I Survived the Children's Blizzard, 1888 Read online

  John’s eyes caught something sparkling in the dirt. He dug it out with his thumb. It was an arrowhead, a perfect, flat triangle made of dark metal.

  John found arrowheads all the time around here. They belonged to Sioux Indian people who used to live on this land. Probably a Sioux hunter shot this arrow at a buffalo.

  Miss Ruell said that there used to be thousands of Sioux people here. They lived in villages and moved across the land with the seasons. In the fall they hunted the buffalo that roamed all over the prairie in giant herds.

  John had never met any Sioux people. That’s because the American government had made them all leave here. The buffalo were gone, too. Every last one. The giant herds trampled crops and got in the way of building the railroad. So soldiers and settlers shot them all.

  John held the arrowhead in his hand. He wondered who it had belonged to. Maybe it was a Sioux boy, a kid like him, hunting with his father like John hunted with Pa. Maybe that kid had a sister like Franny. He could have sat right here, in this exact spot.

  Where was that boy now?

  John could have wondered about this all day. But just then he heard voices. It was the guys, calling his name. Rex, Peter, and Sven rushed toward him, their snake-killing weapons clutched in their hands. Rex gripped an ax, Peter had a hoe. Sven had a big stick resting on each of his beefy shoulders. He handed one to John.

  Peter proudly held up a little canvas bag.

  “Three dead mice,” he said. “Snake bait.”

  They set out for the creek, walking side by side, shoulders bumping. From the way the guys were grinning and bouncing with excitement, you’d have thought they were heading to a picnic. John’s worries and heavy thoughts soon fell away. The guys chattered nonstop about everything from baseball to girls to whether Miss Ruell would ever get married.

  “No way,” Peter insisted. “She’s twenty-five — way too old.”

  “And too mean,” Sven said.

  “What about the cowboy?” Rex asked.

  They’d all heard the rumor: that Miss Ruell was engaged to a cowboy.

  “I don’t believe it,” Peter said, shaking his head. None of them liked Miss Ruell. But Peter had a grudge because he got in trouble the most. He couldn’t make it through the day without burping out loud or turning his eyelids inside out to make the girls scream.

  “I heard that cowboy is in Montana,” Sven said. “Building them a house.”

  “He’s probably hiding out there,” Peter said. “She’s scarier than a grizzly bear!”

  “I didn’t know grizzly bears wore glasses,” Sven laughed.

  Peter curled his fingers into circles to make pretend glasses.

  “Learn this poem or I will eat you!” he growled.

  They all cracked up, including John.

  He was glad he wasn’t the only one who hated those boring poems.

  They kept up their chattering and joking until they got to the creek. The water was deep and running fast from a big rainstorm the night before.

  Suddenly, Rex shopped short.

  “That’s it,” he said quietly. “King Rattler’s den.”

  He pointed to a big rock with a hole underneath.

  They all went quiet.

  “Look!” Sven whispered.

  There was a long, wide groove in the dirt, like a track left by a fat wagon wheel.

  Except no one could ever drive a wagon over here.

  It was a snake track — left by a huge snake.

  It looked fresh.

  “Set the bait,” Rex said to Peter.

  Peter walked up quickly and dropped the dead mice in front of the hole. Then he dashed back. Peter might be a clown. But he was a brave clown.

  “Okay,” Rex said in a steely voice. “Now we wait. You know what to do.”

  All week at recess they’d worked out their plan, huddling together like spies while the girls jumped rope and the younger kids played Red Rover.

  They figured they’d wait for King Rattler to poke his head out of his hole. Then they’d rush forward for the attack. Rex would chop the snake’s head off with his ax. Peter would hack away with his hoe. Sven and John would stand by to smack it with their sticks.

  When it was over, Rex would get to cut off the rattle. That was only fair, since he’d found King Rattler’s den and this whole mission was his idea.

