Sergeant York And His People

by Sam K. Cowan

But the counter, facing the shelves of dress-goods for the women, is free of obstructions, and its surface is worn smooth and polished by the years of unrolling of bolts of cloth, while at every quarter-yard along the counter's rear edge is a shining brass tack-head—the yardstick of the department. A pair of large shears swing prominently from an upright partition. The department is orderly and neat, a mute tribute to those who patronize it.

Into the show-cases has crept every article of small dimension that had no habitat or kind upon the shelves around—from laces to lead pencils. Upon nails in the rafters of the ceiling swing buckets and dippers and lamps, currycombs and brushes.

Off in an L that runs at a right angle from the main store are bacon and tires for wagon wheels, country-cured hams and brooms, flour, kerosene and plows.

Under the counter by the door is an open wooden box of crackers, and its exact location and the volume of the supply are known to every child in the mountains around. Out of it comes their lagnappe for making a journey to the store.

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.