








Chapter 11 - THE WINTER OF THE DEEP SNOW

*Y the time sturdy apple-trees as tall as himself were growing in flourishing young orchards j all over his new field of labor, Johnny was faring farther. His eyes had received no perma- nent injury from the prairie fire, and he was still in his full vigor; but at fifty-five the best man has fewer years and diminishing powers before him. With the feeling, un- known to youth, that no time was to be lost, his heart yearned over wildernesses unsown. Therefore, in June of 1830, his eager feet took the road which Governor Cass had cut through the woods to the Grand River coun- try. In that region, and along the numerous sandy inlets from Lake Michigan that pene- trated the pineries, he left seeds for fall plant- ing with the missionary priests who hadrustic chapels in every cluster of huts of French and Indian trappers. And there the conviction grew upon him that menacing in- fluences were abroad.

To the sower weather is the one, large, ever- present fact of the universe. He puts in his seeds early or late as he is permitted by kind or inclement skies. Then, unable to hasten or delay the harvest by any industry or clever- ness of his own, he waits for the increase with anxious eyes on the heavens. A drought or flood, an untimely frost or rain or burning sun, may bring the labor of a year to naught. So he comes to note and to interpret every change in the temperature, the direction and force of the wind, the formation of the clouds and, especially, any variation from the nor- mal in the pageantry of the seasons. In his three decades of planting in wild places, Johnny had gained all the weather wisdom of the farmer. A poet and seer besides, he was sensitive to disturbances in nature's har- monies. And now, discord had crashed across the rhythmic measures of the year, threaten- ing to make one of those historic periods to which men refer back in some such descrip- tive phrase as "the year of the big wind."

Beginning with the spring equinox, storms such as had not been known in a half-century had strewn the Atlantic coast with wreckage and swept up the valley of the Mississippi with destructive violence. All over the coun- try the months of planting were cold and wet. Midsummer was oppressively hot, even in these northern woods and waters, with such electric tempests as made old hunters un- easy. Then, late in August, a day of sinister aspect  of a haloed and spotted sun which gave off pale-blue and violet rays  ended in a night that was made memorable by the most brilliant aurora ever seen by that gen- eration of woodsmen. The women lit fresh candles before the images of Mother Mary and spent the ominous hours in prayer. This was followed by six weeks of stormy weather, with nocturnal illuminations.

At Muskegon Johnny found a half-breed Frenchman, so old that his merry little face was a scrap of crinkled brown crepe, who pre- dicted a long, cold winter, with deep snow and good hunting only for "M'sieu Wolf." He had no theory concerning it; but about fifty years before, when, as a young man, he had been at Prairie du Chien on the upper

Mississippi  "Oui, M'sieu, Dog Prairie"  sunspots, bright northern lights and a bleak and early autumn had been the forerunners of a terrible season. From Montreal to Kas- kaskia and the Rocky Mountains game was destroyed by wolves, and many trappers never returned to their stations. It struck Johnny as significant that the Eastern newspapers he had seen in Detroit in the spring, and this un- lettered child of nature in the heart of the continent, should agree in harking back a half- century for comparison with this year's ex- traordinary weather. When he reached Ma- rietta in the winter he would ask Dr. Hildreth about this.

No one else could remember so far back, and at first scant attention was paid to the ancient coureur du bois. But in the weeks which should have been mild and clear a gray, heaving lake, sodden woods and "red battles in the sky " stopped the violin-playing and dancing of light-hearted vagabonds, and filled Johnny with a sense of impending ca- lamity.

In deep anxiety about his young orchards, he went down to the trading-post at St. Joseph in a mackinaw boat with hunterswho were obliged to go for their winter out- fits. From there he sent word over the road to Detroit that, in a season which might be severe, men should multch the roots and wrap the trunks of their tender little apple- trees with straw and bagging. He would take the same warning down the Maumee from Fort Wayne, and send it back along the Wabash and White River valleys.

