Dragging Through the Storm
A stage driver survives a 48-hour ordeal in the snow by clinging to his horse's tail for survival.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Albert Dougherty, one of the drivers between Green River and Big Sandy, who was caught in the storm on Wednesday evening and lay out in the ice and snow 48 hours, was brought in tonight by private conveyance. Dougherty was unable to mount the horse after abandoning the stage, and the way he succeeded in traveling was as follows: He took hold of the sagacious animal's tail, and let it drag him. Whenever his hands became so benumbed that he could no longer retain his grasp on the animal's tail, the animal would stop and come up to him and patiently wait until Dougherty had again entwined his hands in the tail, when the horse would again resume the journey.
“Whenever his hands became so benumbed that he could no longer retain his grasp on the animal's tail, the animal would stop and come up to him and patiently wait.”
Long before GPS and emergency beacons, survival on Washington's mountain passes relied on basic human instinct and the intelligence of working animals. It is a stark reminder of the isolation faced by the region's early transit workers in the Cascades, a rugged reality that has evolved into our modern, high-tech, but still volatile, mountain travel culture.
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