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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/16541-8.txt b/16541-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..8b7b387 --- /dev/null +++ b/16541-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,9978 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Poor Man's Rock, by Bertrand W. Sinclair + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Poor Man's Rock + +Author: Bertrand W. Sinclair + +Illustrator: Frank Tenney Johnson + +Release Date: August 17, 2005 [EBook #16541] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POOR MAN'S ROCK *** + + + + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Paul Ereaut and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +Novels by: + +BERTRAND W. SINCLAIR + +North of Fifty-Three +Big Timber +Burned Bridges +Poor Man's Rock + + + + +POOR MAN'S ROCK + +BY + +BERTRAND W. SINCLAIR + +BOSTON + + +LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY + +Published September, 1920 + +THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, MASS., U.S.A. + + + +CONTENTS + +Prologue--Long, Long Ago + +CHAPTER + +I. The House in Cradle Bay + +II. His Own Country + +III. The Flutter of Sable Wings + +IV. Inheritance + +V. From the Bottom Up + +VI. The Springboard + +VII. Sea Boots and Salmon + +VIII. Vested Rights + +IX. The Complexity of Simple Matters + +X. Thrust and Counterthrust + +XI. Peril of the Sea + +XII. Between Sun and Sun + +XIII. An Interlude + +XIV. The Swing of the Pendulum + +XV. Hearts are not Always Trumps + +XVI. En Famille + +XVII. Business as Usual + +XVIII. A Renewal of Hostilities + +XIX. Top Dog + +XX. The Dead and Dusty Past + +XXI. As it was in the Beginning + + + + + +POOR MAN'S ROCK + +PROLOGUE + +Long, Long Ago + + +The Gulf of Georgia spread away endlessly, an immense, empty stretch of +water bared to the hot eye of an August sun, its broad face only saved +from oily smoothness by half-hearted flutterings of a westerly breeze. +Those faint airs blowing up along the Vancouver Island shore made +tentative efforts to fill and belly out strongly the mainsail and jib of +a small half-decked sloop working out from the weather side of Sangster +Island and laying her snub nose straight for the mouth of the Fraser +River, some sixty sea-miles east by south. + +In the stern sheets a young man stood, resting one hand on the tiller, +his navigating a sinecure, for the wind was barely enough to give him +steerageway. He was, one would say, about twenty-five or six, fairly +tall, healthily tanned, with clear blue eyes having a touch of steely +gray in their blue depths, and he was unmistakably of that fair type +which runs to sandy hair and freckles. He was dressed in a light-colored +shirt, blue serge trousers, canvas shoes; his shirt sleeves, rolled to +the elbows, bared flat, sinewy forearms. + +He turned his head to look back to where in the distance a white speck +showed far astern, and his eyes narrowed and clouded. But there was no +cloud in them when he turned again to his companion, a girl sitting on +a box just outside the radius of the tiller. She was an odd-looking +figure to be sitting in the cockpit of a fishing boat, amid recent +traces of business with salmon, codfish, and the like. The heat was +putting a point on the smell of defunct fish. The dried scales of them +still clung to the small vessel's timbers. In keeping, the girl should +have been buxom, red-handed, coarsely healthy. And she was anything but +that. No frail, delicate creature, mind you,--but she did not belong in +a fishing boat. She looked the lady, carried herself like +one,--patrician from the top of her russet-crowned head to the tips of +her white kid slippers. Yet her eyes, when she lifted them to the man at +the tiller, glowed with something warm. She stood up and slipped a +silk-draped arm through his. He smiled down at her, a tender smile +tempered with uneasiness, and then bent his head and kissed her. + +"Do you think they will overtake us, Donald?" she asked at length. + +"That depends on the wind," he answered. "If these light airs hold they +_may_ overhaul us, because they can spread so much more cloth. But if +the westerly freshens--and it nearly always does in the afternoon--I can +outsail the _Gull_. I can drive this old tub full sail in a blow that +will make the _Gull_ tie in her last reef." + +"I don't like it when it's rough," the girl said wistfully. "But I'll +pray for a blow this afternoon." + +If indeed she prayed--and her attitude was scarcely prayerful, for it +consisted of sitting with one hand clasped tight in her lover's--her +prayer fell dully on the ears of the wind god. The light airs fluttered +gently off the bluish haze of Vancouver Island, wavered across the +Gulf, kept the sloop moving, but no more. Sixty miles away the mouth of +the Fraser opened to them what security they desired. But behind them +power and authority crept up apace. In two hours they could distinguish +clearly the rig of the pursuing yacht. In another hour she was less than +a mile astern, creeping inexorably nearer. + +The man in the sloop could only stand on, hoping for the usual afternoon +westerly to show its teeth. + +In the end, when the afternoon was waxing late, the sternward vessel +stood up so that every detail of her loomed plain. She was full +cutter-rigged, spreading hundreds of feet of canvas. Every working sail +was set, and every light air cloth that could catch a puff of air. The +slanting sun rays glittered on her white paint and glossy varnish, +struck flashing on bits of polished brass. She looked her name, the +_Gull_, a thing of exceeding grace and beauty, gliding soundlessly +across a sun-shimmering sea. But she represented only a menace to the +man and woman in the fish-soiled sloop. + +The man's face darkened as he watched the distance lessen between the +two craft. He reached under a locker and drew out a rifle. The girl's +high pinkish color fled. She caught him by the arm. + +"Donald, Donald," she said breathlessly, "there's not to be any +fighting." + +"Am I to let them lay alongside, hand you aboard, and then sail back to +Maple Point, laughing at us for soft and simple fools?" he said quietly. +"They can't take you from me so easily as that. There are only three of +them aboard. I won't hurt them unless they force me to it, but I'm not +so chicken-hearted as to let them have things all their own way. +Sometimes a man _must_ fight, Bessie." + +"You don't know my father," the girl whimpered. "Nor grandpa. He's +there. I can see his white beard. They'll kill you, Donald, if you +oppose them. You mustn't do that. It is better that I should go back +quietly than that there should be blood spilled over me." + +"But I'm not intending to slaughter them," the man said soberly. "If I +warn them off and they board me like a bunch of pirates, then--then it +will be their lookout. Do you want to go back, Bessie? Are you doubtful +about your bargain already?" + +The tears started in her eyes. + +"For shame to say that," she whispered. "Lord knows I don't want to turn +back from anything that includes you, Don. But my father and grandpa +will be furious. They won't hesitate to vent their temper on you if you +oppose them. They are accustomed to respect. To have their authority +flouted rouses them to fury. And they're three to one. Put away your +gun, Donald. If we can't outsail the _Gull_ I shall have to go back +without a struggle. There will be another time. They can't change my +heart." + +"They can break your spirit though--and they will, for this," he +muttered. + +But he laid the rifle down on the locker. The girl snuggled her hand +into his. + +"You will not quarrel with them, Donald--please, no matter what they +say? Promise me that," she pleaded. "If we can't outrun them, if they +come alongside, you will not fight? I shall go back obediently. You can +send word to me by Andrew Murdock. Next time we shall not fail." + +"There will be no next time, Bessie," he said slowly. "You will never +get another chance. I know the Gowers and Mortons better than you do, +for all you're one of them. They'll make you wish you had never been +born, that you'd never seen me. I'd rather fight it out now. Isn't our +own happiness worth a blow or two?" + +"I can't bear to think what might happen if you defied them out here on +this lonely sea," she shuddered. "You must promise me, Donald." + +"I promise, then," he said with a sigh. "Only I know it's the end of our +dream, my dear. And I'm disappointed, too. I thought you had a stouter +heart, that wouldn't quail before two angry old men--and a jealous young +one. You can see, I suppose, that Horace is there, too. + +"Damn them!" he broke out passionately after a minute's silence. "It's a +free country, and you and I are not children. They chase us as if we +were pirates. For two pins I'd give them a pirate's welcome. I tell you, +Bessie, my promise to be meek and mild is not worth much if they take a +high hand with me. I can take their measure, all three of them." + +"But you must not," the girl insisted. "You've promised. We can't help +ourselves by violence. It would break my heart." + +"They'll do that fast enough, once they get you home," he answered +gloomily. + +The girl's lips quivered. She sat looking back at the cutter half a +cable astern. The westerly had failed them. The spreading canvas of the +yacht was already blanketing the little sloop, stealing what little wind +filled her sail. And as the sloop's way slackened the other slid down +upon her, a purl of water at her forefoot, her wide mainsail bellying +out in a snowy curve. + +There were three men in her. The helmsman was a patriarch, his head +showing white, a full white beard descending from his chin, a +fierce-visaged, vigorous old man. Near him stood a man of middle age, a +ruddy-faced man in whose dark blue eyes a flame burned as he eyed the +two in the sloop. The third was younger still,--a short, sturdy fellow +in flannels, tending the mainsheet with a frowning glance. + +The man in the sloop held his course. + +"Damn you, MacRae; lay to, or I'll run you down," the patriarch at the +cutter's wheel shouted, when a boat's length separated the two craft. + +MacRae's lips moved slightly, but no sound issued therefrom. Leaning on +the tiller, he let the sloop run. So for a minute the boats sailed, the +white yacht edging up on the sloop until it seemed as if her broaded-off +boom would rake and foul the other. But when at last she drew fully +abreast the two men sheeted mainsail and jib flat while the white-headed +helmsman threw her over so that the yacht drove in on the sloop and the +two younger men grappled MacRae's coaming with boat hooks, and side by +side they came slowly up into the wind. + +MacRae made no move, said nothing, only regarded the three with sober +intensity. They, for their part, wasted no breath on him. + +"Elizabeth, get in here," the girl's father commanded. + +It was only a matter of stepping over the rubbing gunwales. The girl +rose. She cast an appealing glance at MacRae. His face did not alter. +She stepped up on the guard, disdaining the hand young Gower extended to +help her, and sprang lightly into the cockpit of the _Gull_. + +"As for you, you calculating blackguard," her father addressed MacRae, +"if you ever set foot on Maple Point again, I'll have you horsewhipped +first and jailed for trespass after." + +For a second MacRae made no answer. His nostrils dilated; his blue-gray +eyes darkened till they seemed black. Then he said with a curious +hoarseness, and in a voice pitched so low it was scarcely audible: + +"Take your boat hooks out of me and be on your way." + +The older man withdrew his hook. Young Gower held on a second longer, +matching the undisguised hatred in Donald MacRae's eyes with a fury in +his own. His round, boyish face purpled. And when he withdrew the boat +hook he swung the inch-thick iron-shod pole with a swift twist of his +body and struck MacRae fairly across the face. + +MacRae went down in a heap as the _Gull_ swung away. The faint breeze +out of the west filled the cutter's sails. She stood away on a long tack +south by west, with a frightened girl cowering down in her cabin, +sobbing in grief and fear, and three men in the _Gull's_ cockpit casting +dubious glances at one another and back to the fishing sloop sailing +with no hand on her tiller. + +In an hour the _Gull_ was four miles to windward of the sloop. The +breeze had taken a sudden shift full half the compass. A southeast wind +came backing up against the westerly. There was in its breath a hint of +something stronger. + +Masterless, the sloop sailed, laid to, started off again erratically, +and after many shifts ran off before this stiffer wind. Unhelmed, she +laid her blunt bows straight for the opening between Sangster and +Squitty islands. On the cockpit floor Donald MacRae sprawled unheeding. +Blood from his broken face oozed over the boards. + +Above him the boom swung creaking and he did not hear. Out of the +southeast a bank of cloud crept up to obscure the sun. Far southward the +Gulf was darkened, and across that darkened area specks and splashes of +white began to show and disappear. The hot air grew strangely cool. The +swell that runs far before a Gulf southeaster began to roll the sloop, +abandoned to all the aimless movements of a vessel uncontrolled. She +came up into the wind and went off before it again, her sails bellying +strongly, racing as if to outrun the swells which now here and there +lifted and broke. She dropped into a hollow, a following sea slewed her +stern sharply, and she jibed,--that is, the wind caught the mainsail and +flung it violently from port to starboard. The boom swept an arc of a +hundred degrees and put her rail under when it brought up with a jerk on +the sheet. + +Ten minutes later she jibed again. This time the mainsheet parted. Only +stout, heavily ironed backstays kept mainsail and boom from being blown +straight ahead. The boom end swung outboard till it dragged in the seas +as she rolled. Only by a miracle and the stoutest of standing gear had +she escaped dismasting. Now, with the mainsail broaded off to starboard, +and the jib by some freak of wind and sea winged out to port, the sloop +drove straight before the wind, holding as true a course as if the limp +body on the cockpit floor laid an invisible, controlling hand on sheet +and tiller. + +And he, while that fair wind grew to a yachtsman's gale and lashed the +Gulf of Georgia into petty convulsions, lay where he had fallen, his +head rolling as his vessel rolled, heedless when she rose and raced on a +wave-crest or fell laboring in the trough when a wave slid out from +under her. + +The sloop had all but doubled on her course,--nearly but not +quite,--and the few points north of west that she shifted bore her +straight to destruction. + +MacRae opened his eyes at last. He was bewildered and sick. His head +swam. There was a series of stabbing pains in his lacerated face. But he +was of the sea, of that breed which survives by dint of fortitude, +endurance, stoutness of arm and quickness of wit. He clawed to his feet. +Almost before him lifted the bleak southern face of Squitty Island. +Point Old jutted out like a barrier. MacRae swung on the tiller. But the +wind had the mainsail in its teeth. Without control of that boom his +rudder could not serve him. + +And as he crawled forward to try to lower sail, or get a rope's end on +the boom, whichever would do, the sloop struck on a rock that stands +awash at half-tide, a brown hummock of granite lifting out of the sea +two hundred feet off the tip of Point Old. + +She struck with a shock that sent MacRae sprawling, arrested full in an +eight-knot stride. As she hung shuddering on the rock, impaled by a +jagged tooth, a sea lifted over her stern and swept her like a watery +broom that washed MacRae off the cabin top, off the rock itself into +deep water beyond. + +He came up gasping. The cool immersion had astonishingly revived him. He +felt a renewal of his strength, and he had been cast by luck into a +place from which it took no more than the moderate effort of an able +swimmer to reach shore. Point Old stood at an angle to the smashing +seas, making a sheltered bight behind it, and into this bight the +flooding tide set in a slow eddy. MacRae had only to keep himself +afloat. + +In five minutes his feet touched on a gravel beach. He walked dripping +out of the languid swell that ran from the turbulence outside and turned +to look back. The sloop had lodged on the rock, bilged by the ragged +granite. The mast was down, mast and sodden sails swinging at the end of +a stay as each sea swept over the rock with a hissing roar. + +MacRae climbed to higher ground. He sat down beside a stunted, leaning +fir and watched his boat go. It was soon done. A bigger sea than most +tore the battered hull loose, lifted it high, let it drop. The crack of +breaking timbers cut through the boom of the surf. The next sea swept +the rock clear, and the broken, twisted hull floated awash. Caught in +the tidal eddy it began its slow journey to join the vast accumulation +of driftwood on the beach. + +MacRae glanced along the island shore. He knew that shore slightly,--a +bald, cliffy stretch notched with rocky pockets in which the surf beat +itself into dirty foam. If he had grounded anywhere in that mile of +headland north of Point Old, his bones would have been broken like the +timbers of his sloop. + +But his eyes did not linger there nor his thoughts upon shipwreck and +sudden death. His gaze turned across the Gulf to a tongue of land +outthrusting from the long purple reach of Vancouver Island. Behind that +point lay the Morton estate, and beside the Morton boundaries, matching +them mile for mile in wealth of virgin timber and fertile meadow, spread +the Gower lands. + +His face, streaked and blotched with drying bloodstains, scarred with a +red gash that split his cheek from the hair above one ear to a corner of +his mouth, hardened into ugly lines. His eyes burned again. + +This happened many years ago, long before a harassed world had to +reckon with bourgeois and Bolshevik, when profiteer and pacifist had not +yet become words to fill the mouths of men, and not even the politicians +had thought of saving the world for democracy. Yet men and women were +strangely as they are now. A generation may change its manners, its +outward seeming; it does not change in its loving and hating, in its +fundamental passions, its inherent reactions. + +MacRae's face worked. His lips quivered as he stared across the troubled +sea. He lifted his hands in a swift gesture of appeal. + +"O God," he cried, "curse and blast them in all their ways and +enterprises if they deal with her as they have dealt with me." + + + + +CHAPTER I + +The House in Cradle Bay + + +On an afternoon in the first week of November, 1918, under a sky bank +full of murky cloud and an air freighted with a chill which threatened +untimely snow, a man came rowing up along the western side of Squitty +Island and turned into Cradle Bay, which lies under the lee of Point +Old. He was a young man, almost boyish-looking. He had on a pair of fine +tan shoes, brown overalls, a new gray mackinaw coat buttoned to his +chin. He was bareheaded. Also he wore a patch of pink celluloid over his +right eye. + +When he turned into the small half-moon bight, he let up on his oars and +drifted, staring with a touch of surprise at a white cottage-roofed +house with wide porches sitting amid an acre square of bright green lawn +on a gentle slope that ran up from a narrow beach backed by a low +sea-wall of stone where the gravel ended and the earth began. + +"Hm-m-m," he muttered. "It wasn't built yesterday, either. Funny he +never mentioned _that_." + +He pushed on the oars and the boat slid nearer shore, the man's eyes +still steadfast on the house. It stood out bold against the grass and +the deeper green of the forest behind. Back of it opened a hillside +brown with dead ferns, dotted with great solitary firs and gnarly +branched arbutus. + +No life appeared there. The chimneys were dead. Two moorings bobbed in +the bay, but there was no craft save a white rowboat hauled high above +tidewater and canted on its side. + +"I wonder, now." He spoke again. + +While he wondered and pushed his boat slowly in on the gravel, a low +_pr-r-r_ and a sibilant ripple of water caused him to look behind. A +high-bowed, shining mahogany cruiser, seventy feet or more over all, +rounded the point and headed into the bay. The smooth sea parted with a +whistling sound where her brass-shod stem split it like a knife. She +slowed down from this trainlike speed, stopped, picked up a mooring, +made fast. The swell from her rolled in, swashing heavily on the beach. + +The man in the rowboat turned his attention to the cruiser. There were +people aboard to the number of a dozen, men and women, clustered on her +flush afterdeck. He could hear the clatter of their tongues, low ripples +of laughter, through all of which ran the impatient note of a male voice +issuing peremptory orders. + +The cruiser blew her whistle repeatedly,--shrill, imperative blasts. The +man in the rowboat smiled. The air was very still. Sounds carry over +quiet water as if telephoned. He could not help hearing what was said. + +"Wise management," he observed ironically, under his breath. + +The power yacht, it seemed, had not so much as a dinghy aboard. + +A figure on the deck detached itself from the group and waved a +beckoning hand to the rowboat. + +The rower hesitated, frowning. Then he shrugged his shoulders and pulled +out and alongside. The deck crew lowered a set of steps. + +"Take a couple of us ashore, will you?" He was addressed by a short, +stout man. He was very round and pink of face, very well dressed, and by +the manner in which he spoke to the others, and the glances he cast +ashore, a person of some consequence in great impatience. + +The young man laid his rowboat against the steps. + +"Climb in," he said briefly. + +"You, Smith, come along," the round-faced one addressed a youth in tight +blue jersey and peaked cap. + +The deck boy climbed obediently down. A girl in white duck and heavy +blue sweater put her foot on the steps. + +"I think I shall go too, papa," she said. + +Her father nodded and followed her. + +The rowboat nosed in beside the end of a narrow float that ran from the +sea wall. The boy in the jersey sprang out, reached a steadying hand to +his employer. The girl stepped lightly to the planked logs. + +"Give the boy a lift on that boat to the _chuck_, will you?" the stout +person made further request, indicating the white boat bottom up on +shore. + +A queer expression gleamed momentarily in the eyes of the boatman. But +it passed. He did not speak, but made for the dinghy, followed by the +hand from the yacht. They turned the boat over, slid it down and afloat. +The sailor got in and began to ship his oars. + +The man and the girl stood by till this was done. Then the girl turned +away. The man extended his hand. + +"Thanks," he said curtly. + +The other's hand had involuntarily moved. The short, stout man dropped a +silver dollar in it, swung on his heel and followed his +daughter,--passed her, in fact, for she had only taken a step or two and +halted. + +The young fellow eyed the silver coin in his hand with an expression +that passed from astonishment to anger and broke at last into a smile of +sheer amusement. He jiggled the coin, staring at it thoughtfully. Then +he faced about on the jerseyed youth about to dip his blades. + +"Smith," he said, "I suppose if I heaved this silver dollar out into the +_chuck_ you'd think I was crazy." + +The youth only stared at him. + +"You don't object to tips, do you, Smith?" the man in the mackinaw +inquired. + +"Gee, no," the boy observed. "Ain't you got no use for money?" + +"Not this kind. You take it and buy smokes." + +He flipped the dollar into the dinghy. It fell clinking on the slatted +floor and the youth salvaged it, looked it over, put it in his pocket. + +"Gee," he said. "Any time a guy hands me money, I keep it, believe me." + +His gaze rested curiously on the man with the patch over his eye. His +familiar grin faded. He touched his cap. + +"Thank y', sir." + +He heaved on his oars. The boat slid out. The man stood watching, hands +deep in his pockets. A displeased look replaced the amused smile as his +glance rested a second on the rich man's toy of polished mahogany and +shining brass. Then he turned to look again at the house up the slope +and found the girl at his elbow. + +He did not know if she had overheard him, and he did not at the moment +care. He met her glance with one as impersonal as her own. + +"I'm afraid I must apologize for my father," she said simply. "I hope +you aren't offended. It was awfully good of you to bring us ashore." + +"That's quite all right," he answered casually. "Why should I be +offended? When a roughneck does something for you, it's proper to hand +him some of your loose change. Perfectly natural." + +"But you aren't anything of the sort," she said frankly. "I feel sure +you resent being tipped for an act of courtesy. It was very thoughtless +of papa." + +"Some people are so used to greasing their way with money that they'll +hand St. Peter a ten-dollar bill when they pass the heavenly gates," he +observed. "But it really doesn't matter. Tell me something. Whose house +is that, and how long has it been there?" + +"Ours," she answered. "Two years. We stay here a good deal in the +summer." + +"Ours, I daresay, means Horace A. Gower," he remarked. "Pardon my +curiosity, but you see I used to know this place rather well. I've been +away for some time. Things seem to have changed a bit." + +"You're just back from overseas?" she asked quickly. + +He nodded. She looked at him with livelier interest. + +"I'm no wounded hero," he forestalled the inevitable question. "I merely +happened to get a splinter of wood in one eye, so I have leave until it +gets well." + +"If you are merely on leave, why are you not in uniform?" she asked +quickly, in a puzzled tone. + +"I am," he replied shortly. "Only it is covered up with overalls and +mackinaw. Well, I must be off. Good-by, Miss Gower." + +He pushed his boat off the beach, rowed to the opposite side of the bay, +and hauled the small craft up over a log. Then he took his bag in hand +and climbed the rise that lifted to the backbone of Point Old. Halfway +up he turned to look briefly backward over beach and yacht and house, up +the veranda steps of which the girl in the blue sweater was now +climbing. + +"It's queer," he muttered. + +He went on. In another minute he was on the ridge. The Gulf opened out, +a dead dull gray. The skies were hidden behind drab clouds. The air was +clammy, cold, hushed, as if the god of storms were gathering his breath +for a great effort. + +And Jack MacRae himself, when he topped the height which gave clear +vision for many miles of shore and sea, drew a deep breath and halted +for a long look at many familiar things. + +He had been gone nearly four years. It seemed to him but yesterday that +he left. The picture was unchanged,--save for that white cottage in its +square of green. He stared at that with a doubtful expression, then his +uncovered eye came back to the long sweep of the Gulf, to the brown +cliffs spreading away in a ragged line along a kelp-strewn shore. He put +down the bag and seated himself on a mossy rock close by a stunted, +leaning fir and stared about him like a man who has come a great way to +see something and means to look his fill. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +His Own Country + + +Squitty Island lies in the Gulf of Georgia midway between a mainland +made of mountains like the Alps, the Andes, and the Himalayas all +jumbled together and all rising sheer from the sea, and the low +delta-like shore of Vancouver Island. Southward from Squitty the Gulf +runs in a thirty-mile width for nearly a hundred miles to the San Juan +islands in American waters, beyond which opens the sheltered beauty of +Puget Sound. Squitty is six miles wide and ten miles long, a blob of +granite covered with fir and cedar forest, with certain parklike patches +of open grassland on the southern end, and a hump of a mountain lifting +two thousand feet in its middle. + +The southeastern end of Squitty--barring the tide rips off Cape +Mudge--is the dirtiest place in the Gulf for small craft in blowy +weather. The surges that heave up off a hundred miles of sea tortured by +a southeast gale break thunderously against Squitty's low cliffs. These +walls face the marching breakers with a grim, unchanging front. There is +nothing hospitable in this aspect of Squitty. It is an ugly shore to +have on the lee in a blow. + +Yet it is not so forbidding as it seems. The prevailing summer winds on +the Gulf are westerly. Gales of uncommon fierceness roar out of the +northwest in fall and early winter. At such times the storms split on +Squitty Island, leaving a restful calm under those brown, kelp-fringed +cliffs. Many a small coaster has crept thankfully into that lee out of +the whitecapped turmoil on either side, to lie there through a night +that was wild outside, watching the Ballenas light twenty miles away on +a pile of bare rocks winking and blinking its warning to less fortunate +craft. Tugs, fishing boats, salmon trollers, beach-combing launches, all +that mosquito fleet which gets its bread upon the waters and learns bar, +shoal, reef, and anchorage thoroughly in the getting,--these knew that +besides the half-moon bight called Cradle Bay, upon which fronted Horace +Gower's summer home, there opened also a secure, bottle-necked cove less +than a mile northward from Point Old. + +By day a stranger could only mark the entrance by eagle watch from a +course close inshore. By night even those who knew the place as they +knew the palm of their hand had to feel their way in. But once inside, a +man could lie down in his bunk and sleep soundly, though a southeaster +whistled and moaned, and the seas roared smoking into the narrow mouth. +No ripple of that troubled the inside of Squitty Cove. It was a finger +of the sea thrust straight into the land, a finger three hundred yards +long, forty yards wide, with an entrance so narrow that a man could +heave a sounding lead across it, and that entrance so masked by a rock +about the bigness of a six-room house that one holding the channel could +touch the rock with a pike pole as he passed in. There was a mud bottom, +twenty-foot depth at low tide, and a little stream of cold fresh water +brawling in at the head. A cliff walled it on the south. A low, grassy +hill dotted with solitary firs, red-barked arbutus, and clumps of wild +cherry formed its northern boundary. And all around the mouth, in every +nook and crevice, driftwood of every size and shape lay in great heaps, +cast high above tidewater by the big storms. + +So Squitty had the three prime requisites for a harbor,--secure +anchorage, fresh water, and firewood. There was good fertile land, too, +behind the Cove,--low valleys that ran the length of the island. There +were settlers here and there, but these settlers were not the folk who +intermittently frequented Squitty Cove. The settlers stayed on their +land, battling with stumps, clearing away the ancient forest, tilling +the soil. Those to whom Squitty Cove gave soundest sleep and keenest joy +were tillers of the sea. Off Point Old a rock brown with seaweed, ringed +with a bed of kelp, lifted its ugly head now to the one good, blue-gray +eye of Jack MacRae, the same rock upon which Donald MacRae's sloop broke +her back before Jack MacRae was born. It was a sunken menace at any +stage of water, heartily cursed by the fishermen. In the years between, +the rock had acquired a name not written on the Admiralty charts. The +hydrographers would look puzzled and shake their heads if one asked +where in the Gulf waters lay Poor Man's Rock. + +But Poor Man's Rock it is. Greek and Japanese, Spaniard and Italian, +American and Canadian--and there are many of each--who follow the +silver-sided salmon when they run in the Gulf of Georgia, these know +that Poor Man's Rock lies half a cable south southwest of Point Old on +Squitty Island. Most of them know, too, why it is called Poor Man's +Rock. + +Under certain conditions of sea and sky the Rock is as lonely and +forbidding a spot as ever a ship's timbers were broken upon. Point Old +thrusts out like the stubby thumb on a clenched first. The Rock and the +outer nib of the Point are haunted by quarreling flocks of gulls and +coots and the black Siwash duck with his stumpy wings and brilliant +yellow bill. The southeaster sends endless battalions of waves rolling +up there when it blows. These rear white heads over the Rock and burst +on the Point with shuddering impact and showers of spray. When the sky +is dull and gray, and the wind whips the stunted trees on the +Point--trees that lean inland with branches all twisted to the landward +side from pressure of many gales in their growing years--and the surf is +booming out its basso harmonies, the Rock is no place for a fisherman. +Even the gulls desert it then. + +But in good weather, in the season, the blueback and spring salmon swim +in vast schools across the end of Squitty. They feed upon small fish, +baby herring, tiny darting atoms of finny life that swarm in countless +numbers. What these inch-long fishes feed upon no man knows, but they +begin to show in the Gulf early in spring. The water is alive with +them,--minute, darting streaks of silver. The salmon follow these +schools, pursuing, swallowing, eating to live. Seal and dogfish follow +the salmon. Shark and the giant blackfish follow dogfish and seal. And +man follows them all, pursuing and killing that he himself may live. + +Around Poor Man's Rock the tide sets strongly at certain stages of ebb +and flood. The cliffs north of Point Old and the area immediately +surrounding the Rock are thick strewn with kelp. In these brown patches +of seaweed the tiny fish, the schools of baby herring, take refuge from +their restless enemy, the swift and voracious salmon. + +For years Pacific Coast salmon have been taken by net and trap, to the +profit of the salmon packers and the satisfaction of those who cannot +get fish save out of tin cans. The salmon swarmed in millions on their +way to spawn in fresh-water streams. They were plentiful and cheap. But +even before the war came to send the price of linen-mesh net beyond most +fishermen's pocketbooks, men had discovered that salmon could be taken +commercially by trolling lines. The lordly spring, which attains to +seventy pounds, the small, swift blueback, and the fighting coho could +all be lured to a hook on a wobbling bit of silver or brass at the end +of a long line weighted with lead to keep it at a certain depth behind a +moving boat. From a single line over the stern it was but a logical step +to two, four, even six lines spaced on slender poles boomed out on each +side of a power launch,--once the fisherman learned that with this gear +he could take salmon in open water. So trolling was launched. Odd +trollers grew to trolling fleets. A new method became established in the +salmon industry. + +But there are places where the salmon run and a gasboat trolling her +battery of lines cannot go without loss of gear. The power boats cannot +troll in shallows. They cannot operate in kelp without fouling. So they +hold to deep open water and leave the kelp and shoals to the rowboats. + +And that is how Poor Man's Rock got its name. In the kelp that +surrounded it and the greater beds that fringed Point Old, the small +feed sought refuge from the salmon and the salmon pursued them there +among the weedy granite and the boulders, even into shallows where their +back fins cleft the surface as they dashed after the little herring. The +foul ground and the tidal currents that swept by the Rock held no danger +to the gear of a rowboat troller. He fished a single short line with a +pound or so of lead. He could stop dead in a boat length if his line +fouled. So he pursued the salmon as the salmon pursued the little fish +among the kelp and boulders. + +Only a poor man trolled in a rowboat, tugging at the oars hour after +hour without cabin shelter from wind and sun and rain, unable to face +even such weather as a thirty by eight-foot gasboat could easily fish +in, unable to follow the salmon run when it shifted from one point to +another on the Gulf. The rowboat trollers must pick a camp ashore by a +likely ground and stay there. If the salmon left they could only wait +till another run began. Whereas the power boat could hear of schooling +salmon forty miles away and be on the spot in seven hours' steaming. + +Poor Man's Rock had given many a man his chance. Nearly always salmon +could be taken there by a rowboat. And because for many years old men, +men with lean purses, men with a rowboat, a few dollars, and a hunger +for independence, had camped in Squitty Cove and fished the Squitty +headlands and seldom failed to take salmon around the Rock, the name had +clung to that brown hummock of granite lifting out of the sea at half +tide. From April to November, any day a rowboat could live outside the +Cove, there would be half a dozen, eight, ten, more or less, of these +solitary rowers bending to their oars, circling the Rock. + +Now and again one of these would hastily drop his oars, stand up, and +haul in his line hand over hand. There would be a splashing and +splattering on the surface, a bright silver fish leaping and threshing +the water, to land at last with a plop! in the boat. Whereupon the +fisherman would hurriedly strike this dynamic, glistening fish over the +head with a short, thick club, lest his struggles snarl the line, after +which he would put out his spoon and bend to the oars again. It was a +daylight and dusk job, a matter of infinite patience and hard work, cold +and wet at times, and in midsummer the blaze of a scorching sun and the +eye-dazzling glitter of reflected light. + +But a man must live. Some who came to the Cove trolled long and +skillfully, and were lucky enough to gain a power troller in the end, to +live on beans and fish, and keep a strangle hold on every dollar that +came in until with a cabin boat powered with gas they joined the +trolling fleet and became nomads. They fared well enough then. Their +taking at once grew beyond a rowboat's scope. They could see new +country, hearken to the lure of distant fishing grounds. There was the +sport of gambling on wind and weather, on the price of fish or the +number of the catch. If one locality displeased them they could shift to +another, while the rowboat men were chained perforce to the monotony of +the same camp, the same cliffs, the same old weary round. + +Sometimes Squitty Cove harbored thirty or forty of these power trollers. +They would make their night anchorage there while the trolling held +good, filling the Cove with talk and laughter and a fine sprinkle of +lights when dark closed in. With failing catches, or the first breath of +a southeaster that would lock them in the Cove while it blew, they would +be up and away,--to the top end of Squitty, to Yellow Rock, to Cape +Lazo, anywhere that salmon might be found. + +And the rowboat men would lie in their tents and split-cedar lean-tos, +cursing the weather, the salmon that would not bite, grumbling at their +lot. + +There were two or three rowboat men who had fished the Cove almost since +Jack MacRae could remember,--old men, fishermen who had shot their +bolt, who dwelt in small cabins by the Cove, living somehow from salmon +run to salmon run, content if the season's catch netted three hundred +dollars. All they could hope for was a living. They had become fixtures +there. + +Jack MacRae looked down from the bald tip of Point Old with an eager +gleam in his uncovered eye. There was the Rock with a slow swell lapping +over it. There was an old withered Portuguese he knew in a green dugout, +Long Tom Spence rowing behind the Portuguese, and they carrying on a +shouted conversation. He picked out Doug Sproul among three others he +did not know,--and there was not a man under fifty among them. + +Three hundred yards offshore half a dozen power trollers wheeled and +counterwheeled, working an eddy. He could see them haul the lines hand +over hand, casting the hooked fish up into the hold with an easy swing. +The salmon were biting. + +It was all familiar to Jack MacRae. He knew every nook and cranny on +Squitty Island, every phase and mood and color of the sea. It is a grim +birthplace that leaves a man without some sentiment for the place where +he was born. Point Old, Squitty Cove, Poor Man's Rock had been the +boundaries of his world for a long time. In so far as he had ever +played, he had played there. + +He looked for another familiar figure or two, without noting them. + +"The fish are biting fast for this time of year," he reflected. "It's a +wonder dad and Peter Ferrara aren't out. And I never knew Bill Munro to +miss anything like this." + +He looked a little longer, over across the tip of Sangster Island two +miles westward, with its Elephant's Head,--the extended trunk of which +was a treacherous reef bared only at low tide. He looked at the +Elephant's unwinking eye, which was a twenty-foot hole through a hump of +sandstone, and smiled. He had fished for salmon along the kelp beds +there and dug clams under the eye of the Elephant long, long ago. It did +seem a long time ago that he had been a youngster in overalls, +adventuring alone in a dugout about these bold headlands. + +He rose at last. The November wind chilled him through the heavy +mackinaw. He looked back at the Gower cottage, like a snowflake in a +setting of emerald; he looked at the Gower yacht; and the puzzled frown +returned to his face. + +Then he picked up his bag and walked rapidly along the brow of the +cliffs toward Squitty Cove. