Montana Quarterly

Winter, 2008

Out on the prairie between Malta and Saco, halfway between the Missouri River and the Canadian border, out where the hot water bubbles from the ground, a man and his preacher bent over a horseshoe pit and had a discussion.

The preacher maintained his shoe had fallen close enough to the pin to score a point. His opponent disagreed, but only briefly.

“Okay,” he conceded. “We’ll go with the Lord on that one.

Then they both grinned.

And the horseshoes sailed.

This is a story shaped by water in all its forms: tiny drops and rushing torrents and rising vapors, rainstorms that slicken hillsides and droughts that crack them open, gullywashers that uproot trees and ice that can break a stone. It’s about the greatest of floods, and it’s about the warm mist of your own breath.