AN UNKNOWN HEROINE

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1677, 20 April 1904, Page 4

AN UNKNOWN HEROINE

A gentleman who has travelled) all over the world says that the coolest act m heroism that he ever witnessed was per formed by a woman. He was driving on a hot summer day up the road out ironi the side of a mountain. On one side of him was a wall of rock; on the other side a precipice falling off to a valley, which per hap 9 half a mile wide. Across the valley another road wound up another mountain, and on it, toiling upward, he saw another team with a solitary occupant —a woman. Such mountain paths are not only steep, but are rarely wide enough for two teams to pass, except in carefully prepared spots. The two teams were crawling sipwlv upward. In the peculiar clearness of the atmosphere and the utter stillness of a Californian canyon, both sight and sound carry far. Ah at once the gentleman 9 ear was struck by a strange noise falling upon the quiet—quick and sharp. He listened; it came from across che canyon; and turning, he saw to his horror, tearing aown the 9teep ascent at full gallop, a pair of powerful horses attached to a heavy waggon, such as the Mexicans use to draw wood m. Down they came, straight in the path up which the woman was driving. A moment more and sudden destruction would be upon her. The gentleman opened his lips to cry out. Half a mile of valley separated him from the woman. He could only sit frozen with horror, and with eyes glued to the opposite hill awaiting the end. The woman had stopped her team, and sat as if petrified. It was impossible to turn round, or even to turn out. If ‘'he did nothing, it was because there was nothing to be done. Suddenly, to his unutterable amazement, the watcher saw the woman rise deliberately in her seat, raise her arm, and fire. There was a flash, a puff of smoke, a report, and simultaneously the outer of the two frenzied horses stumbled, 'fell, and pitched headlong, dragging fas companion and the waggon over into He gorge below. All this had passed in a flash. T he watcher, stupefied and gasping, sat gazing at the valley, into the depths of vouch the mad vision had disappeared.

Then he looked up the mountain opposite. The narrow road was perfectly +ree, the air was s till as before, the silence •unbroken, and the team with the solitary woman was quietly winding up the road again. The man, too, resumed, his climb, but with an indelible picture burned in uppn his brain. Who the woman was he never knew. A pioneer and a mother of pioneers probably, whose frontier life ad made her familiar with danger and) swift in emergencies. An instant’s indecision, the trembling of a hand, would have been fatal; but both brain and hand were under absolute control. In nine cases out of ten it is not the danger which kills us, but we, who—cowardly commanders of ourselves—lay down tour arms and succumb without a struggle.