At first Tom failed to catch the significance of what had been said, but when Mr.
Ross nodded, it dawned on him that his hosts were speaking of their daughter, whereupon Mrs. Ross said: 'She's at school during the week. A convent school, where she's been doing rather well.'
'Was the original Lydia Dart a Catholic?'
'As a matter of fact, she was,' Mrs. Ross said. 'But when her church tried to prevent her from coming to Seattle, she more or less broke away. Then she married this strict Presbyterian from Scotland, and I was raised believing that I was both a papist and a John Knox Presbyterian. Never bothered me a bit, but I've always liked Catholic schools. They teach children something, and our Lydia can profit from their discipline too.'
So Tom Venn spent Thursday and Friday in a state of considerable excitement, wondering what Lydia would be like and how he was going to react to the granddaughter of the woman who had written that letter. He feared that he might make a fool of himself, but when he returned from the office late Friday his apprehensions vanished, because Lydia Ross, aged seventeen, was a slender, vivacious girl whose happy life encouraged her to meet everyone with a disarming frankness. Not for her were the torments of adolescence; she supposed that both her famous grandmother and her well adjusted mother had enjoyed similar girlhoods, and she intended becoming a grown woman much like them. She also adored her father and was at ease with her younger brother, who was developing similar attitudes. When Tom Venn first saw her come swinging in the front door, her blond hair coiled about her head so that her strong neck was revealed, he sensed immediately that she was an extension of the happy family which had so impressed him during his visit.
'Hello!' she said easily as she stretched out her hand. 'I'm Lydia. Father has told me about how good you were in handling the murders at the cannery.'
'He told you about that?' Tom asked, showing his surprise that Mr. Ross should have discussed such an unpleasant fact with his daughter.
'He tells us everything,' she replied, tossing a strapful of books onto a hall table, where she intended leaving them till Monday morning. 'And he told me about your run-in with the grizzly bear.'
'It wasn't really a fight. You won't believe this, but an Indian girl told the bear to go back, and it went.'
'How big can a grizzly be? Our geography book said they're twice as big as ordinary bears.'
'This one was so-so. But a hotel in Juneau has one about ten feet tall. Stuffed, of course.'
'He would be quite an attraction if he wasn't.'
She was seriously interested in Alaska, emphasizing that she had not yet been allowed to visit there on her father's ships: 'What I want to see are the glaciers he tells us about. Are they as big as he says?'
'It seems that everything in Alaska is big. Bigger than you imagine,' and he told of the huge iceberg that had floated right to the doorstep of the Ross & Raglan store in Juneau.
'You mean right onto the main street?'
'In the water, of course. But yes, you could reach out and touch it with a pole.'
'What happened to it?'
'A fellow with a little tug threw a rope around one part and easily towed it away.'
'You mean a tug this little and an iceberg this big?' And the way she moved her hands was so expressive that Tom fell under the spell of her liveliness, her quick reaction to spoken words and her ingratiating smile.
Dinner with the Rosses now became a treasured ritual, and on Saturday night Lydia regaled the table with a burlesque description of how two of the Catholic sisters at her school hoodwinked the young priest who served as principal: 'He looked quite simple when they were through with him, so foolish, in fact, that we were sorry for him.'
'Did he know what was happening?' Tom asked, and she said: 'No. Actually, he never knows what's happening.'
Her brother, who was in a public grammar school, asked what kind of school Tom had attended, and Tom said apologetically: 'Just an ordinary school, in Chicago. But I had to drop out.'
'Tom has learned in the best school there is,' Mr. Ross interrupted. 'The kind my father attended. The school of actually doing it.' He asked for his son's attention, and said: 'The young man sitting across from you, Jake, was practically in charge of our store in Dawson before he was Lydia's age. And a year later he was head of everything in Nome.'
'You mean the gold fields?' the boy asked, and when Tom nodded, both the younger Rosses viewed him with more respect.
