CHAPTER XVIII
A Renewal of Hostilities
The pussy willows had put out their fuzzy catkins and shed them fordelicate foliage when MacRae came back to Squitty Cove. The alder, themaple and the wild cherry, all the spring-budding trees and shrubs, weremaking thicket and foreshore dainty green and full of pleasant smells.Jack wakened the first morning at daybreak to the muted orchestration ofmating birds, the song of a thousand sweet-voiced, unseen warblers. Thedays were growing warm, full of sunshine. Distant mountain ranges stoodwhite-capped and purple against sapphire skies. The air was full of theancient magic of spring.
Yet MacRae himself, in spite of these pleasant sights and sounds andsmells, in spite of his books and his own rooftree, found the Covehaunted by the twin ghosts he dreaded most, discontent and loneliness.He was more isolated than he had ever been in his life. There was no onein the Cove save an old, unkempt Swede, Doug Sproul, who slept eighteenhours a day in his cabin while he waited for the salmon to run again, awithered Portuguese who sat in the sun and muttered while he mendedgear. They were old men, human driftwood, beached in their decliningyears, crabbed and sour, looking always backward with unconsciousregret.
Vin Ferrara was away with the _Bluebird_, still plying his fish venture.Dolly and Norman Gower were married, and Dolly was back on the Knob inthe middle of Squitty Island, keeping house for her husband and UnclePeter and Long Tom Spence while they burrowed in the earth to uncover acopper-bearing lead that promised a modest fortune for all three. PeterFerrara's house at the Cove stood empty and deserted in the spring sun.
People had to shift, to grasp opportunities as they were presented,MacRae knew. They could not take root and stand still in one spot likethe great Douglas firs. But he missed the familiar voices, the sight offriendly faces. He had nothing but his own thoughts to keep him company.A man of twenty-five, a young and lusty animal of abounding vitality,needs more than his own reflections to fill his days. Denied the outletof purposeful work in which to release pent-up energy, MacRae broodedover shadows, suffered periods of unaccountable depression. Nature hadnot designed him for either a hermit or a celibate. Something in himcried out for affection, for companionship, for a woman's tendernessbestowed unequivocally. The mating instinct was driving him, as it drovethe birds. But its urge was not the general, unspecified longing whichturns a man's eyes upon any desirable woman. Very clearly, imperiously,this dominant instinct in MacRae had centered upon Betty Gower.
He was at war with his instincts. His mind stipulated that he could nothave her without a revolutionary overturning of his convictions,inhibitions, soundly made and passionately cherished plans of reprisalfor old injustices. That peculiar tenacity of idea and purpose which wasinherent with him made him resent, refuse soberly to consider anydeviation from the purpose which had taken form with such bitterintensity when he kindled to his father's account of those drab yearswhich Horace Gower had laid upon him.
Jack MacRae was no angel. Under his outward seeming his impulses wereprimitive, like the impulses of all strong men. He nursed a vision ofbeating Gower at Gower's own game. He hugged to himself the ultimatesatisfaction of that. Even when he was dreaming of Betty, he wasmentally setting her aside until he had beaten her father to his kneesunder the only sort of blows he could deal. Until he had made Gower knowgrief and disappointment and helplessness, and driven him off the southend of Squitty landless and powerless, he would go on as he had elected.When he got this far Jack would sometimes say to himself in a spirit ofdefiant recklessness that there were plenty of other women for whomultimately he could care as much. But he knew also that he would not saythat, nor even think it, whenever Betty Gower was within reach of hishand or sound of his voice.
He walked sometimes over to Point Old and stared at the cottage, snowywhite against the tender green, its lawn growing rank with uncut grass,its chimney dead. There were times when he wished he could see smokelifting from that chimney and know that he could find Betty somewherealong the beach. But these were only times when his spirits were verylow.
Also he occasionally wondered if it were true, as Stubby Abbottdeclared, that Gower had fallen into a financial hole. MacRae doubtedthat. Men like Gower always got out of a hole. They were fierce andremorseless pursuers of the main chance. When they were cast down theyclimbed up straightway over the backs of lesser men. He thought ofRobbin-Steele. A man like that would die with the harness of themoney-game on his back, reaching for more. Gower was of the same type,skillful in all the tricks of the game, ruthless, greedy for power andschooled to grasp it in a bewildering variety of ways.
