Sammy’s expression did not change. “If you want it, it’s yours,” he said brightly.

“I’ll certainly think about it. I promise.”

“You do that,” Sammy urged. He nodded and paused to sip from his coffee. “So, when can you see what I’ve been doing?”

I knew there was no reason for delay. “When we finish our coffee.”

“Great, great,” Sammy bubbled. He began to rock anxiously in his chair. “You know, Bobo, I found some old fishing flies in a box when I was cleaning up at Arch’s, stuff I think he must have tied himself. Maybe you’d like to have one for a souvenir.”

“I’d like that, Sammy. I had some great times at Arch’s.”

“Yeah. It was still going pretty good when I got here,” Sammy sighed. “Still hard to believe Arch is dead.”

Arch Ellis’ Drug Store—Arch’s—had been one of the old-fashioned kind. Arch had filled prescriptions and sold over-the-counter drug needs, a few gift items, postcards, stationery, maps, and, because he was a fisherman, an impressive selection of fishing equipment, including his own hand-tied flies. Yet, for the townspeople of Pine Hill and for those who worked in the resort hotels, Arch’s was more highly regarded as a place to gather than as a drugstore. For the gatherers, Arch sold coffee and soft drinks and sandwiches and packaged crackers and malted milk shakes that were the best in the Shandaken Valley. In summer, at night, the booths and tables in Arch’s were always filled until he declared a closing hour.

Arch, like his store, had a warm, comfortable personality. He was a pharmacist by heritage and by training, but he did not like being a pharmacist. He liked telling stories, and no one knew the legends of the Catskills as well, or told them as wonderfully.

Someone would call out, “Story, Arch, story.”

And a burst of applause would bring him from behind the counter of the soda fountain.

“Maybe you’ve heard this one,” Arch would begin, “but I was thinking about it just this morning…” And he would move about the store, like a strolling actor delivering a passionate soliloquy, and every eye would be on him.

He told of the days of the tanning companies, which stripped the bark of the hemlocks to tan the skins of animals for leather, and he told of the great plank road constructed from the hemlocks and of a stagecoach robbery by thieves who put fire to the road. He told of the murder of a midget from a traveling carnival, of the hanging of a wealthy landowner by his own children, of the ghost of a beautiful woman who had been drowned on the Esopus Creek.

His favorite story—and mine, and I believe, the favorite of all who heard him—was about a giant Indian warrior named Winnisook.