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.
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