; but he had others that came as near proving fatal, although he lived through them all.
Perhaps the greatest danger connected with the riding of wild horses is that they will throw themselves and that the rider will either be crushed or hang in the stirrup and be dragged when the horse regains its feet. About a year after the dash over Millerton Mountain, Bonnifield met a misfortune of this kind. The horse that he was riding threw itself. He tried to spring off and free his feet from the stirrups. But the animal fell upon him and he was held fast. His spur was driven into the thick girth, and when the horse sprang up, Bonnifield's foot hung in the stirrup. It was a perilous situation, even with a tame horse, and much more so with a wild one.
Such riders carry a long rope, one end of which is tied
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to the halter, and the other is rolled into a coil and tucked under the rider's belt. This is for the purpose of holding the horse, if the rider gets off, accidentally or otherwise. It is so fixed that it will uncoil without endangering the man.
As soon as Bonnifield saw that he was hanging in the stirrup, he seized the rope, which was fast to the horse's halter, and pulled the animal's head round toward him, and held him there with an iron hand. The horse ran and plunged and kicked and fell, and tried to stamp him, and was not only frightened, but was enraged, and endeavored to kill him. He saw that his only hope was in preventing it from trampling upon him. He was thus dragged up and down the field. The horse was so held that it could run only sidewise, and it was this alone that saved Bonnifield from being stamped to death. Several times he tried to get his knife to cut the stirrup strap, but as often failed to do so.
A man half-mile away saw the wild horse galloping up and down the field, dragging the unhorsed rider after him ; and, mounting a horse, he hurried off to the rescue. But, when he came up, he could render no assistance, because whenever he got ahead of the mustang, it would turn. But Bonnifield finally succeeded in getting his knife from his pocket, and, cutting the strap of the stirrup, set himself at liberty.
He did not, for a moment, give up his profession of breaking wild horses. He was sent for, and was paid fabu- lons prices to ride horses that no one else could ride. At this time he was considered one of the very best riders in California. He took pride only in doing that which no one else could do; and for that reason he did not like to ride a horse that anybody else had successfully ridden.
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It was about this time that he was sent for to ride a mule that had baffled several good riders. He went; and when he found that the mule was a miserable little runt, hardly waist high to a man, he thought they were only trying to get a job on him. He considered it beyond the range of all probabilities that such a thing as that should be unmanage- able. However, when they insisted that it was no prank, he lit his pipe, and got on, still with some misgivings that all was not right. But he was soon cleared of doubt. He has always frankly acknowledged that if that mule had been as big as a horse, and as vicious according, he could not have ridden it. As it was, it was a ridiculous victory. It bucked without a pause for two hours. The part of his pipe stem that was between his teeth he still held; the rest, with the pipe, was jolted off and gone. All the buttons of his coat were jarred off. Everything in his pockets had been spilt out. His boot-heels and his hat were gone; and nearly every seam in his clothes had given way. He was a victor, and probably felt like one ; but he looked like something else.
Much hard riding was beginning to tell on him. His constitution was giving way. A long ride on a runaway horse, not unlike that over Millerton Mountain, was the last of the kind that he ever has undertaken. His lungs were so injured that it was long before the hemorrhage could be checked; and he was forced to abandon his profession.
This was about 1875, his twentieth year. His fame had gone out over more countries than one, so that, when a Centennial commissioner, in 1876, visited California to procure wild-horse riders to exhibit at Philadelphia, he was directed, first of all, to see Henry Bonnifield. He vis- ited him, and was fully satisfied that there had been no
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misrepresentation. He offered him a free passage to and from Phiadelphia, to bear all his expenses during the sum- mer, and to pay him fifty dollars a month besides. Bonni- field reluctantly declined the offer, because his weak lungs would not endure rough riding. Besides, he was making a hundred dollars a month at other business.
California, however, was getting too tame for him, and he began looking about for a more romantic field. At this time Arizona was attracting much attention, and many adventurers were wending thither to try their fortune in the half-explored wilds of that desert country.
In the summer of 1877, in his twenty-second year, with a single companion, he set out on horseback for Arizona. They started from Fresno, and that night camped at an old mud house on the shore of Lake Tulare. The house may be especially mentioned on account of its dark legends. Part are no doubt myths and superstition, but part are too true to be doubted. The house had been a tavern in early mining days; and, since it was on the road to Owen's River Mines, and was twenty or thirty miles from any other house, it was of necessity a frequent stopping place for travelers. Many are the dark stories told of murders and robberies there, and of many a poor miner, whose hard earned sav- ings of years were taken from him, and himself murdered and hidden in the sand. The superstitious people of the country now think that the house is haunted of ghosts and of spirits of the departed who died of violence, and hardly ever does anyone venture near the house.
Bonnifield and his friend stopped at the Haunted House of Tulare partly because so few others would dare do it, and partly because it was at the end of a hard day's ride. The next day they proceeded into Kern County, and shaped their
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course for Walker's Pass, where they would cross the mountains into the Mojave Desert. In the upper part of Kern, a few farmers were trying to till the soil; but, it had been dry for a year, and the never-ceasing winds had driven the sand in drifts till all the fences, but the tops of the posts, were buried. They could get no feed for their horses at noon; and late that evening they came to a small lot of clover, where lived a frontier emigrant by a stream of water. They wanted to stay with him that night, but he drove them away, telling them, however, that they could get good pasture ten miles further. They rode on ten or fifteen miles without seeing any indication of pasture, but, to the contrary, the country got drier and more desert like. About dark they met a Mexican who told them that it was seventy miles to the nearest point where feed could be had, and fifty to the nearest water. Having closely questioned the Mexican, and having satisfied themselves that he was telling the truth, they determined to go back and feed their horses on the lying emigrant's clover.
