Show b JfgmStMcWSf i ffe5-- §r STILL WILD for these - I&fefet ' FRONTIER WOMEN ' pplg OHORTLY afterward two riders rode up was sufficiently bright moonlight through the cloudless sky that he recognized one of them as her best tophand She lay still and waited breathless Rawhides cracked through the midnight air The frightened bawling of mavericks answered back The horsemen were cuttinp ofl a tew of the best "beef" from the herd ' If she didn't swing into action at once she would lose her chance The two "punchers were probably planning to drive the cattle mto a little canyon not far away strip their hides load the carcasses on a truck and - speed awav to some "fence" in a desert town If the state police should stop iheir truck on the road they could do nothing She fired three shots in quick succession at her tophand She aimed them deliberately above his head His mustang reared high whinnying in a low The man frightened moan shouted a voile of oaths paused a minute fired a shot into the' clump of mesquite from which the attack had I been made and wheeled about in die opposite direction His comrade followed in a fast The -- ra?:V- rf ' - high-power- Tm IT' - ::-- v -- 1 Fox Hastings is only one of hundreds of V Mrs Anna Mae McCraih archaeologist ivho is risking death b$ going among isolated Indian tribes seeding information about lost prehistoric cities women on the deserts and in the canyons of the West who risk their lives daily in grim desperate battles for survival For although speeding motor buses roar over long gray stretches of mesquite and cacti where lumbering covered-wago- n trains once rumbled and dude ranchers grunt and twist along bluffs where painted Apaches not so long ago swept on murderous raids the day of the pioneer yet remains for many a desert woman : By Mildred Nifxon "HE crowd went wfldlj Ten thou- sand "cow fans" out or a Roman tumultuous holiday shouted in The "death plunge" was ovation about to begin! As calmly as though she were going to pour tea instead of being catapulted headlong onto the horns of an infuriated snorting bellowing beast she climbed astride her jbronc' spurs Clad in rough chaps jshirt of rain-bp- w cjanking colors and a black sombrerp she looked like a cowgirl who had just stepped from an oldtime rancheria A whistle blew Out of the chutes came His eyes tearing a wild maddened steer he his nostrils distended oodshot charged field the down j viciously Her cayuse held back for aj few seconds ter the chutes had been opened was now The ricing as swiftly as the mountain deer The horse was alongside the gap was closing The woman leaped from punging animal the saddle j A buckaroo stopped chewing his quid: Another cowpoke gaping pawed it his stubble beard Silence settled over the j thousands She landed her arms about the great steer's horns She wrenched violendy as she twisted the powerful neck to the ground and the heaving shoulders and Hanks followed with a j thud The crowd bunt into a mighty roar I CHE doesn't have to run the gantlet of death M when she wants some groceries from the settlement She doesn't have to shoulder a musket when ominous smoke signals curl their Her ear messages of ' massacre in the sky for tuned t the isn horrifying whistle of poisoned arrows speeding their whining song of doom to some man—perhaps her husband or son No that is all gone But in a thousand queer nooks of the West from the hot stifling sands of the Great: American desert to the frozen haunts of the northern Rocky peaks women are yet gambling their lives in fierce struggles for existence The g hiss of the rattlesnake the whirr of the "dice of death" as the Mexicans call the rattles bring joy to the ears of Mrs James Reidy The poised head and the coiled body as the reptile prepares to strike its fangs in one swift unerring blow mean money to her Armed with only an old bamboo fishing pole which has a fork of heavy wire at one end she goes "big game hunting" early every blood-curdlin- j - j Vif who is ? Relieved to be the only r'-vwoman bulldoggei in the world 1 bad once again kept her rendezvous with the Great Shadow and won I j For 20 years she has been tramping up and down the rodeo circuit of the West from Cal Above Mrs gary to Fort Worth earning her James Reidy Hith bread and butter ra the most i some of the rattlesnakes Jffhich dangerous of all r a n g e 1 a n d j she has killed sports At the right j During those years she has Mrs Cora Sals' suffered three broken legs a bury dozen smashed ribs a few frac- hunter rith one Iped arms a concussion of the i of her victims brain and crushed hip And yet the thhks it's the only business I j "I raay be tramplei to death one of these morning when the snakes are out in the air she realizes "and days' "I locate a snake or perhaps a nest of seagain death may iarjier-lik- e on of one those quickly horns cpme veral" she relates as though it were as simple I wouldnjt give up my j "But it's thrilling as selling stockings over a department store jpb for anything in the world And then you counter "I wait until the creature has coiled know one has to make a living sfrne way and and has pointed its head ready to strike Then tnu is my proression with a quick stroke I pin the snake head 9 TpOX HASTINGS -- (-- ! buffalo I l!lllllll!llllfIOIIIIl!lllll!lllIIII!lllilllllllI!l!ll!llll!llliii XS&il't" ft 1 ' i obs the open Spac " tOOty hAiCC 'flifflG tlCB - down with the fishing pole and proceed to cut it off using either a pair of scissors or a sharp