  They chose a spot a few feet from the hole. They sat in the dirt, with their backs to the creek. John tried not to think about the sound an ax would make when it chopped through the neck of a huge snake.

  He wondered what it would do when its head was hacked off. Was it like a chicken, whose body kept moving, even without a head? Would its jaws keep snapping open and shut, fangs shooting out venom? He hoped the guys didn’t notice.

  They were quiet for a while, but Peter couldn’t keep his jaw shut for long. Rex kept shushing him, but it was no use. Soon enough, they were all jabbering again.

  They bickered about which candy at the general store was the best, and decided it was a tie between licorice and peppermint sticks.

  They talked about the girls at school. The guys all liked Annie, who had curly hair and very white teeth. John liked Myra, who had a loud laugh and was helping Franny learn to jump rope. But he kept that information to himself.

  The wind turned colder. None of them were wearing coats, and soon they were rubbing their arms to keep warm.

  “My pa says it’s going to be a bad winter,” Rex told them. “He says blizzards are going to start early.”

  “How does he know?” John asked, hoping it wasn’t such a dumb question.

  “Birds have already gone south,” Rex said, squinting up at the sky. “Animals know things we don’t.”

  Sven and Peter nodded in agreement.

  John wondered how any winter could be more miserable than last year’s. He shivered just thinking about the bone-chilling cold. The first blizzard had struck in October. John and Pa were heading home from town when the sky turned dark. The snow started swirling so thick they couldn’t see an inch in front of their faces. Luckily their ox, Shadow, stayed on the path and got them home before they were frozen solid.

  “At least in winter, there are no grasshoppers,” Peter said.

  Sven groaned.

  “Nothing worse than grasshoppers,” added Rex.

  John smiled a little because he was sure they were joking. Nobody could be afraid of a little grasshopper. They didn’t even sting.

  “You never heard about the grasshopper attacks?” Rex asked.

  John studied Rex’s face, and realized he wasn’t joking.

  And then, leaning in close, the guys told John the story.

  “It happened three years ago, in August.” Rex began. “A cloud appeared in the sky from the west.”

  “It looked like a thunderstorm was coming,” Sven said.

  “But the cloud looked weird, all shiny,” Peter added.

  “It got closer and closer,” Rex said. “There was this strange sound …”

  Peter started to click his tongue really fast.

  “That whole cloud was made of grasshoppers,” Sven said. “There were millions.”

  “Billions,” Rex corrected. “The cloud was ten miles wide.”

  “And then they all dropped out of the sky,” Sven said.

  Suddenly the guys all started talking at once, their voices getting louder and louder, their words all swarming together.

  The grasshoppers were an inch long.

  They have huge eyes that bug out.

  They were everywhere!

  They’d cover your whole body.

  They’d crawl up your pants and down your shirt …

  And into your ears and up your nose.

  John squirmed as he listened. He felt as if hundreds of tiny feet were skittering across his flesh.

  “The ground was totally covered with grasshoppers,” Peter said.

  “They’d crunch when you stepped on them,” said Rex. “My boots were covered with
grasshopper guts.”

  John felt queasy.

  “And then they ate all the wheat,” Rex said.

  “All the wheat?” John asked.

  The guys nodded.

  “That’s why they came — for the wheat,” Rex said. “In just a couple of days they attacked every farm in Prairie Creek. We lost almost all of ours — twenty acres.”

  “Us, too,” Sven said.

  “We lost every stalk of wheat,” Peter added.

  People tried everything to get rid of them. They set fires, shot guns, dumped water onto the wheat stalks. The grasshoppers stuck to the wheat like glue.

  The attack lasted a week, until practically every stalk of wheat was chewed down to stubble. The grasshoppers devoured vegetable gardens, too.

  “We put blankets over the garden,” Rex said. “But the grasshoppers ate the blankets.”

  John listened in shock. “Then what happened?” he asked.

  “They laid their eggs and died.”