That weekend was the richest in human experience that Tom Venn had known up to this moment, for he witnessed how a well-organized family interacted, how children were allowed great freedom if they attended to the basic courtesies, and he was especially impressed by the fact that Mrs. Ross, who was obviously proud of her lively daughter, refused Lydia permission to go out on Sunday afternoon until she had finished her weekend homework. Down the books came from the table where Lydia had tossed them, but two hours later she was ready to take a walk over the wooded hills in back of the castle.
It was a walk Tom would never forget. The air was wintry but the sun was warm. Puget Sound glistened at first, then grew somber as a rain squall drifted in from the Strait of Juan de Fuca, and at one point Tom said: 'Look down there. It's almost as if the heart of the city lay exposed.'
'You use words well,' Lydia said, and Tom explained how, in both Dawson and Nome, he had studied books which Missy Peckham had provided.
'Who was she?' Lydia asked, and he replied: 'My mother, sort of,' and when she asked what that meant, for heaven's sake, he laughed uneasily and explained: 'My real mother...well, she ran away with another man ... and my father sort of married Missy. She was a wonderful woman ... is, I'd better say. She lives in Nome now.' He stopped, overcome by the contrast between Missy's chaotic life and the orderliness of the Ross household. He wanted to tell her how this good woman Missy Peckham had been unable to marry his father and was now unable to marry Mr. Murphy, and for much the same reason, but it was too complicated to unravel.
'Father thinks I ought to go on to college,' Lydia said, tactfully changing the subject.
'Mother has doubts.'
'Where would you go?'
'Here in Seattle. The university maybe.'
'That would be nice.'
'But Grandmother always remembered the Boston area with affection, and she told me before she died ..."
'I thought she was fed up with Boston.'
'No! She wrote that letter to tease them. She loved the place, said it was the lighthouse of America. She wanted me to go back there to school.' Then Lydia stopped speaking, for powerful thoughts were coursing through her mind, and after a while she said:
'I want to be like my grandmother. I want always to be brave enough to try things.
I think I'll need an education to achieve what I want to do.'
'And what is that?'
'I don't know. There are so many possibilities, I really can't decide.'
Tom had to laugh, because he faced the same quandary: 'Just like me. I love the work in Alaska. And I can see unbroken years of it ahead. But I feel more at home in Seattle and I can't see how I'm ever going to find a position here.'
'I should think that if you do a good job for Father up in Alaska, it would be only natural for him to bring you down here sooner or later. He has a very high opinion of you, Tom, and so does Mother.'
'But he also has a lot of work for me to do in Alaska.' He halted that line of talk:
'Have you ever met this Marvin Hoxey?'
'He's an awful man. Real slimy. Father knows it, but he says that sometimes you have to use whatever tool's at hand.' She kicked at a stone: 'Hoxey doesn't fool my father one bit.'
They had now swung around to the eastern side of the small hill; Puget Sound was no longer visible, but in its place stood the lakes and waterways which defined this segment of Seattle, and they were as attractive in their more subdued way as the more dramatic sound to the west. 'I've always liked this view,' Lydia said, 'less powerful but safer.'
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'I don't think of you as someone looking for safety,' Tom said, and she corrected him: 'I'm not afraid of challenges, but I do appreciate safe havens at the close of day. My grandmother said the same. She told me once: "I didn't come west for adventure alone. I came to find a good man and build a solid home."Adventure and a safe haven, that's a good mix.'
On Monday morning she told Tom: 'Father says you'll be gone before I come back. It's been real fun talking to you. I can see why Father thinks so much of you, Tom.' And off she went, her hair down her back this time, her strapped books bouncing against her right leg.
On Tuesday, Mr. Ross said at dinner: 'I want you to supervise delivery and installation of the equipment for making tin cans. Our boat sails Thursday, and after Juneau it will lay over at the cannery. The men from the factory will help you with the machines and the new welding device.'
Tom was twenty-one now and amazingly poised for his age, so without embarrassment he suggested: 'Couldn't I take Monday's ship north and meet the men at the cannery?'
'Why would you do that?'
'Because I'd very much like to see Lydia again.'
