PEOPLE

"I am not a gunpowder general," said the handsome Mexican officer who was the top show jumper in the 1948 Olympics. "I never shot a gun. I never fought in a war." Last week, however, all that had changed. Finding himself in one of those traffic clashes that so frequently explode in the thin air of Mexico City, Brigadier General Humberto Mariles jumped out of his car, aimed his gun and fired, thereby starting a small war of his own. "We nearly crashed because of this man's reckless driving," was the way the general described the altercation. "We exchanged a few hot words, and then he pulled out some kind of a steel bar and tried to hit me. In defense of my life, I pulled out my gun and shot him. That was all." But it wasn't. The man, a bricklayer, died 10 days later, and now General Humberto Mariles is hiding out. No one knows where.

While CBS was capturing baseball's Yankees, ABC reached out and grabbed basketball's Lakers—or two of them, anyway. Temporarily short of tall monsters to appear in a far out fall series called The Outer Limits, the network commissioned towering centers LeRoy Ellis and Gene Wiley to suit up in masks, claws and webfeet and make like fast-breaking creatures from Mars or maybe NBC.

Lashing winds, fog and knee-deep snow thwarted their climb 2,000 feet short of the top of the 14,701-foot Matterhorn, but Defense Secretary Robert McNamara (below), his wife, Margaret, and their 14-year-old son, Robert Craig, had a good time anyhow. "You know why we like mountain climbing so much?" asked Mrs. McNamara. "Because it is one of the rare occasions when we can be completely alone and be a real family." "You know what I like best about mountain climbing?" joked her husband, who missed a chance at another summit when L.B.J. told him he couldn't be VP. "It's coming down."

Any day now Lawrence B. Sheppard of the Hanover Shoe Farms will be Moscow-bound to pick out the seven undesignated harness horses the Russians promised in trade for the famed Apex Hanover. And the U.S.S.R. had better watch out. Crusty old Shep, who may be the toughest horse trader since David Harum, has already haggled with the Government of the United States, the State of New York, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (SI, June 5, 1961), The Wall Street Journal and the AFL-CIO, and he has never come out second best.

A proper skipper should go down with his ship, but His Highness Prince Karim Aga Khan is not that proper. When he rammed his 72-foot yacht Amaloun onto a rock off the Sardinian coast, he ordered his guests, Princess Margaret and her husband, the Earl of Snowdon, to jump overboard into a bobbing rubber raft. Then, as the $200,000 vessel foundered helplessly, the Aga jumped after the royal pair, and all three paddled the raft to the island of Mortorío, which lay a good 75 yards away. "There was," came the formal word from Buckingham Palace, "no cause for anxiety."

Many U.S. voters may react favorably to the persuasive oratory of Hubert Humphrey, but there is one man who refuses to be swayed. He is Humphrey's chauffeur. No matter what the man from Minnesota says about his favorite baseball team, the Twins, his driver remains loyal to Gil Hodges and the Washington Senators.

When the new Santa Clara County (Calif.) youth counselor turned aside to make a phone call the other day, two juvenile delinquents in his charge decided to lam out of there. They did not get far. The new counselor happens to be a chap by the name of Don Bowden who, back in 1957, became the first American ever to run a four-minute mile.

Raising quarter horses is costing TV Quizmaster Merv Griffin a small fortune in vintage champagne. Not that Merv's lively colts themselves like bubbly so much—they just keep jumping over the fence to graze in a neighbor's cornfield. And every time they do it. Breeder Griffin has to get up the champagne by way of apology. Score up to now: four cases.

Any good Southern Conference football coach is keeping his eye open for promising recruits these days, but Furman's Bob King seems doomed to disappointment. What Bob wants is a horse to match his school colors, which are purple and white. "But," he sighed hopelessly, "there just aren't many purple horses around."

Like two elderly Huck Finns, Nebraska Governor Frank Morrison and Missouri Governor John Dalton headed down the mucky Missouri River to explore its nooks and crannies. They were not looking for pirate gold, however, but for sites to build marinas. "There is no question," said Governor Morrison, as he stepped ashore at Kansas City after the 200-mile voyage, "that the Missouri will someday become to the Midwest what the Rhine has been to Europe."

Out of stir but not on a full pardon, former Red Sox slugger Ted Williams left the hospital to go to his cottage on the Miramichi River in Canada. "The doctors have told me I can fish," said the 47-year-old athlete, who is recovering from a back injury. "I can't step around on those rocks like nothing ever happened, but I'll be O.K. They say I have the body of a 21-year-old, and by November I will be able to play golf again."

"Everywhere I went the men asked two questions," reported Penn State Coach Rip Engle after an Armed Forces football-clinic tour of the Far East. "One was: 'What do they think of this war back home?'; the other was: 'What about topless bathing suits?' "

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