  “We got lucky. We had a cold September, and the freezing cold killed the eggs. Otherwise, they would have hatched, and come back the next year.”

  That’s what had happened in Minnesota.

  “The grasshoppers attacked four years in a row,” Rex went on.

  “Why haven’t they come back here?” John asked.

  The guys all shook their heads and shrugged.

  Then Peter leaned forward. “I got it,” he said. “Maybe Miss Ruell scared them away.”

  They busted out in honks and snorts.

  But then they all went quiet again.

  “What did people do without their wheat?” John asked.

  Growing and selling wheat was the only way to make money here, unless your pa owned a store or worked for the railroad. John couldn’t imagine what Ma and Pa would have done if grasshoppers had eaten their wheat crop. They’d have no money to buy coal to keep warm, for clothes, for supplies.

  “It was bad,” Peter said. “Lots of families left Dakota after that.”

  “People that stayed helped each other,” Rex said. “So we all made it through.”

  But suddenly Peter’s mouth dropped open. His eyes practically popped out of his head.

  A chilling sound filled the air.

  Shkshkshkshkshkshkshk

  And that’s when John saw it, the most massive rattlesnake he’d ever seen — or imagined.

  There could be no doubt: It was King Rattler.

  He wasn’t in his hole. He was just ahead, on the bank of the creek.

  And he was coming right for them.

  John and the guys all scrambled to their feet. John’s heart pounded through his chest.

  But none of the guys ran. Somehow, John kept his boots glued to the ground. He stared in horror as the giant snake coiled its body. It was like a thick rope tying itself into a knot. John could see its muscles rippling under its scaly skin. Its head lifted higher and higher as its body coiled more tightly. Soon it was almost as high as their chests. Its forked tongue was flickering in and out, like a candle flame in the wind.

  It seemed like a beast from one of Franny’s fairy stories — a fire-breathing dragon, a monster from a dark, dripping cave. It was thicker than John’s leg. From its nose to its tail, it had to be taller than Pa — six feet at least. Its skin was dull gold, and covered with black and white triangles. Its rattle was huge, with at least twenty bands — one for every year it had been alive, John had heard. This was an old snake.

  Shkshkshkshkshkshkshk

  “Don’t move,” Rex whispered.

  It was getting ready to strike, John knew. That’s what a rattler does. It coils itself so it can spring forward when it attacks. A rattler that big could leap forward at least six feet, maybe more. These thoughts raced around and around in John’s mind, like water spinning in a whirlpool.

  There was no way they could kill this snake! Maybe they could have if they had caught it when its head was just peeping out of its hole. But not like this. They’d need a cannon, or an army of soldiers firing rifles. Their stupid snake-killing weapons were useless now. This snake had more than enough venom to kill them all!

  But the guys weren’t ready to surrender.

  Rex was standing there, his ax gripped tight in his hand.

  Peter held his hoe, ready to strike.

  Sven had his stick high in the air.

  John felt frozen.

  King Rattler was looking directly at him. Its deathly yellow eyes glowed. Its mouth opened wide. Needlelike white fangs glistened inside its sickly pink mouth.

  Hissssssssssssss

  John’s entire body started to shake.

  He took a step back, not realizing he was right at the edge of the creek. His foot slipped, and suddenly he was slipping down the bank.

  He tumbled backward, landing in the water with a freezing splash. He barely had a chance to take a breath as the churning water grabbed hold of him and sent him rushing downstream.

  John couldn’t swim — nobody he knew could swim. The water twisted and turned him, scraping him against the rocks as he was carried along. Water gushed into his mouth and up his nose.

  He tried to grab hold of rocks and sticks. Anything to slow himself down. But it was no use.

  John wasn’t going to be killed by a rattlesnake.

  He was going to drown!

  Finally the water pushed John close enough to the creek bank that he could grab hold of a thorny bush. The prickers tore up his fingers. But John held on tight, and managed to pull himself out of the churning water.

