The sky finally lightened to let me gain some reference to this sorry state where we found ourselves. I needed to move about, stomp my feet, make the blood flow in my frozen veins, and talk to someone even if the wind ripped the words from our mouths. I climbed from the wagon, stumbled hands first into a drift, and began my hip-deep flounder. My god, how that snow had banked since last I tried walking to the next wagon!
I peered inside the canvas and saw a dark lump; I jabbed and hollered at it. It took a couple of seconds til it moved. From within I heard over the roar some muffled lines of coarse teamster talk that told me he was all right. One eye appeared and I heard him say, “We ever gonna get rollin' again?” I knew no more than he did but had not yet abandoned hope and wanted no part of pitiable talk so I quickly moved on to the next wagon.
In that cold, blowing whiteout, it was impossible to walk the length of forty-five wagons, so what we knew of our fellow drovers' well-being were rumors that made their way back and forth along the line, wagon to wagon, some so hard to believe like the one that had a man going berserk from snow madness who hitched up his team and drove off into the storm. Another had a man breaking out a bottle of liquor, the only thing left unfrozen, and guzzling it into his empty stomach. He passed out and the one who saw him in his wretched condition of frozen vomit-soaked clothes wondered if he were still alive.
If only a man could see into the distance. This white faceless world wore hard on me. I could as easily been back at Gettysburg with the smoke from the guns and cannons so thick you could not see a comrade beside you, let alone a Reb running with a bayonet pointed at your guts. At the Battle of Wilderness we could not see, either. We had the Rebs outnumbered and Grant wanted to meet them in the open, but Lee out-generalled us and lured us into the woods and evened out the odds. And, God, how we cringed when a brush fire broke out between the lines in no-man's land and the wounded men lying there suffered and screamed as the flames ate them alive. At least we did not have to watch them die as they lay veiled in the smoke.
Here our battle, though, was against the cold, the snow, the wind, the solitude, and if this storm persisted, men would die here, too. Another story started making its way along the line: the old teamsters were saying the oxen should have been set free at the outset so they could drift with the wind and fend for themselves. We could have rounded them up later, but here, they said, they will start dying soon if we do not get them up and moving. The wagon boss never gave any further orders contrary to his earlier one, so there the oxen lay with deep snow mounding over and around them.
We came to believe the story about the man going crazy and taking off with his team, at least it seemed verified in its retelling. I could only wonder about his fate, maybe he had found shelter and sat there thinking we should have followed him, but as sure as there is a heaven there is a hell. More than likely he died, frozen stiff on the prairie, experiencing the notion of being warm and, then slipping off into a deep, dreamless sleep.
The weaker, older oxen started dying but little could be done about it now. Maybe the same fate will come to us, hunched up as we were, shivering, fever setting in, craving water. Eating snow to slake our thirst brought scant relief, and I kept dreaming of a flame-scorched pot of boiling coffee hanging over a fire. If this hell did not soon end our carcasses would freeze stiff in what ever contortion the final heartbeat found us.
Pitch black darkness settled over us again, the end result being no different than if someone had tossed a buffalo robe over my head. What was this, the third night? I was as lost in time as in place. Horrid nightmares visited me, always on a battlefield. Men I had killed rose up through the musket smoke with their gaping wounds and began to come for me. I shot to stop them, but still they came. I tried running but my legs felt paralyzed, and I awoke in fright just as the bayonet plunged downward. Then the noise of the battle began to slack off, the cannons stopped, the shouting, the screams of the wounded horses and men, all vanished. Slowly I came to my senses, but something was different, what was it? I sat upright and shook my head. I welcomed the quiet after the din of the nightmares. Quiet! That was it, I did not hear wind roaring and whistling against and around the wagons. Lifting the wagon cover I saw a bit of light in the eastern sky, the top edge of the sun peeking over the horizon. The storm had ended, the sky was clear! We would roll again.