This they did. They rode back, and told him how that he had dealt deceitfully with them, and had sent them and their horses hungry into the desert to starve. He acknowl- edged all, and gave one and another excuse. They fed their horses on his clover, and the next morning paid him five dollars for it.
They now passed through the mountains and struck boldly across the wide, sandy plains of the Mojave Desert. The ground was covered with alkali, soda and salt, and in places was as white as snow. It was entirely without grass or trees; but, at intervals there were copses of thorny sage- brush, and in other places were groves of cactus, of a won- derful and peculiar kind. It grew from ten to twenty feet
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high, with a trunk a foot in diameter. This is covered with scales like corn husks, and at the top is a bundle of long dry leaves, like sole-leather.
As they were galloping along they saw a carriage coming to meet them. When it drew near, they observed that it contained a man, a woman and two children. Bonnifield and his friend perhaps would not have remembered the incident, had not the man, when he saw them coming, stopped his team and taking up his double-barreled shot- gun, stood by the road, with the gun cocked and ready to fire. He did this fearing that they were robbers. They passed on, and he resumed his way.
It was a hot day, and not till they had ridden fifty miles did they find water. After that, the same day, they rode eighty miles further, making for the entire day a ride of one hundred and thirty miles across the sandy desert.
They crossed the Colorado River near Fort Mojave, and reached Prescott, in Arizona. It was a mining country and all mining places are rough. It was a dull time, and Bon- nifield could do no better than to drive a mule-team for sixty dollars a month. He had three train-wagons and eighteen mules, all in one team, and with them he hauled quartz from the mines. The country was dry and hot, and the work was very hard. He kept at it for some months, and until he had a better offer, that of working on a hay-farm, where hay sold for one hundred dollars a ton. He accept- ed the offer, and turned his attention to farming. At this he succeeded well for a while ; but, he got sick, and was unable to fill his place on the farm. The proprietor discharged him, and turned him out to die. He lay several days in the shade of the cactus trees, in hope that he would recover. But he got no better, and he saw that he must die if he re-
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mained there, for no one came near to bring him water or anything to eat.
He had an aquaintance in a mining camp about three hundred miles distant, and he thought if he could reach there he could get medicine. It was three hundred miles by the road, or one hundred and fifty across the desert and over the mountains where there was no road. He decided to cross the desert, and thought he could make the trip in two days on horseback.
Early the next morning he saddled his horse and started, with two canteens of water tied to his saddle, and a few pounds of oatmeal and salt to do him for provisions on the journey. He struck boldly into the desert, and directed his course by the sun, and the peaks of distant mountains. He was too weak to ride fast, so that he had proceeded only forty or fifty miles by the middle of the afternoon. There he found some water in a hole among the rocks, and some dry grass in bunches here and there. He felt exhausted, and decided to rest there till morning. He tied his horse by a long rope so that it could feed on the dry grass, and having eaten his dinner of oatmeal he lay down in the shade of the rocks to sleep.
When he awoke, it was dark. He got up to see about his horse. Scarcely had he moved when the whizzing of rattle- snakes about him admonished him of his danger. The snakes had lain hidden in their dens during the heat of the day; but, when night came, they crawled out. There is in that country a species of snakes known as "side-winders," because they cannot crawl, but roll along sidewise. They are exceedingly poisonous, and the Indians have no cure for their bite. When an Indian is bitten by one of them, he sings his death song, wraps himself in his blanket and dies.
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When Bonnifield awoke and heard the snakes rattling about him, he sprang to his feet, struck matches, and found his way to his horse, which had not been bitten. He left the place as soon as possible. There are probably more rattlesnakes in Arizona than in any other country of the world. But, they are not as apt to bite as they are in some other places.
He rode on in what he supposed to be the direction. From the height of the moon he judged it to be about three o'clock in the morning. But, after traveling an hour he be- gan to notice that instead of getting lower, the moon rose higher. From this he judged that it must be about ten o'clock. Counting from this, he reasoned that he had got- ten turned around and was not traveling in the right direc- tion. He now became confused, and could not tell which way to go. It was worse than useless to ride in the wrong direction ; and he dismounted to wait for day. Having found a spot free from snakes, he lay down and slept and awakened not till the sun was shining full in his face. He started up confused, and was burning with a high fever. He could not at first realize where he was or whither he was going. When he had settled this in his own mind, he looked for the mountains that had guided him the day before. He could see mountains everywhere, but could not recognize those to which he was going.
He decided to the best of his judgment which way he should go, and started. In about two hours he came to the brink of a deep canon, of which no crossing was visible. Such ravines there are called Box Canons, and they may extend a hundred miles with no place where even a footman may cross. Their sides are perpendicular, and are some- times overgrown with thorns. When Bonnifield reached
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