No, he rather doubted that Gower was broke, or even in any danger ofgoing broke. He hoped this might be true, in spite of his doubts, for itmeant that Gower would be compelled to sacrifice this six hundred acresof MacRae land. The sooner the better. It was a pain to MacRae to see itgoing wild. The soil Donald MacRae had cleared and turned to meadow, tosmall fields of grain, was growing up to ferns and scrub. It had been asource of pride to old Donald. He had visualized for his son more thanonce great fields covered with growing crops, a rich and fruitful area,with a big stone house looking out over the cliffs where ultimategenerations of MacRaes should live. If luck had not gone against oldDonald he would have made this dream come true. But life and Gower hadbeaten him.
Jack MacRae knew this. It maddened him to think that this foundation ofa dream had become the plaything of his father's enemy, a neglectedbackground for a summer cottage which he only used now and then.
There might, however, be something in the statements Stubby had made.MacRae recalled that Gower had not replaced the _Arrow_. Theunderwriters had raised and repaired the mahogany cruiser, and she hadpassed into other hands. When Betty and her father came to Cradle Baythey came on a cannery tender or a hired launch. MacRae hoped it mightbe true that Gower was slipping, that he had helped to start him on thisdecline.
Presently the loneliness of the Cove was broken by the return ofVincent Ferrara. They skidded the _Bluebird_ out on the beach at theCove's head and overhauled her inside and out, hull and machinery. Thatbrought them well into April. The new carrier was complete from truck tokeelson. She had been awaiting only MacRae's pleasure for her maidensea-dip. So now, with the _Bluebird_ sleeked with new paint, he wentdown for the launching.
There was a little ceremony over that.
"It's bad luck, the very worst sort of luck, to launch a boat withoutchristening her in the approved manner," Nelly Abbott declared. "Iinsist on being sponsor. Do let me, Jack."
So the new sixty-footer had a bottle of wine from the Abbott cellarbroken over her brass-bound stemhead as her bows sliced into the saltwater, and Nelly's clear treble chanted:
"I christen thee _Agua Blanco_."
Vin Ferrara's dark eyes gleamed, for _agua blanco_ means "white water"in the Spanish tongue.
The Terminal Fish Company's new coolers were yawning for fish when thefirst blueback run of commercial size showed off Gray Rock and theBallenas. All the Squitty boats went out as soon as the salmon came.MacRae skippered the new and shining _Blanco_, brave in white paint andpolished brass on her virgin trip. He followed the main fleet, while the_Bluebird_ scuttled about to pick up stray trollers' catches and to tendthe rowboat men. She would dump a day's gathering on the _Blanco's_deck, and the two crews would dress salmon till their hands were sore.But it saved both time and fuel to have that great carrying capacity,and the freezing plant which automatically chilled the fish. MacRaecould stay on the grounds till he was fully loaded. He could slashthrough to Vancouver at nine knots instead of seven. A sea that wouldtoss the old wrecked _Blackbird_ like a dory and keep her low deckscontinually awash let the _Blanco_ pass with only a moderate pitch androll.
MacRae worked hard. He found ease in work. When the last salmon wasdressed and stowed below, many times under the glow of electric bulbsstrung along the cargo boom, he would fall into his bunk and sleepdreamlessly. Decks streaming with blood and offal, plastered with slimeand clinging scales--until
such time as they were washed down--ceased toannoy him. No man can make omelettes without breaking eggs. Only thefortunate few can make money without soiling their hands. There is noroom in the primary stages of taking salmon for those who shrink fromsweat and strain, from elemental stress. The white-collared and thelily-fingered cannot function there. The pink meat my lady toys with onLimoges china comes to her table by ways that would appal her. Only themen who toil aboard the fishing boats, with line and gear and guttingknife know in what travail this harvest of the sea is reaped.
MacRae played fair, according to his conception of fair play. He basedhis payments on a decent profit, without which he could not carry on.Running heavier cargoes at less cost he raised the price to thefishermen as succeeding runs of blueback salmon were made up of larger,heavier fish. Other buyers came, lingered awhile, cursed him and wentaway. They could not run to Vancouver with small quantities of salmonand meet his price. But MacRae in the _Blanco_ could take six, eight,ten thousand salmon profitably on a margin which the other buyers saidwas folly.
The trolling fleet swelled in numbers. The fish were there. Theold-timers had prophesied a big blueback year, and for once theirprophecy was by way of being fulfilled. The fish schooled in greatshoals off Nanaimo, around Gray Rock, the Ballenas, passed on toSangster and Squitty. And the fleet followed a hundred strong, each dayincreasing,--Indians, Greeks, Japanese, white men, raking the salmongrounds with glittering spoon hooks, gathering in the fish.
