The Kangaroo Rat 



was a rough, rock-built, 

 squalid ranch-house that I 

 lived in, on the Currumpaw. 

 The plaster of the walls was 

 mud, the roof and walls 

 were dry mud, the great 

 river-flat around it was 

 sandy mud, and the hills a mile away were 

 piled-up mud, sculptured by frost and rain into 

 the oddest of mud vagaries, with here and 

 there a coping of lava to prevent the utter 

 demolition of some necessary mud pinnacle 

 by the indefatigable sculptors named. 



The place seemed uninviting to a stranger 

 from the lush and fertile prairies of Manitoba, 

 but the more I saw of it the more it was revealed 



2 33 





Tiff 



B£fe 



