The Wind Before the Dawn

by Dell H. Munger

The wind gave a little twisting flurry, and dropped completely when he was about halfway between Chamberlain’s and the Hunter place. A few minutes later there was a puff of wind from the opposite direction, succeeded by a feeling of chill. Luther scanned the horizon and stepped faster. When the advance guard of fine snow began to sift down from the leaden sky above, he started to run. He had lived in the north, and knew the meaning of the rapidly darkening sky. The signs were unmistakable. Presently the fine flakes began to rush along toward the south with greater force. The wind came on steadily now. Luther looked about anxiously, making a note of the location of things. It was still a quarter of a mile to Hunter’s. As he peered ahead, wishing himself nearer protection, with a roar the blizzard fell upon him, blotting out the landscape before him as completely as if a curtain had fallen between.

With all his might Luther struggled forward. The wind came from the right side and almost carried him from his feet. He had been standing over a steaming kettle and scalding barrel most of the day, and the icy blast went through him, chilling his blood instantly. Luther knew his danger. This was not a cyclone where men were carried away by the winds of summer; this was a winter’s storm where men could freeze to death, and men froze quickly in blizzards. The driving particles of snow and ice made it impossible to look ahead. He shielded his face with his right arm, and tried, as he hurried forward, to keep in mind the exact direction of the Hunter house. If he could only reach that he would be safe. The road was a new one, recently opened, and not well defined. It was almost at once obliterated. Little needles of ice thrust themselves at him with stinging force, and he could not see; the blinding snow whirled and whistled about his feet, and in five minutes Luther Hansen realized that he had got out of the road. He stopped in alarm and, turning his back to the storm, tried to see about him. The gray wall of snow completely obscured every object from his sight. He had a sense of being the only thing alive in the universe; all else seemed to have been destroyed. His every nerve ached with the cold, but peer about as he would he could not possibly tell where he was. He remembered that there had been a cornfield on his right, and thought that he must have gone too far south, for he was certainly in the meadow now. The pressure of the wind, he reflected, would naturally carry him in that direction, so he faced around and started on, bearing stubbornly toward the north. Every fibre in him shook; no cold he had ever felt in Minnesota was equal to this; there was a quality in the pressure of this cold that was deadly. The wind pierced in spite of every kind of covering. Real fear began to lay hold upon him. He stumbled easily; the action of his limbs began to give him alarm. The package of spareribs fell from under his arm, and he stooped to pick it up. As he bent over the wind caught him like a tumble-weed and threw him in a shivering heap on the ground. He had worn no mittens in the morning, and his hands stung as if tortured by the lashes of many whips. To ease their hurt he remained huddled together with his back to the wind while he breathed on his freezing fingers, but remembered that that was the surest way to add to the nip of the cold in a blast which condensed the breath from his mouth into icicles before it had time to get away from his moustache. Staggering to his feet, he stumbled on toward the Hunter house, trying as hard as his fast benumbing senses would permit to bear toward the wind and the cornfield at the right. He had not picked up the package—had forgotten it in fact—and now he tried to beat his freezing hands across his shoulders as he ran. The bitter wind could not be endured, and he crossed his hands, thrusting them into his sleeves, hoping to warm them somehow on his wrists; but with eyes uncovered he could not gauge his steps, and stumbled and fell. Unable to get his hands out of his sleeves in time to protect himself, he tripped forward awkwardly and scratched his face on the cut stubs of the meadow-grass. Evidently he had not reached the road as yet. He knew the road so well that he could have kept it with a bandage over his eyes but for the wind which thrust him uncertainly from his course. It was that which was defeating him. Try as he would, he could not keep his attention fixed upon the necessity of staying near that cornfield. Determined to find it before he proceeded farther toward the west, he faced the wind squarely, and, bracing his body firmly, hurried as fast as he could toward the stalkfield.

After a time he seemed to wake up; he was not facing the wind, and he was aching miserably. Luther Hansen knew what that meant: he was freezing. Already the lethargy of sleep weighted each dragging foot. He thought of the nest an old sow had been building in the pen next to the one where the killing had been done that day. With the instincts of her kind, the mother-pig had prepared for the storm by making a bed where it would be sheltered. Luther’s mind dwelt lingeringly upon its cozy arrangement; every atom of his body craved shelter. Death by freezing faced him already, though he had been in the grip of the storm but one short quarter of an hour. He had lost consciousness of time: he only knew that he was freezing within sight of home. Nothing but action could save him. Nerving himself for another trial, the bewildered man turned toward the north and walked into the very teeth of the storm, searching for the lost trail. Sometimes he thought his foot had found it; then it would be lost again. He wandered on hours, days, weeks—he wandered shivering over the meadow, the road, the state of Kansas—over the whole globe and through all space, till at last a great wall shut off the offending wind, the roar of the planets lessened, and the numb and frozen man fell forward insensible, striking his head against a dark obstruction thrusting its shoulder through a bank of dirty gray snow.

The sound of a heavy body falling on her doorstep brought Elizabeth Hunter to the door. She opened it cautiously. The snow swirled in as it was drawn back and the heated air of the sitting room rushed out, forming a cloud of steam which almost prevented her from seeing the helpless figure at her feet. She could not distinguish the features, but it was a man, and the significance of his presence was plain. Seizing him about the body, Elizabeth dragged him into the house, and shut the door behind him to keep out the blast.

“Luther Hansen!” she exclaimed.

Finding that she could not arouse him, she pulled the relaxed and nerveless form to the lounge, but when she attempted to lift the limp figure to the couch she found it almost more than all her woman’s strength could accomplish. Luther stirred and muttered, but could not be awakened sufficiently to help himself, and it was only after some minutes and the putting forth of every ounce of strength that the girl had that he was at last stretched upon the lounge. Elizabeth brought blankets to cover the shivering, muttering, delirious man, and having heard that the frost must be drawn gradually from frozen extremities, and being unable to get his hands and feet into cold water, she brought and wrapped wet towels about them, and chafed his frozen face.

It was a long time before the white nose and cheeks began to show colour; then the ears became scarlet, and pain began to sting the man into consciousness. The chafing hurt, and Luther fought off the hands that rubbed so tenderly.

Gradually Luther Hansen awoke to his surroundings. Delirium and reality mixed helplessly for some moments. He remembered his struggles to reach the Hunter house, but the gap in the train of his affairs made him suspect that this was a phase of delirium and that he was in reality freezing. He was stinging all over. He wanted to find out where he was, and tried to get upon his feet.

“You are right here in my house, Luther,” Elizabeth said, holding him on his pillow.

Luther relaxed and lay looking at her for some time before he asked: