The Children's Blizzard(32)

“Th-Thank you, Miss Olsen,” she said, and braved a tiny smile, which pierced Raina’s heart. The trust, the innocence, placed right into her very hands. The bravery of these sons and daughters of immigrants.

“All right, children! We’re going now, but we’re together. Nothing bad can happen to us if we’re together. We’re going to Tor’s house, and when we get there I bet there will be some cookies and warm milk, and we’ll play games until your parents come to get you. That will be fun, won’t it?”

There were a few excited yelps but, for the most part, the children were silent. Trusting. Lifting Enid up, she nodded at Tor, who held on to Rosa Larsen, Sofia already on his back.

“Let’s go,” she cried, bending her head against the wind as she led them all through the doorway of the schoolhouse. She paused for a moment to get her bearing, then she faced the southwest, feeling the pull of the ten children and Tor behind her, all of them in her wake, but attached to her. The children were too stunned by the storm to do more than gasp.

Then she stepped into the howling void.





CHAPTER 15


?????



THE BIRDS AND BEASTS OF the prairie took shelter where they could.

They had sensed it first, long before the humans; they felt the change in the atmosphere, the wind moving like the hands of a clock from the south to the northwest. They smelled it, the subtle yet acrid whiff of electricity. Snow smelled different from rain; drier, less mossy. They felt the coming cold even before the temperature started to plummet.

The rattlesnakes and the toads and the salamanders didn’t sense any of this; they were sleeping their winter sleep, burrowed deep beneath the ground, their hearts barely beating, only just enough to keep them alive until spring. They were unaware of the storm raging on top of them.

Prairie dogs, too, with their extra layer of winter fat, were lazing about in the subterranean burrows of their prairie towns; they may have noticed some changes in the air above them, but they didn’t care. They would wait the storm out, families cuddling together in little nests made of grass. Once the storm was over, these curious critters would venture out to see what was what, but for now, dozing was the plan.

    Even foxes, sporting an additional layer of fur for the winter, decided to cower in dens built against abandoned houses or in soddies, forgoing the delight of sleeping out on the plain at night under the stars. There was no hunting to be done in a storm like this; there was little enough hunting to be done in the winter anyway, which meant an extra reliance on the chicken eggs so prized by the homesteaders. But on a day like this, even a henhouse wasn’t tempting; the mature foxes huddled with their young, for winter was high breeding time.

Coyotes also sought shelter in dens constructed in abandoned houses or in soddies or against what trees there were, or in ravines and creek banks. Hunting was difficult in the winter; the rodents buried deep in the ground, leaving only deer—skinny themselves now, months after the abundance of their autumn pillaging—to be brought down, divided up, consumed or hoarded.

It was the larger animals, the ones who couldn’t hide in dens, that took the brunt of it. The deer and the elk and the pronghorn had to endure the worst of nature’s fury, huddling together against what shelter they could find out on the pitiless prairie that left them so vulnerable with few trees, hills, or gullies for protection. The minute they smelled the change in the air, they clumped together in herds, snuggling low to the ground for warmth, heads down, eyes shut, the weakest and youngest in the middle for protection. Many wouldn’t survive; neither would most of the rabbits trying to shelter together trapped far from their burrows.

The cows—what grazing cows there still were, that is, since by this year of 1888, most bright-eyed ranchers, like an eager young New Yorker named Theodore Roosevelt, had learned the brutal lesson that cows were a losing investment on the merciless plains—had it the worst. The weather was too harsh; every year blizzards wiped out hundreds in one fell swoop. This blizzard was no exception, striking in its peculiarly heartless fashion. Some of the confused cows, not as adept at gathering together as deer and elk, found themselves encased in a hell of self-made ice, their blowing, moist breath freezing about them, suffocating them where they stood, then the elements finishing them off while they remained upright.

    Most of the migratory birds from Canada—rough-legged hawks, a snowy owl or two—weathered the storm, somewhat stunned by its ferocity; they had their nests atop abandoned barns, the odd tree. They were used to the tundra, so they simply bent their heads against the elements and waited; once the weather cleared, the piercing blue sky against the dazzling white landscape would provide the perfect setting for hunting.

Horses caught outside, too, suffered in the storm, wandering farther from their barns in their confusion, some finally giving up and laying down to be covered by the snow, and, eventually, overcome by the plunging temperatures that would follow.

One horse in particular, dragging an empty cutter sleigh, had stopped trying to outrace the howling wall of fury nipping at his heels; it was now barely moving, swaying on its hooves, the weight of the sleigh terrible, so that every now and then the horse tried to buck it off. That took too much strength, though, and the horse became resigned to its burden, even as its heart slowed down, trying to conserve energy. Blind to his surroundings—eyes fully plastered shut by ice—the horse kept moving by instinct, yet he was slowing down with each step.