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Show ADVENTURERS' CLUB 3 HEADLINES FROM THE LIVES A OF PEOPLE LIKE YOURSELF 2S "A Ride With Death" By FLOYD GIBBONS Famous Headline Hunter HELLO EVERYBODY: Mary Billard of La Salle, 111., is today's Distinguished Adventurer, and she wins that distinction with one of the most terrifying yarns I've seen in a long time. It happened in 1913, when Mrs. Billard was Miss Mary Blanch, a girl of twelve, and Mary says, "The La Salle papers called me a heroine at the time, and it was all quite exciting for a girl of my age, but It lost Its thrill when I thought of my mother lying in a hospital in a critical condition, condi-tion, fighting the dangers of gangrene and lockjaw." You can see from that statement of Mary's that there was tragedy In that episode as well as adventure. And It started with nothing but a common, ordinary buggy ride. There weren't many automobiles In those days, and most of the streets were mere unpaved dirt roads. Her Dad Bought a Race Horse. Mary's dad had bought a horse that had spent all Us life on race tracks and was hard to handle when hitched to a boggy. It had run away twice, and Mary's mother didn't drive it any oftener than she had to. But there came a day when she felt she HAD to drive that horse. They had just moved into town, and Mary was finishing a term at a little country schoolhouse three miles out of La Salle. Mary's teacher was coming back with her that evening, so mother hitched up the horse and started out to get them. Mother hadn't been feeling well all that day, but she made the trip to the schoolhouse without any trouble. They were all on their way to town, with Mary in the middle between her mother and the teacher, when, without warning, Mary felt her mother fall away from her. She looked around just in time to see mother topple from the seat and pitch headlong into the road. She had fainted. Off on a Terrifying Run. But that was only the beginning of a disastrous train of events. Mother had fallen out with the lines still clutched in her hands. The sudden jerk on those reins, caused by her falling, frightened the horse. It gave a leap forward. "And with that leap," says Mary, "there started the fastest ride I had ever remembered in all my twelve years. "We were horrified at the situation. The horse was plunging along at a full gallop, and my mother was being dragged face downward over Mary Climbed Onto the Horse's Back. stones and gravel, in a way that struck terror Into my heart The teacher teach-er and I were helpless. . "We called and screamed to mother, pleading with her to let go of the lines, but all our screaming was useless, for mother was in an unconscious un-conscious condition, clinging to those reins with a death grip while the horse dragged her along." And, for half a mile, mother dragged along beside the reeling wagon, in imminent danger of rolling under the wheels, while up in the seat Mary and the teacher sat paralyzed with fear, trying to hang on to the swaying, reeling buggy. Mary says that buggy was running on two wheels a good part of the time. And at other times it seemed t6 be flying through the air, with nothing under the wheels at all. Several men along the road had tried to stop the horse, but couldn't do anything with the crazed animal. At last, at the end of half a mile mother's hands loosened on the reins and the lines were free. They got between the horse's front legs, and that only served to frighten the poor animal more. Still the reeling, careening carriage flew on. They had covered more than a mile, and now they were within a short distance of a narrow culvert, just outside of the business section of La Salle. There were pillars on either side of it, and it would be a miracle if the crazed horse got through that cramped space without wrecking the buggy. The teacher was the first one to think of that culvert. She screamed to Mary that if the horse couldn't be stopped before they reached it they would both be killed. "And with her voice still ringing in my ears," says Mary, "she rose to her feet, stood on them for a moment on the swaying floor of the buggy and jumped! I shut my eyes as I heard her body hit the road, and thought that surely she must have been killed." . Desperate Climb to the Horse's Back. And now, Mary was left alone in that speeding buggy. She knew that, somehow, she had to get hold of those reins that were dragging down there beneath the horse's feet Just a little way ahead, now, was the culvert And even if the buggy did get through the culvert it was certain cer-tain to crash into something in the business district two blocks beyond. So, while the buggy reeled and swayed, Mary began climbing over the dashboard, onto the horse's back. It was a desperate chance. Time and again Mary almost lost her hold in that precarious trip. The horse was slippery with , foam and perspiration, and only by bracing her feet against the shaft did she manage to keep from being thrown into the road. "I reached the horse's head,"- she says, "and the feel of my body on her seemed to frighten her all the more, and make her go faster than ever. But I got the lines from between her legs and started inching my way back to the buggy. "I pulled and jerked at the reins until I brought the horse to a halt" she says, "and it stopped just a few feet In front of the dreaded culvert A boy ran up to hold the animal, and I left the buggy and ran into town to get a doctor for mother. She was still unconscious when they brought her in. and to this day she carries, on the right side of her face, the terrible marks of that horrifying experience." Mary says she's glad the horse and buggy days are over because well she wouldn't want any of her children to have such an experience. Copyright. WNU Service. |