Poor Man's Rock
CHAPTER XIX
Top Dog
Some ten days later the _Bluebird_ swung at anchor in the kelp justclear of Poor Man's Rock. From a speck on the horizon the _Blanco_ grewto full shape, flaring bow and pilot house, walking up the Gulf with abone in her teeth. She bore down upon her consort, sidled alongside andmade fast with lines to the bitts fore and aft. Vin Ferrara threw backhis hatch covers. His helper forked up salmon with a picaroon. Vintossed them across into the _Blanco's_ hold. At the same time the largercarrier's short, stout boom swung back and forth, dumping into the_Bluebird's_ fish pens at each trip a hundred pounds of cracked ice.Presently this work was done, the _Bluebird's_ salmon transferred to the_Blanco_, the _Bluebird's_ pens replenished with four tons of ice.
Vin checked his tabs with the count of fish. The other men slushed decksclean with buckets of sea water.
"Twenty-seven hundred," MacRae said. "Big morning. Every troller in theGulf must be here."
"No, I have to go to Folly Bay and Siwash Islands to-night," Vin toldhim. "There's about twenty boats working there and at Jenkins Pass.Salmon everywhere."
They sat in the shade of the _Blanco's_ pilot house. The sun beatmercilessly, a dog-day sun blazing upon glassy waters, reflected upwardin eye-straining shafts. The heat seared. Within a radius of a mileoutside the Rock the trollers chug-chugged here and there, drivingstraight ahead, doubling short, wheeling in slow circles, working theeddies. They stood in the small cockpit aft, the short tiller betweentheir legs, leaving their hands free to work the gear. They stood out inthe hot sun without shade or cover, stripped to undershirt and ducktrousers, many of them barefooted, brown arms bare, wet lines gleaming.Wherever a man looked some fisherman hauled a line. And everywhere themirror of the sea was broken by leaping salmon, silver crescentsflashing in the sun.
"Say, what do you know about it?" Vin smiled at MacRae. "Old Gower istrolling."
"Trolling!"
"Rowboat. Plugging around the Rock. He was at it when daylight came. Hesold me fifteen fish. Think of it. Old H.A. rowboat trolling. Sellinghis fish to you."
Vincent chuckled. His eyes rested curiously on Jack's face.
"Haughty spirit that goes before destruction, as Dolly used to say," herambled on. "Some come-down for him. He must be broke flat as aflounder."
"He sold you his salmon?"
"Sure. Nobody else to sell 'em to, is there? Said he was trying hishand. Seemed good-natured about it. Kinda pleased, in fact, because hehad one more than Doug Sproul. He started joshin' Doug. You know what acrab old Doug is. He got crusty as blazes. Old Gower just grinned at himand rowed off."
MacRae made no comment, and their talk turned into other channels untilVin hauled his hook and bore away. MacRae saw to dropping the_Blanco's_ anchor. He would lie there till dusk. Then he sat in theshade again, looking up at the Gower cottage.
Gower was finished as an exploiter. There was no question about that.When a man as big as he went down the crash set tongues wagging. All thecurrent talk reached MacRae through Stubby. That price-war had beenGower's last kick, an incomprehensible, ill-judged effort to reestablishhis hold on the Squitty grounds, so it was said.
"He never was such a terribly big toad in the cannery puddle," Stubbyrecited, "and I guess he has made his last splash. They always cut awide swath in town, and that sort of thing can sure eat up coin. I'mkind of sorry for Betty. Still, she'll probably marry somebody withmoney. I know two or three fellows who would be tickled to death to gether."
"Why don't _you_ go to the rescue?" MacRae had suggested, with an ironythat went wide of the mark.
Stubby looked reflectively at his crippled arm.
"Last summer I would have," he said. "But she couldn't see me with amicroscope. And I've found a girl who seems to think a winged duck isworth while."
"You'll be able to get hold of that ranch of yours again, probably,"Stubby had also said. "The chances are old H.A. will raise what cash hecan and try to make a fresh start. It seems there has been friction inthe family, and his wife refused to come through with any of heravailable cash. Seems kind of a complicated hole he got into. He'scleaned, anyway. Robbin-Steele got all his cannery tenders and took overseveral thousand cases of salmon. I hear he still has a few debts to besettled when the cannery is sold. Why don't you figure a way of gettinghold of that cannery, Jack?"
"I'm no cannery man," MacRae replied. "Why don't you? I thought youmade him an offer."
"I withdrew it," Stubby said. "I have my hands full without that. You'veknocked about a hundred per cent off its value anyway."