In early June MacRae was delivering eighteen thousand salmon a week tothe Terminal Fish Company. He was paying forty cents a fish, more thanany troller in the Gulf of Georgia had ever got for June bluebacks, morethan any buyer had ever paid before the opening of the canneriesheightened the demand. He was clearing nearly a thousand dollars a weekfor himself, and he was putting unheard-of sums in the pockets of thefishermen. MacRae believed these men understood how this was possible,that they had a feeling of cooeperating with him for their common good.They had sold their catches on a take-it-or-leave-it basis for years. Hehad put a club in their hands as well as money in their pockets. Theywould stand with him against less scrupulous, more remorselessexploiters of their labor. They would see that he got fish. They toldhim that.
"If somebody else offered sixty cents you'd sell to him, wouldn't you?"MacRae asked a dozen of them sitting on the _Blanco's_ deck oneafternoon. They had been talking about canneries and competition.
"Not if he was boosting the price up just to make you quit, and then cutit in two when he had everything to himself," one man said. "That's beendone too often."
"Remember that when the canneries open, then," MacRae said dryly."There is not going to be much, of a price for humps and dog salmon thisfall. But there is going to be a scramble for the good canning fish. Ican pay as much as salmon are worth, but I can't go any further. If Ishould have to pull my boats off in mid-season you can guess whatthey'll pay around Squitty."
MacRae was not crying "wolf." There were signs and tokens of uneasinessand irritation among those who still believed it was their right andprivilege to hold the salmon industry in the hollows of their graspinghands. Stubby Abbott was a packer. He had the ears of the other packers.They were already complaining to Stubby, grouching about MacRae, unableto understand that Stubby listened to them with his tongue in his cheek,that one of their own class should have a new vision of industrialprocesses, a vision that was not like their own.
"They're cultivating quite a grievance about the price you're paying,"Stubby told Jack in confidence. "They say you are a damned fool. Youcould get those fish for thirty cents and you are paying forty. Thefishermen will want the earth when the canneries open. They hint aroundthat something will drop with a loud bang one of these days. I thinkit's just hot air. They can't hurt either of us. I'll get a fair pack atCrow Harbor, and I'll have this plant loaded. I've got enough money tocarry on. It makes me snicker to myself to imagine how they'll squirmand squeal next winter when I put frozen salmon on the market ten centsa pound below what they figure on getting. Oh, yes, our friends in thefish business are going to have a lot of grievances. But just now theyare chiefly grouching at you."
MacRae seldom set foot ashore those crowded days. But he passed withinsight of Squitty Cove and Poor Man's Rock once at least in eachforty-eight hours. For weeks he had seen smoke drifting blue from thecottage chimney in Cradle Bay. He saw now and then the flutter ofsomething white or blue on the lawn that he knew must be Betty. Part ofthe time a small power boat swung to the mooring in the bay where theshining _Arrow_ nosed to wind and tide in other days. He heard currenttalk among the fishermen concerning the Gowers. Gower himself wasspending his time between the cottage and Folly Bay.
The cannery opened five days in advance of the sockeye season on theFraser. When the Gower collecting boats made their first round MacRaeknew that he had a fight on his hands. Gower, it seemed to him, hadbared his teeth at last.
The way of the blueback salmon might have furnished a theme for Solomon.In all the years during which these fish had run in the Gulf of Georgianeither fishermen, canners, nor the government ichthyologists weregreatly wiser concerning their nature or habits or life history. Groundswhere they swarmed one season might prove barren the next. Where theycame from, out of what depths of the far Pacific those silvery hordesmarshaled themselves, no man knew. Nor, when they vanished in lateAugust, could any man say whither they went. They did not ascend thestreams. No blueback was ever taken with red spawn in his belly. Theywere a mystery which no man had unraveled, no matter that he took themby thousands in order that he himself might subsist upon their flesh.One thing the trollers did know,--where the small feed swarmed, in shoalwater or deep, those myriads of tiny fish, herring and nameless smallerones, there the blueback would appear, and when he did so appear hecould be taken by a spoon hook.
