Page:O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories for 1919.pdf/64



TELEPHONED down the hill to Hazen Kinch. “Hazen,” I asked, “are you going to town to-day?”

“Yes, yes,” he said abruptly in his quick, harsh fashion. “Of course I’m going to town.”

“I’ve a matter of business,” I suggested.

“Come along,” he invited brusquely. “Come along.”

There was not another man within forty miles to whom he would have given that invitation.

“I’ll be down in ten minutes,” I promised him; and I went to pull on my Pontiacs and heavy half boots over them and started downhill through the sandy snow. It was bitterly cold; it had been a cold winter. The bay—I could see it from my window—was frozen over for a dozen miles east and west and thirty north and south; and that had not happened in close to a score of years. Men were freighting across to the islands with heavy teams. Automobiles had beaten a rough road along the course the steamers took in summer. A man who had ventured to stock one of the lower islands with foxes for the sake of their fur, counting on the water to hold them prisoners, had gone bankrupt when his stock in trade escaped across the ice. Bitterly cold and steadily cold, and deep snow lay upon the hills, blue-white in the distance. The evergreens were blue-black blotches on this whiteness. The birches, almost indistinguishable, were like trees in camouflage. To me the hills are never so grand as in this winter coat they wear. It is easy to believe that a brooding God dwells upon them. I wondered as I ploughed my way down to Hazen Kinch’s farm whether God did indeed