Bracing myself, I waited until there was a sufficient lull in the blizzard for me to make some use of my eyes. I blinked and peered toward the different points of the compass, but without catching the first twinkle of light.
"I am lost—lost—" I moaned; "there is no help for me!"
An extraordinary collapse must have come over me, for my senses seemed to forsake me on the instant. I went down in the eddying, blinding snow, and knew no more.
At the moment of giving way I was less than a hundred yards from the easternmost house of the village. My despairing cry was heard, and hospitable hands carried me into the dwelling within a quarter of an hour after losing my consciousness. Intelligent and prompt treatment prevented any serious consequences, but the remembrance of that brief time exposed to the fury of the blizzard will remain with me to my dying day.
THROWING THE RIATA.
The skill shown by cattlemen in throwing the riata or lasso often approaches the marvelous. What is more wonderful than the duel described in the San Francisco Examiner, between Mexican vaqueros, in which the only weapons used were their riatas? The victor overcame the other by throwing his noose, so that his enemy's noose passed right through it, and the conqueror lassoed the other man's arms against his side and jerked him from his steed.
The despatch then went on to tell of the skill of the victorious riata man, and mentioned among other wonderful feats, his lassoing an antelope running at high speed 100 feet away. To make the test more extraordinary, the correspondent wrote that he would pick out one of the animal's feet and get the noose around that alone.
An Examiner reporter called on Louis Ohnimus, Superintendent of Woodward's Gardens, who wielded a riata for many years, and probably knows as much about throwing the lasso as any man on the coast, and asked him if the feats referred to were possible.