Free Fine Just the Way It Is by Annie Proulx Page B

crew went in to town and Archie spent an hour on the bench outside the post office writing on some brown wrapping paper, addressed the tortured missive to Rose at the stage station where he believed her to be. What about the baby, he wrote. Is he born? But inside the post office the walleyed clerk with fingernails like yellow chisels told him the postage had gone up.
    “First time in a hunderd year. Cost you two cents a send a letter now,” he smirked with satisfaction. Archie, who had only one cent, tore up his letter and threw the pieces in the street. The wind dealt them to the prairie, its chill promising a tight-clenched winter.
     
    Rose’s parents, the Mealors, moved to Omaha in November seeking a cure for Mrs. Mealor’s declining health.
    “You think you can stay sober long enough to ride down and let Rosie and Archie know we are going?” the sick woman whispered to Sundown.
    “Why I am goin right now soon as I find my other boot. Just you don’t worry, I got it covered.”
    A full bottle of whiskey took him as far as the river crossing. Dazedly drunk, he rode to the little cabin on the river but found the place silent, the door closed. Swaying, feeling the landscape slide around, he called out three or four times but was unable to get off his horse and knew well enough that if he did he could never get back on.
    “G’up! Home!” he said to Old Slope and the horse turned around.
    “They’re not there,” he reported to his wife. “Not there.”
    “Where could they be? Did you put a note on the table?”
    “Didn’t think of it. Anyway, not there.”
    “I’ll write her from Omaha,” she whispered.
    Within a week of their departure a replacement freighter arrived, Buck Roy, his heavyset wife and a raft of children. The Mealors, who had failed even to be buried in the stage station’s cemetery, were forgotten.
     
    There were no cattle as bad as Karok’s to stray, and ranchers said it was a curious thing the way his cows turned up in distant locations. December was miserable, one storm after another bouncing in like a handful of hurled poker chips, and January turned cold enough to freeze flying birds dead. Foreman Alonzo Lago sent Archie out alone to gather any bovine wanderers he could find in a certain washout area, swampy in June, but now hundreds of deep holes and snaky little streams smoothly covered with snow.
    “Keep your eyes peeled for any Wing-Cross leather-pounders. Better take some sticks and a cinch ring.” So Archie knew he was looking for Wing-Cross cows to doctor their brands. But the Wing-Cross had its own little ways with brand reworkings, so he guessed it was more or less an even exchange.
    The horse did not want to go into the swamp maze. It was one of the warm days between storms and the snow was soft. Archie dismounted and led his horse, keeping to the edge of the bog, waded through wet snow for hours. The exercise sweated him up. Only two cows allowed themselves to be driven out into the open, the others scattering far back into the coyote willows behind the swamp. In the murky, half-frozen world of stream slop and trampled stems there was no way a man alone could fix brands. He watched the cows circle around to the backcountry. The wind dived, pulling cold air with it. The weather was changing. When he reached the bunkhouse four hours after dark, the thermometer had fallen to zero. His boots were frozen, and, chilled to the liver, he fell asleep without eating or undressing beyond his boots.
    “Git back and git them cows,” hissed Alonzo Lago two hours later, leaning over his face. “Git up and on it. Rat now! Mr. Karok wants them cows.”
    “Goddamn short nights on this goddamn ranch,” muttered Archie, pulling on his wet boots.
    Back in the swamp it was just coming light, like grey polish on the cold world, the air so still Archie could see the tiny breath cloud of a finch on a willow twig. Beneath the hardened crust the snow was wallowy. His fresh horse was Poco, who