It howled down out of the Northwest, spun off the flanks of the Colorado Rockies, and whirled free and angry across the Great Plains. To western Kansans, this was ita sure-enough "blue norther,"* the season's first. Soon screaming winds, as high as 80 miles an hour, lashed the wheatfields with blinding snow and churned up great white drifts. Transcontinental trains ground to a halt; ice-sheathed communication lines sagged and snapped. Thousands of grubbing cattle, trapped in the snow, froze to death on the hoof.
Most of the weather-wise plains people battened down and bowed in submission to the storm. But...
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