"If I can get my father's land back I'll be satisfied," MacRae had said.
He was thinking about that now. He had taken the first steps toward thatend, which a year ago had seemed misty and rather hopeless. Gower rich,impregnable, would hold that land for his own pleasure and satisfaction.Beaten in the commercial scramble he might be forced to let it go. AndMacRae was ready to pay any price in reason to get it back. That seemeda debt he owed old Donald MacRae, apart from his own craving to sometimecarry out plans they had made together long before he went away toFrance. The lives of some men are rooted in the soil where they wereborn, where they grow to manhood. Jack MacRae was of that type. He lovedthe sea in all its moods and colors, its quiet calm and wildest storms.But the sea was only his second love. He was a landsman at heart. Allseamen are. They come ashore when they are old and feeble, to give theirbodies at last to the earth. MacRae loved the sea, but he loved betterto stand on the slopes running back from Squitty's cliffs, to look atthose green meadows and bits of virgin forest and think that it wouldall be his again, to have and to hold.
So he had set a firm in Vancouver the task of approaching Gower, tosound him, to see if he would sell, while he kept in the background. Hebelieved that it was necessary for him to remain in the background. Hebelieved that Gower would never willingly relinquish that land into hishands.
MacRae sat on the _Blanco's_ deck, nursing his chin in his palms,staring at Poor Man's Rock with a grim satisfaction. About that lonelyheadland strange things had come to pass. Donald MacRae had felt hisfirst abiding grief there and cried his hurt to a windy sky. He hadlived his last years snatching a precarious living from the seas thatswirled about the Rock. The man who had been the club with which fatebludgeoned old Donald was making his last stand in sight of the Rock,just as Donald MacRae had done. And when they were all dead and gone,Poor Man's Rock would still bare its brown hummock of a head betweentides, the salmon would still play along the kelp beds, in the eddiesabout the Rock. Other men would ply the gear and take the silver fish.It would all be as if it had never happened. The earth and the seaendured and men were passing shadows.
Afternoon waned. Faint, cool airs wavered off the land, easing the heatand the sun-glare. MacRae saw Betty and her father come down to thebeach. She helped him slide his rowboat afloat. Then Gower joined therowers who were putting out to the Rock for the evening run. He passedclose by the _Blanco_ but MacRae gave him scant heed. His eyes were allfor the girl ashore. Betty sat on a log, bareheaded in the sun. MacRaehad a feeling that she looked at him. And she would be thinking,--Godonly knew what.
In MacRae's mind arose the inevitable question,--one that he had chokedback dozens of times: Was it worth while to hurt her so, and himself,because their fathers had fought, because there had been wrongs andinjustices? MacRae shook himself impatiently. He was backsliding.Besides that unappeasable craving for her, vivid images of her withtantalizing mouth, wayward shining hair, eyes that answered the passionin his own, besides these luring pictures of her which troubled himsometimes both in waking hours and sleeping, there was a strange,deep-seated distrust of Betty because she was the daughter of herfather. That was irrational, and Jack MacRae knew it was irrational. Buthe could not help it. It colored his thought of her. It had governed hisreactions.
MacRae himself could comprehend all too clearly the tragedy of hisfather's life. But he doubted if any one else could. He shrank fromunfolding it even to Be
tty,--even to make clear to her why his hand mustbe against her father. MacRae knew, or thought he knew--he had reasonedthe thing out many times in the last few months--that Betty would notturn to him against her own flesh and blood without a valid reason. Hecould not, even, in the name of love, cut her off from all that she hadbeen, from all that had made her what she was, and make her happy. AndMacRae knew that if they married and Betty were not happy and contented,they would both be tigerishly miserable. There was only one possibleavenue, one he could not take. He could not seek peace with Gower, evenfor Betty's sake.
MacRae considered moodily, viewing the matter from every possible angle.He could not see where he could do other than as he was doing: keepBetty out of his mind as much as possible and go on determinedly makinghis fight to be top dog in a world where the weak get little mercy andeven the strong do not always come off unscarred.
Jack MacRae was no philosopher, nor an intellectual superman, but heknew that love did not make the world go round. It was work. Work andfighting. Men spent most of their energies in those two channels.
This they could not escape. Love only shot a rosy glow across life. Itdid not absolve a man from weariness or scars. By it, indeed, he mightsuffer greater stress and deeper scars. To MacRae, love, such as hadtroubled his father's life and his own, seemed to be an emotion pregnantwith sorrow. But he could not deny the strange power of this thingcalled love, when it stirred men and women.