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +The Flutter of Sable Wings + + +A path took form on the mossy rock as Jack MacRae strode on. He followed +this over patches of grass, by lone firs and small thickets, until it +brought him out on the rim of the Cove. He stood a second on the cliffy +north wall to look down on the quiet harbor. It was bare of craft, save +that upon the beach two or three rowboats lay hauled out. On the farther +side a low, rambling house of logs showed behind a clump of firs. Smoke +lifted from its stone chimney. + +MacRae smiled reminiscently at this and moved on. His objective lay at +the Cove's head, on the little creek which came whispering down from the +high land behind. He gained this in another two hundred yards, coming to +a square house built, like its neighbor, of stout logs with a +high-pitched roof, a patch of ragged grass in front, and a picket-fenced +area at the back in which stood apple trees and cherry and plum, +gaunt-limbed trees all bare of leaf and fruit. Ivy wound up the corners +of the house. Sturdy rosebushes stood before it, and the dead vines of +sweet peas bleached on their trellises. + +It had the look of an old place--as age is reckoned in so new a +country--old and bearing the marks of many years' labor bestowed to make +it what it was. Even from a distance it bore a homelike air. MacRae's +face lightened at the sight. His step quickened. He had come a long way +to get home. + +Across the front of the house extended a wide porch which gave a look at +the Cove through a thin screen of maple and alder. From the +grass-bordered walk of beach gravel half a dozen steps lifted to the +floor level. As MacRae set foot on the lower step a girl came out on the +porch. + +MacRae stopped. The girl did not see him. Her eyes were fixed +questioningly on the sea that stretched away beyond the narrow mouth of +the Cove. As she looked she drew one hand wearily across her forehead, +tucking back a vagrant strand of dusky hair. MacRae watched her a +moment. The quick, pleased smile that leaped to his face faded to +soberness. + +"Hello, Dolly," he said softly. + +She started. Her dark eyes turned to him, and an inexpressible relief +glowed in them. She held up one hand in a gesture that warned +silence,--and by that time MacRae had come up the steps to her side and +seized both her hands in his. She looked at him speechlessly, a curious +passivity in her attitude. He saw that her eyes were wet. + +"What's wrong, Dolly?" he asked. "Aren't you glad to see Johnny come +marching home? Where's dad?" + +"Glad?" she echoed. "I never was so glad to see any one in my life. Oh, +Johnny MacRae, I wish you'd come sooner. Your father's a sick man. We've +done our best, but I'm afraid it's not good enough." + +"He's in bed, I suppose," said MacRae. "Well, I'll go in and see him. +Maybe it'll cheer the old boy up to see me back." + +"He won't know you," the girl murmured. "You mustn't disturb him just +now, anyway. He has fallen into a doze. When he comes out of that he'll +likely be delirious." + +"Good Lord," MacRae whispered, "as bad as that! What is it?" + +"The flu," Dolly said quietly. "Everybody has been having it. Old Bill +Munro died in his shack a week ago." + +"Has dad had a doctor?" + +The girl nodded. + +"Harper from Nanaimo came day before yesterday. He left medicine and +directions; he can't come again. He has more cases than he can handle +over there." + +They went through the front door into a big, rudely furnished room with +a very old and worn rug on the floor, a few pieces of heavy furniture, +and bare, uncurtained windows. A heap of wood blazed in an open +cobblestone fireplace. + +MacRae stopped short just within the threshold. Through a door slightly +ajar came the sound of stertorous breathing, intermittent in its volume, +now barely audible, again rising to a labored harshness. He listened, a +look of dismayed concern gathering on his face. He had heard men in the +last stages of exhaustion from wounds and disease breathe in that +horribly distressed fashion. + +He stood a while uncertainly. Then he laid off his mackinaw, walked +softly to the bedroom door, looked in. After a minute of silent watching +he drew back. The girl had seated herself in a chair. MacRae sat down +facing her. + +"I never saw dad so thin and old-looking," he muttered. "Why, his hair +is nearly white. He's a wreck. How long has he been sick?" + +"Four days," Dolly answered. "But he hasn't grown old and thin in four +days, Jack. He's been going downhill for months. Too much work. Too much +worry also, I think--out there around the Rock every morning at +daylight, every evening till dark. It hasn't been a good season for the +rowboats." + +MacRae stirred uneasily in his chair. He didn't understand why his +father should have to drudge in a trolling boat. They had always fished +salmon, so far back as he could recall, but never of stark necessity. He +nursed his chin in his hand and thought. Mostly he thought with a +constricted feeling in his throat of how frail and old his father had +grown, the slow-smiling, slow-speaking man who had been father and +mother and chum to him since he was an urchin in knee breeches. He +recalled him at their parting on a Vancouver railway platform,--tall and +rugged, a lean, muscular, middle-aged man, bidding his son a restrained +farewell with a longing look in his eyes. Now he was a wasted shadow. +Jack MacRae shivered. He seemed to hear the sable angel's wing-beats +over the house. + +He looked up at the girl at last. + +"You're worn out, aren't you, Dolly?" he said. "Have you been caring for +him alone?" + +"Uncle Peter helped," she answered. "But I've stayed up and worried, and +I am tired, of course. It isn't a very cheerful home-coming, is it, +Jack? And he was so pleased when he got your cable from London. Poor old +man!" + +MacRae got up suddenly. But the clatter of his shoes on the floor +recalled him to himself. He sat down again. + +"I've got to do something," he asserted. + +"There's nothing you can do," Dolly Ferrara said wistfully. "He can't +be moved. You can't get a doctor or a nurse. The country's full of +people down with the flu. There's only one chance and I've taken that. I +wrote a message to Doctor Laidlaw--you remember he used to come here +every summer to fish--and Uncle Peter went across to Sechelt to wire it. +I think he'll come if he can, or send some one, don't you? They were +such good friends." + +"That was a good idea," MacRae nodded. "Laidlaw will certainly come if +it's possible." + +"And I can keep cool cloths on his head and feed him broth and give him +the stuff Doctor Harper left. He said it depended mostly on his own +resisting power. If he could throw it off he would. If not--" + +She turned her palms out expressively. + +"How did you come?" she asked presently. + +"Across from Qualicum in a fish carrier to Folly Bay. I borrowed a boat +at the Bay and rowed up." + +"You must be hungry," she said. "I'll get you something to eat." + +"I don't feel much like eating,"--MacRae followed her into the +kitchen--"but I can drink a cup of tea." + +He sat on a corner of the kitchen table while she busied herself with +the kettle and teapot, marveling that in four years everything should +apparently remain the same and still suffer such grievous change. There +was an air of forlornness about the house which hurt him. The place had +run down, as the sands of his father's life were running down. Of the +things unchanged the girl he watched was one. Yet as he looked with +keener appraisal, he saw that Dolly Ferrara too had changed. + +Her dusky cloud of hair was as of old; her wide, dark eyes still +mirrored faithfully every shift of feeling, and her incomparable creamy +skin was more beautiful than ever. Moving, she had lost none of her +lithe grace. And though she had met him as if it had been only yesterday +they parted, still there was a difference which somehow eluded him. He +could feel it, but it was not to be defined. It struck him for the first +time that many who had never seen a battlefield, never heard a screaming +shell, nor shuddered at the agony of a dressing station, might still +have suffered by and of and through the reactions of war. + +They drank their tea and ate a slice of toast in silence. MacRae's +comrades in France had called him "Silent" John, because of his lapses +into concentrated thought, his habit of a close mouth when he was hurt +or troubled or uncertain. One of the things for which he had liked Dolly +Ferrara had been her possession of the same trait, uncommon in a girl. +She could sit on the cliffs or lie with him in a rowboat lifting and +falling in the Gulf swell, staring at the sea and the sky and the +wheeling gulls, dreaming and keeping her dreams shyly to herself,--as he +did. They did not always need words for understanding. And so they did +not talk now for the sake of talking, pour out words lest silence bring +embarrassment. Dolly sat resting her chin in one hand, looking at him +impersonally, yet critically, he felt. He smoked a cigarette and held +his peace until the labored breathing of the sick man changed to +disjointed, muttering, incoherent fragments of speech. + +Dolly went to him at once. MacRae lingered to divest himself of the +brown overalls so that he stood forth in his uniform, the R.A.F. uniform +with the two black wings joined to a circle on his left breast and below +that the multicolored ribbon of a decoration. Then he went in to his +father. + +Donald MacRae was far gone. His son needed no M.D. to tell him that. He +burned with a high fever which had consumed his flesh and strength in +its furnace. His eyes gleamed unnaturally, with no light of recognition +for either his son or Dolly Ferrara. And there was a peculiar tinge to +the old man's lips that chilled young MacRae, the mark of the Spanish +flu in its deadliest manifestation. It made him ache to see that gray +head shift from side to side, to listen to the incoherent babble, to +mark the feeble shiftings of the nervous hands. + +For a terrible half hour he endured the sight of his father struggling +for breath, being racked by spasms of coughing. Then the reaction came +and the sick man slept,--not a healthy, restful sleep; it was more like +the dying stupor of exhaustion. Young MacRae knew that. + +He knew with disturbing certainty that without skilled +treatment--perhaps even in spite of that--his father's life was a matter +of hours. Again he and Dolly Ferrara tiptoed out to the room where the +fire glowed on the hearth. MacRae sat thinking. Dusk was coming on, the +long twilight shortened by the overcast sky. MacRae glowered at the +fire. The girl watched him expectantly. + +"I have an idea," he said at last. "It's worth trying." + +He opened his bag and, taking out the wedge-shaped cap of the birdmen, +set it on his head and went out. He took the same path he had followed +home. On top of the cliff he stopped to look down on Squitty Cove. In a +camp or two ashore the supper fires of the rowboat trollers were +burning. Through the narrow entrance the gasboats were chugging in to +anchorage, one close upon the heels of another. + +MacRae considered the power trollers. He shook his head. + +"Too slow," he muttered. "Too small. No place to lay him only a doghouse +cabin and a fish hold." + +He strode away along the cliffs. It was dark now. But he had ranged all +that end of Squitty in daylight and dark, in sun and storm, for years, +and the old instinctive sense of direction, of location, had not +deserted him. In a little while he came out abreast of Cradle Bay. The +Gower house, all brightly gleaming windows, loomed near. He struck down +through the dead fern, over the unfenced lawn. + +Halfway across that he stopped. A piano broke out loudly. Figures +flittered by the windows, gliding, turning. MacRae hesitated. He had +come reluctantly, driven by his father's great need, uneasily conscious +that Donald MacRae, had he been cognizant, would have forbidden harshly +the request his son had come to make. Jack MacRae had the feeling that +his father would rather die than have him ask anything of Horace Gower. + +He did not know why. He had never been told why. All he knew was that +his father would have nothing to do with Gower, never mentioned the name +voluntarily, let his catch of salmon rot on the beach before he would +sell to a Gower cannery boat,--and had enjoined upon his son the same +aloofness from all things Gower. Once, in answer to young Jack's curious +question, his natural "why," Donald MacRae had said: + +"I knew the man long before you were born, Johnny. I don't like him. I +despise him. Neither I nor any of mine shall ever truck and traffic with +him and his. When you are a man and can understand, I shall tell you +more of this." + +But he had never told. It had never been a mooted point. Jack MacRae +knew Horace Gower only as a short, stout, elderly man of wealth and +consequence, a power in the salmon trade. He knew a little more of the +Gower clan now than he did before the war. MacRae had gone overseas with +the Seventh Battalion. His company commander had been Horace Gower's +son. Certain aspects of that young man had not heightened MacRae's +esteem for the Gower family. Moreover, he resented this elaborate summer +home of Gower's standing on land he had always known to be theirs, the +MacRaes'. That puzzled him, as well as affronted his sense of ownership. + +But these things, he told himself, were for the moment beside the point. +He felt his father's life trembling in the balance. He wanted to see +affectionate, prideful recognition light up those gray-blue eyes again, +even if briefly. He had come six thousand miles to cheer the old man +with a sight of his son, a son who had been a credit to him. And he was +willing to pocket pride, to call for help from the last source he would +have chosen, if that would avail. + +He crossed the lawn, waited a few seconds till the piano ceased its +syncopated frenzy and the dancers stopped. + +Betty Gower herself opened at his knock. + +"Is Mr. Gower here?" he asked. + +"Yes. Won't you come in?" she asked courteously. + +The door opened direct into a great living room, from the oak floor of +which the rugs had been rolled aside for dancing. As MacRae came in out +of the murk along the cliffs, his one good eye was dazzled at first. +Presently he made out a dozen or more persons in the room,--young people +nearly all. They were standing and sitting about. One or two were in +khaki--officers. There seemed to be an abrupt cessation of chatter and +laughing at his entrance. It did not occur to him at once that these +people might be avidly curious about a strange young man in the uniform +of the Flying Corps. He apprehended that curiosity, though, politely +veiled as it was. In the same glance he became aware of a middle-aged +woman sitting on a couch by the fire. Her hair was pure white, +elaborately arranged, her eyes were a pale blue, her skin very delicate +and clear. Her face somehow reminded Jack MacRae of a faded rose leaf. + +In a deep armchair near her sat Horace Gower. A young man, a very young +man, in evening clothes, holding a long cigarette daintily in his +fingers, stood by Gower. + +MacRae followed Betty Gower across the room to her father. She turned. +Her quick eyes had picked out the insignia of rank on MacRae's uniform. + +"Papa," she said. "Captain--" she hesitated. + +"MacRae," he supplied. + +"Captain MacRae wishes to see you." + +MacRae wished no conventionalities. He did not want to be introduced, to +be shaken by the hand, to have Gower play host. He forestalled all this, +if indeed it threatened. + +"I have just arrived home on leave," he said briefly. "I find my father +desperately ill in our house at the Cove. You have a very fast and able +cruiser. Would you care to put her at my disposal so that I may take my +father to Vancouver? I think that is his only chance." + +Gower had risen. He was not an imposing man. At his first glimpse of +MacRae's face, the pink-patched eye, the uniform, he flushed +slightly,--recalling that afternoon. + +"I'm sorry," he said. "You'd be welcome to the _Arrow_ if she were here. +But I sent her to Nanaimo an hour after she landed us. Are you Donald +MacRae's boy?" + +"Yes," MacRae said. "Thank you. That's all." + +He had said his say and got his answer. He turned to go. Betty Gower put +a detaining hand on his arm. + +"Listen," she put in eagerly. "Is there anything any of us could do to +help? Nursing or--or anything?" + +MacRae shook his head. + +"There is a girl with him," he answered. "Nothing but skilled medical +aid would help him at this stage. He has the flu, and the fever is +burning his life out." + +"The flu, did you say?" The young man with the long cigarette lost his +bored air. "Hang it, it isn't very sporting, is it, to expose us--these +ladies--to the infection? I'll say it isn't." + +Jack MacRae fixed the young man--and he was not, after all, much younger +than MacRae--with a steady stare in which a smoldering fire glowed. He +bestowed a scrutiny while one might count five, under which the other's +gaze began to shift uneasily. A constrained silence fell in the room. + +"I would suggest that you learn how to put on a gas mask," MacRae said +coldly, at last. + +Then he walked out. Betty Gower followed him to the door, but he had +asked his question and there was nothing to wait for. He did not even +look back until he reached the cliff. He did not care if they thought +him rude, ill-bred. Then, as he reached the cliff, the joyous jazz broke +out again and shadows of dancing couples flitted by the windows. MacRae +looked once and went on, moody because chance had decreed that he should +fail. + + * * * * * + +When a ruddy dawn broke through the gray cloud battalions Jack MacRae +sat on a chair before the fireplace in the front room, his elbows on his +knees, his chin in his cupped palms. He had been sitting like that for +two hours. The fir logs had wasted away to a pile of white ash spotted +with dying coals. MacRae sat heedless that the room was growing cold. + +He did not even lift his head at the sound of heavy footsteps on the +porch. He did not move until a voice at the door spoke his name in +accents of surprise. + +"Is that you, yourself, Johnny MacRae?" + +The voice was deep and husky and kind, and it was not native to Squitty +Cove. MacRae lifted his head to see his father's friend and his own, +Doctor Laidlaw, physician and fisherman, bulking large. And beyond the +doctor he saw a big white launch at anchor inside the Cove. + +"Yes," MacRae said. + +"How's your father?" Laidlaw asked. "That wire worried me. I made the +best time I could." + +"He's dead," MacRae answered evenly. "He died at midnight." + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +Inheritance + + +On a morning four days later Jack MacRae sat staring into the coals on +the hearth. It was all over and done with, the house empty and still, +Dolly Ferrara gone back to her uncle's home. Even the Cove was bare of +fishing craft. He was alone under his own rooftree, alone with an +oppressive silence and his own thoughts. + +These were not particularly pleasant thoughts. There was nothing mawkish +about Jack MacRae. He had never been taught to shrink from the +inescapable facts of existence. Even if he had, the war would have cured +him of that weakness. As it was, twelve months in the infantry, nearly +three years in the air, had taught him that death is a commonplace after +a man sees about so much of it, that it is many times a welcome relief +from suffering either of the body or the spirit. He chose to believe +that it had proved so to his father. So his feelings were not that +strange mixture of grief and protest which seizes upon those to whom +death is the ultimate tragedy, the irrevocable disaster, when it falls +upon some one near and dear. + +No, Jack MacRae, brooding by his fire, was lonely and saddened and +heavy-hearted. But beneath these neutral phases there was slowly +gathering a flood of feeling unrelated to his father's death, more +directly based indeed upon Donald MacRae's life, upon matters but now +revealed to him, which had their root in that misty period when his +father was a young man like himself. + +On the table beside him lay an inch-thick pile of note paper all closely +written upon in the clear, small pen-script of his father. + + My son: [MacRae had written] I have a feeling lately that I may + never see you again. Not that I fear you will be killed. I no + longer have that fear. I seem to have an unaccountable assurance + that having come through so much you will go on safely to the + end. But I'm not so sure about myself. I'm aging too fast. I've + been told my heart is bad. And I've lost heart lately. Things + have gone against me. There is nothing new in that. For thirty + years I've been losing out to a greater or less extent in most + of the things I undertook--that is, the important things. + + Perhaps I didn't bring the energy and feverish ambition I might + have to my undertakings. Until you began to grow up I accepted + things more or less passively as I found them. + + Until you have a son of your own, until you observe closely + other men and their sons, my boy, you will scarcely realize how + close we two have been to each other. We've been what they call + good chums. I've taken a secret pride in seeing you grow and + develop into a man. And while I tried to give you an + education--broken into, alas, by this unending war--such as + would enable you to hold your own in a world which deals harshly + with the ignorant, the incompetent, the untrained, it was also + my hope to pass on to you something of material value. + + This land which runs across Squitty Island from the Cove to + Cradle Bay and extending a mile back--in all a trifle over six + hundred acres--was to be your inheritance. You were born here. I + know that no other place means quite so much to you as this old + log house with the meadow behind it, and the woods, and the sea + grumbling always at our doorstep. Long ago this place came into + my hands at little more cost than the taking. It has proved a + refuge to me, a stronghold against all comers, against all + misfortune. I have spent much labor on it, and most of it has + been a labor of love. It has begun to grow valuable. In years to + come it will be of far greater value. I had hoped to pass it on + to you intact, unencumbered, an inheritance of some worth. Land, + you will eventually discover, Johnny, is the basis of + everything. A man may make a fortune in industry, in the market. + He turns to land for permanence, stability. All that is sterling + in our civilization has its foundation in the soil. + + Out of this land of ours, which I have partially and + half-heartedly reclaimed from the wilderness, you should derive + a comfortable livelihood, and your children after you. + + But I am afraid I must forego that dream and you, my son, your + inheritance. It has slipped away from me. How this has come + about I wish to make clear to you, so that you will not feel + unkindly toward me that you must face the world with no + resources beyond your own brain and a sound young body. If it + happens that the war ends soon and you come home while I am + still alive to welcome you, we can talk this over man to man. + But, as I said, my heart is bad. I may not be here. So I am + writing all this for you to read. There are many things which + you should know--or at least which I should like you to know. + + Thirty years ago-- + +Donald MacRae's real communication to his son began at that point in the +long ago when the _Gull_ outsailed his sloop and young Horace Gower, +smarting with jealousy, struck that savage blow with a pike pole at a +man whose fighting hands were tied by a promise. Bit by bit, incident +by incident, old Donald traced out of a full heart and bitter memories +all the passing years for his son to see and understand. He made +Elizabeth Morton, the Morton family, Horace Gower and the Gower kin +stand out in bold relief. He told how he, Donald MacRae, a nobody from +nowhere, for all they knew, adventuring upon the Pacific Coast, questing +carelessly after fortune, had fallen in love with this girl whose +family, with less consideration for her feelings and desires than for +mutual advantages of land and money and power, favored young Gower and +saw nothing but impudent presumption in MacRae. + +Young Jack sat staring into the coals, seeing much, understanding more. +It was all there in those written pages, a powerful spur to a vivid +imagination. + +No MacRae had ever lain down unwhipped. Nor had Donald MacRae, his +father. Before his bruised face had healed--and young Jack remembered +well the thin white scar that crossed his father's cheek bone--Donald +MacRae was again pursuing his heart's desire. But he was forestalled +there. He had truly said to Elizabeth Morton that she would never have +another chance. By force or persuasion or whatsoever means were +necessary they had married her out of hand to Horace Gower. + +"That must have been she sitting on the couch," Jack MacRae whispered to +himself, "that middle-aged woman with the faded rose-leaf face. Lord, +Lord, how things get twisted!" + +Though they so closed the avenue to a mésalliance, still their pride +must have smarted because of that clandestine affection, that boldly +attempted elopement. Most of all, young Gower must have hated +MacRae--with almost the same jealous intensity that Donald MacRae must +for a time have hated him--because Gower apparently never forgot and +never forgave. Long after Donald MacRae outgrew that passion Gower had +continued secretly to harass him. Certain things could not be otherwise +accounted for, Donald MacRae wrote to his son. Gower functioned in the +salmon trade, in timber, in politics. In whatever MacRae set on foot, he +ultimately discerned the hand of Gower, implacable, hidden, striking at +him from under cover. + +And so in a land and during a period when men created fortunes easily +out of nothing, or walked carelessly over golden opportunities, Donald +MacRae got him no great store of worldly goods, whereas Horace Gower, +after one venture in which he speedily dissipated an inherited fortune, +drove straight to successful outcome in everything he touched. By the +time young Jack MacRae outgrew the Island teachers and must go to +Vancouver for high school and then to the University of British +Columbia, old Donald had been compelled to borrow money on his land to +meet these expenses. + +Young Jack, sitting by the fire, winced when he thought of that. He had +taken things for granted. The war had come in his second year at the +university,--and he had gone to the front as a matter of course. + +Failing fish prices, poor seasons, other minor disasters had +followed,--and always in the background, as old Donald saw it, the Gower +influence, malign, vindictive, harboring that ancient grudge. + +Whereas in the beginning MacRae had confidently expected by one resource +and another to meet easily the obligation he had incurred, the end of it +was the loss, during the second year of the war, of all the MacRae +lands on Squitty,--all but a rocky corner of a few acres which included +the house and garden. Old Donald had segregated that from his holdings +when he pledged the land, as a matter of sentiment, not of value. All +the rest--acres of pasture, cleared and grassed, stretches of fertile +ground, blocks of noble timber still uncut--had passed through the hands +of mortgage holders, through bank transfers, by devious and tortuous +ways, until the title rested in Horace Gower,--who had promptly built +the showy summer house on Cradle Bay to flaunt in his face, so old +Donald believed and told his son. + +It was a curious document, and it made a profound impression on Jack +MacRae. He passed over the underlying motive, a man justifying himself +to his son for a failure which needed no justifying. He saw now why his +father tabooed all things Gower, why indeed he must have hated Gower as +a man who does things in the open hates an enemy who strikes only from +cover. + +Strangely enough, Jack managed to grasp the full measure of what his +father's love for Elizabeth Morton must have been without resenting the +secondary part his mother must have played. For old Donald was frank in +his story. He made it clear that he had loved Bessie Morton with an +all-consuming passion, and that when this burned itself out he had never +experienced so headlong an affection again. He spoke with kindly regard +for his wife, but she played little or no part in his account. And Jack +had only a faint memory of his mother, for she had died when he was +seven. His father filled his eyes. His father's enemies were his. Family +ties superimposed on clan clannishness, which is the blood heritage of +the Highland Scotch, made it impossible for him to feel otherwise. That +blow with a pike pole was a blow directed at his own face. He took up +his father's feud instinctively, not even stopping to consider whether +that was his father's wish or intent. + +He got up out of his chair at last and went outside, down to where the +Cove waters, on a rising tide, lapped at the front of a rude shed. Under +this shed, secure on a row of keel-blocks, rested a small +knockabout-rigged boat, stowed away from wind and weather, her single +mast, boom, and gaff unshipped and slung to rafters, her sail and +running gear folded and coiled and hung beyond the wood-rats' teeth. +Beside this sailing craft lay a long blue dugout, also on blocks, half +filled with water to keep it from checking. + +These things belonged to him. He had left them lying about when he went +away to France. And old Donald had put them here safely against his +return. Jack stared at them, blinking. He was full of a dumb protest. It +didn't seem right. Nothing seemed right. In young MacRae's mind there +was nothing terrible about death. He had become used to that. But he had +imagination. He could see his father going on day after day, month after +month, year after year, enduring, uncomplaining. Gauged by what his +father had written, by what Dolly Ferrara had supplied when he +questioned her, these last months must have been gray indeed. And he had +died without hope or comfort or a sight of his son. + +That was what made young MacRae blink and struggle with a lump in his +throat. It hurt. + +He walked away around the end of the Cove without definite objective. He +was suddenly restless, seeking relief in movement. Sitting still and +thinking had become unbearable. He found himself on the path that ran +along the cliffs and followed that, coming out at last on the neck of +Point Old where he could look down on the broken water that marked Poor +Man's Rock. + +The lowering cloud bank of his home-coming day had broken in heavy rain. +That had poured itself out and given place to a southeaster. The wind +was gone now, the clouds breaking up into white drifting patches with +bits of blue showing between, and the sun striking through in yellow +shafts which lay glittering areas here and there on the Gulf. The swell +that runs after a blow still thundered all along the southeast face of +Squitty, bursting _boom_--_boom_--_boom_ against the cliffs, shooting +spray in white cascades. Over the Rock the sea boiled. + +There were two rowboats trolling outside the heavy backwash from the +cliffs. MacRae knew them both. Peter Ferrara was in one, Long Tom Spence +in the other. They did not ride those gray-green ridges for pleasure, +nor drop sidling into those deep watery hollows for joy of motion. They +were out for fish, which meant to them food and clothing. That was their +work. + +They were the only fisher folk abroad that morning. The gasboat men had +flitted to more sheltered grounds. MacRae watched these two lift and +fall in the marching swells. It was cold. Winter sharpened his teeth +already. The rowers bent to their oars, tossing and lurching. MacRae +reflected upon their industry. In France he had eaten canned salmon +bearing the Folly Bay label, salmon that might have been taken here by +the Rock, perhaps by the hands of these very men, by his own father. +Still, that was unlikely. Donald MacRae had never sold a fish to a Gower +collector. Nor would he himself, young MacRae swore under his breath, +looking sullenly down upon the Rock. + +Day after day, month after month, his father had tugged at the oars, +hauled on the line, rowing around and around Poor Man's Rock, skirting +the kelp at the cliff's foot, keeping body and soul together with +unremitting labor in sun and wind and rain, trying to live and save that +little heritage of land for his son. + +Jack MacRae sat down on a rock beside a bush and thought about this +sadly. He could have saved his father much if he had known. He could +have assigned his pay. There was a government allowance. He could have +invoked the War Relief Act against foreclosure. Between them they could +have managed. But he understood quite clearly why his father made no +mention of his difficulties. He would have done the same under the same +circumstances himself, played the game to its bitter end without a cry. + +But Donald MacRae had made a long, hard fight only to lose in the end, +and his son, with full knowledge of the loneliness and discouragement +and final hopelessness that had been his father's lot, was passing +slowly from sadness to a cumulative anger. That cottage amid its green +grounds bright in a patch of sunshine did not help to soften him. It +stood on land reclaimed from the forest by his father's labor. It should +have belonged to him, and it had passed into hands that already grasped +too much. For thirty years Gower had made silent war on Donald MacRae +because of a woman. It seemed incredible that a grudge born of jealousy +should run so deep, endure so long. But there were the facts. Jack +MacRae accepted them; he could not do otherwise. He came of a breed +which has handed its feuds from generation to generation, interpreting +literally the code of an eye for an eye. + +So that as he sat there brooding, it was perhaps a little unfortunate +that the daughter of a man whom he was beginning to regard as a +forthright enemy should have chosen to come to him, tripping soundlessly +over the moss. + +He did not hear Betty Gower until she was beside him. Her foot clicked +on a stone and he looked up. Betty was all in white, a glow in her +cheeks and in her eyes, bareheaded, her reddish-brown hair shining in a +smooth roll above her ears. + +"I hear you have lost your father," she said simply. "I'm awfully +sorry." + +Some peculiar quality of sympathy in her tone touched MacRae deeply. His +eyes shifted for a moment to the uneasy sea. The lump in his throat +troubled him again. Then he faced her again. + +"Thanks," he said slowly. "I dare say you mean it, although I don't know +why you should. But I'd rather not talk about that. It's done." + +"I suppose that's the best way," she agreed, although she gave him a +doubtful sort of glance, as if she scarcely knew how to take part of +what he said. "Isn't it lovely after the storm? Pretty much all the +civilized world must feel a sort of brightness and sunshine to-day, I +imagine." + +"Why?" he asked. It seemed to him a most uncalled-for optimism. + +"Why, haven't you heard that the war is over?" she smiled. "Surely some +one has told you?" + +He shook his head. + +"It is a fact," she declared. "The armistice was signed yesterday at +eleven. Aren't you glad?" + +MacRae reflected a second. A week earlier he would have thrown up his +cap and whooped. Now the tremendously important happening left him +unmoved, unbelievably indifferent. He was not stirred at all by the +fact of acknowledged victory, of cessation from killing. + +"I should be, I suppose," he muttered. "I know a lot of fellows will +be--and their people. So far as I'm concerned--right now--" + +He made a quick gesture with his hands. He couldn't explain how he +felt--that the war had suddenly and imperiously been relegated to the +background for him. Temporarily or otherwise, as a spur to his emotions, +the war had ceased to function. He didn't want to talk. He wanted to be +let alone, to think. + +Yet he was conscious of a wish not to offend, to be courteous to this +clear-eyed young woman who looked at him with frank interest. He +wondered why he should be of any interest to her. MacRae had never been +shy. Shyness is nearly always born of acute self-consciousness. Being +free from that awkward inturning of the mind Jack MacRae was not +thoroughly aware of himself as a likable figure in any girl's sight. +Four years overseas had set a mark on many such as himself. A man cannot +live through manifold chances of death, face great perils, do his work +under desperate risks and survive, without some trace of his deeds being +manifest in his bearing. Those tried by fire are sure of themselves, and +it shows in their eyes. Besides, Jack MacRae was twenty-four, +clear-skinned, vigorous, straight as a young fir tree, a handsome boy in +uniform. But he was not quick to apprehend that these things stirred a +girl's fancy, nor did he know that the gloomy something which clouded +his eyes made Betty Gower want to comfort him. + +"I think I understand," she said evenly,--when in truth she did not +understand at all. "But after a while you'll be glad. I know I should be +if I were in the army, although of course no matter how horrible it all +was it had to be done. For a long time I wanted to go to France myself, +to do _something_. I was simply wild to go. But they wouldn't let me." + +"And I," MacRae said slowly, "didn't want to go at all--and I had to +go." + +"Oh," she remarked with a peculiar interrogative inflection. Her +eyebrows lifted. "Why did you have to? You went over long before the +draft was thought of." + +"Because I'd been taught that my flag and country really meant +something," he said. "That was all; and it was quite enough in the way +of compulsion for a good many like myself who didn't hanker to stick +bayonets through men we'd never seen, nor shoot them, nor blow them up +with hand grenades, nor kill them ten thousand feet in the air and watch +them fall, turning over and over like a winged duck. But these things +seemed necessary. They said a country worth living in was worth fighting +for." + +"And isn't it?" Betty Gower challenged promptly. + +MacRae looked at her and at the white cottage, at the great Gulf seas +smashing on the rocks below, at the far vista of sea and sky and the +shore line faintly purple in the distance. His gaze turned briefly to +the leafless tops of maple and alder rising out of the hollow in which +his father's body lay--in a corner of the little plot that was left of +all their broad acres--and came back at last to this fair daughter of +his father's enemy. + +"The country is, yes," he said. "Anything that's worth having is worth +fighting for. But that isn't what they meant, and that isn't the way it +has worked out." + +He was not conscious of the feeling in his voice. He was thinking with +exaggerated bitterness that the Germans in Belgium had dealt less hardly +with a conquered people than this girl's father had dealt with his. + +"I'm afraid I don't quite understand what you mean by that," she +remarked. Her tone was puzzled. She looked at him, frankly curious. + +But he could not tell her what he meant. He had a feeling that she was +in no way responsible. He had an instinctive aversion to rudeness. And +while he was absolving himself of any intention to make war on her he +was wondering if her mother, long ago, had been anything like Miss Betty +Gower. It seemed odd to think that this level-eyed girl's mother might +have been _his_ mother,--if she had been made of stiffer metal, or if +the west wind had blown that afternoon. + +He wondered if she knew. Not likely, he decided. It wasn't a story +either Horace Gower or his wife would care to tell their children. + +So he did not try to tell her what he meant. He withdrew into his shell. +And when Betty Gower seated herself on a rock and evinced an inclination +to quiz him about things he did not care to be quizzed about, he lifted +his cap, bade her a courteous good-by, and walked back toward the Cove. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +From the Bottom Up + + +MacRae did nothing but mark time until he found himself a plain +citizen once more. He could have remained in the service for months +without 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 a +uniform subject to military orders while the politicians wrangled. + +But even when he found himself a civilian again, master of his +individual fortunes, he was still a trifle at a loss. He had no definite +plan. He was rather at sea, because all the things he had planned on +doing when he came home had gone by the board. So many things which had +seemed good and desirable had been contingent upon his father. Every +plan he had ever made for the future had included old Donald MacRae and +those wide acres across the end of Squitty. He had been deprived of +both, left without a ready mark to shoot at. The flood of war had +carried him far. The ebb of it had set him back on his native +shores,--stranded him there, so to speak, to pick up the broken threads +of his old life as best he could. + +He had no quarrel with that. But he did have a feud with circumstance, a +profound 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 good +deal of this focused on Horace Gower and his works. + +"He might have let up on the old man," Jack MacRae would say to himself +resentfully. He would lie awake in the dark thinking about this. "We +were doing our bit. He might have stopped putting spokes in our wheel +while the war was on." + +The fact of the matter is that young MacRae was deeply touched in his +family pride as well as his personal sense of injustice. Gower had +deeply injured his father, therefore it was any MacRae's concern. It +made no difference that the first blow in this quarrel had been struck +before he was born. He smarted under it and all that followed. His only +difficulty was to discern a method of repaying in kind, which he was +thoroughly determined to do. + +He saw no way, if the truth be told. He did not even contemplate +inflicting physical injury on Horace Gower. That would have been absurd. +But he wanted to hurt him, to make him squirm, to heap trouble on the +man and watch him break down under the load. And he did not see how he +possibly could. Gower was too well fortified. Four years of war +experience, which likewise embraced a considerable social experience, +had amply shown Jack MacRae the subtle power of money, of political +influence, of family connections, of commercial prestige. + +All these things were on Gower's side. He was impregnable. MacRae was +not a fool. Neither was he inclined to pessimism. Yet so far as he could +see, the croakers were not lying when they said that here at home the +war had made the rich richer and the poor poorer. It was painfully true +in his own case. He had given four years of himself to his country, +gained an honorable record, and lost everything else that was worth +having. + +What he had lost in a material way he meant to get back. How, he had not +yet determined. His brain was busy with that problem. And the dying down +of his first keen resentment and grief over the death of his father, and +that dead father's message to him, merely hardened into a cold resolve +to pay off his father's debt to the Gowers and Mortons. MacRae ran true +to the traditions of his Highland blood when he lumped them all +together. + +In this he was directed altogether by the promptings of emotion, and he +never questioned the justice of his attitude. But in the practical +adjustment of his life to conditions as he found them he adopted a +purely rational method. + +He took stock of his resources. They were limited enough. A few hundred +dollars in back pay and demobilization gratuities; a sound body, now +that his injured eye was all but healed; an abounding confidence in +himself,--which he had earned the right to feel. That was all. Ambition +for place, power, wealth, he did not feel as an imperative urge. He +perceived the value and desirability of these things. Only he saw no +short straight road to any one of them. + +For four years he had been fed, clothed, directed, master of his own +acts only in supreme moments. There was an unconscious reaction from +that high pitch. Being his own man again and a trifle uncertain what to +do, he did nothing at all for a time. He made one trip to Vancouver, to +learn by just what legal processes the MacRae lands had passed into the +Gower possession. He found out what he wanted to know easily enough. +Gower had got his birthright for a song. Donald MacRae had borrowed six +thousand 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 the +mortgage in a pinch. A financial house had foreclosed and sold the place +to Gower,--who had been trying to buy it for years, through different +agencies. His father's papers told young MacRae plainly enough through +what channels the money had gone. Chance had functioned on the wrong +side for his father. + +So Jack went back to Squitty and stayed in the old house, talked with +the 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 him +scope for two things upon which his mind was set: to get the title to +that six hundred acres revested in the MacRae name, and, in Jack's own +words to Dolores Ferrara, to take a fall out of Horace Gower that would +jar the bones of his ancestors. + +With Christmas the Ferrara clan gathered at the Cove, all the stout and +able company of Dolly Ferrara's menfolk. It had seemed to MacRae a +curious thing that Dolly was the only woman of all the Ferraras. There +had been mothers in the Ferrara family, or there could not have been so +many capable uncles and cousins. But in MacRae's memory there had never +been 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, and +each brother had bred three sons. Four of these sons had left their +boats and gear to go overseas. Two of them would never come back. The +other two were home,--one after a whiff of gas at Ypres, the other with +a leg shorter by two inches than when he went away. These two made +nothing of their disabilities, however; they were home and they were +nearly as good as ever. That was enough for them. And with the younger +boys and their fathers they came to old Peter's house for a week at +Christmas, after an annual custom. These gatherings in the old days had +always embraced Donald MacRae and his son. And his son was glad that it +included him now. He felt a little less alone. + +They were of the sea, these Ferraras, Castilian Spanish, tempered and +diluted by three generations in North America. Their forebears might +have sailed in caravels. They knew the fishing grounds of the British +Columbia coast as a schoolboy knows his _a, b, c_'s. They would never +get rich, but they were independent fishermen, making a good living. And +they were as clannish as the Scotch. All of them had chipped in to send +Dolly 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 too +young to take thought of the commercial end of salmon fishing. He was +about sixty-five now, a lean, hardy old fellow, but he seldom went far +from Squitty Cove. There was Steve and Frank and Vincent and Manuel of +the younger generation, and Manuel and Peter and Joaquin of the elder. +Those three had been contemporary with Donald MacRae. They esteemed old +Donald. Jack heard many things about his father's early days on the Gulf +that were new to him, that made his blood tingle and made him wish he +had lived then too. Thirty years back the Gulf of Georgia was no place +for any but two-handed men. + +He heard also, in that week of casual talk among the Ferraras, certain +things said, statements made that suggested a possibility which never +seemed to have occurred to the Ferraras themselves. + +"The Folly Bay pack of blueback was a whopper last summer," Vincent +Ferrara 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. "We +should worry." + +"Just the same, he ought to be made to pay more for his fish. He ought +to pay what they're worth, for a change," Vincent drawled. "He makes +about a hundred trollers eat out of his hand the first six weeks of the +season. If somebody would put on a couple of good, fast carriers, and +start buying fish as soon as he opens his cannery, I'll bet he'd pay +more than twenty-five cents for a five-pound salmon." + +"Maybe. But that's been tried and didn't work. Every buyer that ever cut +in on Gower soon found himself up against the Packers' Association when +he went into the open market with his fish. And a wise man," old Manuel +grinned, "don't even figure on monkeying with a buzz saw, sonny." + +Not long afterward Jack MacRae got old Manuel in a corner and asked him +what he meant. + +"Well," he said, "it's like this. When the bluebacks first run here in +the spring, they're pretty small, too small for canning. But the fresh +fish markets in town take 'em and palm 'em off on the public for salmon +trout. So there's an odd fresh-fish buyer cruises around here and picks +up a few loads of salmon between the end of April and the middle of +June. The Folly Bay cannery opens about then, and the buyers quit. They +go farther up the coast. Partly because there's more fish, mostly +because nobody has ever made any money bucking Gower for salmon on his +own 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 coast +cut up into areas, and each area is controlled by some packer as a +concession. Well, Gower has the Folly Bay license, and a couple of +purse-seine licenses, and that just about gives him the say-so on all +the waters around Squitty, besides a couple of good bays on the +Vancouver Island side and the same on the mainland. He belongs to the +Packers' Association. They ain't supposed to control the local market. +But the way it works out they really do. At least, when an independent +fish buyer gets to cuttin' in strong on a packer's territory, he +generally finds himself in trouble to sell in Vancouver unless he's got +a 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. They +troll in the summer. They deal at the Folly Bay cannery store. Generally +they're in the hole by spring. Even if they ain't they have to depend on +Folly Bay to market their catch. The cannery's a steady buyer, once it +opens. They can't always depend on the fresh-fish buyer, even if he pays +a few cents more. So once the cannery opens, Gower has a bunch of +trollers 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 no +competition for a month or so. If there is a little there's ways of +killin' it. So he sets his own price. The trollers can take it or leave +it." + +Old Manuel stopped to light his pipe. + +"For three seasons," said he, "Gower has bought blueback salmon the +first month of the season for twenty-five cents or less--fish that run +three to four pounds. And there hasn't been a time when salmon could be +bought in a Vancouver fresh-fish market for less than twenty-five cents +a pound." + +"Huh!" MacRae grunted. + +It set him thinking. He had a sketchy knowledge of the salmon packer's +monopoly of cannery sites and pursing licenses and waters. He had heard +more or less talk among fishermen of agreements in restraint of +competition among the canneries. But he had never supposed it to be +quite so effective as Manuel Ferrara believed. + +Even if it were, a gentleman's agreement of that sort, being a matter of +profit rather than principle, was apt to be broken by any member of the +combination who saw a chance to get ahead of the rest. + +MacRae took passage for Vancouver the second week in January with a +certain plan weaving itself to form in his mind,--a plan which promised +action and money and other desirable results if he could carry it +through. