CHAPTER V
WINTER ON THE PRAIRIE
Those
who never passed a winter on a Western prairie have but a faint idea of
the meaning of the word. One of the coldest and severest I ever passed
was when I was mayor of Woodbine. The mercury sank into the
bulb of the customary thermometer, and it required a spirit thermometer
to register the cold. One night it touched forty-four degrees below
zero. Clerks who slept in the stores froze their ears while in bed.
Wooden sidewalks lined the streets of the town; all through the night
there was a fusilade of thuds sounding like shots from muffled guns. It
was the nails springing from the boards, caused by the intense cold. It
was that night and the thermometer at the hotel where I stopped, which
formed the foundation of the story about the nail freezing off on which
hung the thermometer. It seems the nail shot out, the thermometer
falling to the ground. ''Sun dogs'' accompanied the sun by day, and the
northern lights the stars by night.
The greatest sufferers on the frontier from the winter blasts were the
four-footed animals, on account of the lack of protection. It was all
the newly arrived immigrants could do to find shelter for themselves,
let alone the stock. I have had calves born in cornfields when it was
twenty below zero. The little ones seemed to weather the conditions,
though
often losing their tails. Worse than the clear cold were the blizzards.
They were the boys that made ''Rome howl." Neither Webster's nor
Worcester's dictionaries contain words which can do justice in
describing a Western blizzard. The nearest bnilding to my house was
within about two hundred and fifty feet. The duration of a blizzard is
generally three days. In one particular blizzard lasting tlie usual
limit I never once caught sight of that building.
I still remember a snow storm which, covered to the depth of about
three feet a hog lot in which there were over one thousand hogs. In
looking over that mantle of snow no one would have surmised that
thereunder were over one thousand hogs peacefully snoring the happy
hours away. The evening before was unusually warm, and the hogs went to
sleep in the open lot. During the night it grew cold and the snow began
falling, but the hog, being one of the laziest animals on earth, hugged
the ground. In the morning, with scoop shovels, we dug them out. In
digging down, as we would strike a hog the fellow would give an angry
snort, as if to say, ''Why the devil can't you let a fellow alone?"
After a blizzard was over the first navigators were men on foot, then
came the man on horseback, and then the sleigh. Sometimes during the
blizzard the herd would break from the corral and go with the storm,
often perishing in their tracks.
The fuel question to the early settler was an important one. Those who
settled in or near the groves, which were scattered over the State, ran
no risk while supplying the wood pile. But the settler, whose earthly
possessions were out on the isolated storm-swept prairies, had a
different problem to contend with. It was in the winter that the
isolated settler got up his wood for the following summer. He had no
time in summer to chop it, let alone hauling it from the grove. In
winter, it was an everyday sight, no matter what the weather
conditions, to see many callous handed sons of
toil heading for the groves. Those winter trips for firewood were a
continual nightmare to the early settlers. It was a winter's job to
supply the spring, summer and fall firewood. Therefore, no matter what
the weather conditions, off to the timber was the one daily occupation.
Neither the intense cold of the Northwest, nor even the blizzards,
could retard us. Many a settler lost his life while breasting the
storms for his wood supply.
I had one experience that nearly cost me my life and that of one of my
men, and four horses. Two feet of snow was on the ground and overhead
was one of those leaden skies that denoted an approaching storm, as I
and one of my men started for tlie timber. We had gotten the load
chopped and commenced loading it as the snow commenced falling. At every moment the storm incrcased. Bv the time we had
emerged from the grove, and struck out on the open prairie, the
blizzard was on, but fortunately the wind was at our backs. The snow fell so thick that we could hardly see the
leaders. I was driving and learned on that trip that in a storm if you
give a horse his head he will generally land you at home. I thought I
knew the road better than the leaders, and while they were continually
pulling on one line, I was pulling on the other, and the result was I
pulled them off the divide which led toward home and the horses got
lost with the rest of us. I knew that we had traveled fully as far as
would have taken us home, and as darkness came on, we realized that we
were lost. We unhitched the horses from the load, unharnessed them,
piled the harness on the load of wood, turned two of the horses loose,
and mounted the other two. We soon lost sight in the storm of the two
horses we had turned loose. Our mounts struck out, and I hoped toward
home, but they evidently had lost their bearings. The only thing that saved our lives
was that the storm ceased at midnight. The clouds cleared away and left
us as clear a sky as I ever saw. The snow had frozen our clothes, the
horses' hair was covered with frost, and we looked like ghosts on
horseback. We were so cold we could not stand riding any further and
dismounted. Our hands were so cold we could not lead the horses, so we
turned them loose, but they followed us, the animal instinct telling
them that in difficulties look to human kind for protection.