His deck hand, who was also cook, broke into MacRae's reflections with acall to supper. Jack went down the companion steps into a forepeakstuffy with the heat of the sun and a galley stove, a cramped placewhere they ate heartily despite faint odors of distillate and burnedlubricating oil from the engine room and bilge water that smelled offish.
A troller's boat was rubbing against the _Blanco's_ fenders when theycame on deck again. Others were hoisting the trolling poles, coming into deliver. The sun was gone. The long northern twilight cast a pearlyhaze along far shores. MacRae threw open his hatches and counted thesalmon as they came flipping off the point of a picaroon. For over anhour he stood at one hatch and his engineer at the other, counting fish,making out sale slips, paying out money. It was still light--lightenough to read. But the bluebacks had stopped biting. The rowboat menquit last of all. They sidled up to the _Blanco_, one after the other,unloaded, got their money, and tied their rowboats on behind for a towaround to the Cove.
Gower had rowed back and forth for three hours. MacRae had seen himswing around the Rock, up under the cliffs and back again, pulling slowand steady. He was last to haul in his gear. He came up to the carrierand lay alongside Doug Sproul while that crabbed ancient chucked hissalmon on deck. Then he moved into the place Sproul vacated. The bottomof his boat was bright with salmon. He rested one hand on the _Blanco's_guard rail and took the pipe out of his mouth with the other.
"Hello, MacRae," he said, as casually as a man would address anotherwith whom he had slight acquaintance. "I've got some fish. D'you want'em?"
MacRae looked down at him. He did not want Gower's fish or anything thatwas Gower's. He did not want to see him or talk to him. He desired, inso far as he was conscious of any desire in the matter, that Gowershould keep his distance. But he had a horror of meanness, of pettyspite. He could knock a man down with a good heart, if occasion arose.It was not in him to kick a fallen enemy.
"Chuck them up," he said.
He counted them silently as they flipped over the bulwark and fell intothe chilly hold, marked a slip, handed Gower the money for them. Thehand that took the money, a pudgy hand all angry red from beating sun,had blisters in the palm. Gower's face, like his hands, was brick red.Already shreds of skin were peeling from his nose and cheeks. August sunon the Gulf. MacRae knew its bite and sting. So had his father known. Hewondered if Gower ever thought about that now.
But there was in Gower's expression no hint of any disturbing thought.He uttered a brief "thanks" and pocketed his money. He sat down and tookhis oars in hand, albeit a trifle gingerly. And he said to old DougSproul, almost jovially:
"Well, Doug, I got as many as you did, this trip."
"Didja?" Sproul snarled. "Kain't buy 'em cheap enough, no more, huh?Gotta ketch 'em yourself, huh?"
"Hard-boiled old crab, aren't you, Doug?" Gower rumbled in his deepvoice. But he laughed. And he rowed away to the beach before his house.MacRae watched. Betty came down to meet him. Together they hauled theheavy rowboat out on skids, above the tide mark.
Nearly every day after that he saw Gower trolling around the Rock,sometimes alone, sometimes with Betty sitting forward, occasionallyrelieving him at the oars. No matter what the weather, if a rowboatcould work a line Gower was one of them. Rains came, and he faced themin yellow oilskins. He sweltered under that fiery sun. If his life hadbeen soft and easy, softness and ease did not seem to be whollynecessary to his existence, not even to his peace of mind. For he hadthat. MacRae often wondered at it, knowing the man's history. Gowerjoked his way to acceptance among the rowboat men, all but old DougSproul, who had forgotten what it was to speak pleasantly to any one.
He caught salmon for salmon with these old men who had fished all theirlives. He sold his fish to the _Blanco_ or the _Bluebird_, whichever wason the spot. The run held steady at the Cove end of Squitty, aphenomenal abundance of salmon at that particular spot, and the _Blanco_was there day after day.
And MacRae could not help pondering over Gower and his ways. He waspuzzled, not alone about Gower, but about himself. He had dreamed of afierce satisfaction in beating this man down, in making him know povertyand work and privation,--rubbing his nose in the dirt, he had said tohimself.
He had managed it. Gower had joined the ranks of broken men. He wasfinished as a figure in industry, a financial power. MacRae knew that,beyond a doubt. Gower had debts and no assets save his land on theSquitty cliffs and the closed cannery at Folly Bay. The cannery was awhite elephant, without takers in the market. No cannery man would touchit unless he could first make a contract with MacRae for the bluebacks.They had approached him with such propositions. Like wolves, MacRaethought, seeking to pick the bones of one of their own pack who hadfallen.
