Across the world the Titans laughed and howled.

All the elements were over-ridden by a voice which said, "I shall have back my own!" For presently the old Plains were back again, and over them rushed the wild winds in their favourite ancient game.
Once the winds pelted the slant snow through the interstices of the grasses upon the furry back of the cowering coyote.

Now they found a new sport in driving the icy powder through the cracks of the loose board shanty, upon the stripped back of the mother huddling her sobbing children against the empty, impotent stove, perhaps wrapping her young in the worn and whitened robe of the buffalo taken years ago.

For it was only the buffalo, though now departed, which held the frontier for America in this unprepared season, the Christmas of the Great Cold.
The robes saved many of the children, and now and then a mother also.
The men who had no fuel did as their natures bid, some dying at the ice-bound stove, and others in the open on their way for fuel; for this great storm, known sometimes as the Double Norther, had this deadly aspect, that at the end of the first day it cleared, the sky offering treacherous flag of truce, afterward to slay those who came forth and were entrapped.

In that vast, seething sea of slantwise icy nodules not the oldest plainsman could hold notion of the compass.