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