Away beyond the Sisters--three gaunt gray rocks rising out of the seamiles offshore in a fairway down which passed all the Alaska-boundsteamers, with a lone lighthouse on the middle rock--away north of FollyBay there opened wide trolling grounds about certain islands which layoff the Vancouver Island shore,--Hornby, Lambert Channel, Yellow Rock,Cape Lazo. In other seasons the blueback runs lingered about Squitty fora while and then passed on to those kelp-grown and reef-strewed grounds.This season these salmon appeared first far south of Squitty. Thetrolling scouts, the restless wanderers of the fleet, who could notabide sitting still and waiting in patience for the fish to come, firstpicked them up by the Gulf Islands, very near that great highway to theopen sea known as the Strait of San Juan. The blueback pushed on theGray Rock to the Ballenas, as if the blackfish and seal and shark thathung always about the schools to prey were herding them to some givenpoint. Very shortly after they could be taken in the shadow of theBallenas light the schools swarmed about the Cove end of Squitty Island,between the Elephant on Sangster and Poor Man's Rock. For days on endthe sea was alive with them. In the gray of dawn and the reddened duskthey played upon the surface of the sea as far as the eye reached. Andalways at such times they struck savagely at a glittering spoon hook.Beyond Squitty they vanished. Fifty and sixty salmon daily to a boat offthe Squitty headlands dwindled to fifteen and twenty at the Folly Bayend. Those restless trollers who crossed the Gulf to Hornby and YellowRock Light got little for their pains. Between Folly Bay and theswirling tide races off the desolate head of Cape Mudge the bluebackdisappeared. But at Squitty the runs held constant. There were off days,but the fish were always there. The trollers hung at the south end,sheltering at night in the Cove, huddled rubstrake to rubstrake and bowto stern, so many were they in that little space, on days when thesoutheaster made the cliffs shudder under the shock of breaking seas. Iffishing slackened for a day or two they did not scatter as in otherdays. There would be another run hard on the heels of the last. Andthere was.
MacRae ran the _Blanco_ into Squitty Cove one afternoon and made fastalongside the _Bluebird_ which lay to fore and aft moorings in thenarrow gut of the Cove. The Gulf outside was speckle
d with trollers, butthere were many at anchor, resting, or cooking food.
One of the mustard pots was there, a squat fifty-foot carrier painted agaudy yellow--the Folly Bay house color--flying a yellow flag with ablack C in the center. She was loading fish from two trollers, one lyingon each side. One or two more were waiting, edging up.
"He came in yesterday afternoon after you left," Vin Ferrara told Jack."And he offered forty-five cents. Some of them took it. To-day he'spaying fifty and hinting more if he has to."
MacRae laughed.
"We'll match Gower's price till he boosts us out of the bidding," hesaid. "And he won't make much on his pack if he does that."
"Say, Folly Bay," Jack called across to the mustard-pot carrier, "whatare you paying for bluebacks?"
The skipper took his eye off the tallyman counting in fish.
"Fifty cents," he answered in a voice that echoed up and down the Cove.
"That must sound good to the fishermen," MacRae called back pleasantly."Folly Bay's getting generous in its declining years."
It was the off period between tides. There were forty boats at rest inthe Cove and more coming in. The ripple of laughter that ran over thefleet was plainly audible. They could appreciate that. MacRae sat downon the _Blanco's_ after cabin and lit a cigarette.
"Looks like they mean to get the fish," Vin hazarded. "Can you tilt thatand make anything?"
"Let them do the tilting," MacRae answered. "If the fish run heavy I canmake a little, even if prices go higher. If he boosts them toseventy-five, I'd have to quit. At that price only the men who catch thefish will make anything. I really don't know how much we will be able topay when Crow Harbor opens up."
"We'll have some fun anyway." Vin's black eyes sparkled.
It took MacRae three days to get a load. Human nature functions prettymuch the same among all men. The trollers distrusted Folly Bay. Theysaid to one another that if Gower could kill off competition he wouldcut the price to the bone. He had done that before. But when a fishermanrises wearily from his bunk at three in the morning and spends the bulkof the next eighteen hours hauling four one hundred and fifty footlines, each weighted with from six to fifteen pounds of lead, he feelsthat he is entitled to every cent he can secure for his day's labor.
The Gower boats got fish. The mustard pot came back next day, payingfifty-five cents. A good many trollers sold him their fish before theylearned that MacRae was paying the same. And the mustard pot evidentlyhad his orders, for he tilted the price to sixty, which forced MacRae todo the same.
When the _Blanco_ unloaded her cargo of eight-thousand-odd salmon intothe Terminal and MacRae checked his receipts and expenditures for thattrip, he discovered that he had neither a profit nor a loss.
