Skimpy’s father kept the store, in a leisurely and unexcited fashion—indeed many people might have considered that the store kept itself. As Ike dismounted and hitched the mare to the fence, he gave a peculiar whistle, a preconcerted signal, loud and shrill enough to summon his friend if he had been anywhere in the vicinity. No one responded, and Ike took his way to the open door of the store. He had a certain pleasant anticipation; here congregated the mountain cronies, and he loved to listen to their talk enriched with warlike reminiscences, through which vibrated, as it were, some faint and far-off echo of the strain of the bugle and the roll of the drum. His hopes were suddenly destroyed. As he ascended the three or four unhewn rocks that formed the steps to the door, he heard the long, expressionless drawl of the storekeeper within, and then a fat man’s husky laugh. Ike started guiltily at the sound. But the broad sunshine had thrown a squatty shadow of him upon the floor within, and he knew that this caricature was recognized, for the voice sang out suddenly—“Ai—yi Ike; I see ye! Needn’t be hidin’! I’ll kem arter ye!” Then as the boy, shamefaced and a little lowering, appeared in the doorway, he continued, “Whar’s that buckeye tree ye war a-goin’ ter cut down fur me so brash?” “I plumb furgot it,” mumbled Ike, as if his contrition were more acceptable when half articulate. “I furgot it, Mr. Corbin.” “I’ll be bound ye did!” said the fat man vivaciously. He was seated in one of the rickety chairs which hardly seemed adequate to his weight. He wore an unbleached cotton shirt, a suit of blue jeans much creased and crumpled, and a broad-brimmed hat, beneath which was a face also creased and crumpled. He was slow and inactive rather than old, and a man of his age who had lived a different life would hardly have such gray hair as his, or so many wrinkles. Nevertheless he had not entirely subsided into the chimney corner as is the habit of the elderly mountaineer. He still plied his trade which was that of making spinning-wheels and chairs, bread troughs and bowls, which require mechanical dexterity rather than agility; thus it was that he had hired Ike to find and cut down a sound and stalwart buckeye suitable for his purposes, his own unwieldy bulk and sedentary habits making him averse to undertaking the job himself. Peter Sawyer, the storekeeper, was tall and lank. He had a long head, an attenuated face, and a habit of basking in the sun, which was not incongruous with a certain lizard-like aspect. He sat now with his chair tilted against the frame of the doorway, and the sunshine poured through upon him. He too wore his hat, and did not move while one of his customers counted some pelts that he had brought to exchange and announced the result. “Want some sugar an’ salt fur ’em?” demanded the merchant lazily. “He’p yerse’f, neighbor; he’p yerse’f.”