Beriah was postmaster and the post office was in his store.

The male citizen of middle age or over, seeking opportunity for companionship and chat, usually went first to the depot, sat about in the waiting room until the train came in, superintended that function, then sojourned to the post office until the mail was sorted, returning later, if he happened to be a particular friend of the depot master, to sit and smoke and yarn until Captain Sol announced that it was time to "turn in." When Mr.Phinney entered the little waiting room he found it already tenanted.

Captain Sol had not yet arrived, but official authority was represented by "Issy" McKay--his full name was Issachar Ulysses Grant McKay--a long-legged, freckled-faced, tow-headed youth of twenty, who, as usual, was sprawled along the settee by the wall, engrossed in a paper covered dime novel.

"Issy" was a lover of certain kinds of literature and reveled in lurid fiction.

As a youngster he had, at the age of thirteen, after a course of reading in the "Deadwood Dick Library," started on a pedestrian journey to the Far West, where, being armed with home-made tomahawk and scalping knife, he contemplated extermination of the noble red man.