You Easterners think you're hot stuff with your record breaking lows . . .

I tell you that cold in the East is nothing, nothing compared to a winter storm on the Great Plains. Here it snows horizontally and the winds make ungodly sounds as they hit trees and buildings, the first since leaving the Canadian Rockies. There is fear in a storm like this. Sheer unadulterated fear.

Night falls and the horses are fed, the hens have roosted, and girls with nothing better to do than skulk around creaky farmhouses have retired to clawfooted bathtubs, chin deep in bubbles.