  He clawed his way up the bank and sat there in the mud, coughing and wheezing as he tried to catch his breath.

  Where were the guys? What had happened to them?

  They must think he’d run off, like a scared little rabbit!

  The guys would never let him forget this.

  He heard footsteps, and voices calling his name. And the guys came bursting out of the bushes, rushing toward him, surrounding him.

  John braced himself.

  “Are you all right?”

  “We lost you!”

  “We thought you were a goner!”

  They weren’t mad at John. They were worried about him!

  John forgot his thorn-bitten fingers, and his freezing, mud-soaked clothes. He scrambled to his feet and rushed toward them.

  “Did you kill King Rattler?” he asked.

  The boys eyed each other. Rex slumped a little. “No. He went into his hole.”

  And then Peter blurted out, “I was so scared I wet my pants!”

  John looked down, and sure enough, there was a big wet stain on Peter’s trousers.

  Rex frowned at Peter, just like Miss Ruell did when Peter let out a big belch in the middle of a grammar lesson.

  But then Rex cracked a smile. And all at once they exploded into laughter, including John.

  He laughed at Peter’s soaked pants. But also in amazement about what they’d done — they’d faced down King Rattler, the fiercest snake in Dakota!

  When they finally calmed down and wiped away their laughing tears, Rex got serious again.

  “It was a bad plan,” he admitted. “I should have known he wouldn’t be in his hole during the day.”

  “Don’t worry,” Sven said, putting a comforting hand on Rex’s shoulder. “Now we know where he lives. We can come back and get him next Sunday.”

  “Nah,” Rex said. “It’s getting too cold. He’s going to be hibernating soon. We’ll have to wait until spring.”

  John tried not to show how relieved he felt.

  Peter shouted out, “We’ll be back for you, King Rattler!”

  He waved his empty mouse sack like a flag.

  Sven and Rex pumped their fists and stabbed at the sky with their weapons.

  They bellowed and hooted. John cheered along with them. He felt like he was at a White Stockings game.

  They ran together to the pond and stopped for a few minutes to catch their breath. Then it was finally time to say go
od-bye and go their separate ways back to their farms.

  John walked through the grass toward home. He was shivering in his wet clothes, but he barely noticed. He kept chuckling to himself as he thought of Peter.

  John was about a mile from home when he spotted the dark cloud rushing in from the northwest. During his time in Dakota, John had learned to recognize the different kinds of clouds that appeared in the sky. This one was steel gray, and rimmed with white.

  John’s heart pounded. It was a blizzard cloud.

  But how could there be a blizzard coming? It wasn’t even October yet!

  John remembered Rex’s father’s prediction of a bad winter, and the fact that the birds had left early. And now John wished he was a bird so he could fly home.

  The wind whipped the grasses back and forth. An icy chill filled the air. John shivered in his wet clothes.

  He broke into a run, pushing aside the blades of grass. He had to get back to his farm before the snow started to pour down. One of the first things he’d learned in Dakota was to never be outside in a blizzard.

  Last year a farmer in Prairie Creek died in a blizzard. He’d been in his barn when it hit, and he tried to get back to his house. It was just twenty feet away. But the snow was so thick in the air that he couldn’t find his way. He wandered around in circles until he finally couldn’t take another step. His body wasn’t found until the spring, when the snow melted.

  John ran faster and faster, peering over his shoulder at the looming cloud.

  Would he make it home in time?

  John was just steps from the soddy when the sky broke open and snow started to pour from the sky. Ma and Pa were standing at the front door, waving him in.

  “I was about to come looking for you!” Pa said, pulling John inside and slamming the door.

  Ma grabbed a quilt and wrapped it around him.

  “I saw the cloud coming,” John said, breathing hard and pulling the blanket tight. “I ran the whole way back.”

  “Who ever heard of a blizzard in September?” Ma fretted.

  John told them what Rex had said, that the birds had all flown south early.

  Pa frowned. “Those birds could have warned us,” he said.