Chapter 19

CHAPTER 19 ABOUT TWO WEEKS LATER Newspapers from New York to Seattle printed stories about the deadly blizzard that had struck America's northern prairie. It was one of the most powerful snowstorms ever to hit America, more like a frozen hurricane than a blizzard. Winds had reached 70 miles an

hour. Temperatures had dipped down to minus 40. Cities like St. Paul, Minnesota, and Lincoln, Nebraska, were shut down. Towns were buried. Hundreds were dead. It was a blizzard so terrible that soon it had a name: The Children's Blizzard. Because at least one hundred of the people who died were schoolchildren. The newspapers were filled with sad and terrible stories about children who became trapped in the frozen, swirling winds. But there were miracles, too. Like how one teacher tied her ten students together with a rope and led them to a farmhouse a half mile away from their school. Or the kids who made it through the night in a shelter they built from snow. Or the brothers who huddled in a barn with two pigs that kept them warm. And the four boys from the tiny town of Prairie Creek, Dakota, who survived the blizzard in a

haystack. John didn't read any of those stories, not at first. For the first week after the blizzard, he wasn't sure if he was alive or dead. The storm had ended just a few minutes after he and the guys had fallen asleep. They had been in that haystack almost all night. John was barely breathing when Mr. and Mrs. Ricker carried him and the other boys from the haystack and into the farmhouse. When Ma and Pa got there, later that day, he heard them calling his name. He felt their hands on him. But he couldn't open his eyes. He couldn't move or speak. He felt locked away, caught in a frozen nightmare. Most of the time, he thought he was still in the haystack, or curled into a snowdrift. That hissing blizzard scream still echoed in his ears.

It wasn't until a week after the blizzard that John finally opened his eyes. It was the middle of the night, and it took him a long, panicked moment to understand that he wasn't in the haystack. Or in a frozen grave. He was in the warm soddy, tucked into his bed. Franny was curled up next to him. Pa was dozing in a chair, pulled close. Ma was sitting on John's bed. "Ma?" John said, in a crackling voice. The fire in the stove cast a golden glow, and John saw the tears in Ma's eyes as she smiled down at him. And that was the moment when, for John, the terrifying blizzard at last came to an end.