CHAPTER V
From the Bottom Up
MacRae did nothing but mark time until he found himself a plaincitizen once more. He could have remained in the service for monthswithout risk and with much profit to himself. But the fighting was over.The Germans were whipped. That had been the goal. Having reached it,MacRae, like thousands of other young men, had no desire to loaf in auniform subject to military orders while the politicians wrangled.
But even when he found himself a civilian again, master of hisindividual fortunes, he was still a trifle at a loss. He had no definiteplan. He was rather at sea, because all the things he had planned ondoing when he came home had gone by the board. So many things which hadseemed good and desirable had been contingent upon his father. Everyplan he had ever made for the future had included old Donald MacRae andthose wide acres across the end of Squitty. He had been deprived ofboth, left without a ready mark to shoot at. The flood of war hadcarried him far. The ebb of it had set him back on his nativeshores,--stranded him there, so to speak, to pick up the broken threadsof his old life as best he could.
He had no quarrel with that. But he did have a feud with circumstance, aprofound resentment with the past for its hard dealing with his father,for the blankness of old Donald's last year or two on earth. And a gooddeal of this focused on Horace Gower and his works.
"He might have let up on the old man," Jack MacRae would say to himselfresentfully. He would lie awake in the dark thinking about this. "Wewere doing our bit. He might have stopped putting spokes in our wheelwhile the war was on."
The fact of the matter is that young MacRae was deeply touched in hisfamily pride as well as his personal sense of injustice. Gower haddeeply injured his father, therefore it was any MacRae's concern. Itmade no difference that the first blow in this quarrel had been struckbefore he was born. He smarted under it and all that followed. His onlydifficulty was to discern a method of repaying in kind, which he wasthoroughly determined to do.
He saw no way, if the truth be told. He did not even contemplateinflicting physical injury on Horace Gower. That would have been absurd.But he wanted to hurt him, to make him squirm, to heap trouble on theman and watch him break down under the load. And he did not see how hepossibly could. Gower was too well fortified. Four years of warexperience, which likewise embraced a considerable social experience,had amply shown Jack MacRae the subtle power of money, of politicalinfluence, of family connections, of commercial prestige.
All these things were on Gower's side. He was impregnable. MacRae wasnot a fool. Neither was he inclined to pessimism. Yet so far as he couldsee, the croakers were not lying when they said that here at home thewar had made the rich richer and the poor poorer. It was painfully truein his own case. He had given four years of himself to his country,gained an honorable record, and lost everything else that was worthhaving.
What he had lost in a material way he meant to get back. How, he had notyet determined. His brain was busy with that problem. And the dying downof his first keen resentment and grief over the death of his father, andthat dead father's message to him, merely hardened into a cold resolveto pay off his father's debt to the Gowers and Mortons. MacRae ran trueto the traditions of his Highland blood when he lumped them alltogether.
In this he was directed altogether by the promptings of emotion, and henever questioned the justice of his attitude. But in the practicaladjustment of his life to conditions as he found them he adopted apurely rational method.
He took stock of his resources. They were limited enough. A few hundreddollars in back pay and demobilization gratuities; a sound body, nowthat his injured eye was all but healed; an abounding confidence inhimself,--which he had earned the right to feel. That was all. Ambitionfor place, power, wealth, he did not feel as an imperative urge. Heperceived the value and desirability of these things. Only he saw noshort straight road to any one of them.
For four years he had been fed, clothed, directed, master of his ownacts only in supreme moments. There was an unconscious reaction fromthat high pitch. Being his own man again and a trifle uncertain what todo, he did nothing at all for a time. He made one trip to Vancouver, tolearn by just what legal processes the MacRae lands had passed into theGower possession. He found out what he wanted to know easily enough.Gower had got his birthright for a song. Donald MacRae had borrowed sixthousand dollars through a broker. The land was easily worth double,even at wild-land valuation. But old Donald's luck had run true to form.He had not been able to renew the loan. The broker had discounted themortgage in a pinch. A financial house had foreclosed and sold the placeto Gower,--who had been trying to buy it for years, through differentagencies. His father's papers told young MacRae plainly enough throughwhat channels the money had gone. Chance had functioned on the wrongside for his father.
So Jack went back to Squitty and stayed in the old house, talked withthe fishermen, spent a lot of his time with old Peter Ferrara and Dolly.Always he was casting about for a course of action which would give himscope for two things upon which his mind was set: to get the title tothat six hundred acres revested in the MacRae name, and, in Jack's ownwords to Dolores Ferrara, to take a fall out of Horace Gower that wouldjar the bones of his ancestors.
With Christmas the Ferrara clan gathered at the Cove, all the stout andable company of Dolly Ferrara's menfolk. It had seemed to MacRae acurious thing that Dolly was the only woman of all the Ferraras. Therehad been mothers in the Ferrara family, or there could not have been somany capable uncles and cousins. But in MacRae's memory there had neverbeen any mothers or sisters or daughters save Dolly.
There were nine male Ferraras when Jack MacRae went to France. Dolores'father was dead. Uncle Peter was a bachelor. He had two brothers, andeach brother had bred three sons. Four of these sons had left theirboats and gear to go overseas. Two of them would never come back. Theother two were home,--one after a whiff of gas at Ypres, the other witha leg shorter by two inches than when he went away. These two madenothing of their disabilities, however; they were home and they werenearly as good as ever. That was enough for them. And with the youngerboys and their fathers they came to old Peter's house for a week atChristmas, after an annual custom. These gatherings in the old days hadalways embraced Donald MacRae and his son. And his son was glad that itincluded him now. He felt a little less alone.
