Monday, Aug. 09, 1926
Ogreish Deity
Pour le sport, matadors are gored by bulls, half-backs achieve broken collar bones, skiers leap at 90 miles an hour into snowdrifts where many a hip is twisted awry. Last week Sport, most ogreish of modern Deities, lured Fraulein Elfriede Lucker of Dresden and four male companions up the snow-swept Bratschenkopf, near the Austro-German frontier.
Fraulein Lucker, robust, buxom, was paired in climbing with a lean, nervous youth, her fiance. With pick and pole and hatchet the party labored upward. Suddenly a blinding Alpine snow storm swept upon them, continued for 24 hours.
Fraulein Lucker and her fiance contrived a snow shelter. Wrapping their garments cocoonwise they lay down, shivering, snow-beaten, storm-cowed.
Blue and then white-lipped they sought to keep each other from falling into the terrible sleep of exhaustion which promised relief at the cost, perhaps, of life.
When the storm cleared Fraulein Lucker staggered down the mountain, secured a rescue party, fainted with exhaustion and despair when told that her fiance and his three companions were found dead.