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Show Near Death in Slide Down Mountainside In the early days Samuel Woodworth Cozzens was appointed to the position i of territorial judge in Arizona. He served in that capacity for many years, aud Companion readers reveled in tales of the frontier In Arizona from his pen. But, however much he wrote concerning his own adventures and ! thoe of his friends, he neglected to relate in the Companion the story of j his long slide. j The judge was in the land of the I Zuui, high on a mountain, when his ; foot slipped. In a moment he was moving down a long, steep pitch on his hack. The slide was bare rock and fairly smooth, and his speed increased momentarily. Then his heel struck a projection, and he turned over with his face forward and proceeded on tils stomach. Involuntarily he had thrown both arms forward to save his face, and he was now scooting down with hands turned upward at the wrists just enough to keep his palms from scouring scour-ing to the bone. His right hand touched a second projection, and his fingers grasped on it. The grip caused his body to slew round sideways. His left hand grabbed the little flange of rock and hung on. The abrupt stop together to-gether with the swift swing broke his right arm, but he clung with a death grip. An old, wrinkled grandfather Zunl at the top of the slope, seeing him, yelled like a coyote and ran for the pueblo. The judge bung on and waited. wait-ed. Below him the slide ended in a drop of hundreds of feet to jumbled rock. Presently the old Zuni reappeared re-appeared bearing several reatns, which he nimbly knotted into a long rope. Other Indians grasped it, and the old man started down the slide. When the Zuni reached the judge he looped the rope round his body below the arms and with one arm helped him up. With the judge clinging with his good hand beside the darker hand of the Zuni and the Indian's arm round his body, the men above hauled in slowly, and the two walked up the slope, much as a Kanaka walks up the side of a ship, when given a rope to hold by. Judge Cozzens says In his memoirs that his slide ripped and wore clothing cloth-ing and skin to shreds, and that a broken bone gave him acute pain ; but the rescue and the tender care given him made him appreciate the vast difference dif-ference between the Apache, whom he had fought, and the pueblo Indians, who are essentially men of peace. I Youth's Companion. |
