"Them Old Cowboy Songs"

"Them Old Cowboy Songs"
by Annie Proulx

Rating: 8.9



Short story, set in 1885 near the Wyoming-Colorado border, about a young homesteading couple named Archie and Rose McLaverty.

The following spring, as he rode past the cabin, he saw that the frost heaves had tipped the stone over and that the ridge-pole of the roof had broken under a heavy weight of snow. He rode on, singing, "When the green grass comes, and the wild rose blooms," one of Archie's songs, and wondering if Gold Dust had made it through again. ♦