. . . horses rolling in the dust, cattle around a stock tank . . . a mile wide and a foot deep . . . Western Union closes at four . . . broken asphalt . . . Deer Trail, Keota and Last Chance . . . drill rigs banging under spotlights through the cold night surrounded by acres of dryland, winds whipping the low snow into hard, slick ridges over the stubble in neat succession fading off into the dark . . . waves of heat from heaving asphalt . . . deep rich smell of skunk wafting across the road . . . spectacular scenery . . . aluminum windmill beside a stock tank, discarded wooden frame, legs splayed up and to the southwest . . . bursting sound of cattleguards rattling under tires . . . goathead thorns piercing through bicycle tires and sneakers, escaping air and blood . . . clanging down through machinery . . . blue heron and white pelicans . . . wallowing through the sand . . .town fading into cornfields just a few blocks from where it started . . . trees marking far watercourses of a ditch, dry creek, river or stock pond . . . kestrel static above a spot, wings beating twenty, thirty or more times a minute . . . scattered, hanging tendrils . . . rooster tails slide through the turns . . . cattle grazing in the stubble of the wheat and corn . . . the DLD . . . nights far darker . . . sand and cottonwood thicket in the river bottom, gray drying limbs and new green sprouting saplings . . . layers of dialog and music hanging from the telephone wire . . . prairie dogs sunning on the loose sand of burrow entrances, chirping lookout sounds through the colony . . . faint haze on the western horizon where hundreds of miles of mountains rise up to 14,000 feet . . . living cargo falling into sandy rivers . . . treed the prairies and peopled the plains . . . meadowlark stutter-trill in the still heat . . . relentless heatwave beside discarded wooden frame . . . low clouds moving slowly across the plain, sagging to engulf the earth a few miles farther, spitting snow that sweeps across the highway in interwoven sinuous coils, disappears in thickets of sprouted winter wheat green and sheltered in low even furrows, flakes bursting and tumbling.