CHAPTER 2

FIGHTING THEIR WAY

Twice, during the night, Jack roused him by trying to push himself farther under the blanket and Chad rose to rebuild the fire.  The third time he was awakened by the subtle prescience of dawn and his eyes opened on a flaming radiance in the east.  Again from habit he started to spring hurriedly to his feet and, again sharply conscious, he lay down again.  There was no wood to cut, no fire to rekindle, no water to carry from the spring, no cow to milk, no corn to hoe; there was nothing to do—­nothing.  Morning after morning, with a day’s hard toil at a man’s task before him, what would he not have given, when old Jim called him, to have stretched his aching little legs down the folds of the thick feather-bed and slipped back into the delicious rest of sleep and dreams?  Now he was his own master and, with a happy sense of freedom, he brushed the dew from his face and, shifting the chunk under his head, pulled his old cap down a little more on one side and closed his eyes.  But sleep would not come and Chad had his first wonder over the perverse result of the full choice to do, or not to do.  At once, the first keen savor of freedom grew less sweet to his nostrils and, straightway, he began to feel the first pressure of the chain of duties that was to be forged for him out of his perfect liberty, link by link, and he lay vaguely wondering.

Meanwhile, the lake of dull red behind the jagged lines of rose and crimson that streaked the east began to glow and look angry.  A sheen of fiery vapor shot upward and spread swiftly over the miracle of mist that had been wrought in the night.  An ocean of it and, white and thick as snowdust, it filled valley, chasm, and ravine with mystery and silence up to the dark jutting points and dark waving lines of range after range that looked like breakers, surged up by some strange new law from an under-sea of foam; motionless, it swept down the valleys, poured swift torrents through high gaps in the hills and one long noiseless cataract over a lesser range—­all silent, all motionless, like a great white sea stilled in the fury of a storm.  Morning after morning, the boy had looked upon just such glory, calmly watching the mist part, like the waters, for the land, and the day break, with one phrase, “Let there be light,” ever in his mind—­for Chad knew his Bible.  And, most often, in soft splendor, trailing cloud-mist, and yellow light leaping from crest to crest, and in the singing of birds and the shining of leaves and dew—­there was light.