Then, in the brief allotment of ten days of Indian summer, after which cold rains and sharp nights set in, he had a profound ex- perience. When he reached the ford of the St. Joseph on a still, hazy evening, he found the river so swollen that he hailed the Indian village for help in making the crossing. Chief Pokagon answered him and launched a canoe ; but he stopped in midstream when a voice of worship and of love ineffable, as of an angel come down from the choir invisible, poured a flood of liquid melody out of the forest. It was the hermit -thrush. Never seen, and sel- dom heard to sing in this southern limit of the pines, the Indians called it the spirit bird. White man and red were tranced until that hymn of unearthly purity and beauty had ascended to the skies.

In the hush which followed, a cherished memory of Betty recurred to Johnny with such vividness that he saw again the gay and tender child of the cove above the ship- yard at Marietta. With light, flying foot- steps that seemed not to touch the grassy floor, she sped across a copse that was faintly silvered with moonlight. Turning with a happy smile, she waved her hand to him be- fore she vanished in a belt of woods.

As he stepped into the canoe the chief gazed upon him with reverence, for now he knew what it was in Johnny's face that had arrested him at first sight, and then held him. It was some resemblance to the tribal tradition of Pere Marquette, whose few, saintly years in these wilds, more than a hun- dred and fifty years before, had never been forgotten by the Indians. The face of that sinless man, who had constant speech with angels, had been a pale flame like an altar candle which had been blessed. Johnny had that look now. Had the spirit bird brought him a message?

He thought so. And he had seen some- thing beautiful, reassuring him as to the well- being and happiness of a dear friend who hadlong been in failing health; but he could not fathom its meaning. He lay long that night thinking of the voice and the vision, and when the sky cleared and countless stars bloomed on the dark, he wondered if there were not one more softly shining for a soul returned to its home on the wings of that celestial song.

The next six weeks of the bleak weather, in which there was now and then an illumi- nated night, he spent among the settlements on the Maumee. From Toledo he worked his way on a Lake Erie steamboat to Cleve- land. Journeying southward, he gleaned seeds along the Cuyahoga and Muskingum. It was his intention to go down the Ohio and up the Scioto, and to ease his aching loneliness by seeing Betty in March.

He was in Zanesville early in December, when his apprehensions were confirmed by another day of a dark-cratered sun, followed by an auroral display which kept awe-struck people out of doors all night.

The play of the northern lights began after sunset, in a blush that covered half the horizon. This mounted to a golden corona in the zenith, from which it presently fell in transparent drapery folds that wavered be-

263tween pillars of crimson fire. Spindles of silvery luster darted from this, and through it the stars appeared as blue-white electric points. Stars innumerable glittered on a slate-colored southern sky. In a profound hush of nature the temperature dropped to an icy chill. The first large flakes of snow which wandered in the air at dawn were stained a lovely rose by the flickering light that lingered in the heavens.

Incredibly beautiful as was the spectacle, it aroused the superstitious fear of the igno- rant and alarmed even the educated. Not within the memory of living men had such phenomena of the polar regions occurred in temperate latitudes. Now, Johnny learned, from New York and Boston newspapers, that the auroras he had seen in the wilds of Michi- gan were also reported from the Eastern sea- board and from the observatories of London and Paris. These singular occurrences, with their attendant storms, were not local. What- ever there was of menace in the air appeared to be enveloping the northern world. The succeeding days of wind and rain, snow and sleet and unseasonable cold filled every one with bewilderment and consternation.

The Ohio Valley that was known to early pioneers had no such extremes of weather as are experienced in this semi-denuded region to-day. From the settlement at Marietta the winters had been uniformly mild. With grass until January, then light falls of snow that soon disappeared in soft thaws, and only an occasional "spell" of freezing temperatures, cattle were provided with little or no shelter. Corn was left in shocks in the fields and fuel in the woods, to be brought in as it was needed. Spring returned early in March, with blos- soming trees and greening pastures.