He went to see Stubby, explained briefly the situation.
"You can't get any more cheap salmon for cold storage until the seinersbegin to take coho, that's certain," he declared. "How far can you go inthis price fight when you open the cannery?"
"Gower appears to have gone a bit wild, doesn't he?" Stubby ruminated."Let's see. Those fish are running about five pounds now. They'll get abit heavier as we go along. Well, I can certainly pack as cheaply as hecan. I tell you, go easy for a week, till I get Crow Harbor under way.Then you can pay up to seventy-five cents and I'll allow you five centsa fish commission. I don't believe he'll dare pay more than that beforelate in July. If he does, why, we'll see what we can do."
MacRae went back to Squitty. He could make money with the _Blanco_ on afive-cent commission,--if he could get the salmon within the pricelimit. So for the next trip or two he contented himself with meetingGower's price and taking what fish came to him. The Folly Bay mustardpots--three of them great and small--scurried here and there among thetrollers, dividing the catch with the _Bluebird_ and the _Blanco_. Therewas always a mustard-pot collector in sight. The weather was gettinghot. Salmon would not keep in a troller's hold. Part of the old guardstuck tight to MacRae. But there were new men fishing; there wereJapanese and illiterate Greeks. It was not to be expected that these menshould indulge in far-sighted calculations. But it was a trifledisappointing to see how readily any troller would unload his catch intoa mustard pot if neither of MacRae's carriers happened to be at hand.
"Why don't you tie up your boats, Jack?" Vin asked angrily. "You knowwhat would happen. Gower would drop the price with a bang. You'd thinkthese damned idiots would know that. Yet they're feeding him fish by thethousand. They don't appear to care a hoot whether you get any or not. Iused to think fishermen had some sense. These fellows can't see an inchpast their cursed noses. Pull off your boats for a couple of weeks andlet them get their bumps."
"What do you expect?" MacRae said lightly. "It's a scramble, and theyare acting precisely as they might be expected to act. I don't blamethem. They're under the same necessity as the rest of us--to get itwhile they can. Did you think they'd sell me fish for sixty if somebodyelse offered sixty-five? You know how big a nickel looks to a man whoearns it as hard as these fellows do."
"No, but they don't seem to care who gets their salmon," Vin growled."Even when you're paying the same, they act like they'd just as soonGower got 'em as you. You paid more than Folly Bay all last season. Youput all kinds of money in their pockets that you didn't have to."
"And when the pinch comes, they'll remember that," MacRae said. "Youwatch, Vin. The season is young yet. Gower may beat me at this game, buthe won't make any money at it."
MacRae kept abreast of Folly Bay for ten days and emerged from thatperiod with a slight loss, because at the close he was paying more thanthe salmon were worth at the Terminal warehouse. But when he ran hisfirst load into Crow Harbor Stubby looked over the pile of salmon hismen were forking across the floor and drew Jack into his office.
"I've made a contract for delivery of my entire sockeye and bluebackpack," he said. "I know precisely where I stand. I can pay up to ninetycents for all July fish. I want all the Squitty bluebacks you can get.Go after them, Jack."
And MacRae went after them. Wherever a Folly Bay collector went eitherthe _Blanco_ or the _Bluebird_ was on his heels. MacRae could cover moreground and carry more cargo, and keep it fresh, than any mustard pot.The _Bluebird_ covered little outlying nooks, the stragglers, therowboat men in their beach camps. The _Blanco_ kept mostly in touch withthe main fleet patrolling the southeastern end of Squitty like a navalflotilla, wheeling and counterwheeling over the grounds where theblueback played. MacRae forced the issue. He raised the price tosixty-five, to seventy, to seventy-five, to eighty, and the boats underthe yellow house flag had to pay that to get a fish. MacRae crowded themremorselessly to the limit. So long as he got five cents a fish he couldmake money. He suspected that it cost Gower a great deal more than fivecents a salmon to collect what he got. And he did not get so many now.With the opening of the sockeye season on the Fraser and in the norththe Japs abandoned trolling for the gill net. The white trollersreturned to their first love because he courted them assiduously. Therewas always a MacRae carrier in the offing. It cost MacRae his sleep andrest, but he drove himself tirelessly. He could leave Squitty at dusk,unload his salmon at Crow Harbor, and be back at sunrise. He did it manya time, after tallying fish all day. Three hours' sleep was like a giftfrom the gods. But he kept it up. He had a sense of some approachingcrisis.
