d urged
the tired, hungry, enfeebled emigrants forward at the greatest possible
speed all day, in order to get as near the settlements as they could
before the storm should burst upon them. Besides, their provisions were
exhausted, and they were anxious to reach certain caches of supplies
which they had made while going to the cabins. Fearing that the storm
would prevent the party from reaching these caches, Mr. Reed sent Joseph
Jondro, Matthew Dofar, and Hiram Turner forward to the first cache,
with instructions to get the provisions and return to the suffering
emigrants. That very night the storm came, and the three men had not
been heard from.

The camp was in a most inhospitable spot. Exposed to the fury of
the wind and storm, shelterless, supperless, overwhelmed with
discouragements, the entire party sank down exhausted upon the snow.
The entire party? No! There was one man who never ceased to work. When a
fire had been kindled, and nearly every one had given up, this one man,
unaided, continued to strive to erect some sort of shelter to protect
the defenseless women and children. Planting large pine boughs in the
snow, he banked up the snow on either side of them so as to form a wall.
Hour after hour, in the darkness and raging storm, he toiled on alone,
building the sheltering breastwork which was to ward off death from the
party who by this time had crept shiveringly under its protection. But
for this shelter, all would have perished before morning. At midnight
the man was still at work. The darting snow particles seemed to cut his
eye-balls, and the glare of the fire and the great physical exhaustion
under which he was laboring, gradually rendered him blind. Like his
companions, he had borne a child in his arms all day over the soft,
yielding snow. Like them, he was drenched to the skin, and his clothing
was frozen stiff and hard with ice. Yet he kept up the fire, built
a great sheltering wall about the sufferers, and went here and there
amongst the wailing and dying. With unabated violence the storm
continued its relentless fury. The survivors say it was the coldest
night they ever experienced. There is a limit to human endurance. The
man was getting stone-blind. Had he attempted to speak, his tongue would
have cloven to the roof of his mouth. His senses were chilled, blunted,
dead. Sleep had stilled the plaintive cries of those about him. All was
silent save the storm. Without knowing it, this heroic man was