. Now they found a
new sport in driving the icy powder through the cracks of the loose
board shanty, upon the stripped back of the mother huddling her sobbing
children against the empty, impotent stove, perhaps wrapping her young
in the worn and whitened robe of the buffalo taken years ago. For it
was only the buffalo, though now departed, which held the frontier for
America in this unprepared season, the Christmas of the Great Cold.
The robes saved many of the children, and now and then a mother also.

The men who had no fuel did as their natures bid, some dying at the
ice-bound stove, and others in the open on their way for fuel; for this
great storm, known sometimes as the Double Norther, had this deadly
aspect, that at the end of the first day it cleared, the sky offering
treacherous flag of truce, afterward to slay those who came forth and
were entrapped. In that vast, seething sea of slantwise icy nodules
not the oldest plainsman could hold notion of the compass. Many men
died far away from home, some with their horses, and others far apart
from where the horses stood, the latter also in many cases frozen
stiff. Mishap passed by but few of the remoter homes found unprepared
with fuel, and Christmas day, deceitfully fair, dawned on many homes
that were to be fatherless, motherless, or robbed of a first-born.
Thus it was that from this, the hardiest and most self-reliant
population ever known on earth, there rose the heartbroken cry for
comfort and for help, the frontier for the first time begging aid to
hold the skirmish line. Indeed, back from this skirmish line there
came many broken groups, men who had no families, or families that had
no longer any men. It was because of this new game the winds had found
upon the plains, and because of the deceitful double storm.

Men came into Ellisville white with the ice driven into their buffalo
coats and hair and beards, their mouths mumbling, their feet stumbling
and heavy. They begged for coal, and the agent gave to each, while he
could, what one might carry in a cloth, men standing over the supply
with rifles to see that fairness was enforced. After obtaining such
pitiful store, men started back home again, often besought or ordered
not to leave the town, but eager to die so much the closer to their
families.

After the storm had broken, little relief parties started out, provided
with section maps and lists of names from the Land Office. These
sometimes we