By the third week in July MacRae was taking three fourths of thebluebacks caught between the Ballenas and Folly Bay. He would liesometimes within a stone's throw of Gower's cannery, loading salmon.
He was swinging at anchor there one day when a rowboat from the canneryput out to the _Blanco_. The man in it told MacRae that Gower would liketo see him. MacRae's first impulse was to grin and ignore the request.Then he changed his mind, and taking his own dinghy rowed ashore. Sometime or other he would have to meet his father's enemy, face him, talkto him, listen to what he might say, tell him things. Curiosity wasroused in him a little now. He desired to know what Gower had to say. Hewondered if Gower was weakening; what he could
want.
He found Gower in a cubby-hole of an office behind the cannery store.
"You wanted to see me," MacRae said curtly.
He was in sea boots, bareheaded. His shirt sleeves were rolled abovesun-browned forearms. He stood before Gower with his hands thrust in thepockets of duck overalls speckled with fish scales, smelling of salmon.Gower stared at him silently, critically, it seemed to MacRae, for amatter of seconds.
"What's the sense in our cutting each other's throats over these fish?"Gower asked at length. "I've been wanting to talk to you for quite awhile. Let's get together. I--"
MacRae's temper flared.
"If that's what you want," he said, "I'll see you in hell first."
He turned on his heel and walked out of the office. When he stepped intohis dinghy he glanced up at the wharf towering twenty feet above hishead. Betty Gower was sitting on a pile head. She was looking down athim. But she was not smiling. And she did not speak. MacRae rowed backto the _Blanco_ in an ugly mood.
In the next forty-eight hours Folly Bay jumped the price of bluebacks toninety cents, to ninety-five, to a dollar. The _Blanco_ wallowed down toCrow Harbor with a load which represented to MacRae a dead loss of fourhundred dollars cash.
"He must be crazy," Stubby fumed. "There's no use canning salmon at aloss."
"Has he reached the loss point yet?" MacRae inquired.
"He's shaving close. No cannery can make anything worth reckoning at adollar or so a case profit."
"Is ninety cents and five cents' commission your limit?" MacRaedemanded.
"Just about," Stubby grunted. "Well"--reluctantly--"I can stand adollar. That's the utmost limit, though. I can't go any further."
"And if he gets them all at a dollar or more, he'll be canning at a deadloss, eh?"
"He certainly will," Stubby declared. "Unless he cans 'em heads, tails,and scales, and gets a bigger price per case than has been offered yet."
MacRae went back to Squitty with a definite idea in his mind. Gower haddetermined to have the salmon. Very well, then, he should have them. Buthe would have to take them at a loss, in so far as MacRae could inflictloss upon him. He knew of no other way to hurt effectively such a man asGower. Money was life blood to him, and it was not of great value toMacRae as yet. With deliberate calculation he decided to lose thegreater part of what he had made, if for every dollar he lost himself hecould inflict equal or greater loss on Gower.
The trailers who combed the Squitty waters were taking now close to fivethousand salmon a day. Approximately half of these went to Folly Bay.MacRae took the rest. In this battle of giants the fishermen had lostsight of the outcome. They ceased to care who got fish. They onlywatched eagerly for him who paid the biggest price. They were makingthirty, forty, fifty dollars a day. They no longer held salmon--only afew of the old-timers--for MacRae's carriers. It was nothing to them whomade a profit or suffered a loss. Only a few of the older men wonderedprivately how long MacRae could stand it and what would happen when hegave up.
MacRae met every raise Folly Bay made. He saw bluebacks go to a dollarten, then to a dollar fifteen. He ran cargo after cargo to Crow Harborand dropped from three to seven hundred dollars on each load, until evenStubby lost patience with him.
"What's the sense in bucking him till you go broke? I'm in too deep tostand any loss myself. Quit. Tie up your boats, Jack. Let him have thesalmon. Let those blockheads of fishermen see what he'll do to 'em onceyou stop."
But MacRae held on till the first hot days of August were at hand andhis money was dwindling to the vanishing point. Then he ran the _Blanco_and the _Bluebird_ into Squitty Cove and tied them to permanentmoorings in shoal water near the head. For a day or two the salmon hadshifted mysteriously to the top end, around Folly Bay and the SiwashIslands and Jenkins Pass. The bulk of the fleet had followed them. Onlya few stuck to the Cove and Poor Man's Rock. To these and the rowboattrollers MacRae said:
"Sell your fish to Folly Bay. I'm through."