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +The Springboard + + +With a basic knowledge to start from, any reasonably clever man can +digest an enormous amount of information about any given industry in a +very brief time. Jack MacRae spent three weeks in Vancouver as a one-man +commission, self-appointed, to inquire into the fresh-salmon trade. He +talked to men who caught salmon and to men who sold them, both wholesale +and retail. He apprised himself of the ins and outs of salmon canning, +and of the independent fish collector who owned his own boat, financed +himself, and chanced the market much as a farmer plants his seed, trusts +to the weather, and makes or loses according to the yield and +market,--two matters over which he can have no control. + +MacRae learned before long that old Manuel Ferrara was right when he +said no man could profitably buy salmon unless he had a cast-iron +agreement either with a cannery or a big wholesaler. MacRae soon saw +that the wholesaler stood like a wall between the fishermen and those +who ate fish. They could make or break a buyer. MacRae was not long +running afoul of the rumor that the wholesale fish men controlled the +retail price of fresh fish by the simple method of controlling the +supply, which they managed by coöperation instead of competition among +themselves. He heard this stated. And more,--that behind the big dealers +stood the shadowy figure of the canning colossus. This was told him +casually by fishermen. Fish buyers repeated it, sometimes with a touch +of indignation. That was one of their wails,--the fish combine. It was +air-tight, they said. The packers had a strangle hold on the fishing +waters, and the big local fish houses had the same unrelenting grip on +the market. + +Therefore the ultimate consumer--whose exploitation was the prize plum +of commercial success--paid thirty cents per pound for spring salmon +that a fisherman chivied about in the tumbling Gulf seas fifty miles +up-coast had to take fourteen cents for. As for the salmon packers, the +men who pack the good red fish in small round tins which go to all the +ends of the earth to feed hungry folk,--well, no one knew _their_ +profits. Their pack was all exported. The back yards of Europe are +strewn with empty salmon cans bearing a British Columbia label. But they +made money enough to be a standing grievance to those unable to get in +on this bonanza. + +MacRae, however, was chiefly concerned with the local trade in fresh +salmon. His plan didn't look quite so promising as when he mulled over +it at Squitty Cove. He put out feelers and got no hold. A fresh-fish +buyer operating without approved market connections might make about +such a living as the fishermen he bought from. To Jack MacRae, eager and +sanguine, making a living was an inconspicuous detail. Making a +living,--that was nothing to him. A more definite spur roweled his +flank. + +It looked like an air-tight proposition, he admitted, at last. But, he +said to himself, anything air-tight could be punctured. And undoubtedly +a fine flow of currency would result from such a puncture. So he kept +on looking about, asking casual questions, listening. In the language of +the street he was getting wise. + +Incidentally he enjoyed himself. The battle ground had been transferred +to Paris. The pen, the typewriter, and the press dispatch, with immense +reserves of oratory and printer's ink, had gone into action. And the +soldiers were coming home,--officers of the line and airmen first, since +to these leave and transportation came easily, now that the guns were +silent. MacRae met fellows he knew. A good many of them were well off, +had homes in Vancouver. They were mostly young and glad the big show was +over. And they had the social instinct. During intervals of fighting +they had rubbed elbows with French and British people of consequence. +They had a mind to enjoy themselves. + +MacRae had a record in two squadrons. He needed no press-agenting when +he met another R.A.F. man. So he found himself invited to homes, the +inside of which he would otherwise never have seen, and to pleasant +functions among people who would never have known of his existence save +for the circumstance of war. Pretty, well-bred girls smiled at him, +partly because airmen with notable records were still a novelty, and +partly because Jack MacRae was worth a second look from any girl who was +fancy-free. Matrons were kind to him because their sons said he was the +right sort, and some of these same matrons mothered him because he was +like boys they knew who had gone away to France and would never come +back. + +This was very pleasant. MacRae was normal in every respect. He liked to +dance. He liked glittering lights and soft music. He liked nice people. +He liked people who were nice to him. But he seldom lost sight of his +objective. These people could relax and give themselves up to enjoyment +because they were "heeled"--as a boy lieutenant slangily put it--to +MacRae. + +"It's a great game, Jack, if you don't weaken," he said. "But a fellow +can't play it through on a uniform and a war record. I'm having a +top-hole time, but it'll be different when I plant myself at a desk in +some broker's office at a hundred and fifty a month. It's mixed pickles, +for a fact. You can't buy your way into this sort of thing. And you +can't stay in it without a bank roll." + +Which was true enough. Only the desire to "see it through" socially was +not driving Jack MacRae. He had a different target, and his eye did not +wander far from the mark. And perhaps because of this, chance and his +social gadding about gave him the opening he sought when he least +expected to find one. + +To be explicit, he happened to be one of an after-theater party at an +informal supper dance in the Granada, which is to Vancouver what the +Biltmore is to New York or the Fairmont to San Francisco,--a place where +one can see everybody that is anybody if one lingers long enough. And +almost the first man he met was a stout, ruddy-faced youngster about his +own age. They had flown in the same squadron until "Stubby" Abbott came +a cropper and was invalided home. + +Stubby fell upon Jack MacRae, pounded him earnestly on the back, and +haled him straight to a table where two women were sitting. + +"Mother," he said to a plump, middle-aged woman, "here's Silent John +MacRae." + +Her eyes lit up pleasantly. + +"I've heard of you," she said, and her extended hand put the pressure +of the seal of sincerity on her words. "I've wanted to thank you. You +can scarcely know what you did for us. Stubby's the only man in the +family, you know." + +MacRae smiled. + +"Why," he said easily, "little things like that were part of the game. +Stubb used to pull off stuff like that himself now and then." + +"Anyway, we can thank God it's over," Mrs. Abbott said fervently. +"Pardon me,--my daughter, Mr. MacRae." + +Nelly Abbott was small, tending to plumpness like her mother. She was +very fair with eyes of true violet, a baby-doll sort of young woman, and +she took possession of Jack MacRae as easily and naturally as if she had +known him for years. They drifted away in a dance, sat the next one out +together with Stubby and a slim young thing in orange satin whose talk +ran undeviatingly upon dances and sports and motor trips, past and +anticipated. Listening to her, Jack MacRae fell dumb. Her father was +worth half a million. Jack wondered how much of it he would give to +endow his daughter with a capacity for thought. A label on her program +materialized to claim her presently. Stubby looked after her and +grinned. MacRae looked thoughtful. The girl was pretty, almost +beautiful. She looked like Dolores Ferrara, dark, creamy-skinned, +seductive. And MacRae was comparing the two to Dolores' advantage. + +Nelly Abbott was eying MacRae. + +"Tessie bores you, eh?" she said bluntly. + +MacRae smiled. "Her flow of profound utterance carries me out of my +depth, I'm afraid," said he. "I can't follow her." + +"She'd lead you a chase if you tried," Stubby grinned and sauntered +away to smoke. + +"Is that sarcasm?" Nelly drawled. "I wonder if you are called Silent +John because you stop talking now and then to think? Most of us don't, +you know. Tell me," she changed the subject abruptly, "did you know +Norman Gower overseas?" + +"He was an officer in the battalion I went over with," MacRae replied. +"I went over in the ranks, you see. So I couldn't very well know him. +And I never met him after I transferred to the air service." + +"I just wondered," Nelly went on. "I know Norman rather well. It has +been whispered about that he pulled every string to keep away from the +front,--that all he has done over there is to hold down cushy jobs in +England. Did you ever hear any such talk?" + +"We were too busy to gossip about the boys at home, except to envy +them." MacRae evaded direct reply, and Nelly did not follow it up. + +"I see his sister over there. Betty is a dear girl. That's she talking +to Stubby. Come over and meet her. They've been up on their island for a +long time, while the flu raged." + +MacRae couldn't very well avoid it without seeming rude or making an +explanation which he did not intend to make to any one. His grudge +against the Gower clan was focused on Horace Gower. His feeling had not +abated a jot. But it was a personal matter, something to remain locked +in his own breast. So he perforce went with Nelly Abbott and was duly +presented to Miss Elizabeth Gower. And he had the next dance with her, +also for convention's sake. + +While they stood chatting a moment, the four of them, Stubby said to +MacRae: + +"Who are you with, Jack?" + +"The Robbin-Steeles." + +"If I don't get a chance to talk to you again, come out to the house +to-morrow," Stubby said. "The mater said so, and I want to talk to you +about something." + +The music began and MacRae and Betty Gower slid away in the one-step, +that most conversational of dances. But Jack couldn't find himself +chatty with Betty Gower. She was graceful and clear-eyed, a vigorously +healthy girl with a touch of color in her cheeks that came out of +Nature's rouge pot. But MacRae was subtly conscious of a stiffness +between them. + +"After all," Betty said abruptly, when they had circled half the room, +"it was worth fighting for, don't you really think?" + +For a second MacRae looked down at her, puzzled. Then he remembered. + +"Good Heavens!" he said, "is that still bothering you? Do you take +everything a fellow says so seriously as that?" + +"No. It wasn't so much what you said as the way you said it," she +replied. "You were uncompromisingly hostile that day, for some reason. +Have you acquired a more equable outlook since?" + +"I'm trying," he answered. + +"You need coaching in the art of looking on the bright side of things," +she smiled. + +"Such as clusters of frosted lights, cut glass, diamonds, silk dresses +and ropes of pearls," he drawled. "Would you care to take on the +coaching job, Miss Gower?" + +"I might be persuaded." She looked him frankly in the eyes. + +But MacRae would not follow that lead, whatever it might mean. Betty +Gower was nice,--he had to admit it. To glide around on a polished floor +with his arm around her waist, her soft hand clasped in his, and her +face close to his own, her grayish-blue eyes, which were so very like +his own, now smiling and now soberly reflective, was not the way to +carry on an inherited feud. He couldn't subject himself to that +peculiarly feminine attraction which Betty Gower bore like an aura and +nurse a grudge. In fact, he had no grudge against Betty Gower except +that she was the daughter of her father. And he couldn't explain to her +that he hated her father because of injustice and injury done before +either of them was born. In the genial atmosphere of the Granada that +sort of thing did not seem nearly so real, so vivid, as when he stood on +the cliffs of Squitty listening to the pound of the surf. Then it welled +up in him like a flood,--the resentment for all that Gower had made his +father suffer, for those thirty years of reprisal which had culminated +in reducing his patrimony to an old log house and a garden patch out of +all that wide sweep of land along the southern face of Squitty. He +looked at Betty and wished silently that she were,--well, Stubby +Abbott's sister. He could be as nice as he wanted to then. Whereupon, +instinctively feeling himself upon dangerous ground, he diverged from +the personal, talked without saying much until the music stopped and +they found seats. And when another partner claimed Betty, Jack as a +matter of courtesy had to rejoin his own party. + +The affair broke up at length. MacRae slept late the next morning. By +the time he had dressed and breakfasted and taken a flying trip to Coal +Harbor to look over a forty-five-foot fish carrier which was advertised +for sale, he bethought himself of Stubby Abbott's request and, getting +on a car, rode out to the Abbott home. This was a roomy stone house +occupying a sightly corner in the West End,--that sharply defined +residential area of Vancouver which real estate agents unctuously speak +of as "select." There was half a block of ground in green lawn bordered +with rosebushes. The house itself was solid, homely, built for use, and +built to endure, all stone and heavy beams, wide windows and deep +porches, and a red tile roof lifting above the gray stone walls. + +Stubby permitted MacRae a few minutes' exchange of pleasantries with his +mother and sister. + +"I want to extract some useful information from this man," Stubby said +at length. "You can have at him later, Nell. He'll stay to dinner." + +"How do you know he will?" Nelly demanded. "He hasn't said so, yet." + +"Between you and me, he can't escape," Stubby said cheerfully and led +Jack away upstairs into a small cheerful room lined with bookshelves, +warmed by glowing coals in a grate, and with windows that gave a look +down on a sandy beach facing the Gulf. + +Stubby pushed two chairs up to the fire, waved Jack to one, and extended +his own feet to the blaze. + +"I've seen the inside of a good many homes in town lately," MacRae +observed. "This is the homiest one yet." + +"I'll say it is," Stubby agreed. "A place that has been lived in and +cared for a long time gets that way, though. Remember some of those old, +old places in England and France? This is new compared to that country. +Still, my father built this house when the West End was covered with +virgin timber." + +"How'd you like to be born and grow up in a house that your father +built with a vision of future generations of his blood growing up in," +Stubby murmured, "and come home crippled after three years in the red +mill and find you stood a fat chance of losing it?" + +"I wouldn't like it much," MacRae agreed. + +But he did not say that he had already undergone the distasteful +experience Stubby mentioned as a possibility. He waited for Stubby to go +on. + +"Well, it's a possibility," Stubby continued, quite cheerfully, however. +"I don't propose to allow it to happen. Hang it, I wouldn't blat this to +any one but you, Jack. The mater has only a hazy idea of how things +stand, and she's an incurable optimist anyway. Nelly and the Infant--you +haven't met the Infant yet--don't know anything about it. I tell you it +put the breeze up when I got able to go into our affairs and learned how +things stood. I thought I'd get mended and then be a giddy idler for a +year or so. But it's up to me. I have to get into the collar. Otherwise +I should have stayed south all winter. You know we've just got home. I +had to loaf in the sun for practically a year. Now I have to get busy. I +don't mean to say that the poorhouse stares us in the face, you know, +but unless a certain amount of revenue is forthcoming, we simply can't +afford to keep up this place. + +"And I'd damn well like to keep it going." Stubby paused to light a +cigarette. "I like it. It's our home. We'd be deucedly sore at seeing +anybody else hang up his hat and call it home. So behold in me an active +cannery operator when the season opens, a conscienceless profiteer for +sentiment's sake. You live up where the blueback salmon run, don't you, +Jack?" + +MacRae nodded. + +"How many trollers fish those waters?" + +"Anywhere from forty to a hundred, from ten to thirty rowboats." + +"The Folly Bay cannery gets practically all that catch?" + +MacRae nodded again. + +"I'm trying to figure a way of getting some of those blueback salmon," +Abbott said crisply. "How can it best be done?" + +MacRae thought a minute. A whole array of possibilities popped into his +mind. He knew that the Abbotts owned the Crow Harbor cannery, in the +mouth of Howe Sound just outside Vancouver Harbor. When he spoke he +asked a question instead of giving an answer. + +"Are you going to buck the Packers' Association?" + +"Yes and no," Stubby chuckled. "You do know something about the cannery +business, don't you?" + +"One or two things," MacRae admitted. "I grew up in the Gulf, remember, +among salmon fishermen." + +"Well, I'll be a little more explicit," Stubby volunteered. "Briefly, my +father, as you know, died while I was overseas. We own the Crow Harbor +cannery. I will say that while I was still going to school he started in +teaching me the business, and he taught me the way he learned it +himself--in the cannery and among fishermen. If I do say it, I know the +salmon business from gill net and purse seine to the Iron Chink and bank +advances on the season's pack. But Abbott, senior, it seems, wasn't a +profiteer. He took the war to heart. His patriotism didn't consist of +buying war bonds in fifty-thousand dollar lots and calling it square. He +got in wrong by trying to keep the price of fresh fish down locally, and +the last year he lived the Crow Harbor cannery only made a normal +profit. Last season the plant operated at a loss in the hands of hired +men. They simply didn't get the fish. The Fraser River run of sockeye +has been going downhill. The river canneries get the fish that do run. +Crow Harbor, with a manager who wasn't up on his toes, got very few. I +don't believe we will ever see another big sockeye run in the Fraser +anyway. So we shall have to go up-coast to supplement the Howe Sound +catch and the few sockeyes we can get from gill-netters. + +"The Packers' Association can't hurt me--much. For one thing, I'm a +member. For another, I can still swing enough capital so they would +hesitate about using pressure. You understand. I've got to make that +Crow Harbor plant pay. I must have salmon to do so. I have to go outside +my immediate territory to get them. If I could get enough blueback to +keep full steam from the opening of the sockeye season until the coho +run comes--there's nothing to it. I've been having this matter looked +into pretty thoroughly. I can pay twenty per cent. over anything Gower +has ever paid for blueback and coin money. The question is, how can I +get them positively and in quantity?" + +"Buy them," MacRae put in softly. + +"Of course," Stubby agreed. "But buying direct means collecting. I have +the carriers, true. But where am I going to find men to whom I can turn +over a six-thousand-dollar boat and a couple of thousand dollars in cash +and say to him, 'Go buy me salmon'? His only interest in the matter is +his wage." + +"Bonus the crew. Pay 'em percentage on what salmon they bring in." + +"I've thought of that," Stubby said between puffs. "But--" + +"Or," MacRae made the plunge he had been coming to while Stubby talked, +"I'll get them for you. I was going to buy bluebacks around Squitty +anyway for the fresh-fish market in town if I can make a sure-delivery +connection. I know those grounds. I know a lot of fishermen. If you'll +give me twenty per cent. over Gower prices for bluebacks delivered at +Crow Harbor I'll get them." + +"This grows interesting." Stubby straightened in his chair. "I thought +you were going to ranch it! Lord, I remember the night we sat watching +for the bombers to come back from a raid and you first told me about +that place of yours on Squitty Island. Seems ages ago--yet it isn't +long. As I remember, you were planning all sorts of things you and your +father would do." + +"I can't," MacRae said grimly. "You've been in California for months. +You wouldn't hear any mention of my affairs, anyway, if you'd been home. +I got back three days before the armistice. My father died of the flu +the night I got home. The ranch, or all of it but the old log house I +was born in and a patch of ground the size of a town lot, has gone the +way you mentioned your home might go if you don't buck up the business. +Things didn't go well with us lately. I have no land to turn to. So I'm +for the salmon business as a means to get on my feet." + +"Gower got your place?" Abbott hazarded. + +"Yes. How did you know?" + +"Made a guess. I heard he had built a summer home on the southeast end +of Squitty. In fact Nelly was up there last summer for a week or so. +Hurts, eh, Jack? That little trip to France cost us both something." + +MacRae sprang up and walked over to a window. He stood for half a minute +staring out to sea, looking in that direction by chance, because the +window happened to face that way, to where the Gulf haze lifted above a +faint purple patch that was Squitty Island, very far on the horizon. + +"I'm not kicking," he said at last. "Not out loud, anyway." + +"No," Stubby said affectionately, "I know you're not, old man. Nor am I. +But I'm going to get action, and I have a hunch you will too. Now about +this fish business. If you think you can get them, I'll certainly go you +on that twenty per cent. proposition--up to the point where Gower boosts +me out of the game, if that is possible. We shall have to readjust our +arrangement then." + +"Will you give me a contract to that effect?" MacRae asked. + +"Absolutely. We'll get together at the office to-morrow and draft an +agreement." + +They shook hands to bind the bargain, grinning at each other a trifle +self-consciously. + +"Have you a suitable boat?" Stubby asked after a little. + +"No," MacRae admitted. "But I have been looking around. I find that I +can charter one cheaper than I can build--until such time as I make +enough to build a fast, able carrier." + +"I'll charter you one," Stubby offered. "That's where part of our money +is uselessly tied up, in expensive boats that never carried their weight +in salmon. I'm going to sell two fifty-footers and a seine boat. There's +one called the _Blackbird_, fast, seaworthy rig, you can have at a +nominal rate." + +"All right," MacRae nodded. "By chartering I have enough cash in hand to +finance the buying. I'm going to start as soon as the bluebacks come +and run fresh fish, if I can make suitable connections." + +Stubby grinned. + +"I can fix that too," he said. "I happen to own some shares in the +Terminal Fish Company. The pater organized it to give Vancouver people +cheap fish, but somehow it didn't work as he intended. It's a fairly +strong concern. I'll introduce you. They'll buy your salmon, and they'll +treat you right." + +"And now," Stubby rose and stretched his one good arm and the other that +was visibly twisted and scarred between wrist and elbow, above his head, +"let's go downstairs and prattle. I see a car in front, and I hear +twittering voices." + +Halfway down the stairs Stubby halted and laid a hand on MacRae's arm. + +"Old Horace is a two-fisted old buccaneer," he said. "And I don't go +much on Norman. But I'll say Betty Gower is some girl. What do you +think, Silent John?" + +And Jack MacRae had to admit that Betty was. Oddly enough, Stubby Abbott +had merely put into words an impression to which MacRae himself was +slowly and reluctantly subscribing. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +Sea Boots and Salmon + + +From November to April the British Columbian coast is a region of +weeping skies, of intermittent frosts and fog, and bursts of sleety +snow. The frosts, fogs, and snow squalls are the punctuation points, so +to speak, of the eternal rain. Murky vapors eddy and swirl along the +coast. The sun hides behind gray banks of cloud, the shining face of him +a rare miracle bestowed upon the sight of men as a promise that bright +days and blossoming flowers will come again. When they do come the coast +is a pleasant country. The mountains reveal themselves, duskily green +upon the lower slopes, their sky-piercing summits crowned with snow caps +which endure until the sun comes to his full strength in July. The Gulf +is a vista of purple-distant shore and island, of shimmering sea. And +the fishermen come out of winter quarters to overhaul boats and gear +against the first salmon run. + +The blueback, a lively and toothsome fish, about which rages an +ichthyological argument as to whether he is a distant species of the +salmon tribe or merely a half-grown coho, is the first to show in great +schools. The spring salmon is always in the Gulf, but the spring is a +finny mystery with no known rule for his comings and goings, nor his +numbers. All the others, the blueback, the sockeye, the hump, the coho, +and the dog salmon, run in the order named. They can be reckoned on as +a man reckons on changes of the moon. These are the mainstay of the +salmon canners. Upon their taking fortunes have been built--and +squandered--men have lived and died, loved and hated, gone hungry and +dressed their women in silks and furs. The can of pink meat some inland +chef dresses meticulously with parsley and sauces may have cost some +fisherman his life; a multiplicity of cases of salmon may have produced +a divorce in the packer's household. We eat this fine red fish and heave +its container into the garbage tin, with no care for the tragedy or +humors that have attended its getting for us. + +In the spring, when life takes on a new prompting, the blueback salmon +shows first in the Gulf. He cannot be taken by net or bait,--unless the +bait be a small live herring. He may only be taken in commercial +quantities by a spinner or a wobbling spoon hook of silver or brass or +copper drawn through the water at slow speed. The dainty gear of the +trout spinner gave birth to the trolling fleets of the Pacific Coast. + +At first the schools pass into the Straits of San Juan. Here the joint +fleets of British Columbia and of Puget Sound begin to harry them. A +week or ten days later the vanguard will be off Nanaimo. And in another +week they will be breaking water like trout in a still pool around the +rocky base of the Ballenas Light and the kelp beds and reefs of Squitty +Island. + +By the time they were there, in late April, there were twenty local +power boats to begin taking them, for Jack MacRae made the rounds of +Squitty to tell the fishermen that he was putting on a carrier to take +the first run of blueback to Vancouver markets. + +They were a trifle pessimistic. Other buyers had tried it, men gambling +on a shoestring for a stake in the fish trade, buyers unable to make +regular trips, whereby there was a tale of many salmon rotted in waiting +fish holds, through depending on a carrier that did not come. What was +the use of burning fuel, of tearing their fingers with the gear, of +catching fish to rot? Better to let them swim. + +But since the Folly Bay cannery never opened until the fish ran to +greater size and number, the fishermen, chafing against inaction after +an idle winter, took a chance and trolled for Jack MacRae. + +To the trailers' surprise they found themselves dealing with a new type +of independent buyer,--a man who could and did make his market trips +with clocklike precision. If MacRae left Squitty with a load on Monday, +saying that he would be at Squitty Cove or Jenkins Island or Scottish +Bay by Tuesday evening, he was there. + +He managed it by grace of an able sea boat, engined to drive through sea +and wind, and by the nerve and endurance to drive her in any weather. +There were times when the Gulf spread placid as a mill pond. There were +trips when he drove through with three thousand salmon under battened +hatches, his decks awash from boarding seas, ten and twelve and fourteen +hours of rough-and-tumble work that brought him into the Narrows and the +docks inside with smarting eyes and tired muscles, his head splitting +from the pound and clank of the engine and the fumes of gas and burned +oil. + +It was work, strain of mind and body, long hours filled with discomfort. +But MacRae had never shrunk from things like that. He was aware that few +things worth while come easy. The world, so far as he knew, seldom +handed a man a fortune done up in tissue paper merely because he +happened to crave its possession. He was young and eager to do. There +was a reasonable satisfaction in the doing, even of the disagreeable, +dirty tasks necessary, in beating the risks he sometimes had to run. +There was a secret triumph in overcoming difficulties as they arose. And +he had an object, which, if it did not always lie in the foreground of +his mind, he was nevertheless keen on attaining. + +The risks and work and strain, perhaps because he put so much of himself +into the thing, paid from the beginning more than he had dared hope. He +made a hundred dollars his first trip, paid the trollers five cents a +fish more on the second trip and cleared a hundred and fifty. In the +second week of his venture he struck a market almost bare of fresh +salmon with thirty-seven hundred shining bluebacks in his hold. He made +seven hundred dollars on that single cargo. + +A Greek buyer followed the _Blackbird_ out through the Narrows that +trip. MacRae beat him two hours to the trolling fleet at Squitty, a +fleet that was growing in numbers. + +"Bluebacks are thirty-five cents," he said to the first man who ranged +alongside to deliver. "And I want to tell you something that you can +talk over with the rest of the crowd. I have a market for every fish +this bunch can catch. If I can't handle them with the _Blackbird_, I'll +put on another boat. I'm not here to buy fish just till the Folly Bay +cannery opens. I'll be making regular trips to the end of the salmon +season. My price will be as good as anybody's, better than some. If +Gower gets your bluebacks this season for twenty-five cents, it will be +because you want to make him a present. Meantime, there's another buyer +an hour behind me. I don't know what he'll pay. But whatever he pays +there aren't enough salmon being caught here yet to keep two carriers +running. You can figure it out for yourself." + +MacRae thought he knew his men. Nor was his judgment in error. The Greek +hung around. In twenty-four hours he got three hundred salmon. MacRae +loaded nearly three thousand. + +Once or twice after that he had competitive buyers in Squitty Cove and +the various rendezvous of the trolling fleet. But the fishermen had a +loyalty born of shrewd reckoning. They knew from experience the way of +the itinerant buyer. They knew MacRae. Many of them had known his +father. If Jack MacRae had a market for all the salmon he could buy on +the Gower grounds all season, they saw where Folly Bay would buy no fish +in the old take-it-or-leave it fashion. They were keenly alive to the +fact that they were getting mid-July prices in June, that Jack MacRae +was the first buyer who had not tried to hold down prices by pulling a +poor mouth and telling fairy tales of poor markets in town. He had +jumped prices before there was any competitive spur. They admired young +MacRae. He had nerve; he kept his word. + +Wherefore it did not take them long to decide that he was a good man to +keep going. As a result of this decision other casual buyers got few +fish even when they met MacRae's price. + +When he had run a little over a month MacRae took stock. He paid the +Crow Harbor Canning Company, which was Stubby Abbott's trading name, two +hundred and fifty a month for charter of the _Blackbird_. He had +operating outlay for gas, oil, crushed ice, and wages for Vincent +Ferrara, whom he took on when he reached the limit of single-handed +endurance. Over and above these expenses he had cleared twenty-six +hundred dollars. + +That was only a beginning he knew,--only a beginning of profits and of +work. He purposely thrust the taking of salmon on young Ferrara, let him +handle the cash, tally in the fish, watched Vincent nonchalantly chuck +out overripe salmon that careless trollers would as nonchalantly heave +in for fresh ones if they could get away with it. For Jack MacRae had it +in his mind to go as far and as fast as he could while the going was +good. That meant a second carrier on the run as soon as the Folly Bay +cannery opened, and it meant that he must have in charge of the second +boat an able man whom he could trust. There was no question about +trusting Vincent Ferrara. It was only a matter of his ability to handle +the job, and that he demonstrated to MacRae's complete satisfaction. + +Early in June MacRae went to Stubby Abbott. + +"Have you sold the _Bluebird_ yet?" he asked. + +"I want to let three of those _Bird_ boats go," Stubby told him. "I +don't need 'em. They're dead capital. But I haven't made a sale yet." + +"Charter me the _Bluebird_ on the same terms," Jack proposed. + +"You're on. Things must be going good." + +"Not too bad," MacRae admitted. + +"Folly Bay opens the twentieth. We open July first," Stubby said +abruptly. "How many bluebacks are you going to get for us?" + +"Just about all that are caught around Squitty Island," MacRae said +quietly. "That's why I want another carrier." + +"Huh!" Stubby grunted. His tone was slightly incredulous. "You'll have +to go some. Wish you luck though. More you get the better for me." + +"I expect to deliver sixty thousand bluebacks to Crow Harbor in July," +MacRae said. + +Stubby stared at him. His eyes twinkled. + +"If you can do that in July, and in August too," he said, "I'll _give_ +you the _Bluebird_." + +"No," MacRae smiled. "I'll buy her." + +"Where will Folly Bay get off if you take that many fish away?" Stubby +reflected. + +"Don't know. And I don't care a hoot." MacRae shrugged his shoulders. +"I'm fairly sure I can do it. You don't care?" + +"Do I? I'll shout to the world I don't," Stubby replied. "It's +self-preservation with me. Let old Horace look out for himself. He had +his fingers in the pie while we were in France. I don't have to have +four hundred per cent profit to do business. Get the fish if you can, +Jack, old boy, even if it busts old Horace. Which it won't--and, as I +told you, lack of them may bust me." + +"By the way," Stubby said as MacRae rose to go, "don't you ever have an +hour to spare in town? You haven't been out at the house for six weeks." + +MacRae held out his hands. They were red and cut and scarred, roughened, +and sore from salt water and ice-handling and fish slime. + +"Wouldn't they look well clasping a wafer and a teacup," he laughed. +"I'm working, Stub. When I have an hour to spare I lie down and sleep. +If I stopped to play every time I came to town--do you think you'd get +your sixty thousand bluebacks in July?" + +Stubby looked at MacRae a second, at his work-torn hands and weary eyes. + +"I guess you're right," he said slowly. "But the old stone house will +still be up on the corner when the salmon run is over. Don't forget +that." + +MacRae went off to Coal Harbor to take over the second carrier. And he +wondered as he went if it would all be such clear sailing, if it were +possible that at the first thrust he had found an open crack in Gower's +armor through which he could prick the man and make him squirm. + +He looked at his hands. When they fingered death as a daily task they +had been soft, white, delicate,--dainty instruments equally fit for the +manipulation of aerial controls, machine guns or teacups. Why should +honest work prevent a man from meeting pleasant people amid pleasant +surroundings? Well, it was not the work itself, it was simply the +effects of that gross labor. On the American continent, at least, a man +did not lose caste by following any honest occupation,--only he could +not work with the workers and flutter with the butterflies. MacRae, +walking down the street, communing with himself, knew that he must pay a +penalty for working with his hands. If he were a drone in +uniform--necessarily a drone since the end of war--he could dance and +play, flirt with pretty girls, be a welcome guest in great houses, make +the heroic past pay social dividends. + +It took nearly as much courage and endurance to work as it had taken to +fight; indeed it took rather more, at times, to keep on working. +Theoretically he should not lose caste. Yet MacRae knew he +would,--unless he made a barrel of money. There had been stray straws in +the past month. There were, it seemed, very nice people who could not +quite understand why an officer and a gentleman should do work that +wasn't,--well, not even clean. Not clean in the purely objective, +physical sense, like banking or brokerage, or teaching, or any of those +semi-genteel occupations which permit people to make a living without +straining their backs or soiling their hands. He wasn't even sure that +Stubby Abbott--MacRae was ashamed of his cynicism when he got that far. +Stubby was a real man. Even if he needed a man or a man's activities in +his business Stubby wouldn't cultivate that man socially merely because +he needed his producing capacity. + +The solace for long hours and aching flesh and sleep-weary eyes was a +glimpse of concrete reward,--money which meant power, power to repay a +debt, opportunity to repay an ancient score. It seemed to Jack MacRae +that his personal honor was involved in getting back all that broad +sweep of land which his father had claimed from the wilderness, that he +must exact an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. That was the why +of his unceasing energy, his uncomplaining endurance of long hours in +sea boots, the impatient facing of storms that threatened to delay. Man +strives under the spur of a vision, a deep longing, an imperative +squaring of needs with desires. MacRae moved under the whip of all +three. + +He was quite sanguine that he would succeed in this undertaking. But he +had not looked much beyond the first line of trenches which he planned +to storm. They did not seem to him particularly formidable. The Scotch +had been credited with uncanny knowledge of the future. Jack MacRae, +however, though his Highland blood ran undiluted, had no such gift of +prescience. He did not know that the highway of modern industry is +strewn with the casualties of commercial warfare. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +Vested Rights + + +A small balcony over the porch of Gower's summer cottage commanded a +wide sweep of the Gulf south and east. That was one reason he had built +there. He liked to overlook the sea, the waters out of which he had +taken a fortune, the highway of his collecting boats. He had to keep in +touch with the Folly Bay cannery while the rush of the pack was on. But +he was getting more fastidious as he grew older, and he no longer +relished the odors of the cannery. There were other places nearer the +cannery than Cradle Bay, if none more sightly, where he could have built +a summer house. People wondered why he chose the point that frowned over +Poor Man's Rock. Even his own family had questioned his judgment. +Particularly his wife. She complained of the isolation. She insisted on +a houseful of people when she was there, and as Vancouver was full of +eligible week-enders of both sexes her wish was always gratified. And no +one except Betty Gower ever knew that merely to sit looking out on the +Gulf from that vantage point afforded her father some inscrutable +satisfaction. + +On a day in mid-July Horace Gower stepped out on this balcony. He +carried in his hand a pair of prism binoculars. He took a casual look +around. Then he put the glasses to his eyes and scanned the Gulf with a +slow, searching sweep. At first sight it seemed empty. Then far +eastward toward Vancouver his glass picked up two formless dots which +alternately showed and disappeared. + +Gower put down the glasses, seated himself in a grass chair, lighted a +cigar and leaned back, looking impersonally down on Point Old and the +Rock. A big, slow swell rolled up off the Gulf, breaking with a +precisely spaced _boom_ along the cliffs. For forty-eight hours a +southeaster had swept the sea, that rare phenomenon of a summer gale +which did not blow itself out between suns. This had been a wild +tantrum, driving everything of small tonnage to the nearest shelter, +even delaying the big coasters. + +One of these, trailing black smoke from two funnels, lifting white +superstructure of cabins high above her main deck, standing bold and +clear in the mellow sunshine, steamed out of the fairway between Squitty +and Vancouver Island. But she gained scant heed from Gower. His eyes +kept turning to where those distant specks showed briefly between +periods in the hollows of the sea. They drew nearer. Gower finished his +cigar in leisurely fashion. He focused the glass again. He grunted +something unintelligible. They were what he fully expected to behold as +soon as the southeaster ceased to whip the Gulf,--the _Bluebird_ and the +_Blackbird_, Jack MacRae's two salmon carriers. They were walking up to +Squitty in eight-knot boots. Through his glass Gower watched them lift +and fall, lurch and yaw, running with short bursts of speed on the crest +of a wave, laboring heavily in the trough, plowing steadily up through +uneasy waters to take the salmon that should go to feed the hungry +machines at Folly Bay. + +Gower laid aside the glasses. He smoked a second cigar down to a stub, +resting his plump hands on his plump stomach. He resembled a thoughtful +Billiken in white flannels, a round-faced, florid, middle-aged Billiken. +By that time the two _Bird_ boats had come up and parted on the head of +Squitty. The _Bluebird_, captained by Vin Ferrara, headed into the Cove. +The _Blackbird_, slashing along with a bone in her teeth, rounded Poor +Man's Rock, cut across the mouth of Cradle Bay, and stood on up the +western shore. + +"He knows every pot-hole where a troller can lie. He's not afraid of +wind or sea or work. No wonder he gets the fish. Those damned--" + +Gower cut his soliloquy off in the middle to watch the _Blackbird_ slide +out of sight behind a point. He knew all about Jack MacRae's operations, +the wide swath he was cutting in the matter of blueback salmon. The +Folly Bay showing to date was a pointed reminder. Gower's cannery +foreman and fish collectors gave him profane accounts of MacRae's +indefatigable raiding,--as it suited them to regard his operations. What +Gower did not know he made it his business to find out. He sat now in +his grass chair, a short, compact body of a man, with a heavy-jawed, +powerful face frowning in abstraction. Gower looked younger than his +fifty-six years. There was little gray in his light-brown hair. His blue +eyes were clear and piercing. The thick roundness of his body was not +altogether composed of useless tissue. Even considered superficially he +looked what he really was, what he had been for many years,--a man +accustomed to getting things done according to his desire. He did not +look like a man who would fight with crude weapons--such as a pike +pole--but nevertheless there was the undeniable impression of latent +force, of aggressive possibilities, of the will and the ability to +rudely dispose of things which might become obstacles in his way. And +the current history of him in the Gulf of Georgia did not belie such an +impression. + +He left the balcony at last. He appeared next moving, with the stumpy, +ungraceful stride peculiar to the short and thick-bodied, down the walk +to a float. From this he hailed the _Arrow_, and a boy came in, rowing a +dinghy. + +When Gower reached the cruiser's deck he cocked his ear at voices in the +after cabin. He put his head through the companion hatch. Betty Gower +and Nelly Abbott were curled up on a berth, chuckling to each other over +some exchange of confidences. + +"Thought you were ashore," Gower grunted. + +"Oh, the rest of the crowd went off on a hike into the woods, so we came +out here to look around. Nelly hasn't seen the _Arrow_ inside since it +was done over," Betty replied. + +"I'm going to Folly Bay," Gower said. "Will you go ashore?" + +"Far from such," Betty returned. "I'd as soon go to the cannery as +anywhere. Can't we, daddy?" + +"Oh, yes. Bit of a swell though. You may be sick." + +Betty laughed. That was a standing joke between them. She had never been +seasick. Nelly Abbott declared that if there was anything she loved it +was to ride the dead swell that ran after a storm. They came up out of +the cabin to watch the mooring line cast off, and to wave handkerchiefs +at the empty cottage porches as the _Arrow_ backed and straightened and +swept out of the bay. + +The _Arrow_ was engined to justify her name. But the swell was heavier +than it looked from shore. No craft, even a sixty-footer built for +speed, finds her speed lines a thing of comfort in heavy going. Until +the _Arrow_ passed into the lee of an island group halfway along +Squitty she made less time than a fishing boat, and she rolled and +twisted uncomfortably. If Horace Gower had a mind to reach Folly Bay +before the _Blackbird_ he could not have done so. However, he gave no +hint of such intention. He kept to the deck. The girls stayed below +until the big cruiser struck easier going and a faster gait. Then they +joined Gower. + +The three of them stood by the rail just abaft the pilot house when the +_Arrow_ turned into the half-mile breadth of Folly Bay. The cannery +loomed white on shore, with a couple of purse seiners and a tender or +two tied at the slips. And four hundred yards off the cannery wharf the +_Blackbird_ had dropped anchor and lay now, a dozen trolling boats +clustered about her to deliver fish. + +"Slow up and stop abreast of that buyer," Gower ordered. + +The _Arrow's_ skipper brought his vessel to a standstill within a +boat-length of the _Blackbird_. + +"Why, that's Jack MacRae," Nelly Abbott exclaimed. "Hoo-hoo, Johnny!" + +She waved both hands for good measure. MacRae, bareheaded, sleeves +rolled above his elbows, standing in hip boots of rubber on a deck wet +and slippery with water and fish slime, amid piles of gleaming salmon, +recognized her easily enough. He waved greeting, but his gaze only for +that one recognizing instant left the salmon that were landing _flop, +flop_ on the _Blackbird's_ deck out of a troller's fish well. He made +out a slip, handed the troller some currency. There was a brief exchange +of words between them. The man nodded, pushed off his boat. Instantly +another edged into the vacant place. Salmon began to fall on the deck, +heaved up on a picaroon. At the other end of the fish hold another of +the Ferrara boys was tallying in fish. + +"Old crab," Nelly Abbott murmured. "He doesn't even look at us." + +"He's counting salmon, silly," Betty explained. "How can he?" + +There was no particular inflection in her voice. Nevertheless Horace +Gower shot a sidelong glance at his daughter. She also waved a hand +pleasantly to Jack MacRae, who had faced about now. + +"Why don't you say you're glad to see us, old dear?" Nelly Abbott +suggested bluntly, and smiling so that all her white teeth gleamed and +her eyes twinkled mischievously. + +"Tickled to death," MacRae called back. He went through the pantomime of +shaking hands with himself. His lips parted in a smile. "But I'm the +busiest thing afloat right now. See you later." + +"Nerve," Horace Gower muttered under his breath. + +"Not if we see you first," Nelly Abbott retorted. + +"It's not likely you will," MacRae laughed. + +He turned back to his work. The fisherman alongside was tall and surly +looking, a leathery-faced individual with a marked scowl. He heaved half +a dozen salmon up on the _Blackbird_. Then he climbed up himself. He +towered over Jack MacRae, and MacRae was not exactly a small man. He +said something, his hands on his hips. MacRae looked at him. He seemed +to be making some reply. And he stepped back from the man. Every other +fisherman turned his face toward the _Blackbird's_ deck. Their +clattering talk stopped short. + +The man leaned forward. His hands left his hips, drew into doubled +fists, extended threateningly. He took a step toward MacRae. + +And MacRae suddenly lunged forward, as if propelled by some invisible +spring of tremendous force. With incredible swiftness his left hand and +then his right shot at the man's face. The two blows sounded like two +open-handed smacks. But the fisherman sagged, went lurching backward. +His heels caught on the _Blackbird's_ bulwark and he pitched backward +head-first into the hold of his own boat. + +MacRae picked up the salmon and flung them one by one after the man, +with no great haste, but with little care where they fell, for one or +two spattered against the fellow's face as he clawed up out of his own +hold. There was a smear of red on his lips. + +"Oh! My goodness gracious, sakes alive!" + +Nelly Abbott grasped Betty by the arm and murmured these expletives as +much in a spirit of deviltry as of shock. Her eyes danced. + +"Did you see that?" she whispered. "I never saw two men fight before. +I'd hate to have Jack MacRae hit _me_." + +But Betty was holding her breath, for MacRae had picked up a twelve-foot +pike pole, a thing with an ugly point and a hook of iron on its tip. He +only used it, however, to shove away the boat containing the man he had +so savagely smashed. And while he did that Gower curtly issued an order, +and the _Arrow_ slid on to the cannery wharf. + +Nelly went below for something. Betty stood by the rail, staring back +thoughtfully, unaware that her father was keenly watching the look on +her face, with an odd expression in his own eyes. + +"You saw quite a lot of young MacRae last spring, didn't you?" he asked +abruptly. "Do you like him?" + +A faint touch of color leaped into her cheeks. She met her father's +glance with an inquiring one of her own. + +"Well--yes. Rather," she said at last. "He's a nice boy." + +"Better not," Gower rumbled. His frown grew deeper. His teeth clamped a +cigar in one corner of his mouth at an aggressive angle. "Granted that +he is what you call a nice boy. I'll admit he's good-looking and that he +dances well. And he seems to pack a punch up his sleeve. I'd suggest +that you don't cultivate any romantic fancy for him. Because he's making +himself a nuisance in my business--and I'm going to smash him." + +Gower turned away. If he had lingered he might have observed +unmistakable signs of temper. Betty flew storm signals from cheek and +eye. She looked after her father with something akin to defiance, +likewise with an air of astonishment. + +"As if I--" she left the whispered sentence unfinished. + +She perched herself on the mahogany-capped rail, and while she waited +for Nelly Abbott she gave herself up to thinking of herself and her +father and her father's amazing warning which carried a veiled +threat,--an open threat so far as Jack MacRae was concerned. Why should +he cut loose like that on her? + +She stared thoughtfully at the _Blackbird_, marked the trollers slipping +in from the grounds and clustering around the chunky carrier. + +It might have interested Mr. Horace Gower could he have received a +verbatim report of his daughter's reflections for the next five minutes. +But whether it would have pleased him it is hard to say. