Page:O. Henry Memorial Award Prize Stories for 1919.pdf/75

Rh of their morning’s adventuring. We saw once where a fox had pinned a big snowshoe rabbit in a drift.

Hazen talked much of that child of his on the homeward way. I said little. From the top of the Rayborn Hill we sighted his house and he laid the whip along the mare and we went down that last long descent at a speed that left me breathless. I shut my eyes and huddled low in the robes for protection against the bitter wind, and I did not open them again till we turned into Hazen’s barnyard, ploughing through the unpacked snow.

When we stopped Hazen laughed.

“Ha!” he said. “Now, come in, man, and warm yourself and see the baby! A fine boy!”

He was ahead of me at the door; I went in upon his heels. We came into the kitchen together.

Hazen’s kitchen was also living-room and bedroom in the cold of winter. The arrangement saved firewood. There was a bed against the wall opposite the door. As we came in a woman got up stiffly from this bed and I saw that this woman was Hazen’s wife. But there was a change in her. She was bleak as cold iron and she was somehow strong.

Hazen rasped at this woman impatiently: “Well, I’m home! Where is the boy?”

She looked at him and her lips moved soundlessly. She closed them, opened them again. This time she was able to speak.

“The boy?” she said to Hazen. “The boy is dead!”

The dim-lit kitchen was very quiet for a little time. I felt myself breathe deeply, almost with relief. The thing for which I had waited—it had come. And I looked at Hazen Kinch.

He had always been a little thin man. He was shrunken now and very white and very still. Only his face twitched. A muscle in one cheek jerked and jerked and jerked at his mouth. It was as though he controlled a desire to smile. That jerking, suppressed smile upon his white and tortured countenance was terrible. I could see the blood drain down from his forehead, down from his cheeks. He became white as death itself.