It was the practice in those days for tlie isolated settlers on the
prairies on the stormy nights in winter to keep a light burning in some
conspicuous window the night through, to guide anyone who might be
lost. We wallowed our way to the highest hill and scanned the horizon
like mariners at sea looking for a beacon light. Bill Kumsey, a
conductor on one of the first freight trains that went over tlie
Northwestern, west of Boone, had presented me with a red lantern, and
that lantern was my beacon light. Peary was no happier as he stood at
the North Pole than I was when I saw off to the Northwest about five
miles away a red light. We made a bee-line for it with the two horses
following. We wallowed through snow drifts to our armpits, pitched
headlong into gulleys filled with snow, waded waist deep in slush while
crossing creeks and slues, crawled on our hands and knees up rough
brakes on hill tops, rolled over and over down inclines, and were
constantly in fear of our lives from the close proximity of the
stumbling horses. As the first streak of daylight was coming, we soon
recognized the old familiar landmarks, which led to the Pigeon Valley,
and had no difficulty the balance of the way. The two horses we first
turned loose had arrived ahead of us, and the load of wood was located
the following day.
The railroads over the prairies had their experience also with the beautiful snow.
Before the time of snow fences the trains were often stuck in the cuts.
I remember after one storm, in particular, that the Nortlwestern ncver
turned a wheel for three weeks. I saw a freight train of forty cars in
a cut completely covered over, with nothing in sight but the smokestack
of the locomotive. The trainmen had retreated to the nearest farm
house. I have heard of a span of horses coming into town with the
driver sitting upright in the seat, reins in hand, frozen to death. I
have no doubt whatever that in the intense cold of the Northwest a
human being can freeze to death without the least pain and not knowing
he is freezing. With one of my men I had an experience that would
conlirni that opinion. While operating my stock ranch the territory
over which I had absolute ownership consisted of two square miles. The
buildings were on the southerly end of the property. That particular
winter several stacks of hay were at the northern end of the ranch. On
account of a scarcity of hay at the feed yards I and one of the men
started for the other end for hay. Tliere was two feet of snow on the
g^round, the wind was in the north, and it was twenty-five below zero.
A hay-rack is as well ventilated a convevance as anv fresh-air fiend
could desire. While going up
we sat opposite each other. A white spot would commence to show itself
on my face and my man would say, ''Mr. Stanton, your left cheek is
freezing:.'' A rubbing would restore circulation. The next minute I
would see some part of his face turn white. ''Dick, your right ear is
freezing," and that was the condition oyer the two miles; but when we
arriyed at the hay-stack and got alongside of it with the horses' noses
to the south, you would haye thought we had gone crazy the way we
jumped into that stack. It was either work or freeze. As we traveled
back with our circulation restored, the wind at our backs, the sun
shining down upon us as we hugged into the hay, we could hardly realize
that a few moments before we were actually freezing and didn't know it.
Being a lover of animals, nothing disturbed my slumbers more than when
one of those terrific blizzards was on, for I would realize the
suffering of those dumb animals who looked to me for protection. No
matter how much lumber and nails you used, those awful winds would find
an opening; ev en a knot-hole seemed to be enough. At last I solyed the
problem, and my scheme was followed by all my neighbors. Instead of
stacking my small grain in the fields where it was cut and thrashing it
there, and, as was usually the custom, burning the straw, I had the
bulk of the unthrashed grain hauled to one of the cattleyards and
stacked alongside of a pole-shed I erected. I selected a level place
about forty feet square and built a shed of heavy forked poles about
ten feet long, set them in the ground about three feet, and about ten
feet apart, laid poles and brush across the top, and, with the
exception of a narrow entrance in the southern exposure, boarded the
shed on the outside. When the grain was thrashed we set the thrashing
machine so that the straw-carrier was over the shed. After the grain
was thrashed, the straw covered the shed to the depth of, say, twenty
feet, and at least fifteen feet thick all around it. No wind could
penetrate fifteen feet of straw. Looking at that immense straw pile one
would little surmise that in the center of it was a shed forty feet
square and seven feet in the clear. With the exception of the entrance
I built a barbed-wire fence around the straw pile. With the boards on
the inside and the fence on the outside, the cattle could not disturb
the straw. When the blizzard was on I knew that at least some of my
cattle were as comfortable as myself, and as I would look out of the
entrance of my straw pile shed at the howling blizzard I could realize
the protection and comfort of the Esquimaux in his hut in the frozen
north.
As one rode over the prairies of western Iowa in the earlv sixties he
could see the bones of wild animals that had become extinct. Frequently
you would see the horns of deer nearly consumed by time and the
devastating prairie fire. Up to and during the early fifties, herds of
buffalo, elk and deer reamed over western Iowa and eastern Nebraska,
contiguous to the Missouri River, but the terrific winters of the
middle fifties drove the buffalo
toward the foothills of the Rockies, and exterminated the elk and deer.
One of the winters of the middle fifties was known for years as "the
winter of the deep snow." The snow was so deep and fell so level that
the deer were unable to reach food or shelter, and became an easy prey
to man, but more particularly to the wolves. The wolves could skip over
the crust of snow while the poor aninml, with its sharp hoofs, would
break through to its belly and become an easy prey. The buffalo was
also exterminated, not bv the elements, but bv man. Thousands were
killed simply for their
skins. Man is forever hunting the wild, often simply for its head, skin
or plumage, and where there are no wild
animals to kill or pelts to obtain he then turns on his fellow man, and
tries to remove the hide from him.
Chapter 4 -- Chapter 6