A hush fell over the room, broken by Mrs. Ross, who said brightly: 'That's a sensible idea, Malcolm. I'm sure Lydia would like to see Tom again.' And without further words the decision was reached, with Mr. Ross showing no irritation at having been overruled; he liked Tom Venn and appreciated the young man's forthrightness.
The second weekend was more serious than the first, because all the Rosses, especially Lydia, were aware that Tom had stayed on for the express purpose of exploring further their friendship. She told him frankly, when they were alone, that she had broken two other engagements so that they could spend time together, and when he protested that she should not have done that, she said frankly: 'Oh, but I wanted to. So many of the young men I meet are clods.'
'They won't be when they're four years older,' he said, and she replied: 'They're already four years older and they're confirmed clods.'
Twice they walked on the hill, seeing Seattle and its environs in its varying moods, and they talked incessantly of school and Mr. Hoxey's political plans and the future of Ross & Raglan, and on Monday morning when Lydia again left for school, she stood in the hallway in the presence of both her father and her mother and kissed Tom goodbye.
She did not want there to be any misunderstanding as to how she felt.
WHEN THE TIN-CAN MACHINES WERE INSTALLED AT Totem Cannery, Tom Venn and Sam Bigears, who had reluctantly agreed to serve as winter watchman over the vacant buildings, began to prepare for the arrival of the Filipino and Chinese workmen. Huge quantities of rice were brought in from Seattle, because both these groups would become difficult if the cannery tried to feed them potatoes, and additional bunks were built for the extra Chinese who would be coming. When Tom paddled across the estuary one day to visit with Sam, whose friendship he wanted to retain, he unwisely told him: 'This may be the last year we use Chinese.'
Sam, who could never bear a grudge, even though he had been disgusted after Tom's last visit, asked: 'Who else you gonna get? Tlingits never work no factory."
Sensing potential trouble, Tom said no more, but on several later occasions Sam wanted to know who would be taking the place of the Chinese: 'We don't want no Japanese, no Eskimos brought into our territory. Be damned much better if Chinese and Filipinos both get out.'
'Maybe they will, someday,' Tom said, but in late April a big Canadian ship, the Star of Montreal, hove to off the mouth of the Pleiades River to deposit ninety-three Chinese workers, and as they began to stream down the gangplank, Tom saw what he had expected: Ah Ting was once more in command, his long pigtail trailing, his eyes more challenging than before, if that was possible. This year only one of his co-workers spoke English, and as Tom moved among the gang he suspected that more than half were recent arrivals from China, for they had no concept of what work they would be doing.
'I want two of your best men,' Tom told Ah Ting.
'What for?' the leader asked, implying, as usual, that he, Ah Ting, would decide who would work where.
'They're to work a new machine,' Tom said, and Ah Ting replied: 'I work the new machine,' but Tom said firmly: 'No, you're needed in here. To keep order.'
'That's right,' Ah Ting said with no animosity. He was the top man, and it was prudent that he work where he could supervise the largest number of workers. So he designated two good workmen, but when Tom led them away, Ah Ting insisted upon trailing along, for he considered it essential that he know what was going on in every part of the cannery; in fact, he acted as if it were his cannery, an assumption which irritated Tom, as it had Mr. Ross during the rioting last year.
As soon as Ah Ting saw the stacks of flattened cans and the machines which would expand them into usable form, he appreciated the threat this new system posed for his Chinese. Contemptuously he spurned the machines, saying: 'No good. No more Chinese working here.'
'We'll need two good men on the machines,' Tom assured him. 'Maybe two more to move the cans around.'
Ah Ting would have none of this. Last year he had supervised sixteen of his men in this section; this year there were to be four at most, and he was pretty sure that Mr. Venn would quickly cut that back to three or even two as the men became familiar with the operation of the new system. But what could he do other than sulk? And this he did, with every sign of becoming increasingly difficult as the season progressed.
