The cowboy walks down the street, his boots spraying dust like a horse at full gallop. The dust cuts his face like flying glass. He walks on. Suddenly the wind attacks; swirling furiously like a tempest it rustles and carries the leaves in the trees and on the ground up onto roofs and in through open windows. Shutters bang, signs swing and the dust attacks the cowboy's eyes like acid. The wind now encompasses the city and howls and yelps round it like a lone wolf.
The old man sits on the porch in his rocking chair, smoking his pipe and watching the flies buzzing around the skulls of dead cattle, lying in the desert sands.
Suddenly the wind rises to almost hurricane velocity; the hot searing sun gives way to black forbidding clouds. The thunder rolls and the lightning slashes across the sky like deadly sword play. Like a discordant orchestra the heavens play their music.
Then comes the rain, not slowly, but suddenly, like jumping into an ice cold bath. It torrents down, drenching everything, filling the cowboy's hat to the rim, extinguishing the old man's pipe and making the homes twitch and shiver. It fills the cracks in the ground satisfying their thirst. At first the rain trickles down the street, meandering round rocks but gradually it accumulates and is joined by tributaries and forces its way down the street becoming a raging torrent to ants and beatles attempting to cross it.
The rain does not take "no" for an answer; it will not be ignored; it taps at the windows; it raps at the doors; it splashes and spills out of gutters falling in great puddles on the ground. It gurgles down drains.
The once dry and dusty city has become one sodden amalgamation of wet, steaming clothing, dust and saturated wood.
Then the rain ceases, just as abruptly as it started. The sun whips the few remaining clouds away and the city is cleansed and fresh. The sun glistens on the droplets of rain which hang like earrings on cobwebs of silk. A new summer's day has dawned.
Ion Appuhamy