Free Fine Just the Way It Is by Annie Proulx

pastures, happy with Rose. He thought about the coming child, imagined a boy half-grown and helping him build wild horse traps in the desert, capturing the mustangs. He could not quite conjure up a baby.
    As the late summer folded Sink saw that Archie sat straight up in the saddle, was quiet and even-tempered, good with horses. The kid was one of the kind horses liked, calm and steady. No more morning hollers and the only songs he sang were after supper when somebody else started one, where his voice was appreciated but never mentioned. He kept to himself pretty much, often staring into the distance, but every man had something of value beyond the horizon. Despite his ease with horses he’d been bucked off an oily bronc ruined beyond redemption by Wally Finch, and instinctively putting out one hand to break his fall, snapped his wrist, spent weeks with his arm strapped to his body, rode and did everything else one-handed. Foreman Alonzo Lago fired Wally Finch, refused to pay him for ruined horses, even if they were mustangs from the wild herds, sent him walking north to Montana.
    “Kid, there’s a way you fall so’s you don’t get hurt,” said Sink. “Fold your arms, see, get one shoulder up and your head down. You give a little twist while you’re fallin so’s you hit the ground with your shoulder and you just roll right on over and onto your feet.” He didn’t know why he was telling him this and grouched up. “Hell, figure it out yourself.”
    ROSE & THE COYOTES
    July was hot, the air vibrating, the dry land like a scraped sheep hoof. The sun drew the color from everything and the Little Weed trickled through dull stones. In a month even that trickle would be dried by the hot river rocks, the grass parched white and preachers praying for rain. Rose could not sleep in the cabin, which was as hot as the inside of a black hatbox. Once she carried her pillow to the big stone doorstep and lay on its chill until mosquitoes drove her back inside.
    She woke one morning exhausted and sweaty and went down to the Little Weed hoping for night-cooled water. There was a dark cloud to the south and she was glad to hear the distant rumble of thunder. In anticipation she set out the big kettle and two buckets to catch rainwater. The advance wind came in, thrashing tree branches and ripping leaves. The grass went sidewise. Lightning danced on the crest of Barrel Mountain, and then a burst of hail swallowed up the landscape in a chattering, roaring sweep. She ran inside and watched the ice pellets flail the river rocks and slowly give way to thrumming rain. The rocks disappeared in the foam of rising water. Almost as quickly as it had started the rain stopped, a few last hailstones fell and against the moving cloud the arc of a double rainbow promised everything. Her buckets were full of sweet water and floating hailstones. She stripped and poured dippers of goose-bump water over her head again and again until one bucket was nearly empty and she was shaking. The air was as cool and fresh as September, the heat broken. Around midnight the rain began again, slow and steady. Half awake she could hear it dripping on the stone doorstep.
    The next morning it was cold and sleety and her back ached; she wished for the heat of summer to return. She staggered when she walked and it didn’t seem worthwhile to make coffee. She drank water and stared at the icy spicules sliding down the window glass. Around midmorning the backache increased, working itself into a slow rhythm. It dawned on her very slowly that the baby was not waiting for September. By afternoon the backache was an encircling python and she could do nothing but pant and whimper, the steady rattle of rain dampening her moaning call for succor. She wriggled out of her heavy dress and put on her oldest nightgown. The pain increased to waves of cramping agony that left her gasping for breath, on and on, the day fading into night, the rain torn away by wind, the dark choking hours