Faced by this insubordination, Tom was tempted to fire Ah Ting on the spot, but he knew that no replacement could manage the scores of Chinese who would still be required to keep the cutting tables and the cooking ovens functioning. So against his better judgment, Tom bided his time, accepted Ah Ting's protests, and made small concessions on food and bunkhouse space to keep his tenacious manager happy.
And when this was accomplished, more or less successfully, he faced the wrath of the fishermen, for when Professor Starling and his crew came on the scene to erect their trap, and the local men saw the long jiggers stretching nearly across the inlet, they realized that their days of domination were ended, and they began to make trouble.
Some of the rougher white men threatened to demolish the weir and cut the jiggers, while others said they would prevent the supply ships from landing at the dock or hauling away the cases of canned salmon. There were other threats too from the Tlingits, but in the end the great trap was built and the jiggers installed, and then the fishermen were both superfluous and powerless to oppose the swift changes that were sweeping their industry.
When the mature salmon began to flood into Taku Inlet, all hands watched carefully to determine whether the trap would collect enough fish to keep the gutting tables filled, and by the end of the first week it was apparent that the weir and its two jiggers were going to succeed even beyond the hopes of the men who had installed it. In fact, when Professor Starling reviewed the operation he spotted a problem which not even he had anticipated: 'It's working so well, Mr. Venn, that the holding pen is receiving more fish than it can handle. Your men are not taking the salmon out fast enough.'
'We can't handle any more in the gutting shed than we are right now.'
'When Dr. Whitman gets his Iron Chink perfected,' Starling said, 'we can speed up the chain. But what shall we do now?'
Even as he spoke, the efficient jiggers, blocking the movement of the salmon as they fought to reach their natal lakes, kept throwing so many big fish into the trap and from there into the holding area that there was only one solution: 'We'll have to let the weaker fish at the bottom die and let their bodies drift downstream with the current.'
This was done, and all that summer the trap at the Pleiades caught so many big sockeye that an appalling number of weaker ones were wasted. Now bald eagles from miles around gathered in the skies over Taku Inlet to feast upon the decaying fish, and thousands of fish which could have provided delectable sustenance to hungry people everywhere were allowed to rot and contaminate the lower waters of th
e Taku.
Even more ominous so far as the future of the industry was concerned, the trap was so effective that knowing fishermen began to wonder whether enough mature salmon were getting past the barrier to ensure perpetuation of the breed. 'We do open it up over the weekend,' Professor Starling assured the skeptics as he stopped in Juneau on his way back to Seattle, 'and if you saw the hordes offish that get through on those two days ...'
'A day and a half,' someone corrected, and he nodded: 'If you saw the hordes of salmon that escape in that period, you'd know their future was secure.'
'What about the fish you allow to die in the holding area?' another man asked, and Starling replied: 'There's a little wastage in any big operation. Unavoidable, and in the long run it does no substantial damage.' And back he sailed to lay plans for six more huge traps to be installed at future Ross & Raglan canneries.
Some concerned men in Juneau took Professor Starling's advice and sailed to the Pleiades River to inspect the operation of the trap, but when their little boat started to dock, Tom Venn appeared on the wharf to warn them that they were approaching private property on which they were not permitted to intrude. 'But your Professor Starling invited us to come out and see how the trap works,' and Tom said: 'He had no authority to do that,' but the hardened fishermen of Juneau were not to be so easily turned back.
'We're coming ashore, Venn, and you'll be asking for trouble if you try to stop us.'
Such confrontation was avoided, since inspection of the weir and jiggers could be accomplished without trespassing on Totem property. Tom directed the fishermen to take their boat downstream from the trap, from where they could watch the behavior of the salmon, and a stranger to Alaskan fishing would have been astounded at what they saw. The mature salmon swam in from the gyre not in dozens or hundreds but in thousands, three hundred in one solid block, six hundred resting with their noses all pointed against the current. At times the clear water in which the boat rested was solidly packed with salmon, ten or fifteen thousand crowding past, their sleek bodies shining in sunlight a few inches below the surface. It did seem, in such moments of abundance, that the supply was inexhaustible and indestructible.