“coyote dust fractioned into particles of sound”

I would recognize Annie Proulx’s writing if I ran into it in a dark alley in Turkmenistan. Here is a section from her story “Them Old Cowboy Songs”, included in her latest collection of “Wyoming Stories”, Fine Just the Way It Is: Wyoming Stories 3:

For Archie the work was the usual ranch hand’s luck – hard, dirty, long and dull. There was no time for anything but saddle up, ride, rope, cut, herd, unsaddle, eat, sleep and do it again. On the clear, dry nights coyote voices seemed to emanate from single points in straight lines, the calls crisscrossing like taut wires. When cloud cover moved in, the howls spread out in a different geometry, overlapping like concentric circles from a handful of pebbles thrown into water. But most often the wind surging over the plain sanded the cries into a kind of coyote dust fractioned into particles of sound. He longed to be back on his own sweet place fencing the horse 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 when 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.”

Poetry and prose, eerie and conversational, mixed together.