Democratic Sentinel, Volume 15, Number 49, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 25 December 1891 — Saved by a Lasso. [ARTICLE]

Saved by a Lasso.

A New Jersey woman, Mrs. Schmultz, visited Colorado recently, says an exchange, and after, many lesser excursions, set her heart upon making the ascent of Pike's Peak. The hotel people and the guides shook their heads. The thing could not be done. -No one had been to the top since November. It would be necessary to take the old trail all the way, as the carriage road—to the Half-way House—was completely blocked with snow. Finally a young guide, Steve Brown by name, undertook to see Mrs. Schmults safely up the mountain and down again. She rode a little Indian pony. “It was wonderful,” said Mrs. Schmults, “what intelligence the pony showed. In some places we had to pass between rocks where the space was so narrow that he had to sidle through. In the worst places he planted his hoofs, which had been sharply shod, in a straight line, one after the other. “It was enough to take one's breath away, on the edge of those sheer precipices, to look down into the valley thousands of feet below. The sensation is a peculiar one, for when you are on horseback you seem to be hanging cut over the cliff. And another great rock, rising on the other side of the trail, does not seem to increase your sense of security. “Sometimes we were scrambling upward at an angle of forty-five degrees, or so it seemed, and again we descended to get around some great mass of rock that blocked the way. The air became more and more rarefied, and my breath came quickly. “The guide kept ahead on his mustang, looking back now and then to see how I was getting along. From the pommel of his saddle hung his lasso, and when I inquired its use, he told me that he often had to tie travelers round the waist with it on the descent, to keep them from losing their seats. “After we had got above the timber line the horses were scrambling up a very steep bit of the trail when my pony began to slip back on some loose travel. I thought I was gone. If the pony lost control of himself we should certainly go down the mountain together. “Steve heard the grating of the pony’s hoofs, and turned like a flash. The next instant his lasso was swinging about his head, and before I realized what was going on, it had settled over my head and pinioned my arms to my sides. “With one turn of his wrist Steve pulled me from the pony, who, relieved of his burden, quickly recovered his footing. I did not comprehend, until it was all over, what'a narrow escape I had had, and even now I don’t like to think too much about that incident of the climb.”