But now the earth was saturated, then frozen, then swept by bitter winds and mantled with white. Over a road deserted by travel Johnny made his way southward, from one cider-mill to another, to find farm- ers putting up sheds for their cows and run- ners under their wagon-beds, as if this were New England. His own work was stopped by another storm in the week before Christ- mas. From heaps of pomace congealed to granite and buried under six inches of hard- packed snow, he could not wash out seeds. On the ice of the Muskingum he tramped down to Marietta.

Sleigh-bells were jingling merrily in a crisp day of cold sunshine, for every one who had a horse was out in a gay cutter or hastily con- trived bobsled, to make the most of a winter sport that was usually of brief duration ; and shouting children were snow-balling, coasting, and skating on Duck Creek. How it warmed the heart of any Yankee in exile  this typical New England town in the West! With its twin-towered "two-horn" church, its wide, tree-bordered streets, its colonial houses and prosperous little college, and now, with its ice- contracted flood and wooded hills all hoary with snow, it looked not unlike Burlington, Vermont. The last touch of similitude to a "down-east" port was given by the concern that was felt for an overdue steamboat from Pittsburg.

Johnny had other anxieties  the possi- bility that even his old orchards in Ohio might be winter-killed. Where long, severe seasons were the rule, apple-trees, like wise animals, grew thick, shaggy coats. But here, where even the delicate peach nourished, his trees had no such defense. Many of them kept, up to full maturity, the thin, satiny bark of rose canes. When he reached thetown his canvas seed-bag was wet and frozen, so he hurried up to Dr. Hildreth's house and turned the precious contents out on sheets on the dry attic floor. Then he ran down to the front yard to find the weather-man.

Meteorology was then an experimental sci- ence and the subject of popular derision. For more than twenty years Dr. Hildreth had been, here, one of the dozen or so ob- servers of the weather scattered over the eastern third of the country, who were with- out honor. A man of the slightest physique, muffled to his ears by an anxious wife, Johnny found him beside his little observa- tion station, which looked like the shuttered belfry of a wooden church set up on posts on the lawn.

The gilded cock on the house gable was boxing the compass, in its laudable efforts to determine the direction of erratic gusts of wind. Seeing it so, a facetious neighbor hailed the doctor from the gate.

"If this is the kind of weather that 'tarnal rooster of yours brings, I'll wring his neck. I've got a cargo of pork and flour to ship to New Orleans, and the river is freezingover."

"Put runners under your old mud-scow and you can sledge it down over the ice pretty soon," was the doctor's advice.

The man went on, laughing, but Johnny asked, seriously: "Is that true? ,,

"I think it is, Johnny. A good many straws are blowing that way." He added, dryly, "I have quite a reputation as a hu- morist in this town, but if I am not much mistaken I am going to lose it this winter."

He opened the door of the airy little struc- ture and, as eagerly as a boy to the interested listener, explained the various instruments within. And when Johnny told him about the recollections and predictions of the an- cient, half-breed trapper in western Michigan, his hands shook with excitement and his thin, smooth-shaven, intellectual face glowed with the enthusiasm of the scientific in- vestigator.

"Can he read? How old is he?"

"Not a word  no more than his pony. His speech is a rude, French-Indian patois in which nothing has been printed. He's eighty- five by the mission register."

"Such people often have wonderful mem- ories  their minds are not cluttered up withthinking. This is interesting, undoubtedly reliable, for it confirms other data. Fifty- three years ago this winter your father and mine were at Valley Forge with Washington, trying to keep their discouraged souls in their freezing bodies. They, too, looked up at 'red battles in the sky/ and down at their bloody footprints in the deep snow of the severest season this country ever knew. Same signs this year  the atmosphere in an explosive state for months before, and winter setting in early and with unusual severity. In that winter of '7 7-' 7 8 cattle, sheep and unlucky travelers perished everywhere north of Mary- land, and many old orchards  "

He stopped at Johnny's stricken look, and made haste to put the matter in a more cheer- ful light.