hoe' ' That's all there is to it But many an African lion hunter would prefer to stalk the king of beasts on the veldt rather than take a chance that the fish pole migh£ get tangled in a greasewood bush the vertebrae Mrs Her Reidy makes beads on a homestead workshop lonely not far from Tucson Ariz looks like a mid western snow storm with thousands of the white spinal She uses segments on the floor the meat to can and to serve as h ' JL ' -- Jr sc y i? ' ' ' - ' '" - 9 A ': I ' - ' : ( A- ' W TfROM I field Most of the women "mummy di sters" are young— college graduates imbue J with the pioneer spirit of old who dare -to go often alone into the - West searching for lost cities "steaks" More than once she has barely ruins of great temples and graveyards long f o r g o 1 1 e n They work largely a m o a g Indians on lonely mesas and in canyon retreats little-civiliz- missed having the poisonous fangs sink into her flesh "The narrowest escape Unharmed she stood jp and laughed boyishly The tophand failed to apHe sent pear the next day word by another cowpoke that his "ma was sick up in Utah" Not quite as hazardous as the hunting or cowland jobs but nevertheless filled with an occasional peril and many ex- tiung moments is me arcnae-olog- y klllii I ever jil t ed 'T'HEY always runs the risk violating some tabu which will bring the curses or perhaps worse of the elders down upon their heads ' Miss Henrietta Schmerler brilliant research scholar for Columbia head brushed across the back of University was murdered not I recovered my presmy hand so long ago because she defied ence of mind quickly enough Fox Hastings believed to be the only woman bulldogger in the world' the Apache gods and entered though to watch for an attack prepares to mount her cayuse for the "death plunge" the White Mountain reserva as the reptile landed five feet tion away" Outstanding among the was an opening Then I fired Taking as many risks as the "snake woman" The first shot women archaeologists is Mrs Anna Mae th is Mrs Cora Salsbury the buffalo huntei of was an inch or two too high I pulled the who is charting the prehistoric cities of the Grand Canyon trigger again quickly and the bullet felled him Arizona It is a tremendous job There are bufIhe nicely" country literally hundreds of them I falo w h l c h once "My work is not merely delving into heaps 'S what if she had missed on that second roamed the West- of stone and broken pottery" she declares with M shot and the buffalo had started charging ern plains by the a burft of enthusiasm "It is reliving in my f tens of thousands her? Her big game hunting days would have imagination the life of people just like us It been ended beneath the stampeding hoofs of and supplied the is the piecing together the romance ol their one of nature's "war tanks" piece de resistance simple tasks their games their pleasures their banfor Indian animals and cattle is rustlers all It gives me a new and ceeper unTrapping sorrows the same believes Jeanne Parker who manquets have disapIt is the most derstanding of my own people until cattle ranch only a the Mexican near peared border romantic fascinating and unending work in the ages one herd remains Her father died several months ago leaving world" that still roams the "spread" to her Soon after his death Besides her research in Arizona Mrs X is here wild It cattle few were has penetrated into the unknown back a began disappearing Only "v north time off but on a range at a cut over a period of weeks i country of Venezuela where she lived with the the number that had vanished was surprising of the big canyon head hunters and has worked with Mexican She sent her best vaqueros to try to trap the that Mrs Salsbury Indian tribes in recreating the lives of th "ring-taile-d stalks rattlers" but her prey Q Toltecs and Aztecs they failed with all of the cun-nithat her waddles own And then there are the government nurses Suspecting perhaps were allied with the rustlers she sallied forth of the Red who are trying to stamp out tuberculosis traMan of old one night alone armed with a rifle choma and ether virulent diseases in remote She made her way through the low brush buffalo Indian pueblos Working far from any base were coming to the water hole she describes until she got within a few hundred feet of the of medical supplies they must handle emera foray she made only a few weeks ago "when main herd Here she waited The moon was gency cases just as well as routine ones I singled out a great big fellow When the full and cast a soft ghostly light over the The missionaries too mu4 be included herd came close enough I got my 54 rifle cacti the and Both Catholic and Protestant hundreds have gnarled giant grotesque cholla She lay prone for several hours ready but the other beasts kept getting in front It was taken the words of Isaiah to heart "Prepare of the powerful animal that I had chosen long after midnight when she heard the soft ye the way of the Lord make straight in the "I had to be patient and wait until there crunch of pinto hoofs on the earth desert a hiHway for our God" Coprrihtt 1934 by EvtryWesk Maailne) had" she recounts "was one day when I had a big rattler' pinned I reached to cut its head down off with a pair of scissors fust as I touched its neck it' gave a Its mighty lurch freeing itself A of Mc-Gra- I i '( j ruster 1 LjUoj outvittmg I - I BulWogg"i9 sc ed TUT X -- Mc-Gra- th ng The I li!!lll!lll!ll!l!OIII!lllll!llllllllll- i- HiilllllllilliillililliiM |