Then he lay down in his bunk in the airy pilot house of the _Blanco_ andslept the clock around, the first decent rest he had taken in twomonths. He had not realized till then how tired he was.
When he wakened he washed, ate, changed his clothes and went for a walkalong the cliffs to stretch his legs. Vin had gone up to the Knob to seeDolly and Uncle Peter. His helper on the _Bluebird_ was tinkering abouthis engine. MacRae's two men loafed on the clean-slushed deck. They werenone of them company for MacRae in his present mood. He sought thecliffs to be alone.
Gower had beaten him, it would seem. And MacRae did not take kindly tobeing beaten. But he did not think this was the end yet. Gower would doas he had done before. When he felt himself secure in his monopoly hewould squeeze the fishermen, squeeze them hard. And as soon as he didthat MacRae would buy again. He could not make any money himself,perhaps. But he could make Gower operate at a loss. That would besomething accomplished.
MacRae walked along the cliffs until he saw the white cottage, and sawalso that some one sat on the steps in the sun. Whereupon he turnedback. He didn't want to see Betty. He conceived that to be an endedchapter in his experiences. He had hurt her, and she had put on herarmor against another such hurt. There was a studied indifference abouther now, when he met her, which hurt him terribly. He supposed that inaddition to his own incomprehensible attitude which she resented, shetook sides with her father in this obvious commercial warfare which wasbleeding them both financially. Very likely she saw in this only theopen workings of his malice toward Gower. In which MacRae admitted shewould be quite correct. He had not been able to discover in thatflaring-up of passion for Betty any reason for a burial of his feud withGower. There was in him some curious insistence upon carrying this tothe bitter end. And his hatred of Gower was something alive, vital,coloring his vision somberly. The shadow of the man lay across his life.He could not ignore this, and his instinct was for reprisal. Thefighting instinct in MacRae lurked always very near the surface.
He spent a good many hours during the next three or four days lying inthe shade of a gnarly arbutus which gave on the cliffs. He took a bookup there with him, but most of the time he lay staring up at the bluesky through the leaves, or at the sea, or distant shore lines, thinkingalways in circles which brought him despairingly out where he went in.He saw a mustard pot slide each day into the Cove and pass on about itsbusiness. There was not a great deal to be got in the Cove. The last gasboat had scuttled away to the top end, where the blueback were schoolingin vast numbers. There were still salmon to be taken about Poor Man'sRock. The rowboat men took a few fish each day and hoped for another bigrun.
There came a day when the mustard pot failed to show in the Cove. Therowboat men had three hundred salmon, and they cursed Folly Bay with afine flow of epithet as they took their rotting fish outside the Coveand dumped them in the sea. Nor did a Gower collector come, althoughthere was nothing in the wind or weather to stop them. The rowboattrollers fumed and stewed and took their troubles to Jack MacRae. But hecould neither inform nor help them.
Then upon an evening when the sun rested on the serrated backbone ofVancouver Island, a fiery ball against a sky of burnished copper,flinging a red haze down on a slow swell that furrowed the Gulf, JackMacRae, perched on a mossy boulder midway between the Cove and PointOld, saw first one boat and then another come slipping and lurchingaround Poor Man's Rock. Converted Columbia River sailboats, CapeFlattery trollers, double-enders, all the variegated craft thatfishermen use and traffic with, each rounded the Rock and struck hiscourse for the Cove, broadside on to the rising swell, their twenty-foottrolling poles lashed aloft against a stumpy mast and swinging in agreat arc as they rolled. One, ten, a dozen, an endless procession,sometimes three abreast, again a string in single file. MacRae wasreminded of the march of the oysters--
"So thick and fast they came at last, And more and more and more."
He sat watching them pass, wondering why the great trek. The trollingfleet normally shifted by
pairs and dozens. This was a squadronmovement, the Grand Fleet steaming to some appointed rendezvous. MacRaewatched till the sun dipped behind the hills, and the reddish tint leftthe sea to linger briefly on the summit of the Coast Range flanking themainland shore. The fish boats were still coming, one behind the other,lurching and swinging in the trough of the sea, rising and falling,with wheeling gulls crying above them. On each deck a solitary fishermanhumped over his steering gear. From each cleaving stem the bow-wavecurled in white foam.
There was something in the wind. MacRae felt it like a premonition. Heleft his boulder and hurried back toward the Cove.