"A surprising number of orchards did sur- vive. It's truly wonderful how plants and animals adapt themselves. The wild geese and ducks fled southward this fall a month before their usual time, and my horse is growing a coat like a buffalo. The bark of the fruit-trees has roughened and thickened, and the buds squeezed up and fairly burrowed into the twigs. Men seem to have lost thatprotective instinct. The orchards will pull through all right, Johnny."

"They can be trusted to do their best." Johnny often startled people by speaking of his trees as though they were conscious beings. "But why do such seasons occur? What does it all mean?"

"Ah, that is what we are trying to find out! All we know is that once in two gen- erations or so, varying from fifty to eighty years and coincident with sunspots and au- roral displays, the magnetic conditions and cold of the polar regions descend to low lati- tudes. The periods vary in duration and intensity as in time. Let us hope that this explosion has spent itself."

Glancing at the instruments within before closing the door of the station, the doctor was shocked to see the rapidity with which the barometer was falling.

"Another storm coming, and that boat notin!"

The pale sun was still shining on the un- sullied landscape when, in the face of amused merry - makers, the doctor unfurled a little black storm-flag from his gate-post.

"Ethan should be on that boat," he saidas they turned into the house. "He went to Boston in November for the sheep-breed- ers, to see if better prices could not be got for their wool. He was in Philadelphia last week, on his way home."

The streets of the town were suddenly emptied by a new snow-storm, which blew in on a thirty-mile gale at the darkening end of the day. A neighbor dropped in to ask what grudge the doctor had against the town that he should afflict it so. In the good old Puritan days in Salem he would have been burned for a wicked wizard.

After supper Johnny was sitting with the family before an open fire, where every one was too anxious about Ethan to talk or read, when the whistle of the steamboat was heard. A tortured thing, the thin, continuous shriek- ing was torn into shreds and whipped away on the roaring wind.

"I must go, my dear," the doctor insisted, as he and Johnny slipped into overcoats. "There will be sick and possibly injured peo- ple on that boat. Have a hot supper and a warm bed ready for Ethan. I may be de- layed, but Johnny can fetch him up."

Only in the larger cities were streets lightedin that day, but curtains were drawn back and the glow of fires and whale-oil lamps flared into the storm. The scared faces of women and children could be seen pressed to window-panes. From every house men ran out and down Muskingum Street to the wharf.

The wind, racing counter to the current, had heaped up the water in the narrowed channel until it was a welter of foam-crested billows and wallowing troughs. The boat could not be seen, but its shrill whistling, straining labor, and slithering crashes through shore ice could be heard above all the noises of wind and flood. Like a specter it loomed out of flying clouds of snow, keeled over and smashed into the slip.

A cheer went up. As soon as the gang- plank was run out Johnny went aboard with other men to carry fainting, hysterical and battered passengers off and into the shelter of the nearest warehouse. The crowd had begun to disperse when he ran to the doctor.

"Ethan didn't come!"

"Are you sure?"

"Yes. The captain said there had been heavy snowfalls on the mountains and thestage-coach had not got in when he left. No mail from the East for a week."

The doctor collapsed on a bale of wool, white as a tallow candle. "This is serious! No telling when another boat can get through. If the temperature continues to fall the river will soon freeze over. Johnny, Mary is up there on the farm, with no help besides a bound boy of sixteen, and she has a frail young baby. Ethan brought in enough fuel for an ordinary winter before he left, but not enough for such a season as this. That hol- low of the hills is a perfect trap for snow. This little family of my own blood may be snowed under and frozen to death."

And Mary had a frail mother to care for, too! Johnny's heart leaped to Betty in this new peril, but he did not speak of her. Ex- cept to Alary, he never spoke Betty's name. In a sacred reticence he had always held her locked in the inner shrine. Now he said, simply :

" Don't worry about that. It will be all right. I am going up there. When Ethan can get through have him fetch my seeds."

"You can't do it, Johnny! It's a hundred and fifty miles. You might make the restof the way if you could get a boat to Chilli- cothe. No horse could travel such a distance in this weather."

