by Elizabeth George Speare

1 By the next morning the tight place in his stomach was gone. By the morning after that Matt decided that it was mighty pleasant living alone. He enjoyed waking to a day stretched before him to fill as he pleased. He could set himself the necessary chores without having to listen to any advice about how they should be done. How could he have thought that the time would move slowly? As the days passed and he cut one notch after another on his stick, Matt discovered that there was never enough time for all that must be done between sunrise and sunset.

2 Although the cabin was finished, his father had left him with the endless task of chinking the spaces between the logs with clay from the creek bank. At the edge of the clearing there were trees to fell to let in more sun on the growing corn, and underbrush that kept creeping closer over the cleared ground. All this provided plenty of wood to be chopped and stacked in the woodpile against the cabin wall.

3 To cook a meal for himself once or twice a day, he had to keep a fire going. Twice in the first few days he had waked and found the ashes cold. Back home in Quincy, if his mother's fire burned out she had sent him or Sarah with her shovel to borrow a live coal from a neighbor. There was no neighbor here. He had to gather twigs and make a wad of shredded cedar bark, then strike his flint and blow on the tiny spark until it burst into flame. A man could get mighty hungry before he had coaxed that spark into a cooking fire.

4 The corn patch needed constant tending. In those hot, bright days, every drop of water that those green shoots demanded had to be lugged from the creek, a kettleful at a time, and there was no way to water the corn without encouraging the weeds as well. As fast as he pulled them, new ones sprang up. The crows drove him distracted, forever flapping about. A dozen times a day he would dash at them fiercely, shouting and waving his arms. They would just fly lazily off and wait on a nearby treetop till his back was turned.... At night wild creatures nibbled the tops of the green shoots. Once he sat up all night... batting at the mosquitoes. When morning came he stumbled into the cabin and slept away half the day. That was the second time he let the fire go out.

5 He seemed to be hungrier than ever before in his life. The barrel of flour was going down almost as fast as when two were dipping into it.... For a change of diet he could take his fish pole and follow the twisting course of the creek or walk the trail his father had blazed to a pond some distance away. In no time, he could catch all the fish he could eat....

6 He had grown used to the stillness. In fact he knew now that the forest is rarely quiet. As he tramped through it he was accompanied by the chirruping of birds, the chatter of squirrels, and the whine and twang of thousands of bothersome insects. In the night he could recognize now the strange sounds that used to startle him. The grunt of a porcupine rummaging in the garden. The boom of the great horned owl. The scream of some small creature pounced upon in the forest. Or the long, quavering cry of the loon from the distant pond. The first time he had heard that loon call he had thought it was wolf. Now he liked to hear it. Mournful as it was, it was the cry of another living creature. Matt would worm his shoulder into a comfortable spot in the hemlock boughs that made his mattress, pull the blanket over his head to shut out the mosquitoes, and fall asleep well satisfied with his world.
Excerpt from The Sign of the Beaver by Elizabeth George Speare. Copyright © 1983 by Elizabeth George Speare. Reprinted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
Question
Why is it important for Matt to have fire?

Responses

He needs fire to stay warm in his cabin.
He needs fire to stay warm in his cabin.

He needs fire to clear the underbrush.
He needs fire to clear the underbrush.

He needs fire to cook his food.
He needs fire to cook his food.

He needs fire to keep the animals away.
He needs fire to keep the animals away.