A High-Speed Rescue on the Streets of Oroville
When a runaway horse endangered a child in the heart of town, a man bypassed the mob to execute a daring automotive rescue.
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.
Early that morning, an angry rumor had disturbed the town. The sluice of the hydraulic company had been robbed again. Suspicion pointed toward the cabin on the hillside where Hugh Stires lived. Entering the town, Harry was aware that those he met stopped to gaze after him. He went to a jeweler's to turn his gold dust into coin, and while there, noticed a reward placard for the sluice thief. Suddenly, a sound touched a chord in his brain: the exhaust of a motor car. A long red automobile had stopped at the curb. Nearby, a girl named Jessica was riding a horse with a small child in the saddle. When the crowd gathered and threatened Harry with being tarred and feathered for theft, the horse caught sight of the red automobile, snorted, and broke into a run. Devlin, the child's father, was helpless as the animal dashed down the long, level street. Harry gained the automobile, pushed the lever down, and jerked the throttle wide. The machine bounded into its pace, gathering headway, and darted after the runaway. With the front wheels at the horse's flank, Harry leaned far out from the step and lifted the child from the saddle.
“The steel steed was creeping closer. A thunder of hoofs in pursuit would have maddened the flying animal, but the gliding thing that was now so close to him came on with noiseless swiftness.”
This dramatic scene highlights the early tension between transient laborers and established local interests during the Okanogan mining boom. It serves as a reminder of how quickly civic unrest could spiral in a frontier town, and how machines—like the automobile—were first viewed as symbols of both danger and miraculous, modern progress.
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