The Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come | Page 5

though loath to leave the
safe, warm earth for the upper air. A little later, he felt some great
shadow behind him, and he turned his face to see black clouds
marshalling on either flank of the heavens and fitting their black wings
together, as though the retreating forces of the night were gathering for
a last sweep against the east. A sword flashed blindingly from the dome
high above them and, after it, came one shaking peal that might have
been the command to charge, for Chad saw the black hosts start fiercely.
Afar off, the wind was coming; the trees began to sway above him, and
the level sea of mist below began to swell, and the wooded breakers
seemed to pitch angrily.
Challenging tongues ran quivering up the east, and the lake of red coals
under them began to heave fiercely in answer. On either side the
lightning leaped upward and forward, striking straight and low,
sometimes, as though it were ripping up the horizon to let into the
conflict the host of dropping stars. Then the artillery of the thunder
crashed in earnest through the shaking heavens, and the mists below
pitched like smoke belched from gigantic unseen cannon. The coming
sun answered with upleaping swords of fire and, as the black thunder
hosts swept overhead, Chad saw, for one moment, the whole east in a
writhing storm of fire. A thick darkness rose from the first crash of
battle and, with the rush of wind and rain, the mighty conflict went on
unseen.
Chad had seen other storms at sunrise, but something happened now
and he could never recall the others nor ever forget this. All it meant to
him, young as he was then, was unrolled slowly as the years came
on--more than the first great rebellion of the powers of darkness when,
in the beginning, the Master gave the first command that the seven
days' work of His hand should float through space, smitten with the
welcoming rays of a million suns; more than the beginning thus of
light--of life; more even than the first birth of a spirit in a living thing:
for, long afterward, he knew that it meant the dawn of a new
consciousness to him--the birth of a new spirit within him, and the
foreshadowed pain of its slow mastery over his passion-racked body
and heart. Never was there a crisis, bodily or spiritual, on the

battle-field or alone under the stars, that this storm did not come back
to him. And, always, through all doubt, and, indeed, in the end when it
came to him for the last time on his bed of death, the slow and sullen
dispersion of wind and rain on the mountain that morning far, far back
in his memory, and the quick coming of the Sun-king's victorious light
over the glad hills and trees held out to him the promise of a final
victory to the Sun-king's King over the darkness of all death and the
final coming to his own brave spirit of peace and rest.
So Chad, with Jack drawn close to him, lay back, awe-stricken and
with his face wet from mysterious tears. The comfort of the childish
self-pity that came with every thought of himself, wandering, a lost
spirit along the mountain-tops, was gone like a dream and ready in his
heart was the strong new purpose to strike into the world for himself.
He even took it as a good omen, when he rose, to find his fire quenched,
the stopper of his powder-horn out, and the precious black grains
scattered hopelessly on the wet earth. There were barely more than
three charges left, and something had to be done at once. First, he must
get farther away from old Nathan: the neighbors might search for him
and find him and take him back.
So he started out, brisk and shivering, along the ridge path with Jack
bouncing before him. An hour later, he came upon a hollow tree, filled
with doty wood which he could tear out with his hands and he built a
fire and broiled a little more bacon.
Jack got only a bit this time and barked reproachfully for more; but
Chad shook his head and the dog started out, with both eyes open, to
look for his own food. The sun was high enough now to make the
drenched world flash like an emerald and its warmth felt good, as Chad
tramped the topmost edge of Pine Mountain, where the brush was not
thick and where, indeed, he often found a path running a short way and
turning into some ravine--the trail of cattle and sheep and the pathway
between one little valley settlement and another. He must have made
ten miles and more