You’re a Better Man Than I Am, Pete Garner!

Mt. Whitney Ranger Station, Lone Pine, CA – 1969-1972

I’d only been at the Mount Whitney Ranger Station in Lone Pine for about a week; arriving by Greyhound bus from Long Beach, when I turned twenty years of age on June 18th. There had been a huge dumping of snow that winter and spring in the Sierra Nevada range. So my first assignment as a seasonal forestry aid was to ride along up to the Whitney Portal; trailhead of the Mount Whitney Trail and site of both a day-use area and overnight campground. That spring, due to the heavy snows, an avalanche had run and demolished an outhouse next to the trailhead.

Pete Garner, a horse and mule packer, was our driver and an old Paiute Indian (to us old, but in his late 50’s) who lived in the Owens Valley. Later we found out he was one of the best rodeo team ropers in the area.

Sharing the front bench seat of the green Forest Service pickup truck was another seasonal forestry aid and also a college student, Tom Highberger. Our job was to use sledgehammers and break up and haul out in the pickup the concrete base of the destroyed outhouse.

I should have known at the time that the removal of an outhouse would somehow play a part in a later story. But I will save that for another time.

Pete, in his slow and methodical way, told us stories during our work breaks. He said that being a Paiute Indian he and several other local Paiutes were often called to play as extras in the numerous movies filmed near Lone Pine and in the Alabama Hills. Pete said they played “Indians” and sometimes “Arabs”.

Much of the television series “Wagon Train”, with actor Ward Bond, was filmed here beginning in 1957, and ran for eight years topping the Nielsen ratings at number one in the 1961-62 season. And who can forget the movie scene with an elephant being led by an “East Indian” and in the background there stands Mount Whitney? This 1939 black and white classic starred Gregory Peck, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., and playing Gunga Din, the title of the movie, was Sam Jaffe. The most remembered line in the movie, based on Rudyard Kipling’s poem, said by Peck to Jaffe, “You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din!”

I’d tell people that Humphrey Bogart was killed here at the Whitney Portal in 1941, by a sharpshooting Forest Service ranger with a rifle named Slim. I explained, with a straight face, that many people didn’t realize that Bogie had gone bad and robbed a bank. Then I’d laugh and tell them it was all in the movie “High Sierra”. A big chase scene through Lone Pine, up the winding Whitney Portal road, culminating in death.

Even Hopalong Cassidy, played by actor William Boyd, owned a vacation home tucked away in the Alabama Hills which were halfway between Lone Pine and the Whitney Portal.

Pete continued with his movie story as he drove us down to Lone Pine en route to the landfill. He said that he and several Paiutes were hired as extras and were supposed to storm a stronghold held by soldiers up on a hill. Whooping and hollering and galloping their horses towards the soldiers, they rode at breakneck speed. Only the movie director forgot to mention one thing. “No one told us that the soldiers would be rolling boulders off the hill towards us as we rode to attack them,” said Pete. “We turned tail and rode nonstop on our horses straight to a bar in Lone Pine.”

Pete said that it took several hours coaxing and pleading by the movie director to get them to promise to return the next day to re-shoot the scene. The director had failed to mention to Pete and the others that the soldiers would be rolling paper mache boulders, not real rock, down on the attacking Indians. Pete laughingly said, “By gawd, we thought they were real and they were going to kill us!”

As a mule packer I don’t think anyone could be any better than Pete. Plus the mules used on the Inyo National Forest were a source of pride for their size and good looks.

I was up at the trail crew camp when Pete rode in with his string of mules to pack out their gear at the end of summer. It was fascinating to watch him. Just like his story telling, which was slow and methodical, I realized he packed his mules in the same manner. There was no wasted motion.

Pete would look at items and mentally weigh them in his mind. He knew which mule would carry heavy loads, which could handle bulky items, and the mules all knew him. Except one.

Pete had been loaned a mule named “Cotton” from one of the other ranger districts. As he would load a pannier, a canvas pack, onto the pack saddle all of Pete’s mules would stand absolutely still. When he started towards Cotton the mule started to act up. Pete stopped where he stood, looked straight at the mule and in a loud voice called out, “Hey!”.

All the other mules froze in place. Pete slowly walked forward, started to lift the pannier, and Cotton acted up again.

“Hey!” yelled Pete. The other mules somehow all stood straighter and more rigid.

Pete started once again to lift the pannier and Cotton danced. In Australia I have watched two crocodiles slowly swim towards each other and then in a millisecond turn on one another. I’ve watched a golden eagle fly down just as a prairie dog poked his head up to look around, and be immediately snatched up into it’s talons. But the Pete Garner I knew; soft spoken and slow moving, struck like a rattlesnake.

Pete dropped the pannier, leap up and wrapped his arms around Cotton’s neck, and bit the mule’s ear and held on.

Myself and the trail crew just stood dumbstruck. Pete released himself, walked back to another mule, and checked it’s cinch. Then he picked up the pannier and turned again towards Cotton. The mule started to move and Pete loudly said, “Hey!”. Cotton turned his head forward, stood rigid, and didn’t move. Pete finished packing and soon had the string headed out as if it was just another day in the saddle.

I ran into Pete one more time when he was returning from taking supplies in to Tunnel Meadows. It was late in the day. His clothes were covered in dust and dirt. I invited him to relax at my camp.

“What happened to you Pete?” I asked.

“I was riding across the meadow trail, kind of dozing in the saddle, when all of a sudden a jet flew about twenty feet over my head,” he answered. “My pack string started bucking and I was thrown. I had to chase down my stock for two miles. Then I had to go back and repack them all.”

The China Lake Naval Air Station is based out towards Ridgecrest and is 40-50 miles away. The military jets like to fly low over the Sierra Nevada. At times I’ve been on Army Pass looking down into the cockpit of the fighter pilot. This pilot saw Pete and the pack string and purposely dove down right on top of them.

Pete was sore and stiff but in one piece.

“You know what they told me to do when a jet flies low like that?” Pete asked me.

“No,” I said.

“They told me to get the tail number,” he said as he chuckled. “I was on my back looking up at the sky. Couldn’t read the tail number from there!”