The trolling boats were packed about the _Blanco_ so close that MacRaeleft his dinghy on the outer fringe and walked across their decks to thedeck of his own vessel. The _Blanco_ loomed in the midst of these lessercraft like a hen over her brood of chicks. The fishermen had gathered onthe nearest boats. A dozen had clambered up and taken seats on the_Blanco's_ low bulwarks. MacRae gained his own deck and looked at them.
"What's coming off?" he asked quietly. "You fellows holding a conventionof some sort?"
One of the men sitting on the big carrier's rail spoke.
"Folly Bay's quit--shut down," he said sheepishly. "We come to see ifyou'd start buying again."
MacRae sat down on one sheave of his deck winch. He took out a cigaretteand lighted it, swung one foot back and forth. He did not make haste toreply. An expectant hush fell on the crowd. In the slow-gathering duskthere was no sound but the creak of rubbing gunwales, the low snore ofthe sea breaking against the cliffs, and the chug-chug of the laststragglers beating into the shelter of the Cove.
"He shut down the cannery," the fishermen's spokesman said at last. "Weain't seen a buyer or collector for three days. The water's full ofsalmon, an' we been suckin' our thumbs an' watching 'em play. If youwon't buy here again we got to go where there is buyers. And we'drather not do that. There's no place on the Gulf as good fishin' asthere is here now."
"What was the trouble?" MacRae asked absently. "Couldn't you supply himwith fish?"
"Nobody knows. There was plenty of salmon. He cut the price the dayafter you tied up. He cut it to six bits. Then he shut down. Anyway, wedon't care why he shut down. It don't make no difference. What we wantis for you to start buyin' again. Hell, we're losin' money from daylightto dark! The water's alive with salmon. An' the season's short. Be asport, MacRae."
MacRae laughed.
"Be a sport, eh?" he echoed with a trace of amusement in his tone. "Iwonder how many of you would have listened to me if I'd gone around toyou a week ago and asked you to give me a sporting chance?"
No one answered. MacRae threw away his half-smoked cigarette. He stoodup.
"All right, I'll buy salmon again," he said quietly. "And I won't askyou to give me first call on your catch or a chance to make up some ofthe money I lost bucking Folly Bay, or anything like that. But I want totell you something. You know it as well as I do, but I want to jog yourmemory with it."
He raised his voice a trifle.
"You fellows know that I've always given you a square deal. You aren'tfishing for sport. You're at this to make a living, to make money if youcan. So am I. You are entitled to all you can get. You earn it. You workfor it. So am I entitled to what I can make. I work, I take certainchances. Neither of us is getting something for nothing. But there is alimit to what either of us can get. We can't dodge that. You fellowshave been dodging it. Now you have to come back to earth.
"No fisherman can get the prices you have had lately. No cannery canpack salmon at those prices. Sockeye, the finest canning salmon thatswims in the sea, is bringing eighty cents on the Fraser. Bluebacks aresixty-five cents at Nanaimo, sixty at Cape Mudge, sixty at theEuclataws.
"I can do a little better than that," MacRae hesitated a second. "I canpay a little more, because the cannery I'm supplying is satisfied with alittle less profit than most. Stubby Abbott is not a hog, and neither amI. I can pay seventy-five cents and make money. I have told you beforethat it is to your interest as well as mine to keep me running. I willalways pay as much as salmon are worth. But I cannot pay more. If yourappreciation of Folly Bay's past kindness to you is so keen that youwould rather sell him your fish, why, that's your privilege."
"Aw, that's bunk," a man called. "You know blamed well we wouldn't. Notafter him blowin' up like this."
"How do I know?" MacRae laughed. "If Gower opened up to-morrow again andoffered eighty or ninety cents, he'd get the salmon--even if you knew hewould make you take thirty once he got you where he wanted you."
"Would he?" another voice uprose. "The next time a mustard pot gets anysalmon from me, it'll be because there's no other buyer and no othergrounds to fish."
A growled chorus backed this reckless statement.
"That's all right," MacRae said good-naturedly. "I don't blame you forpicking up easy money. Only easy money isn't always so good as itlooks. Fly at it in the morning, and I'll take the fish at the priceI've said. If Folly Bay gets into the game again, it's up to you."
When the lights were doused and every fisherman was stretched in hisbunk, falling asleep to the slow beat of a dead swell breaking in theCove's mouth, Vin Ferrara stood up to seek his own bed.
"I wonder," he said to Jack, "I wonder why Gower shut down at this stageof the game?"
MacRae shook his head. He was wondering that himself.