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 were but counting parties.  The wolves had new feed that winter, and for years remembered it, coming closer about the settlements, sometimes following the children as they went to school.  The babe that touched with laughter the cool, soft thing that fell upon its cheek lay finally white and silent beneath a coverlid of white, and upon the floor lay others also shrouded; and up to the flapping door led tracks which the rescuing parties saw.

Sam Poston, the driver of the regular mail stage to the south, knew more of the condition of the settlers in that part of the country than any other man in Ellisville, and he gave an estimate which was alarming.  There was no regular supply of fuel, he stated, and it was certain that the storm had found scores of families utterly unprepared.  Of what that signifies, those who have lived only in the routine of old communities can have no idea whatever.  For the most of us, when we experience cold, the remedy is to turn a valve, to press a knob, to ask forthwith for fuel.  But if fuel be twenty miles away, in a sea of shifting ice and bitter cold, if it be somewhere where no man may reach it alive—­what then?  First, we burn the fence, if we can find it.  Then we burn all loose things.  We burn the chairs, the table, the bed, the doors—­ Then we rebel; and then we dream.