"I wouldn't think of taking a horse. If Ethan had come on this boat he would have gone on?"

"Oh yes, certainly ; he would probably have perished, but no consideration could have held him, with his family in such a plight."

"Nothing can hold me." Johnny's eyes burned, and his colorless face was drawn with emotional strain. There was some mystery here  some old grief that had never lost its keen edge of pain. The doctor had always known that a special tie bound Johnny to Mary's family, but into the nature of it this gentleman of delicate mind had no desire to pry. But he felt the passionate strength of it in the quiet voice and restrained speech : "Any man can do what he must."

"At least you will wait until this storm is over?"

"I will not wait a moment after daylight. It may storm all winter. You think so your- self. I will go down-shore through Belpre to Hockingport, and up the Hocking River over the ice. There are villages and farmsall along the way, and no hills to climb. I can make it in ten days, even if there arc drifts and with the wind in my facc. ,,

Johnny was asleep in ten minutes after he reached the house, renewing his powers for the ordeal before him. But no other one of that prayerful household slept soundly through the hours in which the wind moaned in the chimneys, tormented the trees and shook the sashes. By lamplight the next morning he was trussed in woolen clothing and furs and provided like an Arctic explorer. The doctor added blue goggles to protect his eyes from snow-blindness. Word of his inten- tion had filtered through the storm -bound town, and a dozen hero-worshiping boys ap- peared to pilot him across the Muskingum and to cheer him lustily from the site of old Fort Harmer. His answering halloos were borne back to them after he was lost to view in the snow- veiled woods.

Sleet had fallen in the night and formed a crust as smooth as glass, but not strong enough to bear his weight. Through this he broke at every step. The temperature had dropped to five degrees below zero, and it was snowing, again, in stinging pellets as fine andhard as sand, driven by a furious gale. There would have been some shelter in the forest, but the road had disappeared, and he dared not risk losing his way. Facing the full force of the wind, he made his way from tree to tree along the edge of the woods. Now and then he had a glimpse of the narrowing strip of gray water. Every hour or so he stopped at a farm-house to get warm and to drink black coffee. In Belpre, where he slept, he got flat staves at the cooper-shop and fitted them with leather straps. On these ski-like snow-shoes, in a lull of the storm, he sped over the shore ice to Hockingport.

He could not use these helps in the valley of the Hocking, where loose snow had been blown down from the hills and heaped in drifts. Then the sky opened again, and a cataract of fleece as soft and thick as wool tumbled down and was broken to foam on a river of wind. Against this blast he struggled along the low growth of the bank, passing a town and a number of farms un- wittingly. Once, the near-by house oblitera- ted, he stood among cattle huddled in the lee of a stable. A haystack looming out of the smother, he burrowed into it to sleep.

ON THESE SKI-LIKE SNOW-SHOES HE SPED OVER THE SHORE ICE

Not until late in the spring did the people of Ohio learn that the entire Mississippi Val- ley was in the grip of this storm, which opened with a crash in the last week of December. A wonder, at first, it soon became a terror, then a benumbing, bewildering horror, as it raged for days unabated. Changing in char- acter from time to time  running the gamut of rain and snow and sleet, veering winds and minus zero temperatures  it continued to im- peril the lives of men and animals. Travelers caught out in it lay over for days in the first shelter to be found. In a few historic in- stances men did get through; but many more perished. When the snow went off in March the bodies of strangers were found in the woods and on the prairies. And this was but the overture to a winter of storm.

Johnny went on. The only sign of life, now, in storm-beleaguered villages, was the faint glimmer of light through snow-incrusted windows. In spite of huge fires, farm-houses were cold. Shelterless cattle were turned into fields to help themselves to what food they could paw and pull from shocks and stacks. With creeks, ponds and wells frozen, men were melting snow in soap-kettles whichwere fitted into the tops of brick and clay ovens under sheds in the yards. Ropes were stretched from doors to barns and to buried wood-piles, to guide men in and out on life- saving errands.

