I felt sorry
that I had not been there to watch it, because after all,
what I saw, was only the dead record of something that
had been very much alive and vociferatingly noisy. And
in another place it had reared and raised its head like
a boa constrictor, ready to strike at its prey; up to
the flashing, forked tongue it was there. But one spot
I remember, where it looked exactly as if quite consciously
it had attempted the outright ludicrous: it had thrown
up the snow into the semblance of some formidable animal
--more like a gorilla than anything else it looked, a
gorilla that stands on its four hands and raises every
hair on its back and snarls in order to frighten that
which it is afraid of itself--a leopard maybe.
And then I reached the "White Range Line House." Curiously
enough, there it stood, sheltered by its majestic bluff
to the north, as peaceful looking as if there were no
such a thing as that record, which I had crossed, of the
uproar and fury of one of the forces of Nature engaged
in an orgy. And it looked so empty, too, and so deserted,
with never a wisp of smoke curling from its flue-pipe,
that for a moment I was tempted to turn in and see whether
maybe the lonely dweller was ill.
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