"The Time It Rained" - by John R. Erickson

    Around the middle of May 1995, I assembled a crew of cowboys and neighbors to help round up and brand. While we were out horseback, one of the cowboys told me that he had been getting up extra early in the mornings and re-reading The Time It Never Rained, Elmer Kelton's classic novel about the drought of the Fifties.

    Drought was on our minds that year, since we’d just come through an unusually dry winter and spring.

    An hour later, it was pouring...