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You survey nine rickety stalls trailing down the main thoroughfare, each leaning in some random, askance direction. The three, sturdy, pine wood permanents that serve as the first real fixtures of the oncoming humanity stand attention at the end of the quarter mile commerce row. Stepping in among the three dozen men milling to and fro among the market, you begin to search for what you’ve decided this place might be able to offer you.
You need food. The last crumbs of the cornbread in your satchel are stale and pathetic. You need a gun. Your Patterson is reliable but low caliber and outdated. You need some traps. They and preparedness are all that keep your guts from being strewn across the night sky. Finally, you need books. You like books, always a reader, you’ve had little time to pursue the hobby in the past several years, and you’ll be damned if another season will pass without you setting eyes to a page for pleasure. All told, the $100 clip sewn into your vest will cover your considerations with nary a care. Still, the deep mountain beckons, and there will be little opportunity to take in greenbacks on your road to the Shaman’s exsanguination. This money may need to last you a long while. On the other hand, death due to dismemberment that could have been avoided by some considerable purchase is unappealing as poverty.
Your mind sharpened to its purpose, you pierce the first of your objectives; food and medicine. The stalls you pass mostly hew to this purpose, two of them dedicated to fresh meat brought in from some early morning hunt. Another stands for vegetables, dark green roughage and spots of color buckle the distraught wooden counter. One last purveys canned, salted, and preserved foods, the bounty of nature in this place precludes much popularity, but he serves his function, and you in particular have some truck with him.
The rest of the stalls provide a true variety of commonware: sewing kits, soap, gloves, combs, pommade, tobacco, and whatever else the merchants in question managed to steal, trade for, or buy from the ever-revolving labor coming and going to work at Whittier’s logging camp. There is one last stall situated away from the others, at the back end of the thoroughfare, but you ignore it as you reach the first of the pine buildings; the general store.
Inside is the proprietor, a man named Brown, who takes little care to engage with you other than a perfunctory garble of “Fternn.” which you take to mean Afternoon. The floorboards let loose quiet protests as you browse but the building is an order of magnitude more put together than those outside. The general store doesn’t have much you can’t find at the stalls, but there’s finer tobacco, chewing gum, whiskey, sacks of flour and meal, and holy of holies, chocolate.