They were of the sea, these Ferraras, Castilian Spanish, tempered anddiluted by three generations in North America. Their forebears mighthave sailed in caravels. They knew the fishing grounds of the BritishColumbia coast as a schoolboy knows his _a, b, c_'s. They would neverget rich, but they were independent fishermen, making a good living. Andthey were as clannish as the Scotch. All of them had chipped in to sendDolly to school in Vancouver. Old Peter could never have done that,MacRae knew, on what he could make trolling around Poor Man's Rock.Peter had been active with gill net and seine when Jack MacRae was tooyoung to take thought of the commercial end of salmon fishing. He wasabout sixty-five now, a lean, hardy old fellow, but he seldom went farfrom Squitty Cove. There was Steve and Frank and Vincent and Manuel ofthe younger generation, and Manuel and Peter and Joaquin of the elder.Those three had been contemporary with Donald MacRae. They esteemed oldDonald. Jack heard many things about his father's early days on the Gulfthat were new to him, that made his blood tingle and made him wish hehad lived then too. Thirty years back the Gulf of Georgia was no placefor any but two-handed men.
He heard also, in that week of casual talk among the Ferraras, certainthings said, statements made that suggested a possibility which neverseemed to have occurred to the Ferraras themselves.
"The Folly Bay pack of blueback was a whopper last summer," VincentFerrara said once. "They must have cleaned up a barrel of money."
Folly Bay was Gower's cannery.
"Well, he didn't make much of it out of us," old Manuel grunted. "Weshould worry."
"Just the same, he ought to be made to pay more for his fish. He oughtto pay what they're worth, for a change," Vincent drawl
ed. "He makesabout a hundred trollers eat out of his hand the first six weeks of theseason. If somebody would put on a couple of good, fast carriers, andstart buying fish as soon as he opens his cannery, I'll bet he'd paymore than twenty-five cents for a five-pound salmon."
"Maybe. But that's been tried and didn't work. Every buyer that ever cutin on Gower soon found himself up against the Packers' Association whenhe went into the open market with his fish. And a wise man," old Manuelgrinned, "don't even figure on monkeying with a buzz saw, sonny."
Not long afterward Jack MacRae got old Manuel in a corner and asked himwhat he meant.
"Well," he said, "it's like this. When the bluebacks first run here inthe spring, they're pretty small, too small for canning. But the freshfish markets in town take 'em and palm 'em off on the public for salmontrout. So there's an odd fresh-fish buyer cruises around here and picksup a few loads of salmon between the end of April and the middle ofJune. The Folly Bay cannery opens about then, and the buyers quit. Theygo farther up the coast. Partly because there's more fish, mostlybecause nobody has ever made any money bucking Gower for salmon on hisown grounds."
"Why?" MacRae asked bluntly.
"Nobody knows _exactly_ why," Manuel replied. "A feller can guess,though. You know the fisheries department has the British Columbia coastcut up into areas, and each area is controlled by some packer as aconcession. Well, Gower has the Folly Bay license, and a couple ofpurse-seine licenses, and that just about gives him the say-so on allthe waters around Squitty, besides a couple of good bays on theVancouver Island side and the same on the mainland. He belongs to thePackers' Association. They ain't supposed to control the local market.But the way it works out they really do. At least, when an independentfish buyer gets to cuttin' in strong on a packer's territory, hegenerally finds himself in trouble to sell in Vancouver unless he's gota cast-iron contract. That is, he can't sell enough to make any money.Any damn fool can make a living.
"At the top of the island here there's a bunch that has homesteads. Theytroll in the summer. They deal at the Folly Bay cannery store. Generallythey're in the hole by spring. Even if they ain't they have to depend onFolly Bay to market their catch. The cannery's a steady buyer, once itopens. They can't always depend on the fresh-fish buyer, even if he paysa few cents more. So once the cannery opens, Gower has a bunch oftrollers ready to deliver salmon, at most any price he cares to name.And he generally names the lowest price on the coast. He don't have nocompetition for a month or so. If there is a little there's ways ofkillin' it. So he sets his own price. The trollers can take it or leaveit."
Old Manuel stopped to light his pipe.
"For three seasons," said he, "Gower has bought blueback salmon thefirst month of the season for twenty-five cents or less--fish that runthree to four pounds. And there hasn't been a time when salmon could bebought in a Vancouver fresh-fish market for less than twenty-five centsa pound."
"Huh!" MacRae grunted.
It set him thinking. He had a sketchy knowledge of the salmon packer'smonopoly of cannery sites and pursing licenses and waters. He had heardmore or less talk among fishermen of agreements in restraint ofcompetition among the canneries. But he had never supposed it to bequite so effective as Manuel Ferrara believed.
Even if it were, a gentleman's agreement of that sort, being a matter ofprofit rather than principle, was apt to be broken by any member of thecombination who saw a chance to get ahead of the rest.
MacRae took passage for Vancouver the second week in January with acertain plan weaving itself to form in his mind,--a plan which promisedaction and money and other desirable results if he could carry itthrough.