And if MacRae needed other evidence concerning Gower, he had it dailybefore his eyes. To labor at the oars, to troll early and late indrizzling rain or scorching sunshine, a man only does that because hemust. MacRae's father had done it. As a matter of course, withoutcomplaint, with unprotesting patience.
So did Gower. That did not fit Jack MacRae's conception of the man. Ifhe had not known Gower he would have set him down as a fat,good-natured, kindly man with an infinite capacity for hard,disagreeable work.
He never attempted to talk to MacRae. He spoke now and then. But therewas no hint of rancor in his silences. It was simply as if he understoodthat MacRae did not wish to talk to him, and that he conceded this to bea proper attitude. He talked with the fishermen. He joked with them. Ifone slammed out at him now and then with a touch of the old resentmentagainst Folly Bay he laughed as if he understood and bore no malice. Hebaffled MacRae. How could this man who had walked on fishermen's facesfor twenty years, seeking and exacting always his own advantage, playingthe game under harsh rules of his own devising which had enabled him towin--until this last time--how could he see the last bit of prestigewrested from him and still be cheerful? How could he earn his dailybread in the literal sweat of his brow, endure blistered hands and soremuscles and the sting of slime-poison in fingers cut by hooks andtraces, with less outward protest than men who had never known anythingelse?
MacRae could find no answer to that. He could only wonder. He only knewthat some shift of chance had helped him to put Gower where Gower hadput his father. And there was no satisfaction in the achievement, nosense of victory. He looked at the man and felt sorry for him, and wasuncomfortably aware that Gower, taking salmon for his living with otherpoor men around Poor Man's Rock, was in no need of pity. This podgy manwith the bright blue eyes and heavy jaw, who had been Donald MacRae'sjealous N
emesis, had lost everything that was supposed to make lifeworth living to men of his type. And he did not seem to care. He seemedquite content to smoke a pipe and troll for salmon. He seemed to be astranger to suffering. He did not even seem to be aware of discomfort,or of loss.
MacRae had wanted to make him suffer. He had imagined that poverty andhard, dirty work would be the fittest requital he could bestow. If JackMacRae had been gifted with omnipotence when he read that penned historyof his father's life, he would have devised no fitter punishment, nomore fitting vengeance for Gower than that he should lose his fortuneand his prestige and spend his last years getting his bread upon thewaters by Poor Man's Rock in sun and wind and blowy weather.
And MacRae was conscious that if there were any suffering involved inthis matter now, it rested upon him, not upon Gower. Most men pastmiddle age, who have drunk deeply the pleasant wine of materialsuccess, shrink from the gaunt specter of poverty. They have shot theirbolt. They cannot stand up to hard work. They cannot endure privation.They lose heart. They go about seeking sympathy, railing against thefate. They lie down and the world walks unheeding over their pronebodies.
Gower was not doing that. If he had done so, MacRae would have sneeredat him with contempt. As it was, in spite of the rancor he had nursed,the feeling which had driven him to reprisal, he found himselfsorry--sorry for himself, sorry for Betty. He had set out to bludgeonGower, to humiliate him, and the worst arrows he could sling had bluntedtheir points against the man's invulnerable spirit.
Betty had been used to luxury. It had not spoiled her. MacRae grantedthat. It had not made her set great store by false values. MacRae wassure of that. She had loved him simply and naturally, with an almostprimitive directness. Spoiled daughters of the leisure class are not sosimple and direct. MacRae began to wonder if she could possibly escaperesenting his share in the overturning of her father's fortunes, wherebyshe herself must suffer.
By the time MacRae came slowly to these half-formed, disturbingconclusions he was already upon the verge of other disturbingdiscoveries in the realm of material facts.
For obvious reasons he could not walk up to Gower's house and talk toBetty. At least he did not see how he could, although there were timeswhen he was tempted. When he did see her he was acutely sensitive to aveiled reproach in her eyes, a courteous distance in her speech. Shecame off the beach one day alone, a few minutes after MacRae droppedanchor in the usual spot. She had a dozen salmon in the boat. When shecame alongside MacRae set foot over the bulwark with intent to load themhimself. She forestalled him by picking the salmon up and heaving themon the _Blanco's_ deck. She was dressed for the work, in heavy nailedshoes, a flannel blouse, a rough tweed skirt.
