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Stormy Petrel and the Blizzard of 1871: part 5

© Mary Trotter Kion

A STORMY RESCUE Throughout the long cold day Stormy waited inside the wagon. Hour by hour, as the day drew closer to a finish, the wind increased and grew gradually colder. Stormy drew around herself all of the covering she could find. There she waited, each minute expecting to hear the welcoming shout of return from her husband and brothers. But as the day progressed towards night, all that Stormy could detect was the fatal moaning of the wind.

As Stormy waited through the long silent day and the still longer darkness her thoughts surely turned upon several dire possible situations. Had her husband and brothers floundered somewhere along the way, either going from her or on their return? Where they lying somewhere, frozen in death, as the snow gradually covered their still bodies? Stormy would have been well aware that Indians roamed these plains. Did she picture her loved-ones captured and taken from her forever or sprawled somewhere, their precious bodies pierced with deadly arrows, their blood oozing from them, pooling around them until it lost the warmth of the bodies it had escaped, then froze?

Stormy may have considered that Indians might find her before her men did. What then might happen? Would they kill her? Leave her dead and scalped, such as she had heard tell of happening to others. Would she never again see her newly wed husband and her beloved brothers?

But, in time, dawn came and Stormy awoke to find herself completely buried in snow. Having no desire for an early death or being buried alive, she proceeded to dig herself out. When, at last, by climbing upon some boxes in the wagon she was able to get her head and shoulders above the snow, she looked around her. In every direction there was an unbroken landscape of snow.

Realizing that if the wagon was so deeply buried in snow it would be unwise, and probably deadly, for her to even attempt to climb out of it. Surely, if she attempted such a thing, she would instantly sink out of sight. This thought brought another realization to her. The wagon, buried thusly, must surely be near invisible to the eye, in particular the eyes of her husband and brothers.

Somehow, Stormy knew, she had to make the wagon visible. After considering her meager resources, she did a very female thing. She located an umbrella, then tied her red scarf to its tip. This she elevated through the hole in the snow she had made earlier to see above the snow drifted over the wagon. Now all she could do was wait-and surely pray.