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +The Complexity of Simple Matters + + +The army, for a period extending over many months, had imposed a rigid +discipline on Jack MacRae. The Air Service had bestowed upon him a less +rigorous discipline, but a far more exacting self-control. He was not +precisely aware of it, but those four years had saved him from being a +firebrand of sorts in his present situation, because there resided in +him a fiery temper and a capacity for passionate extremes, and those +years in the King's uniform, whatever else they may have done for him, +had placed upon his headlong impulses manifold checks, taught him the +vital necessity of restraint, the value of restraint. + +If the war had made human life seem a cheap and perishable commodity, it +had also worked to give men like MacRae a high sense of honor, to +accentuate a natural distaste for lying and cheating, for anything that +was mean, petty, ignoble. Perhaps the Air Service was unique in that it +was at once the most dangerous and the most democratic and the most +individual of all the organizations that fought the Germans. It had high +standards. The airmen were all young, the pick of the nations, clean, +eager, vigorous boys whose ideals were still undimmed. They lived +and--as it happened--died in big moments. They trained with the gods in +airy spaces and became men, those who survived. + +And the gods may launch destroying thunderbolts, but they do not lie or +cheat or steal. An honest man may respect an honest enemy, and be roused +to murderous fury by a common rascal's trickery. + +When MacRae dropped his hook in Folly Bay he was two days overdue, for +the first time in his fish-running venture. The trollers had promised to +hold their fish. The first man alongside to deliver reminded him of +this. + +"Southeaster held you up, eh?" said he. "We fished in the lee off the +top end. But we might as well have laid in. Held 'em too long for you." + +"They spoiled before you could slough them on the cannery, eh?" MacRae +observed. + +"Most of mine did. They took some." + +"How many of your fish went bad?" Jack asked. + +"About twenty-five, I guess." + +MacRae finished checking the salmon the fisherman heaved up on the deck. +He made out two slips and handed the man his money. + +"I'm paying you for the lost fish," he said. "I told you to hold them +for me. I want you to hold them. If I can't get here on time, it's my +loss, not yours." + +The fisherman looked at the money in his hand and up at MacRae. + +"Well," he said, "you're the first buyer I ever seen do that. You're all +right, all right." + +There were variations of this. Some of the trollers, weatherwise old +sea-dogs, had foreseen that the _Blackbird_ could not face that blow, +and they had sold their fish. Others had held on. These, who were all +men MacRae knew, he paid according to their own estimate of loss. He did +not argue. He accepted their word. It was an astonishing experience for +the trolling fleet. They had never found a buyer willing to make good a +loss of that kind. + +But there were other folk afloat besides simple, honest fishermen who +would not lie for the price of one salmon or forty. When the _Arrow_ +drew abreast and stopped, a boat had pushed in beside the _Blackbird_. +The fisherman in it put half a dozen bluebacks on the deck and clambered +up himself. + +"You owe me for thirty besides them," he announced. + +"How's that?" MacRae asked coolly. + +But he was not cool inside. He knew the man, a preemptor of Folly Bay, a +truckler to the cannery because he was always in debt to the +cannery,--and a quarrelsome individual besides, who took advantage of +his size and strength to browbeat less able men. + +MacRae had got few salmon off Sam Kaye since the cannery opened. He had +never asked Kaye to hold fish for him. He knew instantly what was in +Kaye's mind; it had flitted from one boat to another that MacRae was +making good the loss of salmon held for him, and Kaye was going to get +in on this easy money if he could bluff it through. + +He stood on the _Blackbird's_ deck, snarlingly demanding payment for +thirty fish. MacRae looked at him silently. He hated brawling, +acrimonious dispute. He was loth to a common row at that moment, because +he was acutely conscious of the two girls watching. But he was even more +conscious of Gower's stare and the curious expectancy of the fishermen +clustered about his stern. + +Kaye was simply trying to do him out of fifteen dollars. MacRae knew it. +He knew that the fishermen knew it,--and he had a suspicion that Folly +Bay might not be unaware, or averse, to Sam Kaye taking a fall out of +him. Folly Bay had tried other unpleasant tricks. + +"That doesn't go for you, Kaye," he said quietly. "I know your game. Get +off my boat and take your fish with you." + +Sam Kaye glowered threateningly. He had cowed men before with the +fierceness of his look. He was long-armed and raw-boned, and he rather +fancied himself in a rough and tumble. He was quite blissfully ignorant +that Jack MacRae was stewing under his outward calmness. Kaye took a +step forward, with an intimidating thrust of his jaw. + +MacRae smashed him squarely in the mouth with a straight left, and +hooked him somewhere on the chin with a wicked right cross. Either blow +was sufficient to knock any ordinary man down. There was a deceptive +power in MacRae's slenderness, which was not so much slenderness as +perfect bodily symmetry. He weighed within ten pounds as much as Sam +Kaye, although he did not look it, and he was as quick as a playful +kitten. Kaye went down, as told before. He lifted a dazed countenance +above the cockpit as MacRae shoved his craft clear. + +The fishermen broke the silence with ribald laughter. They knew Kaye's +game too. + +MacRae left Folly Bay later in the afternoon, poorer by many dollars +paid for rotten salmon. He wasn't in a particularly genial mood. The Sam +Kaye affair had come at an inopportune moment. He didn't care to stand +out as a bruiser. Still, he asked himself irritably, why should he care +because Nelly Abbott and Betty Gower had seen him using his fists? He +was perfectly justified. Indeed, he knew very well he could have done +nothing else. The trailers had chortled over the outcome. These were +matters they could understand and appreciate. Even Steve Ferrara looked +at him enviously. + +"It makes me wish I'd dodged the gas," Steve said wistfully. "It's hell +to wheeze your breath in and out. By jiminy, you're wicked with your +hands, Jack. Did you box much in France?" + +"Quite a lot," MacRae replied. "Some of the fellows in our squadron were +pretty clever. We used the gloves quite a bit." + +"And you're naturally quick," Steve drawled. "Now, me, the gas has +cooked my goose. I'd have to bat Kaye over the head with an oar. Gee, he +sure got a surprise." + +They both laughed. Even upon his bloody face--as he rose out of his own +fish hold--bewildered astonishment had been Sam Kaye's chief expression. + +The _Blackbird_ went her rounds. At noon the next day she met Vincent +Ferrara with her sister ship, and the two boats made one load for the +_Blackbird_. She headed south. With high noon, too, came the summer +westerly, screeching and whistling and lashing the Gulf to a brief fury. + +It was the regular summer wind, a yachtsman's gale. Four days out of six +its cycle ran the same, a breeze rising at ten o'clock, stiffening to a +healthy blow, a mere sigh at sundown. Midnight would find the sea smooth +as a mirror, the heaving swell killed by changing tides. + +So the _Blackbird_ ran down Squitty, rolling and yawing through a +following sea, and turned into Squitty Cove to rest till night and calm +settled on the Gulf. + +When her mudhook was down in that peaceful nook, Steve Ferrara turned +into his bunk to get a few hours' sleep against the long night watch. +MacRae stirred wakeful on the sun-hot deck, slushing it down with +buckets of sea water to save his ice and fish. He coiled ropes, made his +vessel neat, and sat him down to think. Squitty Cove always stirred him +to introspection. His mind leaped always to the manifold suggestions of +any well-remembered place. He could shut his eyes and see the old log +house behind its leafy screen of alder and maple at the Cove's head. The +rosebushes before it were laden with bloom now. At his hand were the +gray cliffs backed by grassy patches, running away inland to virgin +forest. He felt dispossessed of those noble acres. He was always seeing +them through his father's eyes, feeling as Donald MacRae must have felt +in those last, lonely years of which he had written in simple language +that had wrung his son's heart. + +But it never occurred to Jack MacRae that his father, pouring out the +tale of those troubled years, had bestowed upon him an equivocal +heritage. + +He slid overboard the small skiff the _Blackbird_ carried and rowed +ashore. There were rowboat trollers on the beach asleep in their tents +and rude lean-tos. He walked over the low ridge behind which stood Peter +Ferrara's house. It was hot, the wooded heights of the island shutting +off the cool westerly. On such a day Peter Ferrara should be dozing on +his porch and Dolly perhaps mending stockings or sewing in a rocker +beside him. + +But the porch was bare. As MacRae drew near the house a man came out the +door and down the three low steps. He was short and thick-set, young, +quite fair, inclined already to floridness of skin. MacRae knew him at +once for Norman Gower. He was a typical Gower,--a second edition of his +father, save that his face was less suggestive of power, less heavily +marked with sullenness. + +He glanced with blank indifference at Jack MacRae, passed within six +feet and walked along the path which ran around the head of the Cove. +MacRae watched him. He would cross between the boathouse and the roses +in MacRae's dooryard. MacRae had an impulse to stride after him, to +forbid harshly any such trespass on MacRae ground. But he smiled at that +childishness. It was childish, MacRae knew. But he felt that way about +it, just as he often felt that he himself had a perfect right to range +the whole end of Squitty, to tramp across greensward and through forest +depths, despite Horace Gower's legal title to the land. MacRae was aware +of this anomaly in his attitude, without troubling to analyze it. + +He walked into old Peter's house without announcement beyond his +footsteps on the floor, as he had been accustomed to do as far back as +he could remember. Dolly was sitting beside a little table, her chin in +her palms. There was a droop to her body that disturbed MacRae. She had +sat for hours like that the night his father died. And there was now on +her face something of the same look of sad resignation and pity. Her +big, dark eyes were misty, troubled, when she lifted them to MacRae. + +"Hello, Jack," she said. + +He came up to her, put his hands on her shoulders. + +"What is it now?" he demanded. "I saw Norman Gower leaving as I came up. +And here you're looking--what's wrong?" + +His tone was imperative. + +"Nothing, Johnny." + +"You don't cry for nothing. You're not that kind," MacRae replied. +"That chunky lobster hasn't given you the glooms, surely?" + +Dolly's eyes flashed. + +"It isn't like you to call names," she declared. "It isn't nice. +And--and what business of yours is it whether I laugh or cry?" + +MacRae smiled. Dolly in a temper was not wholly strange to him. He was +struck with her remarkable beauty every time he saw her. She was +altogether too beautiful a flower to be blushing unseen on an island in +the Gulf. He shook her gently. + +"Because I'm big brother. Because you and I were kids together for years +before we ever knew there could be serpents in Eden. Because anything +that hurts you hurts me. I don't like anything to make you cry, _mia +Dolores_. I'd wring Norman Gower's chubby neck with great pleasure if I +thought he could do that. I didn't even know you knew him." + +Dolly dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief. + +"There are lots of things you don't know, Jack MacRae," she murmured. +"Besides, why shouldn't I know Norman?" + +MacRae threw out his hands helplessly. + +"No law against it, of course," he admitted. "Only--well--" + +He was conscious of floundering, with her grave, dark eyes searching his +face. There was no reason save his own hostility to anything Gower,--and +Dolly knew no basis for that save the fact that Horace Gower had +acquired his father's ranch. That could not possibly be a ground for +Dolores Ferrara to frown on any Gower, male or female, who happened to +come her way. + +"Why, I suppose it really is none of my business," he said slowly. +"Except that I can't help being concerned in anything that makes you +unhappy. That's all." + +He sat down on the arm of her chair and patted her cheek. To his utter +amazement Dolly broke into a storm of tears. Long ago he had seen Dolly +cry when she had hurt herself, because he had teased her, because she +was angry or disappointed. He had never seen any woman cry as she did +now. It was not just simple grieved weeping. It was a tempest that shook +her. Her body quivered, her breath came in gasping bursts between +racking sobs. + +MacRae gathered her into his arms, trying to dam that wild flood. She +put her face against him and clung there, trembling like some hunted +thing seeking refuge, mysteriously stirring MacRae with the passionate +abandon of her tears, filling him with vague apprehensions, with a +strange excitement. + +Like the tornado, swift in its striking and passing, so this storm +passed. Dolly's sobbing ceased. She rested passively in his arms for a +minute. Then she sighed, brushed the cloudy hair out of her eyes, and +looked up at him. + +"I wonder why I should go all to pieces like that so suddenly?" she +muttered. "And why I should somehow feel better for it?" + +"I don't know," MacRae said. "Maybe I could tell you if I knew _why_ you +went off like that. You poor little devil. Something has stung you deep, +I know." + +"Yes," she admitted. "I hope nothing like it ever comes to you, Jack. +I'm bleeding internally. Oh, it hurts, it hurts!" + +She laid her head against him and cried again softly. + +"Tell me," he whispered. + +"Why not?" She lifted her head after a little. "You could always keep +things to yourself. It wasn't much wonder they called you Silent John. +Do you know I never really grasped The Ancient Mariner until now? People +_must_ tell their troubles to some one--or they'd corrode inside." + +"Go ahead," MacRae encouraged. + +"When Norman Gower went overseas we were engaged," she said bluntly, and +stopped. She was not looking at MacRae now. She stared at the opposite +wall, her fingers locked together in her lap. + +"For four years," she went on, "I've been hoping, dreaming, waiting, +loving. To-day he came home to tell me that he married in England two +years ago. Married in the madness of a drunken hour--that is how he puts +it--a girl who didn't care for anything but the good time his rank and +pay could give her." + +"I think you're in luck," MacRae said soberly. + +"What queer creatures men are!" She seemed not to have heard him--to be +thinking her own thoughts out loud. "He says he loves me, that he has +loved me all the time, that he feels as if he had been walking in his +sleep and fallen into some muddy hole. And I believe him. It's terrible, +Johnny." + +"It's impossible," MacRae declared savagely. "If he's got in that kind +of a hole, let him stay there. You're well out of it. You ought to be +glad." + +"But I'm not," she said sadly. "I'm not made that way. I can't let a +thing become a vital part of my life and give it up without a pang." + +"I don't see what else you can do," MacRae observed. "Only brace up and +forget it." + +"It isn't quite so simple as that," she sighed. "Norman's w--this woman +presently got tired of him. Evidently she had no scruples about getting +what she wanted, nor how. She went away with another man. Norman is +getting a divorce--the decree absolute will be granted in March next. He +wants me to marry him." + +"Will you?" + +Dolly looked up to meet MacRae's wondering stare. She nodded. + +"You're a triple-plated fool," he said roughly. + +"I don't know," she replied thoughtfully. "Norman certainly has been. +Perhaps I am too. We should get on--a pair of fools together." + +The bitterness in her voice stung MacRae. + +"You really should have loved me," he said, "and I you." + +"But you don't, Jack. You have never thought of that before." + +"I could, quite easily." + +Dolly considered this a moment. + +"No," she said. "You like me. I know that, Johnny. I like you, too. You +are a man, and I'm a woman. But if you weren't bursting with sympathy +you wouldn't have thought of that. If Norman had some of your +backbone--but it wouldn't make any difference. If you know what it is +that draws a certain man and woman together in spite of themselves, in +spite of things they can see in each other that they don't quite like, I +dare say you'd understand. I don't think I do. Norman Gower has made me +dreadfully unhappy. But I loved him before he went away, and I love him +yet. I want him just the same. And he says--he says--that he never +stopped caring for me--that it was like a bad dream. I believe him. I'm +sure of it. He didn't lie to me. And I can't hate him. I can't punish +him without punishing myself. I don't want to punish him, any more than +I would want to punish a baby, if I had one, for a naughtiness it +couldn't help." + +"So you'll marry him eventually?" MacRae asked. + +Dolly nodded. + +"If he doesn't change his mind," she murmured. "Oh, I shouldn't say ugly +things like that. It sounds cheap and mean." + +"But it hurts, it hurts me so to think of it," she broke out +passionately. "I can forgive him, because I can see how it happened. +Still it hurts. I feel cheated--cheated!" + +She lay back in her chair, fingers locked together, red lips parted over +white teeth that were clenched together. Her eyes glowed somberly, +looking away through distant spaces. + +And MacRae, conscious that she had said her say, feeling that she wanted +to be alone, as he himself always wanted to fight a grief or a hurt +alone and in silence, walked out into the sunshine, where the westerly +droned high above in the swaying fir tops. + +He went up the path around the Cove's head to the porch of his own +house, sat down on the top step, and cursed the Gowers, root and branch. +He hated them, everything of the name and blood, at that moment, with a +profound and active hatred. + +They were like a blight, as their lives touched the lives of other +people. They sat in the seats of the mighty, and for their pleasure or +their whims others must sweat and suffer. So it seemed to Jack MacRae. + +Home, these crowded, hurrying days, was aboard the _Blackbird_. It was +pleasant now to sit on his own doorstep and smell the delicate perfume +of the roses and the balsamy odors from the woods behind. But the rooms +depressed him when he went in. They were dusty and silent, abandoned to +that forsaken air which rests upon uninhabited dwellings. MacRae went +out again, to stride aimlessly along the cliffs past the mouth of the +Cove. + +Beyond the lee of the island the westerly still lashed the Gulf. The +white horses galloped on a gray-green field. MacRae found a grassy place +in the shade of an arbutus, and lay down to rest and watch. Sunset would +bring calm, a dying wind, new colors to sea and sky and mountains. It +would send him away on the long run to Crow Harbor, driving through the +night under the cool stars. + +No matter what happened people must be fed. Food was vital. Men lost +their lives at the fishing, but it went on. Hearts might be torn, but +hands still plied the gear. Life had a bad taste in Jack MacRae's mouth +as he lay there under the red-barked tree. He was moody. It seemed a +struggle without mercy or justice, almost without reason, a blind +obedience to the will-to-live. A tooth-and-toenail contest. He surveyed +his own part in it with cynical detachment. So long as salmon ran in the +sea they would be taken for profit in the markets and the feeding of the +hungry. And the salmon would run and men would pursue them, and the game +would be played without slackening for such things as broken faith or +aching hearts or a woman's tears. + +MacRae grew drowsy puzzling over things like that. Life was a jumble +beyond his understanding, he concluded at last. Men strove to a godlike +mastery of circumstances,--and achieved three meals a day and a squalid +place to sleep. Sometimes, when they were pluming themselves on having +beaten the game, Destiny was laughing in her sleeve and spreading a +snare for their feet. A man never knew what was coming next. It was +just a damned scramble! A disorderly scramble in which a man could be +sure of getting hurt. + +He wondered if that were really true. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +Thrust and Counterthrust + + +By the time Jack MacRae was writing August on his sales slips he was +conscious of an important fact; namely, that nearly a hundred gas-boat +fishermen, trolling Squitty Island, the Ballenas, Gray Rock, even +farther afield to Yellow Rock Light and Lambert Channel, were compactly +behind him. They were still close to a period when they had been +remorselessly exploited. They were all for MacRae. Prices being equal, +they preferred that he should have their fish. It was still vivid in +their astonished minds that he had shared profits with them without +compulsion, that he had boosted prices without competition, had put a +great many dollars in their pockets. Only those who earn a living as +precariously, as riskily and with as much patient labor as a salmon +fisherman, can so well value a dollar. They had an abiding confidence, +by this time, in Jack MacRae. They knew he was square, and they said so. +In the territory his two carriers covered, MacRae was becoming the +uncrowned salmon king. Other buyers cut in from time to time. They did +not fare well. The trollers would hold their salmon, even when some +sporting independent offered to shade the current price. They would +shake their heads if they knew either of the _Bird_ boats would be there +to take the fish. For when MacRae said he would be there, he was always +there. In the old days they had been compelled to play one buyer +against another. They did not have to do that with MacRae. + +The Folly Bay collectors fared little better than outside buyers. In +July Gower met MacRae's price by two successive raises. He stopped at +that. MacRae did not. Each succeeding run of salmon averaged greater +poundage. They were worth more. MacRae paid fifty, fifty-five cents. +When Gower stood pat at fifty-five, MacRae gave up a fourth of his +contract percentage and paid sixty. It was like draw poker with the +advantage of the last raise on his side. + +The salmon were worth the price. They were worth double to a cannery +that lay mostly idle for lack of fish. The salmon, now, were running +close to six pounds each. The finished product was eighteen dollars a +case in the market. There are forty-eight one-pound cans in a case. To a +man familiar with packing costs it is a simple sum. MacRae often +wondered why Gower stubbornly refused to pay more, when his collecting +boats came back to the cannery so often with a few scattered salmon in +their holds. They were primitive folk, these salmon trollers. They +jeered the unlucky collectors. Gower was losing his fishermen as well as +his fish. For the time, at least, the back of his long-held monopoly was +broken. + +MacRae got a little further light on this attitude from Stubby Abbott. + +"He's figuring on making out a season's pack with cohoes, humps, and dog +salmon," Stubby told MacRae at the Crow Harbor cannery. "He expects to +work his purse seiners overtime, and to hell with the individual +fisherman. Norman was telling me. Old Horace has put Norman in charge at +Folly Bay, you know." + +MacRae nodded. He knew about that. + +"The old boy is sore as a boil at you and me," Stubby chuckled. "I +don't blame him much. He has had a cinch there so long he thinks it's +his private pond. You've certainly put a crimp in the Folly Bay blueback +pack--to my great benefit. I don't suppose any one but you could have +done it either." + +"Any one could," MacRae declared, "if he knew the waters, the men, and +was wise enough to play the game square. The trouble has been that each +buyer wanted to make a clean-up on each trip. He wanted easy money. The +salmon fisherman away up the coast practically has to take what is +offered him day by day, or throw his fish overboard. Canneries and +buyers alike have systematically given him the worst of the deal. You +don't cut your cannery hands' pay because on certain days your pack +falls off." + +"Hardly." + +"But canneries and collectors and every independent buyer have always +used any old pretext to cut the price to the fisherman out on the +grounds. And while a fisherman has to take what he is offered he doesn't +have to keep on taking it. He can quit, and try something else. Lots of +them have done that. That's why there are three Japanese to every white +salmon fisherman on the British Columbia coast. That is why we have an +Oriental problem. The Japs are making the canneries squeal, aren't +they?" + +"Rather." Stubby smiled. "They are getting to be a bit of a problem." + +"The packers got them in here as cheap labor in the salmon fishing," +MacRae went on. "The white fisherman was too independent. He wanted all +he could get out of his work. He was a kicker, as well as a good +fisherman. The packers thought they could keep wages down and profits +up by importing the Jap--cheap labor with a low standard of living. And +the Jap has turned the tables on the big fellows. They hang together, as +aliens always do in a strange country, and the war has helped them +freeze the white fisherman out on one hand and exact more and more from +the canneries on the other. And that would never have happened if this +had been kept a white man's country, and the white fisherman had got a +square deal." + +"To buy as cheaply as you can and sell for as much as you can," Stubby +reminded him, "is a fundamental of business. You can't get away from it. +My father abandoned that maxim the last two years of his life, and it +nearly broke us. He was a public-spirited man. He took war and war-time +conditions to heart. In a period of jumping food costs he tried to give +people cheaper food. As I said, he nearly went broke trying to do a +public service, because no one else in the same business departed from +the business rule of making all they could. In fact, men in the same +business, I have since learned, were the first to sharpen their knives +for him. He was establishing a bad precedent. I don't know but their +attitude is sound, after all. In sheer self-defense a man must make all +he can when he has a chance. You cannot indulge in philanthropy in a +business undertaking these days, Silent John." + +"Granted," MacRae made answer. "I don't propose to be a philanthropist +myself. But you will get farther with a salmon fisherman, or any other +man whose labor you must depend on, if you accept the principle that he +is entitled to make a dollar as well as yourself, if you don't stretch +every point to take advantage of his necessity. These fellows who fish +around Squitty have been gouged and cheated a lot. They aren't fools. +They know pretty well who makes the long profit, who pile up moderate +fortunes while they get only a living, and not a particularly good +living at that." + +"Are you turning Bolshevik?" Stubby inquired with mock solicitude. + +MacRae smiled. + +"Hardly. Nor are the fishermen. They know I'm making money. But they +know also that they are getting more out of it than they ever got +before, and that if I were not on the job they would get a lot less." + +"They certainly would," Abbott drawled. "You have been, and are now, +paying more for blueback salmon than any buyer on the Gulf." + +"Well, it has paid me. And it has been highly profitable to you, hasn't +it?" MacRae said. "You've had a hundred thousand salmon to pack which +you would not otherwise have had." + +"Certainly," Stubby agreed. "I'm not questioning your logic. In this +case it has paid us both, and the fisherman as well. But suppose +everybody did it?" + +"If you can pay sixty cents a fish, and fifteen per cent, on top of that +and pack profitably, why can't other canneries? Why can't Folly Bay meet +that competition? Rather, why won't they?" + +"Matter of policy, maybe," Stubby hazarded. "Matter of keeping costs +down. Apart from a few little fresh-fish buyers, you are the only +operator on the Gulf who is cutting any particular ice. Gower may figure +that he will eventually get these fish at his own price. If I were +eliminated, he would." + +"I'd still be on the job," MacRae ventured. + +"Would you, though?" Stubby asked doubtfully. + +"Yes." MacRae made his reply positive in tone. "You could buy all +right. That Squitty Island bunch of trollers seem convinced you are the +whole noise in the salmon line. But without Crow Harbor where could you +unload such quantities of fish?" + +It struck MacRae that there was something more than mere casual +speculation in Stubby's words. But he did not attempt to delve into +motives. + +"A good general," he said with a dry smile, "doesn't advertise his plan +of campaign in advance. Without Crow Harbor as a market I could not have +done what I have done this season. But Crow Harbor could shut down +to-morrow--and I'd go on just the same." + +Stubby poked thoughtfully with a pencil at the blotter on his desk. + +"Well, Jack, I may as well be quite frank with you," he said at last. "I +have had hints that may mean something. The big run will be over at +Squitty in another month. I don't believe I can be dictated to on short +notice. But I cannot positively say. If you can see your way to carry +on, it will be quite a relief to me. Another season it may be +different." + +"I think I can." + +But though MacRae said this confidently, he was privately not so sure. +From the very beginning he had expected pressure to come on Stubby, as +the active head of Crow Harbor. It was as Stubby said. Unless +he--MacRae--had a market for his fish, he could not buy. And within the +limits of British Columbia the salmon market was subject to control; by +just what means MacRae had got inklings here and there. He had not been +deceived by the smoothness of his operations so far. Below the clear +horizon there was a storm gathering. A man like Gower did not lie down +and submit passively to being beaten at his own game. + +But MacRae believed he had gone too far to be stopped now, even if his +tactics did not please the cannery interests. They could have squelched +him easily enough in the beginning, when he had no funds to speak of, +when his capital was mostly a capacity for hard, dirty work and a +willingness to take chances. Already he had run his original shoestring +to fifteen thousand dollars cash in hand. It scarcely seemed possible. +It gave him a startling vision of the profits in the salmon industry, +and it was not a tenable theory that men who had controlled such a +source of profits would sit idle while he undermined their monopoly. +Nevertheless he had made that much money in four months. He had at his +back a hundred fishermen who knew him, liked him, trusted him, who were +anxious that he should prosper, because they felt that they were sharing +in that prosperity. Ninety per cent. of these men had a grievance +against the canneries. And he had the good will of these men with +sun-browned faces and hook-scarred hands. The human equation in +industrial processes is a highly important one, as older, wiser men than +Jack MacRae had been a longer time discovering. + +He did not try to pin Stubby to a more definite statement. A hint was +enough for MacRae. Stubby Abbott could also be depended upon to see +things beyond the horizon. If a storm broke Stubby was the most +vulnerable, because in a sense he was involved with the cannery +interests in general, and they would consider him an apostate and knife +him without mercy,--if they could. If the Abbott estate had debts, +obligations which could be manipulated, if through the financial +convolutions of marketing the Crow Harbor pack Stubby could be reached, +the Abbott family had property, a standard of living that stood for +comfort, appearance, luxury almost. There are always plenty of roads +open to a flank attack on people like that; many levers, financial and +otherwise, can be pulled for or against them. + +So MacRae, knowing that Stubby must protect himself in a showdown, set +about fortifying his own approaches. + +For a first move he hired an engineer, put Steve Ferrara in charge of +the _Blackbird_, and started him back to Squitty. Then MacRae took the +next train to Bellingham, a cannery town which looks out on the southern +end of the Gulf of Georgia from the American side of the boundary. He +extended his journey to Seattle. Altogether, he was gone three days. + +When he came back he made a series of calls,--at the Vancouver offices +of three different canneries and one of the biggest cold-storage +concerns on the Pacific Coast. He got a courteous but unsatisfactory +reception from the cannery men. He fared a little better with the +manager of the cold-storage plant. This gentleman was tentatively +agreeable in the matter of purchasing salmon, but rather vague in the +way of terms. + +"Beginning with May next I can deliver any quantity up to two thousand a +day, perhaps more, for a period of about four months," MacRae stated. +"What I should like to know is the percentage over the up-coast price +you would pay." + +But he could not pin the man down to anything definite. He would only +speak pleasantly of the market and possible arrangements, utter vague +commonplaces in business terminology. MacRae rose. + +"I'm wasting your time and my own," he said. "You don't want my fish. +Why not say so?" + +"We always want fish," the man declared, bending a shrewdly appraising +eye on MacRae. "Bring in the salmon and we will do business." + +"On your own terms when my carriers are tied to your dock with a +capacity load which I must sell or throw overboard within forty-eight +hours," MacRae smiled. "No, I don't intend to go up against any +take-it-or-leave proposition like that. I don't have to." + +"Well, we might allow you five per cent. That's about the usual thing on +salmon. And we would rather have salmon now than a promise of them next +season." + +"Oh, rats!" MacRae snorted. "I'm in the business to make money--not +simply to create dividends for your Eastern stockholders while I eke out +a living and take all the risks. Come again." + +The cold storage man smiled. + +"Come and see me in the spring. Meantime, when you have a cargo of +salmon, you might run them in to us. We'll pay market prices. It's up to +you to protect yourself in the buying." + +MacRae went on about his business. He had not expected much +encouragement locally, so he did not suffer disappointment. He knew +quite well what he could expect in Vancouver if Crow Harbor canceled his +contract. He would bring in boatloads of salmon, and the dealers would +squeeze him, all but the Terminal Fish Company. And if the market could +be controlled, if the men behind could dictate the Crow Harbor policy, +they might also bring the Terminal into line. Even if they did not the +Terminal could only handle a minor portion of the salmon he could get +while the big run swirled around Squitty Island. + +But MacRae was not downcast. He was only sober and thoughtful, which had +become characteristic of him in the last four months. He was forgetting +how to laugh, to be buoyant, to see the world through the rose-colored +glasses of sanguine youth. He was becoming a living exampler of his +nickname. Even Stubby Abbott marked this when Jack came back from +Bellingham. + +"Come on out to the house," Stubby urged. "Your men can handle the job a +day or two longer. Forget the grind for once. It's getting you." + +"No, I don't think it is," MacRae denied. "But a man can't play and +produce at the same time. I have to keep going." + +He did go out to Abbott's one evening, however, and suffered a good deal +of teasing from Nelly over his manhandling of Sam Kaye. A lot of other +young people happened to foregather there. They sang and flirted and +presently moved the rugs off the living-room floor and danced to a +phonograph. MacRae found himself a little out of it, by inclination. He +was tired, without knowing quite what was the matter with him. A man, +even a young and sturdy man, cannot work like a horse for months on end, +eating his meals anyhow and sleeping when he can, without losing +temporarily the zest for careless fun. For another thing, he found +himself looking at these immaculate young people as any hard-driven +worker must perforce look upon drones. + +They were sons and daughters of the well-to-do, divorced from all +uncouthness, with pretty manners and good clothes. They seemed serene in +the assurance--MacRae got this impression for the first time in his +social contact with them--that wearing good clothes, behaving well, +giving themselves whole-heartedly to having a good time, was the most +important and satisfying thing in the world. They moved in an atmosphere +of considering these things their due, a birthright, their natural and +proper condition of well-being. + +And MacRae found himself wondering what they gave or ever expected to +give in return for this pleasant security of mind and body. Some one had +to pay for it, the silks and georgettes and white flannels, furs and +strings of pearls and gold trinkets, the good food, the motor cars, and +the fun. + +He knew a little about every one he met that evening, for in Vancouver +as in any other community which has developed a social life beyond the +purely primitive stages of association, people gravitate into sets and +cliques. They lived in good homes, they had servants, they week-ended +here and there. Of the dozen or more young men and women present, only +himself and Stubby Abbott made any pretense at work. + +Yet somebody paid for all they had and did. Men in offices, in shops, in +fishing boats and mines and logging camps worked and sweated to pay for +all this well-being in which they could have no part. MacRae even +suspected that a great many men had died across the sea that this sort +of thing should remain the inviolate privilege of just such people as +these. It was not an inspiring conclusion. + +He smiled to himself. How they would stare if he should voice these +stray thoughts in plain English. They would cry out that he was a +Bolshevik. Absolutely! He wondered why he should think such things. He +wasn't disgruntled. He wanted a great many things which these young +people of his own age had gotten from fairy godmothers,--in the shape of +pioneer parents who had skimmed the cream off the resources of a +developing frontier and handed it on to their children, and who +themselves so frequently kept in the background, a little in awe of +their gilded offspring. MacRae meant to beat the game as it was being +played. He felt that he was beating it. But nothing would be handed him +on a silver salver. Fortune would not be bestowed upon him in any easy, +soft-handed fashion. He would have to render an equivalent for what he +got. He wondered if the security of success so gained would have any +greater value for him than it would have for those who took their +blessings so lightly. + +This kink of analytical reasoning was new to MacRae, and it kept him +from entering whole-heartedly into the joyous frivolity which functioned +in the Abbott home that evening. He had never found himself in that +critical mood before. He did not want to prattle nonsense. He did not +want to think, and he could not help thinking. He had a curious sense of +detachment from what was going on, even while he was a part of it. So he +did not linger late. + +The _Blackbird_ had discharged at Crow Harbor late in the afternoon. She +lay now at a Vancouver slip. By eleven o'clock he was aboard in his +bunk, still thinking when he should have been asleep, staring wide-eyed +at dim deck beams, his mind flitting restlessly from one thing to +another. Steve Ferrara lay in the opposite bunk, wheezing his breath in +and out of lungs seared by poison gas in Flanders. Smells of seaweed and +tide-flat wafted in through open hatch and portholes. A full moon thrust +silver fingers through deck openings. Gradually the softened medley of +harbor noises lulled MacRae into a dreamless sleep. He only wakened at +the clank of the engine and the shudder of the _Blackbird's_ timbers as +Steve backed her out of her berth in the first faint gleam of dawn. + +The _Blackbird_ made her trip and a second and a third, which brought +the date late in August. On his delivery, when the salmon in her hold +had been picarooned to the cannery floor, MacRae went up to the office. +Stubby had sent for him. He looked uncomfortable when Jack came in. + +"What's on your mind now?" MacRae asked genially. + +"Something damned unpleasant," Stubby growled. + +"Shoot," MacRae said. He sat down and lit a cigarette. + +"I didn't think they could do it," Abbott said slowly. "But it seems +they can. I guess you'll have to lay off the Gower territory after all, +Jack." + +"You mean _you_ will," MacRae replied. "I've been rather expecting that. +Can Gower hurt you?" + +"Not personally. But the banks--export control--there are so many angles +to the cannery situation. There's nothing openly threatened. But it has +been made perfectly clear to me that I'll be hampered and harassed till +I won't know whether I'm afoot or on horseback, if I go on paying a few +cents more for salmon in order to keep my plant working efficiently. +Damn it, I hate it. But I'm in no position to clash with the rest of the +cannery crowd and the banks too. I hate to let you down. You've pulled +me out of a hole. I don't know a man who would have worked at your pitch +and carried things off the way you have. If I had this pack marketed, I +could snap my fingers at them. But I haven't. There's the rub. I hate to +ditch you in order to insure myself--get in line at somebody else's +dictation." + +"Don't worry about me," MacRae said gently. "I have no cannery and no +pack to market through the regular channels. Nor has the bank advanced +me any funds. You are not responsible for what I do. And neither Gower +nor the Packers' Association nor the banks can stop me from buying +salmon so long as I have the money to pay the fishermen and carriers to +haul them, can they?" + +"No, but the devil of it is they can stop you _selling_," Stubby +lamented bitterly. "I tell you there isn't a cannery on the Gulf will +pay you a cent more than they pay the fishermen. What's the use of +buying if you can't sell?" + +MacRae did not attempt to answer that. + +"Let's sum it up," he said. "You can't take any more bluebacks from +Gower's territory. That, I gather, is the chief object. I suppose they +know as much about your business as you know yourself. Am I to be +deprived of the two boat charters into the bargain?" + +"No, by the Lord," Stubby swore. "Not if you want them. My general +policy may be subject to dictation, but not the petty details of my +business. There's a limit. I won't stand for that." + +"Put a fair price on the _Birds_, and I'll buy 'em both," MacRae +suggested. "You had them up for sale, anyway. That will let you out, so +far as my equipment is concerned." + +"Five thousand each," Stubby said promptly. + +"They're good value at that. And I can use ten thousand dollars to +advantage, right now." + +"I'll give you a check. I want the registry transferred to me at once," +MacRae continued. "That done, you can cease worrying over me, Stub. +You've been square, and I've made money on the deal. You would be +foolish to fight unless you have a fighting chance. Oh, another thing. +Will the Terminal shut off on me, too?" + +"No," Stubby declared. "The Terminal is one of the weapons I intend +ultimately to use as a club on the heads of this group of gentlemen who +want to make a close corporation of the salmon industry on the British +Columbia coast. If I get by this season, I shall be in shape to show +them something. They will not bother about the Terminal, because the +Terminal is small. All the salmon they could take from you wouldn't hurt +Gower. What they want is to enable Gower to get up his usual fall pack. +It has taken him this long to get things shaped so he could call me off. +He can't reach a local concern like the Terminal. No, the Terminal will +continue to buy salmon from you, Jack. But you know they haven't the +facilities to handle a fourth of the salmon you have been running +lately." + +"I'll see they get whatever they can use," MacRae declared. "And if it +is any satisfaction to you personally, Stub, I can assure you that I +shall continue to do business as usual." + +Stubby looked curious. + +"You've got something up your sleeve?" + +"Yes," MacRae admitted. "No stuffed club, either. It's loaded. You wait +and keep your ears open." + +MacRae's face twisted into a mirthless smile. His eyes glowed with the +fire that always blazed up in them when he thought too intensely of +Horace Gower and the past, or of Gower's various shifts to defeat him in +what he undertook. He had anticipated this move. He was angrily +determined that Gower should not get one more salmon, or buy what he got +a cent cheaper, by this latest strategy. + +"You appear to like old Horace," Stubby said thoughtfully, "about as +much as our fellows used to like Fritz when he dropped high explosives +on supposedly bomb-proof shelters." + +"Just about as much," MacRae said shortly. "Well, you'll transfer that +registry--when? I want to get back to Squitty as soon as possible." + +"I'll go to town with you now, if you like," Stubby offered. + +They acted on that. Within two hours MacRae was the owner of two motor +launches under British registry. Payment in full left him roughly with +five thousand dollars working capital, enough by only a narrow margin. +At sunset Vancouver was a smoky smudge on a far horizon. At dusk he +passed in the narrow mouth of Squitty Cove. The _Bluebird_ was swinging +about to go when her sister ship ranged alongside. Vincent Ferrara +dropped his hook again. There were forty trollers in the Cove. MacRae +called to them. They came in skiffs and dinghys, and when they were all +about his stern and some perched in sea boots along the _Blackbird's_ +low bulwarks, MacRae said what he had to say. + +"Gower has come alive. My market for fish bought in Gower's territory is +closed, so far as Crow Harbor is concerned. If I can't sell salmon I +can't buy them from you. How much do you think Folly Bay will pay for +your fish?" + +He waited a minute. The fishermen looked at him in the yellow lantern +light, at each other. They shifted uneasily. No one answered his +question. + +MacRae went on. + +"You can guess what will happen. You will be losers. So will I. I don't +like the idea of being frozen out of the salmon-buying business, now +that I have got my hand in. I don't intend to be. As long as I can +handle a load of salmon I'll make the run. But I've got to run them +farther, and you fellows will have to wait a bit for me now and then, +perhaps. The cannery men hang together. They are making it bad for me +because I'm paying a few cents more for salmon. They have choked off +Crow Harbor. Gower is hungry for cheap salmon. He'll get them, too, if +you let him head off outside buyers. Since I'm the only buyer covering +these grounds, it's up to you, more than ever, to see that I keep +coming. That's all. Tell the rest of the fishermen what I say whenever +you happen to run across them." + +They became articulate. They plied MacRae with questions. He answered +tersely, as truthfully as he could. They cursed Folly Bay and the +canneries in general. But they were not downcast. They did not seem +apprehensive that Folly Bay would get salmon for forty cents. MacRae had +said he would still buy. For them that settled it. They would not have +to sell their catch to Folly Bay for whatever price Gower cared to set. +Presently they began to drift away to their boats, to bed, for their +work began in that gray hour between dawn and sunrise when the schooling +salmon best strike the trolling spoon. + +One lingered, a returned soldier named Mullen, who had got his discharge +in May and gone fishing. Mullen had seen two years in the trenches. He +sat in his skiff, scowling up at MacRae, talking about the salmon +packers, about fishing. + +"Aw, it's the same everywhere," he said cynically. "They all want a +cinch, easy money, big money. Looks like the more you have, the more you +can grab. Folly Bay made barrels of coin while the war was on. Why can't +they give us fellers a show to make a little now? But they don't give a +damn, so long as they get theirs. And then they wonder why some of us +guys that went to France holler about the way we find things when we +come home." + +He pushed his skiff away into the gloom that rested upon the Cove. + +The _Bluebird_ was packed with salmon to her hatch covers. There had +been a fresh run. The trollers were averaging fifty fish to a man daily. +MacRae put Vincent Ferrara aboard the _Blackbird_, himself took over the +loaded vessel, and within the hour was clear of Squitty's dusky +headlands, pointing a course straight down the middle of the Gulf. His +man turned in to sleep. MacRae stood watch alone, listening to the +ka-_choof_, ka-_choof_ of the exhaust, the murmuring swash of calm water +cleft by the _Bluebird's_ stem. Away to starboard the Ballenas light +winked and blinked its flaming eye to seafaring men as it had done in +his father's time. Miles to port the Sand Heads lightship swung to its +great hawsers off the Fraser River shoals. + +MacRae smiled contentedly. There was a long run ahead. But he felt that +he had beaten Gower in this first definite brush. Moving in devious +channels to a given end Gower had closed the natural markets to MacRae. + +But there was no law against the export of raw salmon to a foreign +country. MacRae could afford to smile. Over in Bellingham there were +salmon packers who, like Folly Bay, were hungry for fish to feed their +great machines. But--unlike Folly Bay--they were willing to pay the +price, any price in reason, for a supply of salmon. Their own carriers +later in the season would invade Canadian waters, so many thorns in the +ample sides of the British Columbia packers. "The damned Americans!" +they sometimes growled, and talked about legislation to keep American +fish buyers out. Because the American buyer and canner alike would spend +a dollar to make a dollar. And the British Columbia packers wanted a +cinch, a monopoly, which in a measure they had. They were an +anachronism, MacRae felt. They regarded the salmon and the salmon waters +of the British Columbia coast as the feudal barons of old jealously +regarded their special prerogatives. MacRae could see them growling and +grumbling, he could see most clearly the scowl that would spread over +the face of Mr. Horace A. Gower, when he learned that ten to twenty +thousand Squitty Island salmon were passing down the Gulf each week to +an American cannery; that a smooth-faced boy out of the Air Service was +putting a crimp in the ancient order of things so far as one particular +cannery was concerned. + +This notion amused MacRae, served to while away the hours of monotonous +plowing over an unruffled sea, until he drove down abreast the Fraser +River's mouth and passed in among the nets and lights of the sockeye +fleet drifting, a thousand strong, on the broad bosom of the Gulf. Then +he had to stand up to his steering wheel and keep a sharp lookout, lest +he foul his propellor in a net or cut down some careless fisherman who +did not show a riding light. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +Peril of the Sea + + +The last of August set the Red Flower of the Jungle books blooming along +the British Columbia coast. The seeds of it were scattered on hot, dry, +still days by pipe and cigarette, by sparks from donkey engines, by +untended camp fires, wherever the careless white man went in the great +coastwise forests. The woods were like a tinder box. One unguarded +moment, and the ancient firs were wrapped in sheets of flame. Smoke lay +on the Gulf like a pall of pungent fog, through which vessels ran by +chart and compass, blind between ports, at imminent risk of collision. + +Through this, well on into September, MacRae and Vincent Ferrara +gathered cargoes of salmon and ran them down the Gulf to Bellingham, +making their trips with the regularity of the tides, despite the murk +that hid landmarks by day and obscured the guiding lighthouse flashes +when dark closed in. They took their chances in the path of coastwise +traffic, straining their eyes for vessels to leap suddenly out of the +thickness that shut them in, their ears for fog signals that blared +warning. There were close shaves, but they escaped disaster. They got +the salmon and they delivered them, and Folly Bay still ran a bad second +wherever the _Bird_ boats served the trolling fleet. Even when Gower at +last met MacRae's price, his collectors got few fish. The fishermen took +no chances. They were convinced that if MacRae abandoned buying for +lack of salmon Folly Bay would cut the price in two. It had been done +before. So they held their fish for the _Bird_ boats. MacRae got them +all. Even when American buyers trailed MacRae to the source of his +supply their competition hurt Gower instead of MacRae. The trollers +supplied MacRae with all the salmon he could carry. It was still fresh +in their minds that he had come into the field that season as their +special Providence. + +But the blueback run tapered off at Squitty. September ushered in the +annual coho run on its way to the spawning grounds. And the coho did not +school along island shores, feeding upon tiny herring. Stray squadrons +of coho might pass Squitty, but they did not linger in thousands as the +blueback did. The coho swept into the Gulf from mysterious haunts in +blue water far offshore, myriads of silver fish seeking the streams +where they were spawned, and to which as mature fish they now returned +to reproduce themselves. They came in great schools. They would loaf +awhile in some bay at a stream mouth, until some irresistible urge drove +them into fresh water, up rivers and creeks, over shoal and rapid, +through pool and canyon, until the stream ran out to a whimpering +trickle and the backs of the salmon stuck out of the water. Up there, in +the shadow of great mountains, in the hidden places of the Coast range, +those that escaped their natural enemies would spawn and die. + +While the coho and the humpback, which came about the same time, and the +dog salmon, which comes last of all--but each to function in the same +manner and sequence--laid in the salt-water bays, resting, it would +seem, before the last and most terrible struggle of their brief +existence, the gill-net fishermen and the cannery purse-seine boats took +toll of them. The trollers harried them from the moment they showed in +the Gulf, because the coho will strike at a glittering spoon anywhere in +salt water. But the net boats take them in hundreds at one drift, and +the purse seiners gather thousands at a time in a single sweep of the +great bag-like seine. + +When September days brought the cohoes in full force along with cooler +nights and a great burst of rain that drowned the forest fires and +cleared away the enshrouding smoke, leaving only the pleasant haze of +autumn, the Folly Bay purse-seine boats went out to work. The trolling +fleet scattered from Squitty Island. Some steamed north to the troubled +waters of Salmon River and Blackfish Sound, some to the Redondas where +spring salmon could be taken. Many put by their trolling gear and hung +their gill nets. A few gas boats and a few rowboat men held to the +Island, depending upon stray schools and the spring salmon that haunted +certain reefs and points and beds of kelp. But the main fleet scattered +over two hundred miles of sea. + +MacRae could have called it a season and quit with honor and much +profit. Or he might have gone north and bought salmon here and there, +free-lancing. He did neither. There were enough gill-netters operating +on Gower's territory to give him fair cargoes. Every salmon he could +divert from the cans at Folly Bay meant,--well, he did not often stop to +ask precisely what that did mean to him. But he never passed Poor Man's +Rock, bleak and brown at low tide, or with seas hissing over it when the +tide was at flood, without thinking of his father, of the days and +months and years old Donald MacRae had lived and worked in sight of the +Rock,--a life at the last lonely and cheerless and embittered by the +sight of his ancient enemy preening his feathers in Cradle Bay. Old +Donald had lived for thirty years unable to return a blow which had +scarred his face and his heart in the same instant. But his son felt +that he was making better headway. It is unlikely that Donald MacRae +ever looked at Gower's cottage nestling like a snowflake in the green +lee of Point Old, or cast his eyes over that lost estate of his, with +more unchristian feelings than did his son. In Jack MacRae's mind the +Golden Rule did not apply to Horace Gower, nor to aught in which Gower +was concerned. + +So he stayed on Folly Bay territory with a dual purpose: to make money +for himself, and to deprive Gower of profit where he could. He was wise +enough to know that was the only way he could hurt a man like Gower. And +he wanted to hurt Gower. The intensity of that desire grew. It was a +point of honor, the old inborn clan pride that never compromised an +injury or an insult or an injustice, which neither forgave nor forgot. + +For weeks MacRae in the _Blackbird_ and Vin Ferrara in her sister ship +flitted here and there. The purse seiners hunted the schooling salmon, +the cohoes and humps. The gill-netters hung on the seiner's heels, +because where the purse seine could get a haul so could they. And the +carriers and buyers sought the fishermen wherever they went, to buy and +carry away their catch. + +Folly Bay suffered bad luck from the beginning. Gower had four +purse-seine boats in commission. Within a week one broke a crankshaft in +half a gale off Sangster Island. The wind put her ashore under the nose +of the sandstone Elephant and the seas destroyed her. + +Fire gutted a second not long after, so that for weeks she was laid up +for repairs. That left him but two efficient craft. One operated on his +concessions along the mainland shore. The other worked three stream +mouths on Vancouver Island, straight across from Folly Bay. + +Still, Gower's cannery was getting salmon. In those three bays no other +purse seiner could shoot his gear. Folly Bay held them under exclusive +license. Gill nets could be drifted there, but the purse seiner was +king. + +A gill net goes out over a boat's stern. When it is strung it stands in +the sea like a tennis net across a court, a web nine hundred feet long, +twenty feet deep, its upper edge held afloat by corks, its lower sunk by +lead weights spaced close together. The outer end is buoyed to a float +which carries a flag and a lantern; the inner is fast to the bitts of +the launch. Thus set, and set in the evening, since salmon can only be +taken by the gills in the dark, fisherman, launch, and net drift with +the changing tides till dawn. Then he hauls. He may have ten salmon, or +a hundred, or treble that. He may have none, and the web be torn by +sharks and fouled heavy with worthless dogfish. + +The purse seiner works in daylight, off a powerfully engined sixty-foot, +thirty-ton craft. He pays the seine out over a roller on a revolving +platform aft. His vessel moves slowly in a sweeping circle as the net +goes out,--a circle perhaps a thousand feet in diameter. When the circle +is complete the two ends of the net meet at the seiner's stern. A power +winch hauls on ropes and the net closes. Nothing escapes. It draws +together until it is a bag, a "purse" drawn up under the vessel's +counter, full of glistening fish. + +The salmon is a surface fish, his average depth seldom below four +fathoms. He breaks water when he feeds, when he plays, when he runs in +schools. The purse seiner watches the signs. When the salmon rise in +numbers he makes a set. To shoot the gear and purse the seine is a +matter of minutes. A thousand salmon at a haul is nothing. Three +thousand is common. Five thousand is far below the record. Purse seines +have been burst by the dead weight of fish against the pull of the +winch. + +The purse seine is a deadly trap for schooling salmon. And because the +salmon schools in mass formation, crowding nose to tail and side to +side, in the entrance to a fresh-water stream, the Fisheries Department +having granted a monopoly of seining rights to a packer has also +benevolently decreed that no purse seine or other net shall operate +within a given distance of a stream mouth,--that the salmon, having won +to fresh water, shall go free and his kind be saved from utter +extinction. + +These regulations are not drawn for sentimental reasons, only to +preserve the salmon industry. The farmer saves wheat for his next year's +seeding, instead of selling the last bushel to the millers. No man +willfully kills the goose that lays him golden eggs. But the salmon +hunter, eagerly pursuing the nimble dollar, sometimes grows rapacious in +the chase and breaks laws of his own devising,--if a big haul promises +and no Fisheries Inspector is by to restrain him. The cannery purse +seiners are the most frequent offenders. They can make their haul +quickly in forbidden waters and get away. Folly Bay, shrewdly paying its +seine crews a bonus per fish on top of wages, had always been notorious +for crowding the law. + +Solomon River takes its rise in the mountainous backbone of Vancouver +Island. It is a wide, placid stream on its lower reaches, flowing +through low, timbered regions, emptying into the Gulf in a half-moon bay +called the Jew's Mouth, which is a perfect shelter from the Gulf storms +and the only such shelter in thirty miles of bouldery shore line. The +beach runs northwest and southeast, bleak and open, undented. In all +that stretch there is no point from behind which a Fisheries Patrol +launch could steal unexpectedly into the Jew's Mouth. + +Upon a certain afternoon the _Blackbird_ lay therein. At her stern, fast +by light lines to her after bitts, clung half a dozen fish boats, blue +wisps of smoke drifting from the galley stovepipes, the fishermen +variously occupied. The _Blackbird's_ hold was empty except for ice. She +was waiting for fish, and the _Bluebird_ was due on the same errand the +following day. + +Nearer shore another cluster of gill-netters was anchored, a Jap or two, +and a Siwash Indian with his hull painted a gaudy blue. And in the +middle of the Jew's Mouth, which was a scant six hundred yards across at +its widest, the _Folly Bay No. 5_ swung on her anchor chain. A tubby +cannery tender lay alongside. The crews were busy with picaroons forking +salmon out of the seiner into the tender's hold. The flip-flop of the +fish sounded distinctly in that quiet place. Their silver bodies flashed +in the sun as they were thrown across the decks. + +When the tender drew clear and passed out of the bay she rode deep with +the weight of salmon aboard. Without the Jew's Mouth, around the +_Blackbird_ and the fish boats and the _No. 5_ the salmon were threshing +water. _Klop._ A flash of silver. Bubbles. A series of concentric rings +that ran away in ripples, till they merged into other widening rings. +They were everywhere. The river was full of them. The bay was alive with +them. + +A boat put off from the seiner. The man rowed out of the Jew's Mouth and +stopped, resting on his oars. He remained there, in approximately the +same position. A sentry. + +The _No. 5_ heaved anchor, the chain clanking and chattering in a +hawsepipe. Her exhaust spat smoky, gaseous fumes. A bell clanged. She +moved slowly ahead, toward the river's mouth, a hundred yards to one +side of it. Then the brown web of the seine began to spin out over the +stern. She crossed the mouth of the Solomon, holding as close in as her +draft permitted, and kept on straight till her seine was paid out to the +end. Then she stopped, lying still in dead water with her engine idling. + +The tide was on the flood. Salmon run streams on a rising tide. And the +seine stood like a wall across the river's mouth. + +Every man watching knew what the seiner was about, in defiance of the +law. The salmon, nosing into the stream, driven by that imperative urge +which is the law of their being, struck the net, turned aside, swam in a +slow circle and tried again and again, seeking free passage, until +thousands of them were massed behind the barrier of the net. Then the +_No. 5_ would close the net, tauten the ropes which made it a purse, and +haul out into deep water. + +It was the equivalent of piracy on the high seas. To be taken in the act +meant fines, imprisonment, confiscation of boat and gear. But the _No. +5_ would not be caught. She had a guard posted. Cannery seiners were +never caught. When they were they got off with a warning and a +reprimand. Only gill-netters, the small fry of the salmon industry, ever +paid the utmost penalty for raids like that. So the fishermen said, with +a cynical twist of their lips. + +"Look at 'em," one said to MacRae. "They make laws and break 'em +themselves. They been doin' that every day for a week. If one of us set +a piece of net in the river and took three hundred salmon the canners +would holler their heads off. There'd be a patrol boat on our heels all +the time if they thought we'd take a chance." + +"Well, I'm about ready to take a chance," another man growled. "They +clear the bay in daylight and all we get is their leavings at night." + +The _No. 5_ pursed her seine and hauled out until she was abreast of the +_Blackbird_. She drew close up to her massive hull a great heap of +salmon, struggling, twisting, squirming within the net. The loading +began. Her men laughed and shouted as they worked. The gill-net +fishermen watched silently, scowling. It was like taking bread out of +their mouths. It was like an honest man restrained by a policeman's club +from taking food when he is hungry, and seeing a thief fill his pockets +and walk off unmolested. + +"Four thousand salmon that shot," Dave Mullen said, the same Mullen who +had talked to MacRae in Squitty one night. "Say, why should we stand for +that? We can get salmon that way too." + +He spoke directly to MacRae. + +"What's sauce for the goose ought to be sauce for the gander," MacRae +replied. "I'll take the fish if you get them." + +"You aren't afraid of getting in wrong yourself?" the man asked him. + +MacRae shook his head. He did not lean to lawlessness. But the cannery +men had framed this law. They cried loudly and continually for its +strict enforcement. And they violated it flagrantly themselves, or +winked at its violation when that meant an added number of cases to +their pack. Not alone in the Jew's Mouth; all along the British Columbia +coast the purse seiners forgot the law when the salmon swarmed in a +stream mouth and they could make a killing. Only canneries could hold a +purse-seine license. If the big men would not honor their own law, why +should the lesser? So MacRae felt and said. + +The men in the half-dozen boats about his stern had dealt all the season +with MacRae. They trusted him. They neither liked nor trusted Folly Bay. +Folly Bay was not only breaking the law in the Jew's Mouth, but in +breaking the law they were making it hard for these men to earn a dollar +legitimately. Superior equipment, special privilege, cold-blooded +violation of law because it was safe and profitable, gave the purse +seiner an unfair advantage. The men gathered in a little knot on the +deck of one boat. They put their heads together and lowered their +voices. MacRae knew they were angry, that they had reached the point of +fighting fire with fire. And he smiled to himself. He did not know what +they were planning, but he could guess. It would not be the first time +the individual fishermen had kicked over the traces and beaten the purse +seiners at their own game. They did not include him in their council. He +was a buyer. It was not his function to inquire how they took their +fish. If they could take salmon which otherwise the _No. 5_ would take, +so much the worse for Folly Bay,--and so much the better for the +fishermen, who earned their living precariously at best. + +It was dusk when the purse seiner finished loading her catch and stowed +the great net in a dripping heap on the turntable aft. At daylight or +before, a cannery tender would empty her, and she would sweep the Jew's +Mouth bare of salmon again. + +With dusk also the fishermen were busy over their nets, still riding to +the _Blackbird's_ stern. Then they moved off in the dark. MacRae could +hear nets paying out. He saw lanterns set to mark the outer end of each +net. Silence fell on the bay. A single riding light glowed at the _No. +5's_ masthead. Her cabin lights blinked out. Her crew sprawled in their +bunks, sound asleep. + +Under cover of the night the fishermen took pattern from the seiner's +example. A gill net is nine hundred feet long, approximately twenty feet +deep. They stripped the cork floats off one and hung it to the lead-line +of another. Thus with a web forty feet deep they went stealthily up to +the mouth of the Solomon. With a four-oared skiff manning each end of +the nine hundred-foot length they swept their net around the Jew's +Mouth, closed it like a purse seine, and hauled it out into the shallows +of a small beach. They stood in the shallow water with sea boots on and +forked the salmon into their rowboats and laid the rowboats alongside +the _Blackbird_ to deliver,--all in the dark without a lantern flicker, +with muffled oarlocks and hushed voices. Three times they swept the bay. + +At five in the morning, before it was lightening in the east, the +_Blackbird_ rode four inches below her load water line with a mixed +cargo of coho and dog salmon, the heaviest cargo ever stowed under her +hatches,--and eight fishermen divided two thousand dollars share and +share alike for their night's work. + +MacRae battened his hatch covers, started his engine, heaved up the +hook, and hauled out of the bay. + +In the Gulf the obscuring clouds parted to lay a shaft of silver on +smooth, windless sea. The _Blackbird_ wallowed down the moon-trail. +MacRae stood at the steering wheel. Beside him Steve Ferrara leaned on +the low cabin. + +"She's getting day," Steve said, after a long silence. He chuckled. +"Some raid. If they can keep that lick up those boys will all have new +boats for next season. You'll break old Gower if you keep on, Jack." + +The thought warmed MacRae. To break Gower, to pull him down to where he +must struggle for a living like other common men, to deprive him of the +power he had abused, to make him suffer as such a man would suffer under +that turn of fortune,--that would help to square accounts. It would be +only a measure of justice. To be dealt with as he had dealt with +others,--MacRae asked no more than that for himself. + +But it was not likely, he reflected. One bad season would not seriously +involve a wary old bird like Horace Gower. He was too secure behind +manifold bulwarks. Still in the end,--more spectacular things had come +to pass in the affairs of men on this kaleidoscopic coast. MacRae's face +was hard in the moonlight. His eyes were somber. It was an ugly feeling +to nurse. For thirty years that sort of impotent bitterness must have +rankled in his father's breast--with just cause, MacRae told himself +moodily. No wonder old Donald had been a grave and silent man; a just, +kindly, generous man, too. Other men had liked him, respected him. Gower +alone had been implacable. + +Well into the red and yellow dawn MacRae stood at the wheel, thinking of +this, an absent look in eyes which still kept keen watch ahead. He was +glad when it came time for Steve's watch on deck, and he could lie down +and let sleep drive it out of his mind. He did not live solely to +revenge himself upon Horace Gower. He had his own way to make and his +own plans--even if they were still a bit nebulous--to fulfill. It was +only now and then that the past saddened him and made him bitter. + +The week following brought great runs of salmon to the Jew's Mouth. Of +these the _Folly Bay No. 5_ somehow failed to get the lion's share. The +gill-net men laughed in their soiled sleeves and furtively swept the bay +clear each night and all night, and the daytime haul of the seine fell +far below the average. The _Blackbird_ and the _Bluebird_ waddled down a +placid Gulf with all they could carry. + +And although there was big money-making in this short stretch, and the +secret satisfaction of helping put another spoke in Gower's wheel, +MacRae did not neglect the rest of his territory nor the few trollers +that still worked Squitty Island. He ran long hours to get their few +fish. It was their living, and MacRae would not pass them up because +their catch meant no profit compared to the time he spent and the fuel +he burned making this round. He would drive straight up the Gulf from +Bellingham to Squitty, circle the Island and then across to the mouth of +the Solomon. The weather was growing cool now. Salmon would keep +unspoiled a long time in a trailer's hold. It did not matter to him +whether it was day or night around Squitty. He drove his carrier into +any nook or hole where a troller might lie waiting with a few salmon. + +The _Blackbird_ came pitching and diving into a heavy southeast swell up +along the western side of Squitty at ten o'clock in the black of an +early October night. There was a storm brewing, a wicked one, reckoned +by the headlong drop of the aneroid. MacRae had a hundred or so salmon +aboard for all his Squitty round, and he had yet to pick up those on the +boats in the Cove. He cocked his eye at a cloud-wrack streaking above, +driving before a wind which had not yet dropped to the level of the +Gulf, and he said to himself that it would be wise to stay in the Cove +that night. A southeast gale, a beam sea, and the tiny opening of the +Jew's Mouth was a bad combination to face in a black night. As he stood +up along Squitty he could hear the swells break along the shore. Now and +then a cold puff of air, the forerunner of the big wind, struck him. +Driving full speed the _Blackbird_ dipped her bow deep in each sea and +rose dripping to the next. He passed Cradle Bay at last, almost under +the steep cliffs, holding in to round Poor Man's Rock and lay a compass +course to the mouth of Squitty Cove. + +And as he put his wheel over and swept around the Rock and came clear of +Point Old a shadowy thing topped by three lights in a red and green and +white triangle seemed to leap at him out of the darkness. The lights +showed, and under the lights white water hissing. MacRae threw his +weight on the wheel. He shouted to Steve Ferrara, lying on his bunk in +the little cabin aft. + +He knew the boat instantly,--the _Arrow_ shooting through the night at +twenty miles an hour, scurrying to shelter under the full thrust of her +tremendous power. For an appreciable instant her high bow loomed over +him, while his hands twisted the wheel. But the _Blackbird_ was heavy, +sluggish on her helm. She swung a little, from square across the rushing +_Arrow_, to a slight angle. Two seconds would have cleared him. By the +rules of the road at sea the _Blackbird_ had the right of way. If MacRae +had held by the book this speeding mass of mahogany and brass and steel +would have cut him in two amidships. As it was, her high bow, the stem +shod with a cast bronze cutwater edged like a knife, struck him on the +port quarter, sheared through guard, planking, cabin. + +There was a crash of riven timbers, the crunching ring of metal, quick +oaths, a cry. The _Arrow_ scarcely hesitated. She had cut away nearly +the entire stern works of the _Blackbird_. But such was her momentum +that the shock barely slowed her up. Her hull bumped the _Blackbird_ +aside. She passed on. She did not even stand by to see what she had +done. There was a sound of shouting on her decks, but she kept on. + +MacRae could have stepped aboard her as she brushed by. Her rail was +within reach of his hand. But that did not occur to him. Steve Ferrara +was asleep in the cabin, in the path of that destroying stem. For a +stunned moment MacRae stood as the _Arrow_ drew clear. The _Blackbird_ +began to settle under his feet. + +MacRae dived down the after companion. He went into water to his waist. +His hands, groping blindly, laid hold of clothing, a limp body. He +struggled back, up, gained the deck, dragging Steve after him. The +_Blackbird_ was deep by the holed stern now, awash to her after fish +hatch. She rose slowly, like a log, on each swell. Only the buoyancy of +her tanks and timbers kept her from the last plunge. There was a light +skiff bottom up across her hatches by the steering wheel. MacRae moved +warily toward that, holding to the bulwark with one hand, dragging Steve +with the other lest a sea sweep them both away. + +He noticed, with his brain functioning unruffled, that the _Arrow_ +drove headlong into Cradle Bay. He could hear her exhaust roaring. He +could still hear shouting. And he could see also that the wind and the +tide and the roll of the swells carried the water-logged hulk of the +_Blackbird_ in the opposite direction. She was past the Rock, but she +was edging shoreward, in under the granite walls that ran between Point +Old and the Cove. He steadied himself, keeping his hold on Steve, and +reached for the skiff. As his fingers touched it a comber flung itself +up out of the black and shot two feet of foam and green water across the +swamped hull. It picked up the light cedar skiff like a chip and cast it +beyond his reach and beyond his sight. And as he clung to the cabin +pipe-rail, drenched with the cold sea, he heard that big roller burst +against the shore very near at hand. He saw the white spray lift ghostly +in the black. + +MacRae held his hand over Steve's heart, over his mouth to feel if he +breathed. Then he got Steve's body between his legs to hold him from +slipping away, and bracing himself against the sodden lurch of the +wreck, began to take off his clothes. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +Between Sun and Sun + + +Walking when he could, crawling on hands and knees when his legs buckled +under him, MacRae left a blood-sprinkled trail over grass and moss and +fallen leaves. He lived over and over that few minutes which had seemed +so long, in which he had been battered against broken rocks, in which he +had clawed over weedy ledges armored with barnacles that cut like +knives, hauling Steve Ferrara's body with him so that it should not +become the plaything of the tides. MacRae was no stranger to death. He +had seen it in many terrible forms. He had heard the whistle of the +invisible scythe that cuts men down. He knew that Steve was dead when he +dragged him at last out of the surf, up where nothing but high-flung +drops of spray could reach him. He left him there on a mossy ledge, +knowing that he could do nothing more for Steve Ferrara and that he must +do something for himself. So he came at last to the end of that path +which led to his own house and crept and stumbled up the steps into the +deeper darkness of those hushed, lonely rooms. + +MacRae knew he had suffered no vital hurt, no broken bones. But he had +been fearfully buffeted among those sea-drenched rocks, bruised from +head to foot, shocked by successive blows. He had spent his strength to +keep the sea from claiming Steve. He had been unmercifully slashed by +the barnacles. He was weak from loss of blood, and he was bleeding yet, +in oozy streams,--face, hands, shoulders, knees, wherever those +lance-edged shells had raked his flesh. + +He was sick and dizzy. But he could still think and act. He felt his way +to matches on a kitchen shelf, staggered into his bedroom, lit a lamp. +Out of a dresser drawer he took clean white cloth, out of another +carbolic acid. He got himself a basin of water. + +He sat down on the edge of his bed. As he tore the first strip of linen +things began to swim before his eyes. He sagged back on a pillow. The +room and the lamp and all that was near him blended in a misty swirl. He +had the extraordinary sensation of floating lightly in space that was +quiet and profoundly dark--and still he was cloudily aware of footsteps +ringing hollow on the bare floor of the other room. + +He became aware--as if no interval had elapsed--of being moved, of hands +touching him, of a stinging sensation of pain which he understood to be +the smarting of the cuts in his flesh. But time must have gone winging +by, he knew, as his senses grew clearer. He was stripped of his sodden, +bloody undershirt and overalls, partly covered by his blanket. He could +feel bandages on his legs, on one badly slashed arm. He made out Betty +Gower's face with its unruly mass of reddish-brown hair and two rose +spots of color glowing on her smooth cheeks. There was also a tall young +man, coatless, showing a white expanse of flannel shirt with the sleeves +rolled above his elbows. MacRae could only see this out of one corner of +his eye, for he was being turned gently over on his face. Weak and +passive as he was, the firm pressure of Betty's soft hands on his skin +gave him a curiously pleasant sensation. + +He heard her draw her breath sharply and make some exclamation as his +bare back turned to the light. + +"This chap has been to the wars, eh, Miss Gower?" he heard the man say. +"Those are machine-gun marks, I should say--close range, too. I saw +plenty of that after the Argonne." + +"Such scars. How could a man live with holes like that through his +body?" Betty said. "He was in the air force." + +"Some Hun got in a burst of fire on him, sometime, then," the man +commented. "Didn't get him, either, or he wouldn't be here. Why, two or +three bullet holes like that would only put a fellow out for a few +weeks. Look at him," he tapped MacRae's back with a forefinger. +"Shoulders and chest and arms like a champion middle weight ready to go +twenty rounds. And you can bet all your pin money, Miss Gower, that this +man's heart and lungs and nerves are away above par or he would never +have got his wings. Takes a lot to down those fellows. Looks in bad +shape now, doesn't he? All cut and bruised and exhausted. But he'll be +walking about day after to-morrow. A little stiff and sore, but +otherwise well enough." + +"I wish he'd open his eyes and speak," Betty said. "How can you tell? He +may be injured internally." + +The man chuckled. He did not cease work as he talked. He was using a +damp cloth, with a pungent medicated smell. Dual odors familiar to every +man who has ever been in hospital assailed MacRae's nostrils. Wherever +that damp cloth touched a cut it burned. MacRae listened drowsily. He +had not the strength or the wish to do anything else. + +"Heart action's normal. Respiration and temperature, ditto," he heard +above him. "Unconsciousness is merely natural reaction from shock, +nerve strain, loss of blood. You can guess what sort of fight he must +have made in those breakers. If you were a sawbones, Miss Gower, you +wouldn't be uneasy. I'll stake my professional reputation on his +injuries being superficial. Quite enough to knock a man out, I grant. +But a physique of this sort can stand a tremendous amount of strain +without serious effect. Hand me that adhesive, will you, please?" + +There was an air of unreality about the whole proceeding in MacRae's +mind. He wondered if he would presently wake up in his bunk opposite +Steve and find that he had been dreaming. Yet those voices, and the +hands that shifted him tenderly, and the pyjama coat that was slipped on +him at last, were not the stuff of dreams. No, the lights of the +_Arrow_, the smash of the collision, the tumbling seas which had flung +him against the rocks, the dead weight of Steve's body in his bleeding +arms, were not illusions. + +He opened his eyes when they turned him on his back. + +"Well, old man, how do you feel?" Betty's companion asked genially. + +"All right," MacRae said briefly. He found that speech required effort. +His mind worked clearly enough, but his tongue was uncertain, his voice +low-pitched, husky. He turned his eyes on Betty. She tried to smile. But +her lips quivered in the attempt. MacRae looked at her curiously. But he +did not say anything. In the face of accomplished facts, words were +rather futile. + +He closed his eyes again, only to get a mental picture of the _Arrow_ +leaping at him out of the gloom, the thunder of the swells bursting +against the foot of the cliffs, of Steve lying on that ledge alone. But +nothing could harm Steve. Storm and cold and pain and loneliness were +nothing to him, now. + +He heard Betty speak. + +"Can we do anything more?" + +"Um--no," the man answered. "Not for some time, anyway." + +"Then I wish you would go back to the house and tell them," Betty said. +"They'll be worrying. I'll stay here." + +"I suppose it would be as well," he agreed. "I'll come back." + +"There's no need for either of you to stay here," MacRae said wearily. +"You've stopped the bleeding, and you can't do any more. Go home and go +to bed. I'm as well alone." + +There was a brief interval of silence. MacRae heard footsteps crossing +the floor, receding, going down the steps. He opened his eyes. Betty +Gower sat on a low box by his bed, her hands in her lap, looking at him +wistfully. She leaned a little toward him. + +"I'm awfully sorry," she whispered. + +"So was the little boy who cut off his sister's thumb with the hatchet," +MacRae muttered. "But that didn't help sister's thumb. If you'll run +down to old Peter Ferrara's house and tell him what has happened, and +then go home yourself, we'll call it square." + +"I have already done that," Betty said. "Dolly is away. The fishermen +are bringing Steve Ferrara's body to his uncle's house. They are going +to try to save what is left of your boat." + +"It is kind of you, I'm sure, to pick up the pieces," MacRae gibed. + +"I _am_ sorry," the girl breathed. + +"After the fact. Belting around a point in the dark at train speed, +regardless of the rules of the road. Destroying a valuable boat, killing +a man. Property is supposed to be sacred--if life has no market value. +Were you late for dinner?" + +In his anger he made a quick movement with his arms, flinging the +blanket off, sending intolerable pangs through his bruised and torn +body. + +Betty rose and bent over him, put the blanket back silently, tucked him +in like a mother settling the cover about a restless child. She did not +say anything for a minute. She stood over him, nervously plucking bits +of lint off the blanket. Her eyes grew wet. + +"I don't blame you for feeling that way," she said at last. "It was a +terrible thing. You had the right of way. I don't know why or how +Robertson let it happen. He has always been a careful navigator. The +nearness when he saw you under his bows must have paralyzed him, and +with our speed--oh, it isn't any use, I know, to tell you how sorry I +am. That won't bring that poor boy back to life again. It won't--" + +"You killed him--your kind of people--twice," MacRae said thickly. "Once +in France, where he risked his life--all he had to risk--so that you and +your kind should continue to have ease and security. He came home +wheezing and strangling, suffering all the pains of death without +death's relief. And when he was beginning to think he had another chance +you finish him off. But that's nothing. A mere incident. Why should you +care? The country is full of Ferraras. What do they matter? Men of no +social or financial standing, men who work with their hands and smell of +fish. If it's a shock to you to see one man dead and another cut and +bloody, think of the numbers that suffer as great pains and hardships +that you know nothing about--and wouldn't care if you did. You couldn't +be what you are and have what you have if they didn't. Sorry! Sympathy +is the cheapest thing in the market, cheaper than salmon. You can't help +Steve Ferrara with that--not now. Don't waste any on me. I don't need +it. I resent it. You may need it all for your own before I get through. +I--I am--" + +MacRae's voice trailed off into an incoherent murmur. He seemed to be +floating off into those dark shadowy spaces again. In reality he was +exhausted. A man with his veins half emptied of blood cannot get in a +passion without a speedy reaction. MacRae went off into an unconscious +state which gradually became transformed into natural, healthy sleep, +the deep slumber of utter exhaustion. + +At intervals thereafter he was hazily aware of some one beside him, of +soft hands that touched him. Once he wakened to find the room empty, the +lamp turned low. In the dim light and the hush the place seemed +unutterably desolate and forsaken, as if he were buried in a crypt. When +he listened he could hear the melancholy drone of the southeaster and +the rumble of the surf, two sounds that fitted well his mood. He felt a +strange relief when Betty came tiptoeing in from the kitchen. She bent +over him. MacRae closed his eyes and slept again. + +He awakened at last, alert, refreshed, free of that depression which had +rested so heavily on him. And he found that weariness had caught Betty +Gower in its overpowering grip. She had drawn her box seat up close +beside him. Her body had drooped until her arms rested on the side of +the bed, and her head rested on her arms. MacRae found one of his hands +caught tight in both hers. She was asleep, breathing lightly, regularly. +He twisted his stiffened neck to get a better look at her. He could +only see one side of her face, and that he studied a long time. Pretty +and piquant, still it was no doll's face. There was character in that +firm mouth and round chin. Betty had a beautiful skin. That had been +MacRae's first impression of her, the first time he saw her. And she had +a heavy mass of reddish-brown hair that shone in the sunlight with a +decided wave in it which always made it seem unruly, about to escape +from its conventional arrangement. + +MacRae made no attempt to free his hand. He was quite satisfied to let +it be. The touch of her warm flesh against his stirred him a little, +sent his mind straying off into strange channels. Queer that the first +woman to care for him when he crept wounded and shaken to the shelter of +his own roof should be the daughter of his enemy. For MacRae could not +otherwise regard Horace Gower. Anything short of that seemed treason to +the gray old man who had died in the next room, babbling of his son and +the west wind and some one he called Bessie. + +MacRae's eyes blurred unexpectedly. What a damned shame things had to be +the way they were. Behind this girl, who was in herself lovely and +desirable as a woman should be, loomed the pudgy figure of her father, +ruthless, vindictively unjust. Gower hadn't struck at him openly; but +that, MacRae believed, was merely for lack of suitable opening. + +But that did not keep Jack MacRae from thinking--what every normal man +begins to think, or rather to feel, soon or late--that he is incomplete, +insufficient, without some particular woman to love him, upon whom to +bestow love. It was like a revelation. He caught himself wishing that +Betty would wake up and smile at him, bend over him with a kiss. He +stared up at the shadowy roof beams, feeling the hot blood leap to his +face at the thought. There was an uncanny magic in the nearness of her, +a lure in the droop of her tired body. And MacRae struggled against that +seduction. Yet he could not deny that Betty Gower, innocently sleeping +with his hand fast in hers, filled him with visions and desires which +had never before focused with such intensity on any woman who had come +his way. Mysteriously she seemed absolved of all blame for being a +Gower, for any of the things the Gower clan had done to him and his, +even to the misfortune of that night which had cost a man his life. + +"It isn't _her_ fault," MacRae said to himself. "But, Lord, I wish she'd +kept away from here, if _this_ sort of thing is going to get me." + +What _this_ was he did not attempt to define. He did not admit that he +was hovering on the brink of loving Betty Gower--it seemed an incredible +thing for him to do--but was vividly aware that she had kindled an +incomprehensible fire in him, and he suspected, indeed he feared with a +fear that bordered on spiritual shrinking, that it would go on glowing +after she was gone. And she would go presently. This spontaneous rushing +to his aid was merely what a girl like that, with generous impulses and +quick sympathy, would do for any one in dire need. She would leave +behind her an inescapable longing, an emptiness, a memory of sweetly +disturbing visions. MacRae seemed to see with remarkable clarity and +sureness that he would be penalized for yielding to that bewitching +fancy. By what magic had she so suddenly made herself a shining figure +in a golden dream? Some necromancy of the spirit, invisible but +wonderfully potent? Or was it purely physical,--the soft reddish-brown +of her hair; her frank gray eyes, very like his own; the marvelous, +smooth clearness and coloring of her skin; her voice, that was given to +soft cadences? He did not know. No man ever quite knows what positive +qualities in a woman can make his heart leap. MacRae was no wiser than +most. But he was not prone to cherish illusions, to deceive himself. He +had imagination. That gave him a key to many things which escape a +sluggish mind. + +"Well," he said to himself at last, with a fatalistic humor, "if it +comes that way, it comes. If I am to be the goat, I shall be, and that's +all there is to it." + +Under his breath he cursed Horace Gower deeply and fervently, and he was +not conscious of anything incongruous in that. And then he lay very +thoughtful and a little sad, his eyes on the smooth curve of Betty's +cheek swept by long brown lashes, the corner of a red mouth made for +kissing. His fingers were warm in hers. He smiled sardonically at a +vagrant wish that they might remain there always. + +Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad. MacRae wondered if the +gods thus planned his destruction? + +A tremulous sigh warned him. He shut his eyes, feigned sleep. He felt +rather than saw Betty sit up with a start, release his hand. Then very +gently she moved that arm back under the blanket, reached across him and +patted the covers close about his body, stood looking down at him. + +And MacRae stirred, opened his eyes. + +"What time is it?" he asked. + +She looked at a wrist watch. "Four o'clock." She shivered. + +"You've been here all this time without a fire. You're chilled through. +Why didn't you go home? You should go now." + +"I have been sitting here dozing," she said. "I wasn't aware of the cold +until now. But there is wood and kindling in the kitchen, and I am going +to make a fire. Aren't you hungry?" + +"Starving," he said. "But there is nothing to eat in the house. It has +been empty for months." + +"There is tea," she said. "I saw some on a shelf. I'll make a cup of +that. It will be something warm, refreshing." + +MacRae listened to her at the kitchen stove. There was the clink of iron +lids, the smell of wood smoke, the pleasant crackle of the fire. +Presently she came in with two steaming cups. + +"I have a faint recollection of talking wild and large a while ago," +MacRae remarked. Indeed, it seemed hazy to him now. "Did I say anything +nasty?" + +"Yes," she replied frankly; "perhaps the sting of what you said lay in +its being partly true. A half truth is sometimes a deadly weapon. I +wonder if you do really hate us as much, as your manner implied--and +why?" + +"Us. Who?" MacRae asked. + +"My father and me," she put it bluntly. + +"What makes you think I do?" MacRae asked. "Because I have set up a +fierce competition in a business where your father has had a monopoly so +long that he thinks this part of the Gulf belongs to him? Because I +resent your running down one of my boats? Because I go about my affairs +in my own way, regardless of Gower interests?" + +"What do these things amount to?" Betty answered impatiently. "It's in +your manner, your attitude. Sometimes it even shows in your eyes. It +was there the morning I came across you sitting on Point Old, the day +after the armistice was signed. I've danced with you and seen you look +at me as if--as if," she laughed self-consciously, "you would like to +wring my neck. I have never done anything to create a dislike of that +sort. I have never been with you without being conscious that you were +repressing something, out of--well, courtesy, I suppose. There is a +peculiar tension about you whenever my father is mentioned. I'm not a +fool," she finished, "even if I happen to be one of what you might call +the idle rich. What is the cause of this bad blood?" + +"What does it matter?" MacRae parried. + +"There is something, then?" she persisted. + +MacRae turned his head away. He couldn't tell her. It was not wholly his +story to tell. How could he expect her to see it, to react to it as he +did? A matter involving her father and mother, and his father. It was +not a pretty tale. He might be influenced powerfully in a certain +direction by the account of it passed on by old Donald MacRae; he might +be stirred by the backwash of those old passions, but he could not lay +bare all that to any one--least of all to Betty Gower. And still MacRae, +for the moment, was torn between two desires. He retained the same +implacable resentment toward Gower, and he found himself wishing to set +Gower's daughter apart and outside the consequences of that ancient +feud. And that, he knew, was trying to reconcile the irreconcilable. It +couldn't be done. + +"Was the _Arrow_ holed in the crash?" + +Betty stood staring at him. She blinked. Her fingers began again that +nervous plucking at the blanket. But her face settled presently into +its normal composure and she answered evenly. + +"Rather badly up forward. She was settling fast when they beached her in +the Bay." + +"And then," she continued after a pause, "Doctor Wallis and I got ashore +as quickly as we could. We got a lantern and came along the cliffs. And +two of the men took our big lifeboat and rowed along near the shore. +They found the _Blackbird_ pounding on the rocks, and we found Steve +Ferrara where you left him. And we followed you here by the blood you +spattered along the way." + +A line from the Rhyme of the Three Sealers came into MacRae's mind as +befitting. But he was thinking of his father and not so much of himself +as he quoted: + + "'Sorrow is me, in a lonely sea, + And a sinful fight I fall.'" + +"I'm afraid I don't quite grasp that," Betty said. "Although I know +Kipling too, and could supply the rest of those verses. I'm afraid I +don't understand." + +"It isn't likely that you ever will," MacRae answered slowly. "It is not +necessary that you should." + +Their voices ceased. In the stillness the whistle of the wind and the +deep drone of the seas shattering themselves on the granite lifted a +dreary monotone. And presently a quick step sounded on the porch. Doctor +Wallis came hurriedly in. + +"Upon my soul," he said apologetically. "I ought to be shot, Miss +Grower. I got everybody calmed down over at the cottage and chased them +all to bed. Then I sat down in a soft chair before that cheerful fire in +your living room. And I didn't wake up for hours. You must be worn out." + +"That's quite all right," Betty assured him. "Don't be +conscience-stricken. Did mamma have hysterics?" + +Wallis grinned cheerfully. + +"Well, not quite," he drawled. "At any rate, all's quiet along the +Potomac now. How's the patient getting on?" + +"I'm O.K.," MacRae spoke for himself, "and much obliged to you both for +tinkering me up. Miss Gower ought to go home." + +"I think so myself," Wallis said. "I'll take her across the point. Then +I'll come back and have another look over you." + +"It isn't necessary," MacRae declared. "Barring a certain amount of +soreness I feel fit enough. I suppose I could get up and walk now if I +had to. Go home and go to bed, both of you." + +"Good night, or perhaps it would be better to say good morning." Betty +gave him her hand. "Pleasant dreams." + +It seemed to MacRae that there was a touch of reproach, a hint of the +sardonic in her tone and words. + +Then he was alone in the quiet house, with his thoughts for company, and +the distant noises of the storm muttering in the outer darkness. + +They were not particularly pleasant processes of thought. The sins of +the fathers shall be visited even unto the third and fourth generation. +Why, in the name of God, should they be, he asked himself? + +Betty Gower liked him. She had been trying to tell him so. MacRae felt +that. He did not question too closely the quality of the feeling for her +which had leaped up so unexpectedly. He was afraid to dig too deep. He +had got a glimpse of depths and eddies that night which if they did not +wholly frighten him, at least served to confuse him. They were like +flint and steel, himself and Betty Gower. They could not come together +without striking sparks. And a man may long to warm himself by fire, +MacRae reflected gloomily, but he shrinks from being burned. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +An Interlude + + +At daybreak Peter Ferrara came to the house. + +"How are you?" he asked. + +"Sore. Wobbly." MacRae had tried his legs and found them wanting. + +"It was a bad night all round, eh, lad?" Peter rumbled in his rough old +voice. "Some of the boys got a line on the _Blackbird_ and hauled what +was left of her around into the Cove. But she's a ruin. The engine went +to pieces while she was poundin' on the rocks. Steve lays in the house. +He looks peaceful--as if he was glad to be through." + +"I couldn't save him. It was done like that." MacRae snapped his +fingers. + +"I know," Old Peter said. "You're not to blame. Perhaps nobody is. Them +things happen. Manuel'll feel it. He's lost both sons now. But Steve's +better off. He'd 'a' died of consumption or something, slow an' painful. +His lungs was gone. I seen him set for weeks on the porch wheezin' after +he come home. He didn't get no pleasure livin'. He said once a bullet +would 'a' been mercy. No, don't worry about Steve. We all come to it +soon or late, John. It's never a pity for the old or the crippled to +die." + +"You old Spartan," MacRae muttered. + +"What's that?" Peter asked. But MacRae did not explain. He asked about +Dolly instead. + +"She was up to Potter's Landing. I sent for her and she's back," Peter +told him. "She'll be up to see you presently. There's no grub in the +house, is there? Can you eat? Well, take it easy, lad." + +An hour or so later Dolly Ferrara brought him a steaming breakfast on a +tray. She sat talking to him while he ate. + +"Gower will have to pay for the _Blackbird_, won't he?" she asked. "The +fishermen say so." + +"If he doesn't in one way he will another," MacRae answered +indifferently. "But that doesn't help Steve. The boat doesn't matter. +One can build boats. You can't bring a man back to life when he's dead." + +"If Steve could talk he'd say he didn't care," Dolly declared sadly. +"You know he wasn't getting much out of living, Jack. There was nothing +for him to look forward to but a few years of discomfort and +uncertainty. A man who has been strong and active rebels against dying +by inches. Steve told me--not so very long ago--that if something would +finish him off quickly he would be glad." + +If that had been Steve's wish, MacRae thought, then fate had hearkened +to him. He knew it was true. He had lived at elbows with Steve all +summer. Steve never complained. He was made of different stuff. It was +only a gloomy consolation, after all, to think of Steve as being better +off. MacRae knew how men cling to life, even when it has lost all its +savor. There is that imperative will-to-live which refuses to be denied. + +Dolly went away. After a time Wallis came over from the cottage at +Cradle Bay. He was a young and genial medico from Seattle, who had just +returned from service with the American forces overseas, and was +holidaying briefly before he took up private practice again. He had +very little more than a casual interest in MacRae, however, and he did +not stay long once he had satisfied himself that his patient had little +further need of professional services. And MacRae, who was weaker than +he expected to find himself, rested in his bed until late afternoon +brought bars of sunlight streaming through openings in the cloud bank +which still ran swift before the wind. + +Then he rose, dressed, made his way laboriously and painfully down to +the Cove's edge and took a brief look at the hull of the _Blackbird_ +sunk to her deck line, her rail and cabins broken and twisted. After +that he hailed a fisherman, engaged him to go across to Solomon River +and apprise the _Bluebird_. That accomplished he went back to the house. +Thereafter he spent days lying on his bed, resting in a big chair before +the fireplace while his wounds healed and his strength came back to him, +thinking, planning, chafing at inaction. + +There was a perfunctory inquest, after which Steve's body went away to +Hidalgo Island to rest beside the bodies of other Ferraras in a plot of +ground their grandfather had taken for his own when British Columbia was +a Crown colony. + +MacRae carried insurance on both his carriers. There was no need for him +to move against Gower in the matter. The insurance people would attend +efficiently to that. The adjusters came, took over the wreck, made +inquiries. MacRae made his formal claim, and it was duly paid. + +But long before the payment was made he was at work, he and Vin Ferrara +together, on the _Bluebird_, plowing the Gulf in stormy autumn weather. +The season was far gone, the salmon run slackening to its close. It was +too late to equip another carrier. The cohoes were gone. The dog +salmon, great-toothed, slimy fish which are canned for European +export--for cheap trade, which nevertheless returned much profit to the +canneries--were still running. + +MacRae had taken ninety per cent. of the Folly Bay bluebacks. He had +made tremendous inroads on Folly Bay's take of coho and humpback. He did +not care greatly if Gower filled his cans with "dogs." But the +Bellingham packers cried for salmon of whatsoever quality, and so MacRae +drove the _Bluebird_ hard in a trade which gave him no great profit, +chiefly to preserve his connection with the American canners, to harass +Folly Bay, and to let the fishermen know that he was still a factor and +could serve them well. + +He was sick of the smell of salmon, weary of the eternal heaving of the +sea under his feet, of long cold tricks at the wheel, of days in somber, +driving rain and nights without sleep. But he kept on until the salmon +ceased to run, until the purse seiners tied up for the season, and the +fishermen put by their gear. + +MacRae had done well,--far better than he expected. His knife had cut +both ways. He had eighteen thousand dollars in cash and the _Bluebird_. +The Folly Bay pack was twelve thousand cases short. How much that +shortage meant in lost profit MacRae could only guess, but it was a +pretty sum. Another season like that,--he smiled grimly. The next season +would be better,--for him. The trollers were all for him. They went out +of their way to tell him that. He had organized good will behind him. +The men who followed the salmon schools believed he did not want the +earth, only a decent share. He did not sit behind a mahogany desk in +town and set the price of fish. These men had labored a long time under +the weighty heel of a controlled industry, and they were thankful for a +new dispensation. It gave MacRae a pleasant feeling to know this. It +gave him also something of a contempt for Gower, who had sat tight with +a virtual monopoly for ten years and along with his profits had earned +the distrust and dislike of a body of men who might as easily have been +loyal laborers in his watery vineyards,--if he had not used his power to +hold them to the most meager return they could wring from the sea. + +He came home to the house at Squitty Cove with some odds and ends from +town shops to make it more comfortable, flooring to replace the old, +worn boards, a rug or two, pictures that caught his fancy, new cushions +for the big chairs old Donald MacRae had fashioned by hand years before, +a banjo to pick at, and a great box of books which he had promised to +read some day when he had time. And he knew he would have time through +long winter evenings when the land was drenched with rain, when the +storm winds howled in the swaying firs and the sea beat clamorously +along the cliffs. He would sit with his feet to a glowing fire and read +books. + +He did, for a time. When late November laid down a constant barrage of +rain and the cloud battalions marched and countermarched along the +coast, MacRae had settled down. He had no present care upon his +shoulders. Although he presumed himself to be resting, he was far from +idle. He found many ways of occupying himself about the old place. It +was his pleasure that the old log house should be neat within and +without, the yard clean, the garden restored to order. It had suffered a +season's neglect. He remedied that with a little labor and a little +money, wishing, as the place took on a sprightlier air, that old Donald +could be there to see. MacRae was frank in his affection for the spot. +No other place that he had ever seen meant quite the same to him. He was +always glad to come back to it; it seemed imperative that he should +always come back there. It was home, his refuge, his castle. Indeed he +had seen castles across the sea from whose towers less goodly sights +spread than he could command from his own front door, now that winter +had stripped the maple and alder of their leafy screen. There was the +sheltered Cove at his feet, the far sweep of the Gulf--colored according +to its mood and the weather--great mountain ranges lifting sheer from +blue water, their lower slopes green with forest and their crests white +with snow. Immensities of land and trees. All his environment pitched +upon a colossal scale. It was good to look at, to live among, and MacRae +knew that it was good. + +He sat on a log at the brink of the Cove one morning, in a burst of +sunshine as grateful as it was rare. He looked out at the mainland +shore, shading away from deep olive to a faint and misty blue. He cast +his gaze along Vancouver Island, a three-hundred-mile barrier against +the long roll of the Pacific. He thought of England, with its scant area +and its forty million souls. He smiled. An empire opened within range of +his vision. He had had to go to Europe to appreciate his own country. +Old, old peoples over there. Outworn, bewildered aristocracies and vast +populations troubled with the specter of want, swarming like rabbits, +pressing always close upon the means of subsistence. No room; no chance. +Born in social stratas solidified by centuries. No wonder Europe was +full of race and class hatred, of war and pestilence. Snap +judgment,--but Jack MacRae had seen the peasants of France and Belgium, +the driven workmen of industrial France and England. He had seen also +something of the forces which controlled them, caught glimpses of the +iron hand in the velvet glove, a hand that was not so sure and steady as +in days gone by. + +Here a man still had a chance. He could not pick golden apples off the +fir trees. He must use his brains as well as his hands. A reasonable +measure of security was within a man's grasp if he tried for it. To pile +up a fortune might be a heavy task. But getting a living was no +insoluble problem. A man could accomplish either without selling his +soul or cutting throats or making serfs of his fellow men. There was +room to move and breathe,--and some to spare. + +Perhaps Jack MacRae, in view of his feelings, his cherished projects, +was a trifle inconsistent in the judgments he passed, sitting there on +his log in the winter sunshine. But the wholly consistent must die +young. Their works do not appear in this day and hour. The normal man +adjusts himself to, and his actions are guided by, moods and +circumstances which are seldom orderly and logical in their sequence. + +MacRae cherished as profound an animosity toward Horace Gower as any +Russian ever felt for bureaucratic tyranny. He could smart under +injustice and plan reprisal. He could appreciate his environment, his +opportunities, be glad that his lines were cast amid rugged beauty. But +he did not on that account feel tolerant toward those whom he conceived +to be his enemies. He was not, however, thinking concretely of his +personal affairs or tendencies that bright morning. He was merely +sitting more or less quiescent on his log, nursing vagrant impressions, +letting the sun bathe him. + +He was not even conscious of trespassing on Horace Gower's land. When +he thought of it, of course he realized that this was legally so. But +the legal fact had no reality for MacRae. Between the Cove and Point +Old, for a mile back into the dusky woods, he felt free to come and go +as he chose. He had always believed and understood and felt that area to +be his, and he still held to that old impression. There was not a foot +of that six hundred acres that he had not explored alone, with his +father, with Dolly Ferrara, season after season. He had gone barefoot +over the rocks, dug clams on the beaches, fished trout in the little +streams, hunted deer and grouse in the thickets, as far back as he could +remember. He had loved the cliffs and the sea, the woods around the Cove +with an affection bred in use and occupancy, confirmed by the sense of +inviolate possession. Old things are dear, if a man has once loved them. +They remain so. The aura of beloved familiarity clings to them long +after they have passed into alien hands. When MacRae thought of this and +turned his eyes upon this noble sweep of land and forest which his +father had claimed for his own from the wilderness, it was as if some +one had deprived him of an eye or an arm by trickery and unfair +advantage. + +He was not glooming over such things this rare morning which had come +like a benediction after ten days of rain and wind. He was sitting on +his log bareheaded, filled with a passive content rare in his recent +experience. + +From this perch, in the idle wandering of his gaze, his eyes at length +rested upon Peter Ferrara's house. He saw a man and a woman come out of +the front door and stand for a minute or two on the steps. He could not +recognize the man at the distance, but he could guess. The man presently +walked away around the end of the Cove, MacRae perceived that his guess +was correct, for Norman Gower came out on the brow of the cliff that +bordered the south side of the Cove. He appeared a short distance away, +walking slowly, his eyes on the Cove and Peter Ferrara's house. He did +not see MacRae till he was quite close and glanced that way. + +"Hello, MacRae," he said. + +"How d' do," Jack answered. There was no cordiality in his tone. If he +had any desire at that moment it was not for speech with Norman Gower, +but rather a desire that Gower should walk on. + +But the other man sat down on MacRae's log. + +"Not much like over the pond, this," he remarked. + +"Not much," MacRae agreed indifferently. + +Young Gower took a cigarette case out of his pocket, extended it to +MacRae, who declined with a brief shake of his head. Norman lighted a +cigarette. He was short and stoutly built, a compact, muscular man +somewhat older than MacRae. He had very fair hair and blue eyes, and the +rose-leaf skin of his mother had in him taken on a masculine floridity. +But he had the Gower mouth and determined chin. So had Betty, MacRae was +reminded, looking at her brother. + +"You sank your harpoon pretty deep into Folly Bay this season," Norman +said abruptly. "Did you do pretty well yourself?" + +"Pretty well," MacRae drawled. "Did it worry you?" + +"Me? Hardly," young Gower smiled. "It did not cost _me_ anything to +operate Folly Bay at a loss while I was in charge. I had neither money +nor reputation to lose. You may have worried the governor. I dare say +you did. He never did take kindly to anything or any one that interfered +with his projects. But I haven't heard him commit himself. He doesn't +confide in me, anyway, nor esteem me very highly in any capacity. I +wonder if your father ever felt that way about you?" + +"No," MacRae said impulsively. "By God, no!" + +"Lucky. And you came home with a record behind you. Nothing to handicap +you. You jumped into the fray to do something for yourself and made good +right off the bat. There is such a thing as luck," Norman said soberly. +"A man can do his best--and fail. I have, so far. I was expected to come +home a credit to the family, a hero, dangling medals on my manly chest. +Instead, I've lost caste with my own crowd. Girls and fellows I used to +know sneer at me behind my back. They put their tongues in their cheek +and say I was a crafty slacker. I suppose you've heard the talk?" + +"No," MacRae answered shortly; he had forgotten Nelly Abbott's +questioning almost the first time he met her. "I don't run much with +your crowd, anyway." + +"Well, they can think what they damn please," young Gower grumbled. +"It's quite true that I was never any closer to the front than the Dover +cliffs. Perhaps at home here in the beginning they handed me a captain's +commission on the family pull. But I tried to deliver the goods. These +people think I dodged the trenches. They don't know my eyesight spoiled +my chances of going into action. I couldn't get to France. So I did my +bit where headquarters told me I could do it or go home. And all I have +got out of it is the veiled contempt of nearly everybody I know, my +father included, for not killing Germans with my own hands." + +MacRae kept still. It was a curious statement. Young Gower twisted and +ground his boot heel into the soft earth. + +"Being a rich man's son has proved a considerable handicap in my case," +he continued at last. "I was petted and coddled all my life. Then the +war came along. Everybody expected a lot of me. And I am as good as +excommunicated for not coming up to expectations. Beautiful irony. If my +eyes had been normal, I should be another of Vancouver's heroes,--alive +or dead. The spirit doesn't seem to count. The only thing that matters, +evidently, is that I stayed on the safe side of the Channel. They take +it for granted that I did so because I valued my own skin above +everything. Idiots." + +"You can easily explain," MacRae suggested. + +"I won't. I'd see them all in Hades first," Norman growled. "I'll admit +it stings me to have people think so and rub it in, in their polite way. +But I'm getting more or less indifferent. There are plenty of real +people in England who know I did the only work I could do and did it +well. Do you imagine I fancied sitting on the side lines when all the +fellows I knew were playing a tough game? But I can't go about telling +that to people at home. I'll be damned if I will. A man has to learn to +stand the gaff sometime, and the last year or so seems to be my period +of schooling." + +"Why tell all this to me?" MacRae asked quietly. + +Norman rose from the log. He chucked the butt of his cigarette away. He +looked directly, rather searchingly, at MacRae. + +"Really, I don't know," he said in a flat, expressionless. Then he +walked on. + +MacRae watched him pass out of sight among the thickets. Young Gower had +succeeded in dispelling the passive contentment of basking in the sun. +He had managed to start buzzing trains of not too agreeable reflection. +MacRae got to his feet before long and tramped back around the Cove's +head. He had known, of course, that the Gowers still made more or less +use of their summer cottage. But he had not come in personal contact +with any of them since the night Betty had given him that new, +disturbing angle from which to view her. He had avoided her purposely. +Now he was afflicted with a sudden restlessness, a desire for other +voices and faces besides his own, and so, as he was in the habit of +doing when such a mood seized him, he went on to Peter Ferrara's house. + +He walked in through a wide-open door, unannounced by aught save his +footsteps, as he was accustomed to do, and he found Dolly Ferrara and +Betty Gower laughing and chatting familiarly in the kitchen over teacups +and little cakes. + +"Oh, I beg pardon," said he. "I didn't know you were entertaining." + +"I don't entertain, and you know it," Dolly laughed. "Come down from +that lofty altitude and I'll give you a cup of tea." + +"Mr. MacRae, being an aviator of some note," Betty put in, "probably +finds himself at home in the high altitudes." + +"Do I seem to be up in the air?" MacRae inquired dryly. "I shall try to +come down behind my own lines, and not in enemy territory." + +"You might have to make a forced landing," Dolly remarked. + +Her great dusky eyes rested upon him with a singular quality of +speculation. MacRae wondered if those two had been talking about him, +and why. + +There was an astonishing contrast between these two girls, MacRae +thought, his mind and his eyes busy upon them while his tongue uttered +idle words and his hands coped with a teacup and cakes. They were the +product of totally dissimilar environments. They were the physical +antithesis of each other,--in all but the peculiar feline grace of young +females who are healthily, exuberantly alive. Yet MacRae had a feeling +that they were sisters under their skins, wonderfully alike in their +primary emotions. Why, then, he wondered, should one be capable of +moving him to violent emotional reactions (he had got that far in his +self-admissions concerning Betty Gower), and the other move him only to +a friendly concern and latterly a certain pity? + +Certainly either one would quite justify a man in seeking her for his +mate, if he found his natural instincts urging him along ways which +MacRae was beginning to perceive no normal man could escape traveling. +And if he had to tread that road, why should it not have been his desire +to tread it with Dolly Ferrara? That would have been so much simpler. +With unconscious egotism he put aside Norman Gower as a factor. If he +had to develop an unaccountable craving for some particular woman, why +couldn't it have centered upon a woman he knew as well as he knew Dolly, +whose likes and dislikes, little tricks of speech and manner, habits of +thought, all the inconsiderable traits that go to make up what we call +personality, were pleasantly familiar? + +Strange thoughts over a teacup, MacRae decided. It seemed even more +strange that he should be considering such intimately personal things in +the very act of carrying on an impersonal triangular conversation; as if +there were two of him present, one being occupied in the approved teacup +manner while the other sat by speculating with a touch of moroseness +upon distressingly important potentialities. This duality persisted in +functioning even when Betty looked at her watch and said, "I must go." + +He walked with her around to the head of the Cove. He had not wanted to +do that,--and still he did. He found himself filled with an intense and +resentful curiosity about this calm, self-possessed young woman. He +wondered if she really had any power to hurt him, if there resided in +her any more potent charm than other women possessed, or if it were a +mere sentimental befogging of his mind due to the physical propinquity +of her at a time when he was weak and bruised and helpless. He could +feel the soft warmth of her hands yet, and without even closing his eyes +he could see her reddish-brown hair against the white of his bed covers +and the tired droop of her body as she slept that night. + +Curiously enough, before they were well clear of the Ferrara house they +had crossed swords. Courteously, to be sure. MacRae could not afterward +recall clearly how it began,--something about the war and the +after-effect of the war. British Columbia nowise escaped the muddle into +which the close of the war and the wrangle of the peacemakers had +plunged both industry and politics. There had been a recent labor +disturbance in Vancouver in which demobilized soldiers had played a +part. + +"You can't blame these men much. They're bewildered at some of the +things they get up against, and exasperated by others. A lot of them +have found the going harder at home than it was in France. A lot of +promises and preachments don't fit in with performance since the guns +have stopped talking. I suppose that doesn't seem reasonable to people +like you," MacRae found himself saying. "You don't have to gouge and +claw a living out of the world. Or at least, if there is any gouging +and clawing to be done, you are not personally involved in it. You get +it done by proxy." + +Betty flushed slightly. + +"Do you always go about with a chip on your shoulder?" she asked. "I +should think you did enough fighting in France." + +"I learned to fight there," he said. "I was a happy-go-lucky kid before +that. Rich and poor looked alike to me. I didn't covet anything that +anybody had, and I didn't dream that any one could possibly wish to take +away from me anything that I happened to have. I thought the world was a +kind and pleasant place for everybody. But things look a little +different to me now. They sent us fellows to France to fight Huns. But +there are a few at home, I find. Why shouldn't I fight them whenever I +see a chance?" + +"But _I'm_ not a Hun," Betty said with a smile. + +"I'm not so sure about that." + +The words leaped out before he was quite aware of what they might imply. +They had come to a point on the path directly in front of his house. +Betty stopped. Her gray eyes flashed angrily. Storm signals blazed in +her cheeks, bright above the delicate white of her neck. + +"Jack MacRae," she burst out hotly, "you are a--a--a first-class idiot!" + +Then she turned her back on him and went off up the path with a quick, +springy step that somehow suggested extreme haste. + +MacRae stood looking after her fully a minute. Then he climbed the +steps, went into the front room and sat himself down in a deep, +cushioned chair. He glowered into the fireplace with a look as black as +the charred remains of his morning fire. He uttered one brief word after +a long period of fixed staring. + +"Damn!" he said. + +It seemed a very inadequate manner of expressing his feelings, but it +was the best he could do at the moment. + +He sat there until the chill discomfort of the room stirred him out of +his abstraction. Then he built a fire and took up a book to read. But +the book presently lay unheeded on his knees. He passed the rest of the +short forenoon sprawled in that big chair before the fireplace, +struggling with chaotic mental processes. + +It made him unhappy, but he could not help it. A tremendous assortment +of mental images presented themselves for inspection, flickering up +unbidden out of his brain-stuff,--old visions and new, familiar things +and vague, troublesome possibilities, all strangely jumbled together. +His mind hopped from Squitty Cove to Salisbury Plain, to the valley of +the Rhone, to Paris, London, Vancouver, turned up all sorts of +recollections, cameralike flashes of things that had happened to him, +things he had seen in curious places, bits of his life in that somehow +distant period when he was a youngster chumming about with his father. +And always he came back to the Gowers,--father, son and daughter, and +the delicate elderly woman with the faded rose-leaf face whom he had +seen only once. Whole passages of Donald MacRae's written life story +took form in living words. He could not disentangle himself from these +Gowers. + +And he hated them! + +Dark came down at last. MacRae went out on the porch. The few scattered +clouds had vanished completely. A starry sky glittered above horizons +edged by mountain ranges, serrated outlines astonishingly distinct. The +sea spread duskily mysterious from duskier shores. It was very still, to +MacRae suddenly very lonely, empty, depressing. + +The knowledge that just across a narrow neck of land the Gowers, +father, daughter and son, went carelessly, securely about their own +affairs, made him infinitely more lonely, irritated him, stirred up a +burning resentment against the lot of them. He lumped them all together, +despite a curious tendency on the part of Betty's image to separate +itself from the others. He hated them, the whole damned, profiteering, +arrogant, butterfly lot. He nursed an unholy satisfaction in having made +some inroad upon their comfortable security, in having "sunk his +harpoon" into their only vulnerable spot. + +But that satisfaction did not give him relief or content as he stood +looking out into the clear frost-tinged night. Squitty had all at once +become a ghostly place, haunted with sadness. Old Donald MacRae was +living over again in him, he had a feeling, reliving those last few +cheerless, hopeless years which, MacRae told himself savagely, Horace +Gower had deliberately made more cheerless and hopeless. + +And he was in a fair way to love that man's flesh and blood? MacRae +sneered at himself in the dark. Never to the point of staying his hand, +of foregoing his purpose, of failing to strike a blow as chance offered. +Not so long as he was his father's son. + +"Hang it, I'm getting morbid," MacRae muttered at last. "I've been +sticking around here too close. I'll pack a bag to-morrow and go to town +for a while." + +He closed the door on the crisp, empty night, and set about getting +himself something to eat. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +The Swing of the Pendulum + + +MacRae did himself rather well, as the English say, when he reached +Vancouver. This was a holiday, and he was disposed to make the most of +it. He put up at the Granada. He made a few calls and presently found +himself automatically relaunched upon Vancouver's social waters. There +were a few maids and more than one matron who recalled pleasantly this +straight up-standing youngster with the cool gray eyes who had come +briefly into their ken the winter before. There were a few fellows he +had known in squadron quarters overseas, home for good now that +demobilization was fairly complete. MacRae danced well. He had the +faculty of making himself agreeable without effort. He found it pleasant +to fall into the way of these careless, well-dressed folk whose greatest +labor seemed to be in amusing themselves, to keep life from seeming +"slow." Buttressed by revenues derived from substantial sources, mines, +timber, coastal fisheries, land, established industries, these sons and +daughters of the pioneers, many but one degree removed from pioneering +uncouthness, were patterning their lives upon the plan of equivalent +classes in older regions. If it takes six generations in Europe to make +a gentleman, western America quite casually dispenses with five, and the +resulting product seldom suffers by comparison. + +As the well-to-do in Europe flung themselves into revelry with the +signing of the armistice, so did they here. Four years of war had corked +the bottle of gayety. The young men were all overseas. Life was a little +too cloudy during that period to be gay. Shadows hung over too many +homes. But that was past. They had pulled the cork and thrown it away, +one would think. Pleasure was king, to be served with light abandon. + +It was a fairly vigorous place, MacRae discovered. He liked it, gave +himself up to it gladly,--for a while. It involved no mental effort. +These people seldom spoke of money, or of work, or politics, the high +cost of living, international affairs. If they did it was jocularly, +sketchily, as matters of no importance. Their talk ran upon dances, +clothes, motoring, sports indoors and afield, on food,--and sometimes +genially on drink, since the dry wave had not yet drained their cellars. + +MacRae floated with this tide. But he was not wholly carried away with +it. He began to view it impersonally, to wonder if it were the real +thing, if this was what inspired men to plot and scheme and struggle +laboriously for money, or if it were just the froth on the surface of +realities which he could not quite grasp. He couldn't say. There was a +dash and glitter about it that charmed him. He could warm and thrill to +the beauty of a Granada ballroom, music that seduced a man's feet, +beauty of silk and satin, of face and figure, of bright eyes and +gleaming jewels, a blending of all the primary colors and every shade +between, flashing over a polished floor under high, carved ceilings. + +He had surrendered Nelly Abbott to a claimant and stood watching the +swirl and glide of the dancers in the Granada one night. His eyes were +on the brilliance a little below the raised area at one end of the +floor, and so was his mind, inquiringly, with the curious concentration +of which his mind was capable. Presently he became aware of some one +speaking to him, tugging at his elbow. + +"Oh, come out of it," a voice said derisively. + +He looked around at Stubby Abbott. + +"Regular trance. I spoke to you twice. In love?" + +"Uh-uh. Just thinking," MacRae laughed. + +"Deep thinking, I'll say. Want to go down to the billiard room and +smoke?" + +They descended to a subterranean chamber where, in a pit lighted by +low-hung shaded globes, men in shirt sleeves clicked the red and white +balls on a score of tables. Rows of leather-upholstered chairs gave +comfort to spectators. They commandeered seats and lighted cigarettes. +"Look," Stubby said. "There's Norman Gower." + +Young Gower sat across a corner from them. He was in evening clothes. He +slumped in his chair. His hands were limp along the chair arms. He was +not watching the billiard players. He was staring straight across the +room with the sightless look of one whose mind is far away. + +"Another deep thinker," Stubby drawled. "Rather rough going for Norman +these days." + +"How?" MacRae asked. + +"Funked it over across," Stubby replied. "So they say. Careful to stay +on the right side of the Channel. Paying the penalty now. Girls rather +rub it in. Fellows not too--well, cordial. Pretty rotten for Norman." + +"Think he slacked deliberately?" MacRae inquired. + +"That's the story. Lord, I don't know," Stubby answered. "He stuck in +England four years. Everybody else that was fit went up the line. +That's all I know. By their deeds ye shall judge them--eh?" + +"Perhaps. What does he say about that himself?" + +"Nothing, so far as I know. Keeps strictly mum on the war subject," +Stubby said. + +Young Gower did not alter his position during the few minutes they sat +there. He sat staring straight ahead of him, unseeingly. MacRae suddenly +felt sorry for him. If he had told the truth he was suffering a +peculiarly distressing form of injustice, of misconception. MacRae +recalled the passionate undertone in Gower's voice when he said, "I did +the only thing I could do in the way I was told to do it." Yes, he was +sorry for Norman. The poor devil was not getting a square deal. + +But MacRae's pity was swiftly blotted out. He had a sudden uncomfortable +vision of old Donald MacRae rowing around Poor Man's Rock, back and +forth in sun and rain, in frosty dawns and stormy twilights, coming home +to a lonely house, dying at last a lonely death, the sordid culmination +of an embittered life. + +Let him sweat,--the whole Gower tribe. MacRae was the ancient Roman, for +the moment, wishing all his enemies had but a single head that he might +draw his sword and strike it off. Something in him hardened against that +first generous impulse to repeat to Stubby Abbott what Norman had told +him on the cliff at Squitty. Let the beggar make his own defense. Yet +that stubborn silence, the proud refusal to make words take the place of +valiant deeds expected, wrung a gleam of reluctant admiration from +MacRae. He would have done just that himself. + +"Let's get back," Stubby suggested. "I've got the next dance with Betty +Gower. I don't want to miss it." + +"Is she here to-night? I haven't noticed her." + +"Eyesight affected?" Stubby bantered. "Sure she's here. Looking like a +dream." + +MacRae felt a pang of envy. There was nothing to hold Stubby back,--no +old scores, no deep, abiding resentment. MacRae had the conviction that +Stubby would never take anything like that so seriously as he, Jack +MacRae, did. He was aware that Stubby had the curious dual code common +in the business world,--one set of inhibitions and principles for +business and another for personal and social uses. A man might be +Stubby's opponent in the market and his friend when they met on a common +social ground. MacRae could never be quite like that. Stubby could fight +Horace Gower, for instance, tooth and toenail, for an advantage in the +salmon trade, and stretch his legs under Gower's dining table with no +sense of incongruity, no matter what shifts the competitive struggle had +taken or what weapons either had used. That was business; and a man left +his business at the office. A curious thing, MacRae thought. A +phenomenon in ethics which he found hard to understand, harder still to +endorse. + +He stood watching Stubby, knowing that Stubby would go straight to Betty +Gower. Presently he saw her, marked the cut and color of her gown, +watched them swing into the gyrating wave of couples that took the floor +when the orchestra began. Indeed, MacRae stood watching them until he +recalled with a start that he had this dance with Etta Robbin-Steele, +who would, in her own much-used phrase, be "simply furious" at anything +that might be construed as neglect; only Etta's fury would consist of +showing her white, even teeth in a pert smile with a challenging twinkle +in her very black eyes. + +He went to Betty as soon as he found opportunity. He did not quite know +why. He did not stop to ask himself why. It was a purely instinctive +propulsion. He followed his impulse as the needle swings to the pole; as +an object released from the hand at a great height obeys the force of +gravity; as water flows downhill. + +He took her programme. + +"I don't see any vacancies," he said. "Shall I create one?" + +He drew his pencil through Stubby Abbott's name. Stubby's signature was +rather liberally inscribed there, he thought. Betty looked at him a +trifle uncertainly. + +"Aren't you a trifle--sweeping?" she inquired. + +"Perhaps. Stubby won't mind. Do you?" he asked. + +"I seem to be defenseless." Betty shrugged her shoulders. "What shall we +quarrel about this time?" + +"Anything you like," he made reckless answer. + +"Very well, then," she said as they got up to dance. "Suppose we begin +by finding out what there is to quarrel over. Are you aware that +practically every time we meet we nearly come to blows? What is there +about me that irritates you so easily?" + +"Your inaccessibility." + +MacRae spoke without weighing his words. Yet that was the truth, +although he knew that such a frank truth was neither good form nor +policy. He was sorry before the words were out of his mouth. Betty could +not possibly understand what he meant. He was not sure he wanted her to +understand. MacRae felt himself riding to a fall. As had happened +briefly the night of the _Blackbird's_ wrecking, he experienced that +feeling of dumb protest against the shaping of events in which he moved +helpless. This bit of flesh and blood swaying in his arms in effortless +rhythm to sensuous music was something he had to reckon with powerfully, +whether he liked or not. MacRae was beginning dimly to see that. When he +was with her-- + +"But I'm not inaccessible." + +She dropped her voice to a cooing whisper. Her eyes glowed as they met +his with steadfast concern. There was a smile and a question in them. + +"What ever gave you that idea?" + +"It isn't an idea; it's a fact." + +The resentment against circumstances that troubled MacRae crept into his +tone. + +"Oh, silly!" + +There was a railing note of tenderness in Betty's voice. MacRae felt his +moorings slip. A heady recklessness of consequences seized him. He drew +her a little closer to him. Irresistible prompting from some wellspring +of his being urged him on to what his reason would have called sheer +folly, if that reason had not for the time suffered eclipse, which is a +weakness of rational processes when they come into conflict with a +genuine emotion. + +"Do you like me, Betty?" + +Her eyes danced. They answered as well as her lips: + +"Of course I do. Haven't I been telling you so plainly enough? I've been +ashamed of myself for being so transparent--on such slight provocation." + +"How much?" he demanded. + +"Oh--well--" + +The ballroom was suddenly shrouded in darkness, saved only from a +cavelike black by diffused street light through the upper windows. A +blown fuse. A mis-pulled switch. One of those minor accidents common to +electric lighting systems. The orchestra hesitated, went on. From a +momentary silence the dancers broke into chuckles, amused laughter, a +buzz of exclamatory conversation. But no one moved, lest they collide +with other unseen couples. + +Jack and Betty stood still. They could not see. But MacRae could feel +the quick beat, of Betty's heart, the rise and fall of her breast, a +trembling in her fingers. There was a strange madness stirring in him. +His arm tightened about her. He felt that she yielded easily, as if +gladly. Their mouths sought and clung in the first real kiss Jack MacRae +had ever known. And then, as they relaxed that impulse-born embrace, the +lights flashed on again, blazed in a thousand globes in great frosted +clusters high against the gold-leaf decorations of the ceiling. The +dancers caught step again. MacRae and Betty circled the polished floor +silently. She floated in his arms like thistledown, her eyes like twin +stars, a deeper color in her cheeks. + +Then the music ceased, and they were swept into a chattering group, out +of which presently materialized another partner to claim Betty. So they +parted with a smile and a nod. + +But MacRae had no mind for dancing. He went out through the lobby and +straight to his room. He flung off his coat and sat down in a chair by +the window and blinked out into the night. He had looked, it seemed to +him, into the very gates of paradise,--and he could not go in. + +It wasn't possible. He sat peering out over the dusky roofs of the city, +damning with silent oaths the coil in which he found himself +inextricably involved. History was repeating itself. Like father, like +son. + +There was a difference though. MacRae, as he grew calmer, marked that. +Old Donald had lost his sweetheart by force and trickery. His son must +forego love--if it were indeed love--of his own volition. He had no +choice. He saw no way of winning Betty Gower unless he stayed his hand +against her father. And he would not do that. He could not. It would be +like going over to the enemy in the heat of battle. Gower had wronged +and persecuted his father. He had beaten old Donald without mercy in +every phase of that thirty-year period. He had taken Donald MacRae's +woman from him in the beginning and his property in the end. Jack MacRae +had every reason to believe Gower merely sat back awaiting a favorable +opportunity to crush him. + +So there could be no compromising there; no inter-marrying and +sentimental burying of the old feud. Betty would tie his hands. He was +afraid of her power to do that. He did not want to be a Samson shorn. +His ego revolted against love interfering with the grim business of +everyday life. He bit his lip and wished he could wipe out that kiss. He +cursed himself for a slavish weakness of the flesh. The night was old +when MacRae lay down on his bed. But he could find no ease for the +throbbing ferment within him. He suffered with a pain as keen as if he +had been physically wounded, and the very fact that he could so suffer +filled him with dismay. He had faced death many times with less emotion +than he now was facing life. + +He had no experience of love. Nothing remotely connected with women had +ever suggested such possibilities of torment. He had known first-hand +the pangs of hunger and thirst, of cold and weariness, of anger and +hate, of burning wounds in his flesh. He had always been able to grit +his teeth and endure; none of it had been able to wring his soul. This +did. He had come to manhood, to a full understanding of sex, at a time +when he played the greatest game of all, when all his energies were +fiercely centered upon preservation for himself and certain destruction +for other men. Perhaps because he had come back clean, having never +wasted himself in complaisant liaisons overseas, the inevitable focusing +of passion stirred him more profoundly. He was neither a varietist nor a +male prude. He was aware of sex. He knew desire. But the flame Betty +Gower had kindled in him made him look at women out of different eyes. +Desire had been revealed to him not as something casual, but as an +imperative. As if nature had pulled the blinkers off his eyes and shown +him his mate and the aim and object and law and fiery urge of the mating +instinct all in one blinding flash. + +He lay hot and fretful, cursing himself for a fool, yet unable to find +ease, wondering dully if Betty Gower must also suffer as he should, or +if it were only an innocent, piquant game that Betty played. Always in +the background of his mind lurked a vision of her father, sitting back +complacently, fat, smug, plump hands on a well-rounded stomach, +chuckling a brutal satisfaction over another MacRae beaten. + +MacRae wakened from an uneasy sleep at ten o'clock. He rose and dressed, +got his breakfast, went out on the streets. But Vancouver had all at +once grown insufferable. The swarming streets irritated him. He +smoldered inside, and he laid it to the stir and bustle and noise. He +conceived himself to crave hushed places and solitude, where he could +sit and think. + +By mid-afternoon he was far out in the Gulf of Georgia, aboard a +coasting steamer sailing for island ports. If it occurred to him that he +was merely running away from temptation, he did not admit the fact. