Part 17

Beside the door upon a shelf sits the water-bucket, kept cool by frequent replenishing from the York spring. Here every man who enters stops; and, after he has shifted his quid of tobacco, looked around, and made his cheerful greeting a hearty one with, "Howdy people!" he lifts the dipper filled with its pleasing refreshment--and the surplus goes accurately, in a crystal curve, to the back of some venturesome chicken that has come upon the store porch.

Above the door as you enter hangs a stenciled, uneven, unpunctuated sign, "NO CREDIT CASH OR BARTER." But that sign has lost its potency. It is yellow with age and no longer is there anyone who believes in it. It was hung when John Marion first opened his store, and before he knew his people and wanted cash or barter for his wares.

There is trading every day that is barter. But it is the women bringing chickens under their arms, or it basket of eggs. The eggs are deposited in a box, the storekeeper counting them aloud as he packs them for shipment; or one of the eleven Rains' "kids" is bestirred to the barn with the chickens, where they remain in semi-captivity until the egg and poultry man, in an old canvas covered schooner, comes on his weekly rounds. And the cash value to the barter is traded to a cent. A "poke" of flour or of sugar or a cut of tobacco usually evens the transaction.

It is many a journey around the store that John Marion makes in a day. The decision to purchase each article is announced slowly and as tho it were the only thing desired. The plump and genial storekeeper goes leisurely for it, and with a smile of satisfaction places it before the customer. There is a moment of silence, then a journey for the next need, and it is only in balancing the barter that the merchant makes a suggestion.

In a small glass show-case is refuting testimony that the sign over the door of NO CREDIT had been discredited long ago. The charge account is open to everyone. A memorandum of the purchase is made upon a strip torn from a writing-tablet or upon a piece of wrapping-paper and tossed into the show-case, among many others of its kind, until the customer "comes around to settle up." Then, with an unerring instinct, John Marion can pull from the tumbled pile of memoranda the records of the charges he seeks. If the charge account is to remain open until the next crop comes in, on some rainy day he will transcribe the charge to his day-book.

The clocks of the valley are not controlled by the government's or the railroads' standard of time. They go by "sun time" and are regulated by the hour the almanacs say the sun should rise. John Marion winds the store clock after it has run down and he sets it by no consultation with anything but his feeling as to what hour of the day it should be.

At least once a week every man who lives in the valley is at the store, but Saturday is the popular meeting-time. When the chairs and the row of horseshoe kegs are occupied, the men rest their hands behind them on the counter and swing to a place of comfort upon it, or they sit upon the window-sills, keeping well within the range of raillery that welcomes the coming and speeds the parting guest. It is a good-natured humor that these mountaineers love, quick as the crack of a rifle and as direct as its speeding ball. There is never an effort to wound. But always there is the open challenge to measure resource and wit.

Many a trade in mules that owners have ridden to the store has resulted from the defense against the mule-wise critics who several times outnumber the man who rode the mule. If the mount is a newly acquired one, especial pleasure is found in a seemingly serious pointing out why any sort of trade was a bad one for that particular animal.

A mule trade is a measure of business capability. No lie is ever told in answer to a direct question, but no information is relinquished unless a question is asked. If no hand is passed over the mule's eyes, and there is no specific inquiry about the eyes before the trade is consummated, and the animal proves blind in one of them, the fault lies in the mule-swapping ability of the new owner. Over no question could two men be seemingly so widely apart as the two when both are anxious to trade. They are jockeying for that "something to boot" which always makes at least one participant satisfied in a mountain mule trade.

There are pitfalls for the unwary in the conversations that pass across the store aisle. Bill Sharpe, who has spent eighty-two summers in the valley--and the winters, as well--with seeming innocence started a discussion as to how far a cow-bell could be heard. He sat quietly as several compared their experiences while hunting cattle in the mountains. Finally the old man said his hearing was not so good as it used to be, but he remembered once "hearing a cow-bell all the way from Overton county." Down the line a rural statistician figured it must be seventy miles from Pall Mall to the nearest point in Overton county, and the jests began to explode in the old man's vicinity. He conceded many changes since he was young, but so far as he could see there was evidently no improvement in man's hearing powers. When all his efforts to secure a side bet that he could prove his assertion were futile, he explained:

"Wall, boys, ye got away. En once I won two gallons o' whisky on hit. I was in Overton county. I bought a cow. As she had a bell on her, and I drove her home, I heard that cow-bell all the way from Overton county."

On Saturday afternoon, or a rainy afternoon, when Alvin York and the "Wright boys," and one of them, "Will" Wright, is president of the bank at Jamestown; Ab Williams, gray of hair and bent, but vigorous of tongue; his son, Sam Williams, tall and straight as an Indian and equally upstanding for his opinions; John Evans, a local justice of the peace; Bill Sharpe, who lives in the shadow of "Old Crow"; T. C. Frogge, of Frogge's Chapel, who farms, preaches or teaches school as the demand arises; "Paster" Pile and his brother, Virgil Pile, who has been County Trustee; when any of these are among those gathered at the store, there is a tournament of wit, with a constant change of program.

Many a time John Marion is compelled to retreat behind a grin when in a lull "a shot" is taken at him, and his smile is his acknowledgment that he cannot be expected to add up a charge-slip and at the same time defend himself against a care-free man upon a keg of horseshoes.

But the storekeeper is never taken by surprize at the badinage of his patrons. One afternoon after a long wait and another day in the valley seemed sure to pass with no unusual incident, an old fellow arose from one of the chairs, stretched himself, and said:

"John Marion, I want a shift o' shirts. Else, I got to go to bed to git this-un washed."

The storekeeper laid out several of dark color:

"Here's some you can wear without change till the shirt falls off."

"That's right, John; gimme one thet won't advertise thet the ole woman's neglectin' me."

Another was uncertain about the size of a pair of overalls for his boy:

"Dunknow, John Marion! One tight enough to keep the bees out--a kid shore wastes energy when a bee gits in 'em."

When it is "good dusk" the storekeeper closes the wooden shutters and fastens them by looping a small cotton string over a nail. All the mountaineers are on their way home, but they had not parted without an interchange of invitation:

"Home with me, boys; home! Ef I can't feed ye well, I'll be friendly."

Or, maybe, the invitation is not so sweeping, and holds a reservation:

"Spend the night with me! I'll not stop you; I'll let you leave afore breakfast."

Over any gathering at the store a pall of silence descends when a stranger rides up. If the newcomer is a new drummer unfamiliar with the ways of the mountains, if he comes imbued with the belief that the voice with the smile wins, and talkatively radiates his individual idea of fellowship and democracy, one by one his auditors silently drop away. To them, an insincere, a false note of democracy has been struck. Perhaps around the door there will linger some of the mountain boys waiting to satisfy their curiosity over the contents of the drummer's cases.

John Marion Rains always listens to the story of prices, but his shelves are really replenished by the drummers who drive to the barn instead of the store, who unhitch their own horses and feed them from the storekeeper's supply of corn, who come into the center of the crowd only after they have unobtrusively lingered awhile in the fringe of it.

One afternoon one of these mountaineers who had withdrawn to the porch, unhitched, without being solicited, a drummer's horse, and he had trouble in pulling off a loose shoe and renailing it. The drummer wanted to pay for the work, but the mountaineer shook his head. The deed had been done for the horse. The visitor insisted, and finally the price was fixed:

"Bout a nickel!"