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.