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + +Hearts are Not Always Trumps + + +If MacRae reckoned on tranquillity in his island seclusion he failed in +his reckoning. A man may fly from temptation, run from a threatening +danger, but he cannot run away from himself. He could not inhibit +thought, reflection, surges of emotion generated mysteriously within +himself. + +He did his best. He sought relief in action. There were a great many +things about his freehold upon which he bestowed feverish labor for a +time. He cleared away all the underbrush to the outer limits of his +shrunken heritage. He built a new enclosing fence of neatly split cedar, +installed a pressure system of water in the old house. + +"You goin' to get married?" old Peter inquired artlessly one day. "You +got all the symptoms--buzzin' around in your nest like a bumblebee." + +And Dolly smiled her slow, enigmatic smile. + +Whereupon MacRae abandoned his industry and went off to Blackfish Sound +with Vincent in the _Bluebird_. The salmon run was long over, but the +coastal waters still yielded a supply of edible fish. There were always +a few spring salmon to be taken here and there. Ling, red and rock cod +knew no seasons. Nor the ground fish, plaice, sole, flounders, halibut. +Already the advance guard of the great run of mature herring began to +show. For a buyer there was no such profit in running these fish to +market as the profit of the annual salmon run. Still it paid moderately. +So MacRae had turned the _Bluebird_ over to Vin to operate for a time on +a share basis. It gave Vin, who was ambitious and apparently tireless, a +chance to make a few hundred dollars in an off season. + +Wherefore MacRae, grown suddenly restless beyond all restraining upon +his island, made a trip or two north with Vin--a working guest on his +own vessel--up where the Gulf of Georgia is choked to narrow passages +through which the tidal currents race like mountain streams pent in a +gorge, up where the sea is a maze of waterways among wooded islands. +They anchored in strange bays. They fared once into Queen Charlotte +Sound and rode the great ground swell that heaves up from the far coast +of Japan to burst against the rocky outpost of Cape Caution. They +doubled on their tracks and gathered their toll of the sea from fishing +boats here and there until the _Bluebird_ rode deep with cargo, fresh +fish to be served on many tables far inland. MacRae often wondered if +the housewife who ordered her weekly ration of fish and those who picked +daintily at the savory morsels with silver forks ever thought how they +came by this food. Men till the sea with pain and risk and infinite +labor, as they till the land; only the fisherman with his nets and hooks +and gear does not sow, he only reaps. Nature has attended diligently to +the sowing, from the Cape of Good Hope to Martha's Vineyard, from Bering +Strait to Botany Bay. + +But MacRae soon had enough of that and came back to Squitty, to his +fireplace and his books. He had been accustomed to enjoy the winters, +the clear crisp mornings that varied weeks of drenching rain which +washed the land clean; to prowl about in the woods with a gun when he +needed meat; to bask before a bed of coals in the fireplace through long +evenings when the wind howled and the rain droned on the roof and the +sea snored along the rocky beaches. That had been in days before he +learned the weight of loneliness, when his father had been there to sit +quietly beside the fire smoking a pipe, when Dolly Ferrara ran wild in +the woods with him or they rode for pure sport the tumbling seas in a +dugout canoe. + +Now winter was a dull inaction, a period of discontent, in which thought +gnawed at him like an ingrowing toenail. Everything seemed out of joint. +He found himself feverishly anxious for spring, for the stress and +strain of another tilt with Folly Bay. Sometimes he asked himself where +he would come out, even if he won all along the line, if he made money, +gained power, beat Gower ultimately to his knees, got back his land. He +did not try to peer too earnestly into the future. It seemed a little +misty. He was too much concerned with the immediate present, looming big +with possibilities of good or evil for himself. Things did not seem +quite so simple as at first. A great many complications, wholly +unforeseen, had arisen since he came back from France. But he was +committed to certain undertakings from which he neither wished nor +intended to turn aside,--not so long as he had the will to choose. + +Christmas came again, and with it the gathering of the Ferraras for +their annual reunion,--Old Manuel and Joaquin, young Manuel and Ambrose +and Vincent. Steve they could speak of now quite casually. He had died +in his sea boots like many another Ferrara. It was a pity, of course, +but it was the chance of his calling. And the gathering was stronger in +numbers, even with Steve gone. Ambrose had taken himself a wife, a +merry round-cheeked girl whose people were coaxing Ambrose to quit the +sea for a more profitable undertaking in timber. And also Norman Gower +was there. + +MacRae did not quite know how to take that young man. He had had stray +contacts with Norman during the last few weeks. For a rich man's son he +was not running true to form. He and Long Tom Spence had struck up a +partnership in a group of mineral claims on the Knob, that conical +mountain which lifted like one of the pyramids out of the middle of +Squitty Island. There had been much talk of those claims. Years ago Bill +Munro--he who died of the flu in his cabin beside the Cove--had staked +those claims. Munro was a young man then, a prospector. He had inveigled +other men to share his hopes and labors, to grubstake him while he drove +the tunnel that was to cut the vein. MacRae's father had taken a hand in +this. So had Peter Ferrara. But these informal partnerships had always +lapsed. Old Bill Munro's prospects had never got beyond the purely +prospective stage. The copper was there, ample traces of gold and +silver. But he never developed a showing big enough to lure capital. +When Munro died the claims had been long abandoned. + +Long Tom Spence had suddenly relocated them. Some working agreement had +included Uncle Peter and young Gower. Long Tom went about hinting +mysteriously of fortunes. Peter Ferrara even admitted that there was a +good showing. Norman had been there for weeks, living with Spence in a +shack, sweating day after day in the tunnel. They were all beginning to +speak of it as "the mine." + +Norman had rid himself of that grouchy frown. He was always singing or +whistling or laughing. His fair, rather florid face glowed with a +perpetual good nature. He treated MacRae to the same cheerful, careless +air that he had for everything and everybody. And when he was about +Uncle Peter's house at the Cove he monopolized Dolly, an attitude which +Dolly herself as well as her uncle seemed to find agreeable and proper. + +MacRae finally found himself compelled to accept Norman Gower as part of +the group. He was a little surprised to find that he harbored no decided +feeling about young Gower, one way or the other. If he felt at all, it +was a mild impatience that another man had established a relation with +Dolly Ferrara which put aside old friendships. He found himself +constrained more and more to treat Dolly like any other pleasant young +woman of his acquaintance. He did not quite like that. He and Dolly +Ferrara had been such good chums. Besides, he privately considered that +Dolly was throwing herself away on a man weak enough to make the tragic +blunder young Gower had made in London. But that was their own affair. +Altogether, MacRae found it quite impossible to muster up any abiding +grudge against young Gower on his own account. + +So he let matters stand and celebrated Christmas with them. Afterward +they got aboard the _Bluebird_ and went to a dance at Potter's Landing, +where for all that Jack MacRae was the local hero, both of the great war +and the salmon war of the past season, both Dolly and Norman, he +privately conceded, enjoyed themselves a great deal more than he did. +Their complete absorption in each other rather irritated him. + +They came back to the Cove early in the morning. The various Ferraras +disposed themselves about Peter's house to sleep, and MacRae went on to +his own place. About an hour after daybreak he saw Norman Gower pass up +the bush trail to the mine with a heavy pack of provisions on his back. +And MacRae wondered idly if Norman was bucking the game in earnest, +strictly on his own, and why? + +Late in January the flash of a white skirt and a sky-blue sweater past +his dooryard apprised MacRae that Betty was back. And he did not want to +see Betty or talk with her. He hoped her stay would be brief. He even +asked himself testily why people like that wanted to come to a summer +dwelling in the middle of winter. But her sojourn was not so brief as he +hoped. At divers times thereafter he saw her in the distance, faring to +and fro from Peter Ferrara's house, out on the trail that ran to the +Knob, several times when the sea was calm paddling a canoe or rowing +alongshore. Also he had glimpses of the thickset figure of Horace Gower +walking along the cliffs. MacRae avoided both. That was easy enough, +since he knew every nook and bush and gully on that end of the island. +But the mere sight of Gower was an irritation. He resented the man's +presence. It affected him like a challenge. It set him always pondering +ways and means to secure ownership of those acres again and forever bar +Gower from walking along those cliffs with that masterful air of +possession. Only a profound distaste for running away from anything kept +him from quitting the island while they were there, those two, one of +whom he was growing to hate far beyond the original provocation, the +other whom he loved,--for MacRae admitted reluctantly, resentfully, that +he did love Betty, and he was afraid of where that emotion might lead +him. He recognized the astonishing power of passion. It troubled him, +stirred up an amazing conflict at times between his reason and his +impulses. He fell back always upon the conclusion that love was an +irrational thing anyway, that it should not be permitted to upset a +man's logical plan of existence. But he was never very sure that this +conclusion would stand a practical test. + +The southern end of Squitty was not of such vast scope that two people +could roam here and there without sometime coming face to face, +particularly when these two were a man and a woman, driven by a spirit +of restlessness to lonely wanderings. MacRae went into the woods with +his rifle one day in search of venison. He wounded a buck, followed him +down a long canyon, and killed his game within sight of the sea. He took +the carcass by a leg and dragged it through the bright green salal +brush. As he stepped out of a screening thicket on to driftwood piled by +storm and tide, he saw a rowboat hauled up on the shingle above reach of +short, steep breakers, and a second glance showed him Betty sitting on a +log close by, looking at him. + +"Stormbound?" he asked her. + +"Yes. I was rowing and the wind came up." + +She rose and came over to look at the dead deer. + +"What beautiful animals they are!" she said. "Isn't it a pity to kill +them?" + +"It's a pity, too, to kill cattle and sheep and pigs, to haul fish by +the gills out of the sea," MacRae replied; "to trap marten and mink and +fox and beaver and bear for their skins. But men must eat and women must +wear furs." + +"How horribly logical you are," Betty murmured. "You make a natural +sympathy appear wishy-washy sentimentalism." + +She reseated herself on the log. MacRae sat down beside her. He looked +at her searchingly. He could not keep his eyes away. A curious +inconsistency was revealed to him. He sat beside Betty, responding to +the potent stimuli of her nearness and wishing pettishly that she were a +thousand miles away, so that he would not be troubled by the magic of +her lips and eyes and unruly hair, the musical cadences of her voice. +There was a subtle quality of expectancy about her, as if she sat there +waiting for him to say something, do something, as if her mere presence +were powerful to compel him to speak and act as she desired. MacRae +realized the fantasy of those impressions. Betty sat looking at him +calmly, her hands idle in her lap. If there were in her soul any of the +turmoil that was fast rising in his, it was not outwardly manifested by +any sign whatever. For that matter, MacRae knew that he himself was +placid enough on the surface. Nor did he feel the urge of +inconsequential speech. There was no embarrassment in that mutual +silence, only the tug of a compelling desire to take her in his arms, +which he must resist. + +"There are times," Betty said at last, "when you live up to your +nickname with a vengeance." + +"There are times," MacRae replied slowly, "when that is the only wise +thing for a man to do." + +"And you, I suppose, rather pride yourself on being wise in your day and +generation." + +There was gentle raillery in her tone. + +"I don't like you to be sarcastic," he said. + +"I don't think you like me sarcastic or otherwise," Betty observed, +after a moment's silence. + +"But I do," he protested. "That's the devil of it. I do--and you know I +do. It would be a great deal better if I didn't." + +Betty's fingers began to twist in her lap. The color rose faintly in her +smooth cheeks. Her eyes turned to the sea. + +"I don't know why," she said gently. "I'd hate to think it would." + +MacRae did not find any apt reply to that. His mind was in an agonized +muddle, in which he could only perceive one or two things with any +degree of clearness. Betty loved him. He was sure of that. He could tell +her that he loved her. And then? Therein arose the conflict. Marriage +was the natural sequence of love. And when he contemplated marriage with +Betty he found himself unable to detach her from her background, in +which lurked something which to MacRae's imagination loomed sinister, +hateful. To make peace with Horace Gower--granting that Gower was +willing for such a consummation--for love of his daughter struck MacRae +as something very near to dishonor. And if, contrariwise, he repeated to +Betty the ugly story which involved her father and his father, she would +be harassed by irreconcilable forces even if she cared enough to side +with him against her own people. MacRae was gifted with acute +perception, in some things. He said to himself despairingly--nor was it +the first time that he had said it--that you cannot mix oil and water. + +He could do nothing at all. That was the sum of his ultimate +conclusions. His hands were tied. He could not go back and he could not +go on. He sat beside Betty, longing to take her in his arms and still +fighting stoutly against that impulse. He was afraid of his impulses. + +A faint moisture broke out on his face with that acute nervous strain. A +lump rose chokingly in his throat. He stared out at the white-crested +seas that came marching up the Gulf before a rising wind until his eyes +grew misty. Then he slid down off the log and laid his head on Betty's +knee. A weight of dumb grief oppressed him. He wanted to cry, and he was +ashamed of his weakness. + +Betty's fingers stole caressingly over his bare head, rumpled his hair, +stroked his hot cheek. + +"Johnny-boy," she said at last, "what is it that comes like a fog +between you and me?" + +MacRae did not answer. + +"I make love to you quite openly," Betty went on. "And I don't seem to +be the least bit ashamed of doing so. I'm not a silly kid. I'm nearly as +old as you are, and I know quite well what I want--which happens to be +you. I love you, Silent John. The man is supposed to be the pursuer. But +I seem to have that instinct myself. Besides," she laughed tremulously, +"this is leap year. And, remember, you kissed me. Or did I kiss you? +Which was it, Jack?" + +MacRae seated himself on the log beside her. He put his arm around her +and drew her close to him. That disturbing wave of emotion which had +briefly mastered him was gone. He felt only a passionate tenderness for +Betty and a pity for them both. But he had determined what to do. + +"I do love you, Betty," he said--"your hair and your eyes and your lips +and the sound of your voice and the way you walk and everything that is +you. Is that quite plain enough? It's a sort of emotional madness." + +"Well, I am afflicted with the same sort of madness," she admitted. "And +I like it. It is natural." + +"But you wouldn't like it if you knew it meant a series of mental and +spiritual conflicts that would be almost like physical torture," he said +slowly. "You'd be afraid of it." + +"And you?" she demanded. + +"Yes," he said simply. "I am." + +"Then you're a poor sort of lover," she flung at him, and freed herself +from his arms with a quick twist of her body. Her breast heaved. She +moved away from him. + +"I'll admit being a poor lover, perhaps," MacRae said. "I didn't want to +love you. I shouldn't love you. I really ought to hate you. I don't, but +if I was consistent, I should. I ought to take every opportunity to hurt +you just because you are a Gower. I have good reason to do so. I can't +tell you why--or at least I am not going to tell you why. I don't think +it would mend matters if I did. I dare say I'm a better fighter than a +lover. I fight in the open, on the square. And because I happen to care +enough to shrink from making you risk things I can't dodge, I'm a poor +lover. Well, perhaps I am." + +"I didn't really mean that, Jack," Betty muttered. + +"I know you didn't," he returned gently. "But I mean what I have just +said." + +"You mean that for some reason which I do not know and which you will +not tell me, there is such bad blood between you and my father that you +can't--you won't--won't even take a chance on me?" + +"Something like that," MacRae admitted. "Only you put it badly. You'd +either tie my hands, which I couldn't submit to, or you'd find yourself +torn between two factions, and life would be a pretty sad affair." + +"I asked you once before, and you told me it was something that happened +before either of us was born," Betty said thoughtfully. "I am going to +get at the bottom of this somehow. I wonder if you do really care, or +if this is all camouflage,--if you're just playing with me to see how +big a fool I _will_ make of myself." + +That queer mistrust of him which suddenly clouded Betty's face and made +her pretty mouth harden roused Jack MacRae to an intolerable fury. It +was like a knife in a tender spot. He had been stifling the impulse to +forget and bury all these ancient wrongs and injustices for which +neither of them was responsible but for which, so far as he could see, +they must both suffer. Something cracked in him at Betty's words. She +jumped, warned by the sudden blaze in his eyes. But he caught her with a +movement quicker than her own. He held her by the arms with fingers that +gripped like iron clamps. He shook her. + +"You wonder if I really care," he cried. "My God, can't you see? Can't +you feel? Must a man grovel and weep and rave?" + +Betty whitened a little at this storm which she had evoked. But she did +not flinch. Her eyes looked straight into his, fearlessly. + +"You are raving now," she said. "And you are hurting my arms terribly." + +MacRae released his hold on her. His hands dropped to his sides. + +"I suppose I was," he said in a flat, lifeless tone. "But don't say that +to me again, ever. You can say anything you like, Betty, except that I'm +not in earnest. I don't deserve that." + +Betty retreated a little. MacRae was not even looking at her now. His +eyes were turned to the sea, to hide the blur that crept into them in +spite of his will. + +"You don't deserve anything," Betty said distinctly. She moved warily +away as she spoke. "You have the physical courage to face death; but you +haven't the moral courage to face a problem in living, even though you +love me. You take it for granted that I'm as weak as you are. You won't +even give me a chance to prove whether love is strong or weak in the +face of trouble. And I will never give you another chance--never." + +She sprang from the beach to the low pile of driftwood and from that +plunged into the thicket. MacRae did not try to follow. He did not even +move. He looked after her a minute. Then he sat down on the log again +and stared at the steady march of the swells. There was a sense of +finality in this thing which made him flounder desperately. Still, he +assured himself, it had to be. And if it had to be that way it was +better to have it so understood. Betty would never look at him again +with that disturbing message in her eyes. He would not be troubled by a +futile longing. But it hurt. He had never imagined how so abstract a +thing as emotion could breed such an ache in a man's heart. + +After a little he got up. There was a trail behind that thicket, an old +game trail widened by men's feet, that ran along the seaward slope to +Cradle Bay. He went up now to this path. His eye, used to the practice +of woodcraft, easily picked up tiny heel marks, toe prints, read their +message mechanically. Betty had been running. She had gone home. + +He went back to the beach. The rowboat and the rising tide caught his +attention. He hauled the boat up on the driftwood so that it should not +float away. Then he busied himself on the deer's legs with a knife for a +minute and shouldered the carcass. + +It was a mile and a half across country to the head of Squitty Cove. He +had intended to hang his deer in a tree by the beach and come for it +later with a boat. Now he took up this hundred-pound burden for the +long carry over steep hills and through brushy hollows in the spirit of +the medieval flagellantes, mortifying his flesh for the ease of his +soul. + +An hour or so later he came out on a knoll over-looking all the +southeastern face of Squitty. Below, the wind-harassed Gulf spread its +ruffled surface. He looked down on the cliffs and the Cove and Cradle +Bay. He could see Gower's cottage white among the green, one chimney +spitting blue smoke that the wind carried away in a wispy banner. He +could see a green patch behind his own house with the white headboard +that marked his father's grave. He could see Poor Man's Rock bare its +kelp-grown head between seas, and on the point above the Rock a solitary +figure, squat and brown, that he knew must be Horace Gower. + +MacRae laid down his pack to rest his aching shoulders. But there was no +resting the ache in his heart. Nor was it restful to gaze upon any of +these things within the span of his eye. He was reminded of too much +which it was not good to remember. As he sat staring down on the distant +Rock and a troubled sea with an intolerable heaviness in his breast, he +recalled that so must his father have looked down on Poor Man's Rock in +much the same anguished spirit long ago. And Jack MacRae's mind reacted +morbidly to the suggestion, the parallel. His eyes turned with +smoldering fire to the stumpy figure on the tip of Point Old. + +"I'll pay it all back yet," he gritted. "Betty or no Betty, I'll make +him wish he'd kept his hands off the MacRaes." + + * * * * * + +About the time Jack MacRae with his burden of venison drew near his own +dooryard, Betty Gower came out upon the winter-sodden lawn before their +cottage and having crossed it ran lightly up the steps to the wide +porch. From there she saw her father standing on the Point. She called +to him. At her hail he came trudging to the house. Betty was piling wood +in the living-room fireplace when he came in. + +"I was beginning to worry about you," he said. + +"The wind got too much for me," she answered, "so I put the boat on the +beach a mile or so along and walked home." + +Gower drew a chair up to the fire. + +"Blaze feels good," he remarked. "There's a chill in this winter air." + +Betty made no comment. + +"Getting lonesome?" he inquired after a minute. "It seems to me you've +been restless the last day or two. Want to go back to town, Betty?" + +"I wonder why we come here and stay and stay, out of reach of everything +and everybody?" she said at last. + +"Blest if I know," Gower answered casually. "Except that we like to. +It's a restful place, isn't it? You work harder at having a good time in +town than I ever did making money. Well, we don't have to be hermits +unless we like. We'll go back to mother and the giddy whirl to-morrow, +if you like." + +"We might as well, I think," she said absently. + +For a minute neither spoke. The fire blazed up in a roaring flame. +Raindrops slashed suddenly against the windows out of a storm-cloud +driven up by the wind. Betty turned her eyes on her father. + +"Did you ever do anything to Jack MacRae that would give him reason to +hate you?" she asked bluntly. + +Gower shook his head without troubling to look at her. He kept his face +steadfastly to the fire. + +"No," he said. "The other way about, if anything. He put a crimp in me +last season." + +"I remember you said you were going to smash him," she said +thoughtfully. + +"Did I?" he made answer in an indifferent tone. "Well, I might. And then +again I might not. He may do the smashing. He's a harder proposition +than I figured he would be, in several ways." + +"That isn't it," Betty said, as if to herself. "Then you must have had +some trouble with his father--long ago. Something that hurt him enough +for him to pass a grudge on to Jack. What was it, daddy? Anything real?" + +"Jack, eh?" Gower passed over the direct question. "You must be getting +on. Have you been seeing much of that young man lately?" + +"What does that matter?" Betty returned impatiently. "Of course I see +him. Is there any reason I shouldn't?" + +Gower picked up a brass poker. He leaned forward, digging aimlessly at +the fire, stirring up tiny cascades of sparks that were sucked glowing +into the black chimney throat. + +"Perhaps no reason that would strike you as valid," he said slowly. +"Still--I don't know. Do you like him?" + +"You won't answer my questions," Betty complained. "Why should I answer +yours?" + +"There are plenty of nice young fellows in your own crowd," Gower went +on, still poking mechanically at the fire. "Why pick on young MacRae?" + +"You're evading, daddy," Betty murmured. "Why _shouldn't_ I pick on +Jack MacRae if I like him--if he likes me? That's what I'm trying to +find out." + +"Does he?" Gower asked pointblank. + +"Yes," Betty admitted in a reluctant whisper. "He does--but--why don't +you tell me, daddy, what I'm up against, as you would say? What did you +ever do to old Donald MacRae that his son should have a feeling that is +stronger than love?" + +"You think he loves you?" + +"I know it," Betty murmured. + +"And you?" Gower's deep voice seemed harsh. + +Betty threw out her hands in an impatient gesture. + +"Must I shout it out loud?" she cried. + +"You always were different from most girls, in some things," Gower +observed reflectively. "Iron under your softness. I never knew you to +stop trying to get anything you really wanted, not while there was a +chance to get it. Still--don't you think it would be as well for you to +stop wanting young MacRae--since he doesn't want you bad enough to try +to get you? Eh?" + +He still kept his face studiously averted. His tone was kind, full of a +peculiar tenderness that he kept for Betty alone. + +She rose and perched herself on the arm of his chair, caught and drew +his head against her, forced him to look up into eyes preternaturally +bright. + +"You don't seem to understand," she said. "It isn't that Jack doesn't +want me badly enough. He could have me, and I think he knows that too. +But there is something, something that drives him the other way. He +loves me. I know he does. And still he has spells of hating all us +Gowers--especially you. I know he wouldn't do that without reason." + +"Doesn't he tell you the reason?" + +Betty shook her head. + +"Would I be asking you, daddy?" + +"I can't tell you, either," Gower rumbled deep in his throat. + +"Is it something that can't be mended?" Betty put her face down against +his, and he felt the tears wet on her cheek. "Think, daddy. I'm +beginning to be terribly unhappy." + +"That seems to be a family failing," Gower muttered. "I can't mend it, +Betty. I don't know what young MacRae knows or what he feels, but I can +guess. I'd make it worse if I meddled. Should I go to this hot-headed +young fool and say, 'Come on, let's shake hands, and you marry my +daughter'?" + +"Don't be absurd," Betty flashed. "I'm not asking you to _do_ anything." + +"I couldn't do anything in this case if I wanted to," Gower declared. +"As a matter of fact, I think I'd put young MacRae out of my head, if I +were you. I wouldn't pick him for a husband, anyway." + +Betty rose to her feet. + +"You brought me into the world," she said passionately. "You have fed me +and clothed me and educated me and humored all my whims ever since I can +remember. But you can't pick a husband for me. I shall do that for +myself. It's silly to tell me to put Jack MacRae out of my head. He +isn't in my head. He's in my--my--heart. And I can keep him there, if I +can't have him in my arms. Put him out of my head! You talk as if loving +and marrying were like dealing in fish." + +"I wish it were," Gower rumbled. "I might have had some success at it +myself." + +Betty did not even vouchsafe reply. Probably she did not even hear what +he said. She turned and went to the window, stood looking out at the +rising turmoil of the sea, at the lowering scud of the clouds, dabbing +surreptitiously at her eyes with a handkerchief. After a little she +walked out of the room. Her feet sounded lightly on the stairs. + +Gower bent to the fire again. He resumed his aimless stirring of the +coals. A grim, twisted smile played about his lips. But his eyes were as +somber as the storm-blackened winter sky. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + +En Famille + + +Horace Gower's town house straddled the low crest of a narrow peninsula +which juts westward into the Gulf from the heart of the business section +of Vancouver. The tip of this peninsula ends in the green forest of +Stanley Park, which is like no other park in all North America, either +in its nature or its situation. It is a sizable stretch of ancient +forest, standing within gunshot of skyscrapers, modern hotels, great +docks where China freighters unload tea and silk. Hard on the flank of a +modern seaport this area of primitive woodland broods in the summer sun +and the winter rains not greatly different from what it must have been +in those days when only the Siwash Indians penetrated its shadowy +depths. + +The rear of Gower's house abutted against the park, neighbor to great +tall firs and massive, branchy cedars and a jungle of fern and thicket +bisected by a few paths and drives, with the sea lapping all about three +sides of its seven-mile boundary. From Gower's northward windows the +Capilano canyon opened between two mountains across the Inlet. Southward +other windows gave on English Bay and beach sands where one could count +a thousand swimmers on a summer afternoon. + +The place was only three blocks from Abbott's. The house itself was not +unlike Abbott's, built substantially of gray stone and set in ample +grounds. But it was a good deal larger, and both within and without it +was much more elaborate, as befitted the dwelling of a successful man +whose wife was socially a leader instead of a climber,--like so many of +Vancouver's newly rich. There was order and system and a smooth, +unobtrusive service in that home. Mrs. Horace A. Gower rather prided +herself on the noiseless, super-efficient operation of her domestic +machinery. Any little affair was sure to go off without a hitch, to be +quite charming, you know. Mrs. Gower had a firmly established prestige +along certain lines. Her business in life was living up to that +prestige, not only that it might be retained but judiciously expanded. + +Upon a certain March morning, however, Mrs. Gower seemed to be a trifle +shaken out of her usual complacency. She sat at a rather late breakfast, +facing her husband, flanked on either hand by her son and daughter. +There was an injured droop to Mrs. Gower's mouth, a slightly indignant +air about her. The conversation had reached a point where Mrs. Gower +felt impelled to remove her pince-nez and polish them carefully with a +bit of cloth. This was an infallible sign of distress. + +"I cannot see the least necessity for it, Norman," she resumed in a +slightly agitated, not to say petulant tone. "It's simply ridiculous for +a young man of your position to be working at common labor with such +terribly common people. It's degrading." + +Norman was employing himself upon a strip of bacon. + +"That's a mere matter of opinion," he replied at length. "Somebody has +to work. I have to do something for myself sometime, and it suits me to +begin now, in this particular manner which annoys you so much. I don't +mind work. And those copper claims are a rattling good prospect. +Everybody says so. We'll make a barrel of money out of them yet. Why +shouldn't I peel off my coat and go at it?" + +"By the way," Gower asked bluntly, "what occasioned this flying trip to +England?" + +Norman pushed back his chair a trifle, thrust his hands in his trousers +pockets and looked straight at his father. + +"My own private business," he answered as bluntly. + +"You people," he continued after a brief interval, "seem to think I'm +still in knee breeches." + +But this did not serve to turn his mother from her theme. + +"It is quite unnecessary for you to attempt making money in such a +primitive manner," she observed. "We have plenty of money. There is +plenty of opportunity for you in your father's business, if you must be +in business." + +"Huh!" Norman grunted. "I'm no good in my father's business, nor +anywhere else, in his private opinion. It's no good, mamma. I'm on my +own for keeps. I'm going through with it. I've been a jolly fizzle so +far. I'm not even a blooming war hero. You just stop bothering about +me." + +"I really can't think what's got into you," Mrs. Gower complained in a +tone which implied volumes of reproach. "It's bad enough for your father +and Betty to be running off and spending so much time at that miserable +cottage when so much is going on here. I'm simply exhausted keeping +things up without any help from them. But this vagary of yours--I really +can't consider it anything else--is most distressing. To live in a dirty +little cabin and cook your own food, to associate with such men--it's +simply dreadful! Haven't you any regard for our position?" + +"I'm fed up with our position," Norman retorted. A sullen look was +gathering about his mouth. "What does it amount to? A lot of people +running around in circles, making a splash with their money. You, and +the sort of thing you call our position, made a sissy of me right up +till the war came along. There was nothing I was good for but parlor +tricks. And you and everybody else expected me to react from that and +set things afire overseas. I didn't. I didn't begin to come up to your +expectations at all. But if I didn't split Germans with a sword or do +any heroics I did get some horse sense knocked into me--unbelievable as +that may appear to you. I learned that there was a sort of satisfaction +in doing things. I'm having a try at that now. And you needn't imagine +I'm going to be wet-nursed along by your money. + +"As for my associates, and the degrading influences that fill you with +such dismay," Norman's voice flared into real anger, "they may not have +much polish--but they're human. I like them, so far as they go. I've +been frostbitten enough by the crowd I grew up with, since I came home, +to appreciate being taken for what I am, not what I may or may not have +done. Since I have discovered myself to have a funny sort of feeling +about living on your money, it behooves me to get out and make what +money I need for myself--in view of the fact that I'm going to be +married quite soon. I am going to marry"--Norman rose and looked down at +his mother with something like a flicker of amusement in his eyes as he +exploded his final bombshell--"a fisherman's daughter. A poor but worthy +maiden," he finished with unexpected irony. + +"Norman!" His mother's voice was a wail. "A common fisherman's +daughter? Oh, my son, my son." + +She shed a few beautifully restrained tears. + +"A common fisherman's daughter. Exactly," Norman drawled. "Terrible +thing, of course. Funny the fish scales on the family income never +trouble you." + +Mrs. Gower glared at him through her glasses. + +"Who is this--this woman?" she demanded. + +"Dolly," Betty whispered under her breath. + +"Miss Dolores Ferrara of Squitty Cove," Norman answered imperturbably. + +"A foreigner besides. Great Heavens! Horace," Mrs. Gower appealed to her +husband, "have you no influence whatever with your son?" + +"Mamma," Betty put in, "I assure you you are making a tremendous fuss +about nothing. I can tell you that Dolly Ferrara is really quite a nice +girl. _I_ think Norman is rather lucky." + +"Thanks, Bet," Norman said promptly. "That's the first decent thing I've +heard in this discussion." + +Mrs. Gower turned the battery of her indignant eyes on her daughter. + +"You, I presume," she said spitefully, "will be thinking of marrying +some fisherman next?" + +"If she did, Bessie," Gower observed harshly, "it would only be history +repeating itself." + +Mrs. Gower flushed, paled a little, and reddened again. She glared--no +other word describes her expression--at her husband for an instant. Then +she took refuge behind her dignity. + +"There is a downright streak of vulgarity in you, Horace," she said, +"which I am sorry to see crop out in my children." + +"Thank you, mamma," Betty remarked evenly. + +Mrs. Gower whirled on Norman. + +"I wash my hands of you completely," she said imperiously. "I am ashamed +of you." + +"I'd rather you'd be ashamed of me," Norman retorted, "than that I +should be ashamed of myself." + +"And you, sir,"--he faced his father, speaking in a tone of formal +respect which did not conceal a palpable undercurrent of defiance--"you +also, I suppose, wash your hands of me?" + +Gower looked at him for a second. His face was a mask, devoid of +expression. + +"You're a man grown," he said. "Your mother has expressed herself as she +might be expected to. I say nothing." + +Norman walked to the door. + +"I don't care a deuce of a lot what you say or what you don't say, nor +even what you think," he flung at them angrily, with his hand on the +knob. "I have my own row to hoe. I'm going to hoe it my own style. And +that's all there is to it. If you can't even wish me luck, why, you can +go to the devil!" + +"Norman!" His mother lifted her voice in protesting horror. Gower +himself only smiled, a bit cynically. And Betty looked at the door which +closed upon her brother with a wistful sort of astonishment. + +Gower first found occasion for speech. + +"While we are on the subject of intimate family affairs, Bessie," he +addressed his wife casually, "I may as well say that I shall have to +call on you for some funds--about thirty thousand dollars. Forty +thousand would be better." + +Mrs. Gower stiffened to attention. She regarded her husband with an air +of complete disapproval, slightly tinctured with surprise. + +"Oh," she said, "really?" + +"I shall need that much properly to undertake this season's operations," +he stated calmly, almost indifferently. + +"Really?" she repeated. "Are you in difficulties again?" + +"Again?" he echoed. "It is fifteen years since I was in a corner where I +needed any of your money." + +"It seems quite recent to me," Mrs. Gower observed stiffly. + +"Am I to understand from that that you don't care to advance me whatever +sum I require?" he asked gently. + +"I don't see why I should," Mrs. Gower replied after a second's +reflection, "even if I were quite able to do so. This place costs +something to keep up. I can't very well manage on less than two thousand +a month. And Betty and I must be clothed. You haven't contributed much +recently, Horace." + +"No? I had the impression that I had been contributing pretty freely for +thirty years," Gower returned dryly. "I paid the bills up to December. +Last season wasn't a particularly good one--for me." + +"That was chiefly due to your own mismanagement, I should say," Mrs. +Gower commented tartly. "Putting the whole cannery burden on Norman when +the poor boy had absolutely no experience. Really, you must have +mismanaged dreadfully. I heard only the other day that the Robbin-Steele +plants did better last season than they ever did. I'm sure the Abbotts +made money last year. If the banks have lost faith in your business +ability, I--well, I should consider you a bad risk, Horace. I can't +afford to gamble." + +"You never do. You only play cinches," Gower grunted. "However, your +money will be safe enough. I didn't say the banks refuse me credit. I +have excellent reasons for borrowing of you." + +"I really do not see how I can possibly let you have such a sum," she +said. "You already have twenty thousand dollars of my money tied up in +your business, you know." + +"You have an income of twelve thousand a year from the Maple Point +place," Gower recited in that unchanging, even tone. "You have over +twenty thousand cash on deposit. And you have eighty thousand dollars in +Victory Bonds. You mean you don't want to, Bessie." + +"You may accept that as my meaning," she returned. + +"There are times in every man's career," Gower remarked dispassionately, +"when the lack of a little money might break him." + +"That is all the more reason why I should safeguard my funds," Mrs. +Gower replied. "You are not as young as you were, Horace. If you should +fail now, you would likely never get on your feet again. But we could +manage, I dare say, on what I have. That is why I do not care to risk +any of it." + +"You refuse then, absolutely, to let me have this money?" he asked. + +"I do," Mrs. Gower replied, with an air of pained but conscious +rectitude. "I should consider myself most unwise to do so." + +"All right," Gower returned indifferently. "You force me to a showdown. +I have poured money into your hands for years for you to squander in +keeping up your position--as you call it. I'm about through doing that. +I'm sick of aping millionaires. All I need is a comfortable place where +I can smoke a pipe in peace. This house is mine. I shall sell it and +repay you your twenty thousand. You--" + +"Horace! Sell this house. Our home! _Horace._" + +"Our home?" Gower continued inflexibly. "The place where we eat and +sleep and entertain, you mean. We never had a home, Bessie. You will +have your ancestral hall at Maple Point. You will be quite able to +afford a Vancouver house if you choose. But this is mine, and it's going +into the discard. I shall owe you nothing. I shall still have the +cottage at Cradle Bay, if I go smash, and that is quite good enough for +me. Do I make myself clear?" + +Mrs. Gower was sniffing. She had taken refuge with the pince-nez and the +polishing cloth. But her fingers were tremulous, and her expression was +that of a woman who feels herself sadly abused and who is about to +indulge in luxurious weeping. + +"But, Horace, to sell this house over my head--what will p-people say?" + +"I don't care two whoops what people say," Mr. Gower replied +unfeelingly. + +"This is simp-ply outrageous! How is Betty going to m-meet p-people?" + +"You mean," her husband retorted, "how are you going to contrive the +proper background against which Betty shall display her charms to the +different varieties of saphead which you hit upon as being eligible to +marry her? Don't worry. With the carefully conserved means at your +disposal you will still be able to maintain yourself in the station in +which it has pleased God to place you. You will be able to see that +Betty has the proper advantages." + +This straw broke the camel's back, if it is proper so to speak of a +middle-aged, delicate-featured lady, delightfully gowned and coiffed +and manicured. Mrs. Gower's grief waxed crescendo. Whereupon her +husband, with no manifest change of expression beyond an unpleasant +narrowing of his eyes, heaved his short, flesh-burdened body out of the +chair and left the room. + +Betty had sat silent through this conversation, a look of profound +distaste slowly gathering on her fresh young face. She gazed after her +father. When the door closed upon him Betty's gray eyes came to rest on +her mother's bowed head and shaking shoulders. There was nothing in +Betty Gower's expression which remotely suggested sympathy. She said +nothing. She leaned her elbows on the table and rested her pretty chin +in her cupped palms. + +Mrs. Gower presently became aware of this detached, observing, almost +critical attitude. + +"Your f-father is p-positively b-brutal," she found voice to declare. + +"There are various sorts of brutality," Betty observed enigmatically. "I +don't think daddy has a corner on the visible supply. Are you going to +let him have that money?" + +"No. Never," Mrs. Gower snapped. + +"You may lose a great deal more than the house by that," Betty murmured. + +But if Mrs. Gower heard the words they conveyed no meaning to her +agitated mind. She was rapidly approaching that incomprehensible state +in which a woman laughs and cries in the same breath, and Betty got up +with a faintly contemptuous curl to her red lips. She went out into the +hall and pressed a button. A maid materialized. + +"Go into the dining room and attend to mamma, if you please, Mary," +Betty said. + +Then she skipped nimbly upstairs, two steps at a time, and went into a +room on the second floor, a room furnished something after the fashion +of a library in which her father sat in a big leather chair chewing on +an unlighted cigar. + +Betty perched on the arm of his chair and ran her fingers through a +patch on top of his head where the hair was growing a bit thin. + +"Daddy," she asked, "did you mean that about going smash?" + +"Possibility," he grunted. + +"Are you really going to sell this house and live at Cradle Bay?" + +"Sure. You sorry?" + +"About the house? Oh, no. It's only a place for mamma to make a splash, +as Norman said. If you hibernate at the cottage I'll come and keep house +for you." + +Gower considered this. + +"You ought to stay with your mother," he said finally. "She'll be able +to give you a lot I wouldn't make an effort to provide. You don't know +what it means really to work. You'd find it pretty slow at Squitty." + +"Maybe," Betty said. "But we managed very well last winter, just you and +me. If there is going to be a break-up of the family I shall stay with +you. I'm a daddy's girl." + +Gower drew her face down and kissed it. + +"You are that," he said huskily. "You're all Gower. There's real stuff +in you. You're free of that damned wishy-washy Morton blood. She made a +poodle dog of Norman, but she couldn't spoil you. We'll manage, eh, +Betty?" + +"Of course," Betty returned. "But I don't know that Norman is such a +hopeless case. Didn't he rather take your breath away with his +declaration of independence?" + +"It takes more than a declaration to win independence," Gower answered +grimly. "Wait till the going gets hard. However, I'll say there's a +chance for Norman. Now, you run along, Betty. I've got some figuring to +do." + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + +Business as Usual + + +Late in March Jack MacRae came down to Vancouver and quartered himself +at the Granada again. He liked the quiet luxury of that great hostelry. +It was a trifle expensive, but he was not inclined to worry about +expense. At home, or aboard his carriers in the season, living was a +negligible item. He found a good deal of pleasure in swinging from one +extreme to the other. Besides, a man stalking big game does not arm +himself with a broomstick. + +He had not come to town solely for his pleasure, although he was not +disposed to shy from any diversion that offered. He had business in +hand, business of prime importance since it involved spending a little +matter of twelve thousand dollars. In brief, he had to replace the +_Blackbird_, and he was replacing her with a carrier of double the +capacity, of greater speed, equipped with special features of his own +choosing. The new boat was designed to carry ten thousand salmon. There +was installed in her holds an ammonia refrigerating plant which would +free him from the labor