"Oh, say, take the picaroon, won't you?" He held it out to her, thesix-foot wooden shaft with a slightly curving point of steel on the end.
She turned on him with a salmon dangling by the gills from her fingers.
"You don't think I'm afraid to get my hands dirty, do you?" she asked."Me--a fisherman's daughter. Besides, I'd probably miss the salmon andjab that pointed thing through the bottom of the boat."
She laughed lightly, with no particular mirth in her voice. And MacRaewas stricken dumb. She was angry. He knew it, felt it intuitively. Angryat him, warning him to keep his distance. He watched her dabble herhands in the salt chuck, dry them coolly on a piece of burlap. She tookthe money for the fish with a cool "thanks" and rowed back to shore.
Jack lay in his bunk that night blasted by a gloomy sense of futility ineverything. He had succeeded in his undertaking beyond all theexpectations which had spurred him so feverishly in the beginning. Butthere was no joy in it; not when Betty Gower looked at him with thatcold gleam in her gray eyes. Yet he told himself savagely that if he hadto take his choice he would not have done otherwise. And when he hadaccomplished the last move in his plan and driven Gower off the island,then he would have a chance to forget that such people had ever existedto fill a man's days with unhappiness. That, it seemed to him, must bethe final disposition of this problem which his father and Horace Gowerand Elizabeth Morton had set for him years before he was born.
There came a burst of afternoon westerlies which blew small hurricanesfrom noon to sundown. But there was always fishing under the broad leeof the cliffs. The _Bluebird_ continued to scuttle from one outlyingpoint to another, and the _Blanco_ wallowed down to Crow Harbor everyother day with her hold crammed. When she was not under way and the seawas fit the big carrier rode at anchor in the kelp close by Poor Man'sRock, convenient for the trollers to come alongside and deliver whenthey chose. There were squalls that blew up out of nowhere and drovethem all to cover. There were days when a dead swell rolled and thetrolling boats dipped and swung and pointed their bluff bows skyward asthey climbed the green mountains,--for the salmon strike when a sea ison, and a troller runs from heavy weather only when he can no longerhandle his gear.
MacRae was much too busy to brood long at a time. The phenomenal run ofblueback still held, with here and there the hook-nosed coho coming instray schools. He had a hundred and forty fishermen to care for in thematter of taking their catch, keeping them supplied with fuel, bringingthem foodstuffs such as they desired. The _Blanco_ came up fromVancouver sometimes as heavily loaded as when she went down. But hewelcomed the work because it kept him from too intense thinking. Heshepherded his seafaring flock for his profit and theirs alike andpoured salmon by tens of thousands into the machines at CrowHarbor,--red meat to be preserved in tin cans which in months to comeshould feed the hungry in the far places of the earth.
MacRae sometimes had the strange fancy of being caught in a vast machinefor feeding the world, a machine which did not reckon such factors aspain and sorrow in its remorseless functioning. Men could live withoutlove or ease or content. They could not survive without food.
He came up to Squitty one bright afternoon when the sea was flat andstill, unharassed by the westerly. The Cove was empty. All the fleet wasscattered over a great area. The _Bluebird_ was somewhere on her rounds.MacRae dropped the _Blanco's_ hook in the middle of Cradle Bay, a spothe seldom chose for anchorage. But he had a purpose in this. When thebulky carrier swung head to the faint land breeze MacRae was sitting onhis berth in the pilot house, glancing over a letter he held in hishand. It was from a land-dealing firm in Vancouver. One paragraph issufficiently illuminating:
In regard to the purchase of this Squitty Island property we beg to advise you that Mr. Gower, after some correspondence, states distinctly that while he is willing to dispose of this property he will only deal directly with a _bona fide_ purchaser.
We therefore suggest that you take the matter up with Mr. Gower personally.
MacRae put the sheet back in its envelope. He stared thoughtfullythrough an open window which gave on shore and cottage. He could seeGower sitting on the porch, the thick bulk of the man clean-cut againstthe white wall. As he looked he saw Betty go across the untrimmed lawn,up the path that ran along the cliffs, and pass slowly out of sightamong the stunted, wind-twisted firs.
He walked to the after deck, laid hold of the dinghy, and slid itoverboard. Five minutes later he had beached it and was walking up thegravel path to the house.
He was conscious of a queer irritation against Gower. If he were willingto sell the place, why did he sit like a spider in his web and demandthat victims come to him? MacRae was wary, distrustful, suspicious, ashe walked up the slope. Some of the old rancor revived in him. Gowermight have a shaft in his quiver yet, and the will to use it.