At the end of ten days he had reached the upper end of the Hocking Valley, and was obliged to skirt the hills and to make his way across a tract of tangled marshland to the Scioto. For miles here there were no houses. All landmarks had disappeared. Once a wolf tracked him for a long distance, for there were still a few of these raiders of the flocks in the rough hills of Ohio. His feet wxre frost- bitten when he reached the river-bank and was guided to a house by a glimmer of light through the gauzy veils of snow. There, unable to get his boots on, he was obliged to lie over for a day. The delay was an eternity of mental agony, for the situation of people had become alarming. Every family was marooned, with starving and freezing cattle and diminishing wood-piles.

By noon the next day he was able to speed up the river on his snow-shoes, over a new, glazed surface. But when he turned west- ward into the creek he faced a bitter wind

2 79and a dazzling light on the glittering ice, for against the gray sky a white sun shone for a time, its disk clearly marked by a halo of prismatic colors. A slaty dome was darken- ing above the white fields when he reached the home of his heart.

In that trap for drifting snow the house was sunk to the window-sills. But cheerful firelight glowed through the panes and from an out-oven under a shed. There, as he thought, the bound boy was shoveling snow into the big iron kettle. Hearing his foot- steps crunching through the crust as he stumbled up into the yard, the figure turned. It was Mary, in a suit of Ethan's old working- clothes, who dropped the shovel and ran tow- ard him.

''Ethan! Oh my dear, my dear! Thank God you have come!"

"It's Johnny, Mary!" He caught her and held her while she sobbed on his shoulder. "Why, Alary, dear little Mary-go- 'round, this isn't like you! Ethan's all right. He missed the boat, so, of course, I came."

She laughed and wept hysterically. "I don't know which I've been the most afraid of  that Ethan would come, or that hewouldn't. So much trouble this year, all coming at once, has sapped my courage and strength. I guess there isn't quite enough of me  to go 'round  this time, Johnny."

"Why are you doing such work as this? Where's that boy?"

"Otto? Getting the sheep into the fold that he boarded in on the hill-slope under the barn floor. He's a good, strong, German boy, Johnny, doing more than a man's work. We have to keep this fire going to supply the stock and the house with water."

"Well, go in now and see if you can cook enough for two men." He was extraordi- narily happy as he took up a pail of water and followed her along the tunnel-like path to the house. His orchards were resisting the weather, and it was his blessed privilege to protect and cherish Betty and her loved ones until Ethan should return.

For an hour he melted snow, and worked about the animals which were crowded into the stable, whistling all the while. Then he milked the cows. Now for a heartening supper, ease for his frost-bitten feet, and an evening of joy! The wind had died down and sparkling stars come out when hestarted toward the house again. Then the hush, the icy chill, the rosy blush spreading along the horizon and climbing to the zenith in pulsing flares of splendor! In a stillness broken only by electric cracklings in the air, the snow-laden trees in the orchard were stained to a sardonic semblance of the April blossoming.

Another storm! No rest, now, no safety for any one, until, in frantic haste, more work was done. In such apprehension as he had never before felt, he went in and set the pails of milk on the floor. No one was in the low-ceiled, fire-lit living-room; no breath of wind was stirring, but, as he opened the door, Betty's little empty chair swayed lightly on its rockers. A surge of memory swept him back to the hour and the room in which Mary Lake had died. A wistful, hovering presence, loath to leave those long loved on earth, her spirit had seemed to linger before taking its final flight. This room, too, had its gentle ghost.

Hearing him, Mary hastened in from the kitchen. The face of the delicate baby on her arm was a snowdrop against her sable breast, for Mary was dressed in the unrelievedblack of mourning. At that he cried out, hoarsely :

"Where's Betty?"

She burst into tears, her grief fresh at the sight of his.

"Oh, Johnny, I didn't know where to write, you move about so. Didn't Dr. Hildreth tell you? Mother  died  suddenly  three months ago."