and expense and uncertainty of crushed ice. +Science bent to the service of money-making. MacRae grinned to himself +when he surveyed the coiled pipes, the pumping engine. His new boat was +a floating, self-contained cold-storage plant. He could maintain a +freezing temperature so long as he wished by chemico-mechanical means. +That meant a full load every trip, since he could follow the trollers +till he got a load, if it took a week, and his salmon would still be +fresh. + +He wondered why this had not been done before. Stubby enlightened him. + +"Partly because it's a costly rig to install. But mostly because salmon +and ice have always been both cheap and plentiful, and people have got +into a habit of doing things in the same old way. You know. Until the +last season or two salmon have been so cheap that neither canneries nor +buyers bothered about anything so up-to-date. If they lost their ice in +hot weather and the fish rotted--why, there were plenty more fish. There +have been times when the Fraser River stunk with rotten salmon. They +used to pay the fishermen ten cents apiece for six-pound sockeyes and +limit them to two hundred fish to the boat if there was a big run. The +gill-netter would take five hundred in one drift, come in to the cannery +loaded to the guards, find himself up against a limit. He would sell the +two hundred and dump more than that overboard. And the Fraser River +canneries wonder why sockeye is getting scarce. My father used to rave +about the waste. Criminal, he used to say." + +"When the fishermen were getting only ten cents apiece for sockeyes, +salmon was selling at fifteen cents a pound tin," MacRae observed. + +"Oh, the canneries made barrels of money." Stubby shrugged his +shoulders. "They thought the salmon would always run in millions, no +matter how many they destroyed. Some of 'em think so yet." + +"We're a nation of wasters, compared to Europe," MacRae said +thoughtfully. "The only thing they are prodigal with over there is human +flesh and blood. That is cheap and plentiful. But they take care of +their natural resources. We destroy as much as we use, fish, +timber--everything. Everybody for himself and the devil take the +hindmost." + +"Well, I don't know what _we_ can do about it," Stubby drawled. + +"Keep from being the hindmost," MacRae answered. "But I sometimes feel +sorry for those who are." + +"Man," Stubby observed, "is a predatory animal. You can't make anything +else of him. Nobody develops philanthropy and the public spirit until he +gets rich and respectable. Social service is nothing but a theory yet. +God only helps those who help themselves." + +"How does he arrange it for those who _can't_ help themselves?" MacRae +inquired. + +Stubby shrugged his shoulders. + +"Search me," he said. + +"Do you even believe in this anthropomorphic God of the preachers?" +MacRae asked curiously. + +"Well, there must be something, don't you think?" Stubby hedged. + +"There may be," MacRae pursued the thought. "I read a book by Wells not +long ago in which he speaks of God as the Great Experimenter. If there +is an all-powerful Deity, it strikes me that in his attitude toward +humanity he is a good deal like a referee at a football game who would +say to the teams, 'Here is the ball and the field and the two goals. Go +to it,' and then goes off to the side lines to smoke his pipe while the +players foul and gouge and trip and generally run amuck in a frenzied +effort to win the game." + +"You're a pessimist," Stubby declared. + +"What is a pessimist?" MacRae demanded. + +But Stubby changed the subject. He was not concerned with abstractions. +And he was vitally concerned with the material factors of his everyday +life, believing that he was able to dominate those material factors and +bend them to his will if only he were clever enough and energetic +enough. + +Stubby wanted to get in on the blueback salmon run again. He had put a +big pack through Crow Harbor and got a big price for the pack. In a +period of mounting prices canned salmon was still ascending. Food in any +imperishable, easily transported form was sure of a market in Europe. +There was a promise of even bigger returns for Pacific salmon packers in +the approaching season. But Stubby was not sure enough yet of where he +stood to make any definite arrangement with MacRae. He wanted to talk +things over, to feel his way. + +There were changes in the air. For months the industrial pot had been +spasmodically boiling over in strikes, lockouts, boycotts, charges of +profiteering, loud and persistent complaints from consumers, organized +labor and rapidly organizing returned soldiers. Among other things the +salmon packers' monopoly and the large profits derived therefrom had not +escaped attention. + +From her eight millions of population during those years of war effort +Canada had withdrawn over six hundred thousand able-bodied men. Yet the +wheels of industry turned apace. She had supplied munitions, food for +armies, ships, yet her people had been fed and clothed and housed,--all +their needs had been liberally supplied. + +And in a year these men had come back. Not all. There were close on to +two hundred thousand to be checked off the lists. There was the lesser +army of the slightly and totally disabled, the partially digested food +of the war machine. But there were still a quarter of a million men to +be reabsorbed into a civil and industrial life which had managed to +function tolerably well without them. + +These men, for the most part, had somehow conceived the idea that they +were coming back to a better world, a world purged of dross by the +bloody sweat of the war. And they found it pretty much the same old +world. They had been uprooted. They found it a little difficult to take +root again. They found living costly, good jobs not so plentiful, +masters as exacting as they had been before. The Golden Rule was no more +a common practice than it had ever been. Yet the country was rich, +bursting with money. Big business throve, even while it howled to high +heaven about ruinous, confiscatory taxation. + +The common man himself lifted up his voice in protest and backed his +protest with such action as he could take. Besides the parent body of +the Great War Veterans' Association other kindred groups of men who had +fought on both sea and land sprang into being. The labor organizations +were strengthened in their campaign for shorter hours and longer pay by +thousands of their own members returned, all semi-articulate, all more +or less belligerent. The war had made fighters of them. War does not +teach men sweet reasonableness. They said to themselves and to each +other that they had fought the greatest war in the world's history and +were worse off than they were before. From coast to coast society was +infiltrated with men who wore a small bronze button in the left lapel of +their coats, men who had acquired a new sense of their relation to +society, men who asked embarrassing questions in public meetings, in +clubs, in legislative assemblies, in Parliament, and who demanded +answers to the questions. + +British Columbia was no exception. The British Columbia coast fishermen +did not escape the influence of this general unrest, this critical +inquiry. Wealthy, respectable, middle-aged citizens viewed with alarm +and denounced pernicious agitation. The common man retorted with the +epithet of "damned profiteer" and worse. Army scandals were aired. +Ancient political graft was exhumed. Strident voices arose in the +wilderness of contention crying for a fresh deal, a clean-up, a new +dispensation. + +When MacRae first began to run bluebacks there were a few returned +soldiers fishing salmon, men like the Ferrara boys who had been +fishermen before they were soldiers, who returned to their old calling +when they put off the uniform. Later, through the season, he came across +other men, frankly neophytes, trying their hand at a vocation which at +least held the lure of freedom from a weekly pay check and a boss. These +men were not slow to comprehend the cannery grip on the salmon grounds +and the salmon fishermen. They chafed against the restrictions which, +they said, put them at the canneries' mercy. They growled about the +swarms of Japanese who could get privileges denied a white man because +the Japs catered to the packers. They swelled with their voices the +feeble chorus that white fishermen had raised long before the war. + +All of this, like wavering gusts, before the storm, was informing the +sentient ears of politicians who governed by grace of electoral votes. +Soldiers, who had been citizens before they became soldiers, who were +frankly critical of both business and government, won in by-elections. +In the British Columbia legislature there was a major from an Island +district and a lieutenant from North Vancouver. They were exponents of a +new deal, enemies of the profiteer and the professional politician, and +they were thorns in the side of a provincial government which yearned +over vested rights as a mother over her ailing babe. In the Dominion +capital it was much the same as elsewhere,--a government which had +grasped office on a win-the-war platform found its grasp wavering over +the knotty problems of peace. + +The British Columbia salmon fisheries were controlled by the Dominion, +through a department political in its scope. Whether the Macedonian cry +penetrated through bureaucratic swaddlings, whether the fact that +fishermen had votes and might use them with scant respect for personages +to whom votes were a prerequisite to political power, may remain a +riddle. But about the time Jack MacRae's new carrier was ready to take +the water, there came a shuffle in the fishery regulations which fell +like a bomb in the packers' camp. + +The ancient cannery monopoly of purse-seining rights on given territory +was broken into fine large fragments. The rules which permitted none but +a cannery owner to hold a purse-seine license and denied all other men +that privilege were changed. The new regulations provided that any male +citizen of British birth or naturalization could fish if he paid the +license fee. The cannery men shouted black ruin,--but they girded up +their loins to get fish. + +MacRae was still in Vancouver when this change of policy was announced. +He heard the roaring of the cannery lions. Their spokesmen filled the +correspondence columns of the daily papers with their views. MacRae had +not believed such changes imminent or even possible. But taking them as +an accomplished fact, he foresaw strange developments in the salmon +industry. Until now the packers could always be depended upon to stand +shoulder to shoulder against the fishermen and the consumer, to dragoon +one another into the line of a general policy. The American buyers, +questing adventurously from over the line, had alone saved the +individual fisherman from eating humbly out of the British Columbia +canner's hand. + +The fishermen had made a living, such as it was. The cannery men had +dwelt in peace and amity with one another. They had their own loosely +knit organization, held together by the ties of financial interest. They +sat behind mahogany desks and set the price of salmon to the fishermen +and very largely the price of canned fish to the consumer, and their +most arduous labor had been to tot up the comfortable balance after each +season's operations. All this pleasantness was to be done away with, +they mourned. Every Tom, Dick, and Harry was to be turned loose on the +salmon with deadly gear and greedy intent to exterminate a valuable +species of fish and wipe out a thriving industry. The salmon would all +be killed off, so did the packers cry. What few small voices arose, +suggesting that the deadly purse seine had never been considered deadly +when only canneries had been permitted to use such gear and that _they_ +had not worried about the extermination of the salmon so long as they +did the exterminating themselves and found it highly profitable,--these +few voices, alas, arose only in minor strains and were for the most part +drowned by the anvil chorus of the cannery men. + +MacRae observed, listened, read the papers, and prophesied to himself a +scramble. But he did not see where it touched him,--not until +Robbin-Steele Senior asked him to come to his office in the Bond +Building one afternoon. + +MacRae faced the man over a broad table in an office more like the +library of a well-appointed home than a place of calculated +profit-mongering. Robbin-Steele, Senior, was tall, thin, sixty years of +age, sandy-haired, with a high, arched nose. His eyes, MacRae thought, +were disagreeably like the eyes of a dead fish, lusterless and sunken; a +cold man with a suave manner seeking his own advantage. Robbin-Steele +was a Scotchman of tolerably good family who had come to British +Columbia with an inherited fortune and made that fortune grow to vast +proportions in the salmon trade. He had two pretty and clever daughters, +and three of his sons had been notable fighters overseas. MacRae knew +them all, liked them well enough. But he had never come much in contact +with the head of the family. What he had seen of Robbin-Steele, Senior, +gave him the impression of cold, calculating power. + +"I wonder," MacRae heard him saying after a brief exchange of +courtesies, "if we could make an arrangement with you to deliver all the +salmon you can get this season to our Fraser River plant." + +"Possibly," MacRae replied. "But there is no certainty that I will get +any great number of salmon." + +"If you were as uncertain as that," Robbin-Steele said dryly, "you would +scarcely be putting several thousand dollars into an elaborately +equipped carrier. We may presume that you intend to get the salmon--as +you did last year." + +"You seem to know a great deal about my business," MacRae observed. + +"It is our policy to know, in a general way, what goes on in the salmon +industry," Robbin-Steele assented. + +MacRae waited for him to continue. + +"You have a good deal of both energy and ability," Robbin-Steele went +on. "It is obvious that you have pretty well got control of the blueback +situation around Squitty Island. You must, however, have an outlet for +your fish. We can use these salmon to advantage. On what basis will you +deliver them to us on the Fraser if we give you a contract guaranteeing +to accept all you can deliver?" + +"Twenty per cent, over Folly Bay prices," MacRae answered promptly. + +The cannery man shook his head. + +"No. We can't afford to boost the cost of salmon like that. It'll ruin +the business, which is in a bad enough way as it is. The more you pay a +fisherman, the more he wants. We must keep prices down. That is to your +interest, too." + +"No," MacRae disagreed. "I think it is to my interest to pay the +fishermen top prices, so long as I make a profit on the deal. I don't +want the earth--only a moderate share of it." + +"Twenty per cent. on Folly Bay prices is too uncertain a basis." +Robbin-Steele changed his tactics. "We can send our own carriers there +to buy at far less cost." + +MacRae smiled. + +"You can send your carriers," he drawled, "but I doubt if you would get +many fish. I don't think you quite grasp the Squitty situation." + +"Yes, I think I do," Robbin-Steele returned. "Gower had things pretty +much his own way until you cut in on his grounds. You have undoubtedly +secured quite an advantage in a peculiar manner, and possibly you feel +secure against competition. But your hold is not so strong as Gower's +once was. Let me tell you, your hold on that business can be broken, my +young friend." + +"Undoubtedly," MacRae readily admitted. "But there is a world-wide +demand for canned salmon, and I have not suffered for a market--even +when influence was used last season to close the home market against me, +on Folly Bay's behalf. And I am quite sure, from what I have seen and +heard, that many of the big British Columbia packers like yourself are +so afraid the labor situation will get out of hand that they would shut +down their plants rather than pay fishermen what they could afford to +pay if they would be content with a reasonable profit. So I am not at +all afraid of you seducing the Squitty trollers with high prices." + +"You are laboring under the common error about cannery profits," +Robbin-Steele declared pointedly. "Considering the capital invested, the +total of the pack, the risk and uncertainty of the business, our returns +are not excessive." + +MacRae smiled amusedly. + +"That all depends on what you regard as excessive. But there is nothing +to be gained by an argument on that subject. Canning salmon is a highly +profitable business, but it would not be the gold mine it has been if +canneries hadn't been fostered at the expense of the men who actually +catch the fish, if the government hadn't bestowed upon cannery men the +gift of a strangle hold on the salmon grounds, and license privileges +that gave them absolute control. I haven't any quarrel with cannery men +for making money. You only amuse me when you speak of doubtful returns. +I wish I could have your cinch for a season or two." + +"You shouldn't have any quarrel with us. You started with nothing and +made twenty thousand dollars in a single season," Robbin-Steele +reminded. + +"I worked like a dog. I took chances. And I was very lucky," MacRae +agreed. "I did make a lot of money. But I paid the fishermen more than +they ever got for salmon--a great deal more than they would have got if +I hadn't broken into the game. Abbott made money on the salmon I +delivered him. So everybody was satisfied, except Gower--who perhaps +feels that he is ordained by the Almighty to get cheap salmon." + +"You're spoiling those men," Robbin-Steele declared irritably. "My +observation of that class of labor is that the more money they get the +less they will do and the more they will want. You can't carry on any +industry on that basis. But that's beside the point. We're getting away +from the question. We want you to deliver those fish to us, if you can +do so at a reasonable price. We should like to have some sort of +agreement, so that we may know what to expect." + +"I can deliver the fish," MacRae asserted confidently. "But I don't care +to bind myself to anything. Not this far in advance. Wait till the +salmon run." + +"You are a very shrewd young man, I should say." Robbin-Steele paid him +a reluctant compliment and let a gleam of appreciation flicker in his +dead-fish eyes. "I imagine you will get on. Come and see me when you +feel like considering this matter seriously." + +MacRae went down the elevator wondering if the gentleman's agreement +among the packers was off, if there was going to be something in the +nature of competition among them for the salmon. There would be a few +more gill-net licenses issued. More important, the gill-netters would be +free to fish where they chose, for whosoever paid the highest price, +and not for the cannery which controlled their license. There would be +scores of independent purse seiners. Would the packers bid against one +another for the catch? It rather seemed to MacRae as if they must. They +could no longer sit back secure in the knowledge that the salmon from a +given area must come straight to their waiting cans. And British +Columbia packers had always dreaded American competition. + +Following that, MacRae took train for Bellingham. The people he had +dealt with there at the close of the last season had dealt fairly. +American salmon packers had never suffered the blight of a monopoly. +They had established their industry in legitimate competition, without +governmental favors. They did not care how much money a fisherman made +so long as he caught fish for them which they could profitably can. + +MacRae had no contract with them. He did not want a contract. If he made +hard and fast agreements with any one it would be with Stubby Abbott. +But he did want to fortify himself with all the information he could +get. He did not know what line Folly Bay would take when the season +opened. He was not sure what shifts might occur among the British +Columbia canneries. If such a thing as free and unlimited competition +for salmon took place he might need more than one outlet for his +carriers. MacRae was not engaged in a hazardous business for pastime. He +had an objective, and this objective was contingent upon making money. + +From the American source he learned that a good season was anticipated +for the better grades of salmon. He found out what prices he could +expect. They were liberal enough to increase his confidence. These men +were anxious to get the thousands of British Columbia salmon MacRae +could supply. + +MacRae returned to Vancouver. Before he had finished unpacking his bag +the telephone rang. Hurley, of the Northwest Cold Storage, spoke when he +took down the receiver. Could he drop into the Northwest office? MacRae +grinned to himself and went down to the grimy wharf where deep-sea +halibut schooners rubbed against the dock, their stubby top-hamper +swaying under the office windows as they rocked to the swell of passing +harbor craft. + +He talked with Hurley,--the same gentleman whom he had once approached +with no success in the matter of selling salmon. The situation was +reversed now. The Northwest was eager to buy. They would pay him, _sub +rosa_, two cents a pound over the market price for fresh salmon if he +would supply them with the largest possible quantity from the beginning +of the blueback run. + +As with Robbin-Steele, MacRae refused to commit himself. More clearly he +perceived that the scramble was beginning. The packers and the +cold-storage companies had lost control. They must have fish to +function, to make a profit. They would cut one another's throats for +salmon. So much the better, MacRae cynically reflected. He told Hurley, +at last, as he had told Robbin-Steele, to wait till the salmon began to +run. + +He left the Northwest offices with the firm conviction that it was not +going to be a question of markets, but a question of getting the salmon. +And he rather fancied he could do that. + +Last of all on the list of these men who approached him in this fashion +came Stubby Abbott. Stubby did not ask him to call. He came to the +Granada in search of Jack and haled him, nothing loth, out to the stone +house in the West End. It happened that Betty Gower, Etta Robbin-Steele, +and two gilded youths, whom MacRae did not know, were there. They had +been walking in the Park. Nelly and her mother were serving tea. + +It happened, too, that as they chatted over the teacups, a blue-bodied +limousine drew up under the Abbott pergola and deposited Mrs. Horace A. +Gower for a brief conversation with Mrs. Abbott. It was MacRae's first +really close contact with the slender, wonderfully preserved lady whose +life had touched his father's so closely in the misty long ago. He +regarded her with a reflective interest. She must have been very +beautiful then, he thought. She was almost beautiful still. Certainly +she was a very distinguished person, with her costly clothing, her rich +furs, her white hair, and that faded rose-leaf skin. The petulant, +querulous droop of her mouth escaped MacRae. He was not a physiognomist. +But the distance of her manner did not escape him. She acknowledged the +introduction and thereafter politely overlooked MacRae. He meant nothing +at all to Mrs. Horace A. Gower, he saw very clearly. Merely a young man +among other young men; a young man of no particular interest. Thirty +years is a long time, MacRae reflected. But his father had not +forgotten. He wondered if she had; if those far-off hot-blooded days had +grown dim and unreal to her? + +He turned his head once and caught Betty as intent upon him as he was +upon her mother, under cover of the general conversation. He gathered +that there was a shade of reproach, of resentment, in her eyes. But he +could not be sure. Certainly there was nothing like that in her manner. +But the manner of these people, he understood very well, was pretty much +a mask. Whatever went on in their secret bosoms, they smiled and joked +and were unfailingly courteous. + +He made another discovery within a few minutes. Stubby maneuvered +himself close to Etta Robbin-Steele. Stubby was not quite so adept at +repression as most of his class. He was a little more naïve, more prone +to act upon his natural, instinctive impulses. MacRae was aware of that. +He saw now a swift by-play that escaped the rest. Nothing of any +consequence,--a look, the motion of a hand, a fleeting something on the +girl's face and Stubby's. Jack glanced at Nelly Abbott sitting beside +him, her small blonde head pertly inclined. Nelly saw it too. She smiled +knowingly. + +"Has the brunette siren hooked Stubby?" MacRae inquired in a discreet +undertone. + +"I think so. I'm not sure. Etta's such an outrageous flirt," Nelly said. +"I hope not, anyway. I'm afraid I can't quite appreciate Etta as a +prospective sister-in-law." + +"No?" + +"She's catty--and vain as a peacock. Stubby ought to marry a nice +sensible girl who'd mother him," Nelly observed with astonishing +conviction; "like Betty, for instance." + +"Oh, you seem to have very definite ideas on that subject," MacRae +smiled. He did not commit himself further. But he resented the +suggestion. There was also an amusing phase of Nelly's declaration which +did not escape him,--the pot calling the kettle black. Etta +Robbin-Steele did flirt. She had dancing black eyes that flung a +challenge to men. But Nelly herself was no shrinking violet, for all her +baby face. She was like an elf. Her violet eyes were capable of +infinite shades of expression. She, herself, had a way of appropriating +men who pleased her, to the resentful dismay of other young women. It +pleased her to do that with Jack MacRae whenever he was available. And +until Betty had preëmpted a place in his heart without even trying, Jack +MacRae had been quite willing to let his fancy linger romantically on +Nelly Abbott. + +As it was,--he looked across the room at Betty chatting with young Lane. +What a damned fool he was,--he, MacRae! All his wires were crossed. If +some inescapable human need urged him to love, how much better to love +this piquant bit of femininity beside him? But he couldn't do it. It +wasn't possible. All the old rebellion stirred in him. The locked +chambers of his mind loosed pictures of Squitty, memories of things +which had happened there, as he let his eyes drift from Betty, whom he +loved, to her mother, whom his father had loved and lost. She had made +his father suffer through love. Her daughter was making Donald MacRae's +son suffer likewise. Again, through some fantastic quirk of his +imagination, the stodgy figure of Horace Gower loomed in the background, +shadowy and sinister. There were moments, like the present, when he felt +hatred of the man concretely, as he could feel thirst or hunger. + +"A penny for your thoughts," Nelly bantered. + +"They'd be dear at half the price," MacRae said, forcing a smile. + +He was glad when those people went their way. Nelly put on a coat and +went with them. Stubby drew Jack up to his den. + +"I have bought up the controlling interest in the Terminal Fish Company +since I saw you last," Stubby began abruptly. "I'm going to put up a +cold-storage plant and do what my father started to do early in the +war--give people cheaper fish for food." + +"Can you make it stick," MacRae asked curiously, "with the other +wholesalers against you? Their system seems to be to get all the traffic +will bear, to boost the price to the consumer by any means they can use. +And there is the Packers' Association. They are not exactly--well, +favorable to cheap retailing of fish. Everybody seems to think the +proper caper is to tack on a cent or two a pound wherever he can." + +"I know I can," Stubby declared. "The pater would have succeeded only he +trusted too much to men who didn't see it his way. Look at Cunningham--" +Stubby mentioned a fish merchant who had made a resounding splash in +matters piscatorial for a year or two, and then faded, along with his +great cheap-fish markets, into oblivion--"he made it go like a house +afire until he saw a chance to make a quick and easy clean-up by +sticking people. It can be done, all right, if a man will be satisfied +with a small profit on a big turnover. I know it." + +MacRae made no comment on that. Stubby was full of his plan, eager to +talk about its possibilities. + +"I wanted to do it last year," he said, "but I couldn't. I had to play +the old game--make a bunch of money and make it quick. Between you and +Gower's pig-headedness, and the rest of the cannery crowd letting me go +till it was too late to stop me, and a climbing market, I made more +money in one season than I thought was possible. I'm going to use that +money to make more money and to squash some of these damned fish +pirates. I tell you it's jolly awful. We had baked cod for lunch to-day. +That fish cost twenty cents a pound. Think of it! When the fisherman +sells it for six cents within fifty miles of us. No wonder everybody is +howling. I don't know anything about other lines of food supply, but I +can sure put my finger on a bunch of fish profiteers. And I feel like +putting my foot on them. Anyway, I've got the Terminal for a starter; +also I have a twenty-five-year lease on the water frontage there. I have +the capital to go ahead and build a cold-storage plant. The wholesale +crowd can't possibly bother me. And the canneries are going to have +their hands full this season without mixing into a scrap over local +prices of fresh fish. You've heard about the new regulations?" + +MacRae nodded assent. + +"There's going to be a free-for-all," Stubby chuckled. "There'll be a +lot of independent purse seiners. If the canneries don't pay good prices +these independent fishermen, with their fast, powerful rigs, will seine +the salmon under the packers' noses and run their catch down to the +Puget Sound plants. This is no time for the British Columbia packers to +get uppish. Good-by, four hundred per cent." + +"They'll wiggle through legislation to prevent export of raw salmon," +MacRae suggested; "same as they have on the sockeye." + +"No chance. They've tried, and it can't be done," Stubby grinned. "There +aren't going to be any special privileges for British Columbia salmon +packers any more. I know, because I'm on the inside. The fishermen have +made a noise that disturbs the politicians, I guess. Another thing, +there's a slack in the demand for all but the best grades of salmon. But +the number one grades, sockeye and blueback and coho, are short. So that +a cannery man with an efficient plant can pay big for those fish. If +you can hold that Squitty fleet of trollers like you did last year, +you'll make some money." + +"Do you want those salmon?" MacRae asked. + +"Sure I want them. I want them as soon as they begin to run big enough +to be legally taken for sale," Stubby declared. "I'm going to rush that +cold-storage construction. By the time you begin collecting bluebacks +I'll have a place for them, all you can buy. I'll have storage for three +hundred thousand fish. I'm going to buy everything and start half a +dozen retail stores at the same time. Just imagine the situation in this +burg of a hundred and fifty thousand people with waters that swarm with +fish right at our doors--salmon selling for thirty cents a pound, hardly +ever below twenty, other fish in about the same proportion. It's a +damned scandal, and I don't much blame a man who works for four dollars +a day thinking he might as well turn Bolshevik. I know that I can pay +twelve cents for salmon and make a good profit selling for sixteen. Can +you make money supplying me with bluebacks at twelve cents a pound?" + +"Yes, more money than I made last year," MacRae replied--"unless Folly +Bay boosts prices to the sky in an effort to drive me out of business." + +"I don't think there's much danger of that," Stubby said. "I doubt if +Folly Bay opens this season. It's reported that Gower is broke." + +"Eh?" MacRae looked his doubt. + +"That's what they say," Stubby went on. "It's common talk. He sold his +place in town a short while ago. He has the cannery on the market. And +there are no takers. Folly Bay used to be a little gold mine. But Gower +rode the fishermen too hard. And you balled things up last season. He +lost his grip. I suppose he was involved other ways, too. Lots of these +old-timers are, you know. Anyway, he seems to be trying to get out from +under. But nobody wants to take over a plant that has a black eye among +the men who catch the fish, in a territory where you appear to have a +pretty strong hold." + +"At the same time, if I can pay so much for salmon, haul them up the +coast and make a profit on that, and if you can pay this advanced price +and pack them at a still bigger profit, why in blazes can't a plant +right there on the grounds pay top price and still make money?" MacRae +asked impatiently. + +"Could," Stubby declared. "Certainly. But most men in the salmon canning +business aren't like you and me, Jack. They are used to big returns on a +three months' season. They simply can't stand the idea of paying out big +gobs of money to a sulky, un-shaven bohunk whose whole equipment isn't +worth a thousand dollars. They think any man in sea boots ought to be +damn well satisfied if he makes a living. They say high wages, or +returns, spoil fishermen. On top of these new regulations nobody hankers +to buy a plant where they might have to indulge in a price war with a +couple of crazy young fools like you and me--that's what they call us, +you know. That is why no experienced cannery man will touch Folly Bay +the way things stand now. It's a fairly good plant, too. I don't know +how Gower has managed to get in a hole. I don't believe one poor season +could do that to him. But he sure wants to get rid of Folly Bay. It is a +forty-thousand-dollar plant, including the gas boats. He has been +nibbling at an offer of twenty-five thousand. I know, because I made it +myself." + +"What'll you do with it if you get it?" MacRae asked curiously. "It's +no good unless you get the fish. You'd have to put me out of business." + +"Well, I wasn't exactly figuring on that," Stubby grinned. "In the first +place, the machinery and equipment is worth that much in the open +market. And if I get it, we'll either make a deal for collecting the +fish, or you can take a half-interest in the plant at the ground-floor +price. Either way, we can make it a profitable investment for both of +us." + +"You really think Gower is in a bad way?" Jack asked reflectively. + +"I know it," Stubby replied emphatically. "Oh, I don't mean to say that +abject poverty is staring him in the face, or anything like that. But it +looks to me as if he had lost a barrel of money somehow and was anxious +to get Folly Bay off his hands before it sets him further in the hole. +You could make Folly Bay pay big dividends. So could I. But so long as +you cover his ground with carriers, every day he operates is a dead +loss. I haven't much sympathy for him. He has made a fortune out of that +place and those fishermen and spent it making a big splurge in town. +Anyway, his wife has all kinds of kale, so we should worry about old +Horace A." + +MacRae lit a cigarette and listened to the flow of Stubby's talk, with +part of his mind mulling over this information about Horace Gower. He +wondered if that was why Robbin-Steele was so keen on getting a contract +for those Squitty bluebacks, why Hurley of the Northwest wanted to make +a deal for salmon; if they reckoned that Gower had ceased to be a factor +and that Jack MacRae held the Squitty Island business in the hollow of +his hand. MacRae smiled to himself. If that were true it was an +advantage he meant to hold for his own good and the good of all those +hard-driven men who labored at the fishing. In a time that was +economically awry MacRae's sympathy turned more to those whose struggle +was to make a living, or a little more if they could, than to men who +already had more than they needed, men who had no use for more money +except to pile it up, to keep piling it up. MacRae was neither an +idealist nor a philanthropic dreamer. But he knew the under dog of the +great industrial scramble. In his own business he would go out of his +way to add another hundred dollars a year to a fisherman's earnings. He +did not know quite clearly why he felt like that. It was more or less +instinctive. He expected to make money out of his business, he was eager +to make money, but he saw very clearly that it was only in and through +the tireless labor of the fishermen that he could reap a profit. And he +was young enough to be generous in his impulses. He was not afraid, like +the older men, that if those who worked with their hands got a little +more than sufficient to live on from season to season they would grow +fat and lazy and arrogant, and refuse to produce. + +Money was a necessity. Without it, without at least a reasonable amount +of money, a man could not secure any of the things essential to +well-being of either body or mind. The moneyless man was a slave so long +as he was moneyless. MacRae smiled at those who spoke slightingly of the +power of money. He knew they were mistaken. Money was king. No amount of +it, cash in hand, would purchase happiness, perhaps, but lack of it made +a man fall an easy victim to dire misfortunes. Without money a man was +less than the dirt beneath the feet of such as Robbin-Steele and Hurley +and Gower, because their criterion of another man's worth was his +ability to get money, to beat the game they all played. + +MacRae put himself and Stubby Abbott in a different category. They +wanted to get on. They were determined to get on. But their programme of +getting on, MacRae felt, was a better one for themselves and for other +men than the mere instinct to grab everything in sight. MacRae was not +exactly a student of economics or sociology, but he had an idea that the +world, and particularly his group-world, was suffering from the +grab-instinct functioning without control. He had a theory that society +would have to modify that grab-instinct by legislation and custom before +the world was rid of a lot of its present ills. And both his reason and +his instinct was to modify it himself, in his dealings with his fellows, +more particularly when those he dealt with were simple, uneducated men +who worked as hard and complained as little as salmon fishermen. + +He talked with Stubby in the den until late in the afternoon, and then +walked downtown. When he reached the Granada he loafed uneasily in the +billiard room until dinner. His mind persistently turned from material +considerations of boats and gear and the season's prospects to dwell +upon Betty Gower. This wayward questing of his mind irritated him. But +he could not help it. Whenever he met her, even if it were only a brief, +casual contact, for hours afterward he could not drive her out of his +mind. And he was making a conscious effort to do that. It was a matter +of sheer self-defense. Only when he shut Betty resolutely out of the +chambers of his brain could he be free of that hungry longing for her. +While he suffered from that vain longing there was neither peace nor +content in his life; he could get no satisfaction out of working or +planning or anything that he undertook. + +That would wear off, he assured himself. But he did not always have +complete confidence in this assurance. He was aware of a tenacity of +impressions and emotions and ideas, once they took hold of him. Old +Donald MacRae had been afflicted with just such characteristics, he +remembered. It must be in the blood, that stubborn constancy to either +an affection or a purpose. And in him these two things were at war, +pulling him powerfully in opposite directions, making him unhappy. + +Sitting deep in a leather chair, watching the white and red balls roll +and click on the green cloth, MacRae recalled one of the maxims of +Hafiz: + + "'Two things greater than all things are + And one is Love and the other is War.'" + +MacRae doubted this. He had had experience of both. At the moment he +could see nothing in either but vast accumulations of futile anguish +both of the body and the soul. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + +A Renewal of Hostilities + + +The pussy willows had put out their fuzzy catkins and shed them for +delicate foliage when MacRae came back to Squitty Cove. The alder, the +maple and the wild cherry, all the spring-budding trees and shrubs, were +making thicket and foreshore dainty green and full of pleasant smells. +Jack wakened the first morning at daybreak to the muted orchestration of +mating birds, the song of a thousand sweet-voiced, unseen warblers. The +days were growing warm, full of sunshine. Distant mountain ranges stood +white-capped and purple against sapphire skies. The air was full of the +ancient magic of spring. + +Yet MacRae himself, in spite of these pleasant sights and sounds and +smells, in spite of his books and his own rooftree, found the Cove +haunted 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 one +in the Cove save an old, unkempt Swede, Doug Sproul, who slept eighteen +hours a day in his cabin while he waited for the salmon to run again, a +withered Portuguese who sat in the sun and muttered while he mended +gear. They were old men, human driftwood, beached in their declining +years, crabbed and sour, looking always backward with unconscious +regret. + +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 in +the middle of Squitty Island, keeping house for her husband and Uncle +Peter and Long Tom Spence while they burrowed in the earth to uncover a +copper-bearing lead that promised a modest fortune for all three. Peter +Ferrara'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 like +the great Douglas firs. But he missed the familiar voices, the sight of +friendly 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 outlet +of purposeful work in which to release pent-up energy, MacRae brooded +over shadows, suffered periods of unaccountable depression. Nature had +not designed him for either a hermit or a celibate. Something in him +cried out for affection, for companionship, for a woman's tenderness +bestowed unequivocally. The mating instinct was driving him, as it drove +the birds. But its urge was not the general, unspecified longing which +turns 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 not +have her without a revolutionary overturning of his convictions, +inhibitions, soundly made and passionately cherished plans of reprisal +for old injustices. That peculiar tenacity of idea and purpose which was +inherent with him made him resent, refuse soberly to consider any +deviation from the purpose which had taken form with such bitter +intensity when he kindled to his father's account of those drab years +which Horace Gower had laid upon him. + +Jack MacRae was no angel. Under his outward seeming his impulses were +primitive, like the impulses of all strong men. He nursed a vision of +beating Gower at Gower's own game. He hugged to himself the ultimate +satisfaction of that. Even when he was dreaming of Betty, he was +mentally setting her aside until he had beaten her father to his knees +under the only sort of blows he could deal. Until he had made Gower know +grief and disappointment and helplessness, and driven him off the south +end 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 of +defiant recklessness that there were plenty of other women for whom +ultimately he could care as much. But he knew also that he would not say +that, nor even think it, whenever Betty Gower was within reach of his +hand or sound of his voice. + +He walked sometimes over to Point Old and stared at the cottage, snowy +white against the tender green, its lawn growing rank with uncut grass, +its chimney dead. There were times when he wished he could see smoke +lifting from that chimney and know that he could find Betty somewhere +along the beach. But these were only times when his spirits were very +low. + +Also he occasionally wondered if it were true, as Stubby Abbott +declared, that Gower had fallen into a financial hole. MacRae doubted +that. Men like Gower always got out of a hole. They were fierce and +remorseless pursuers of the main chance. When they were cast down they +climbed up straightway over the backs of lesser men. He thought of +Robbin-Steele. A man like that would die with the harness of the +money-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 and +schooled to grasp it in a bewildering variety of ways. + +No, he rather doubted that Gower was broke, or even in any danger of +going broke. He hoped this might be true, in spite of his doubts, for it +meant that Gower would be compelled to sacrifice this six hundred acres +of MacRae land. The sooner the better. It was a pain to MacRae to see it +going wild. The soil Donald MacRae had cleared and turned to meadow, to +small fields of grain, was growing up to ferns and scrub. It had been a +source of pride to old Donald. He had visualized for his son more than +once great fields covered with growing crops, a rich and fruitful area, +with a big stone house looking out over the cliffs where ultimate +generations of MacRaes should live. If luck had not gone against old +Donald he would have made this dream come true. But life and Gower had +beaten him. + +Jack MacRae knew this. It maddened him to think that this foundation of +a dream had become the plaything of his father's enemy, a neglected +background 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_. The +underwriters had raised and repaired the mahogany cruiser, and she had +passed into other hands. When Betty and her father came to Cradle Bay +they came on a cannery tender or a hired launch. MacRae hoped it might +be true that Gower was slipping, that he had helped to start him on this +decline. + +Presently the loneliness of the Cove was broken by the return of +Vincent Ferrara. They skidded the _Bluebird_ out on the beach at the +Cove's head and overhauled her inside and out, hull and machinery. That +brought them well into April. The new carrier was complete from truck to +keelson. She had been awaiting only MacRae's pleasure for her maiden +sea-dip. So now, with the _Bluebird_ sleeked with new paint, he went +down for the launching. + +There was a little ceremony over that. + +"It's bad luck, the very worst sort of luck, to launch a boat without +christening her in the approved manner," Nelly Abbott declared. "I +insist on being sponsor. Do let me, Jack." + +So the new sixty-footer had a bottle of wine from the Abbott cellar +broken over her brass-bound stemhead as her bows sliced into the salt +water, 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 the +first blueback run of commercial size showed off Gray Rock and the +Ballenas. All the Squitty boats went out as soon as the salmon came. +MacRae skippered the new and shining _Blanco_, brave in white paint and +polished brass on her virgin trip. He followed the main fleet, while the +_Bluebird_ scuttled about to pick up stray trollers' catches and to tend +the 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. MacRae +could stay on the grounds till he was fully loaded. He could slash +through to Vancouver at nine knots instead of seven. A sea that would +toss the old wrecked _Blackbird_ like a dory and keep her low decks +continually awash let the _Blanco_ pass with only a moderate pitch and +roll. + +MacRae worked hard. He found ease in work. When the last salmon was +dressed and stowed below, many times under the glow of electric bulbs +strung along the cargo boom, he would fall into his bunk and sleep +dreamlessly. Decks streaming with blood and offal, plastered with slime +and clinging scales--until such time as they were washed down--ceased to +annoy him. No man can make omelettes without breaking eggs. Only the +fortunate few can make money without soiling their hands. There is no +room in the primary stages of taking salmon for those who shrink from +sweat and strain, from elemental stress. The white-collared and the +lily-fingered cannot function there. The pink meat my lady toys with on +Limoges china comes to her table by ways that would appal her. Only the +men who toil aboard the fishing boats, with line and gear and gutting +knife know in what travail this harvest of the sea is reaped. + +MacRae played fair, according to his conception of fair play. He based +his payments on a decent profit, without which he could not carry on. +Running heavier cargoes at less cost he raised the price to the +fishermen as succeeding runs of blueback salmon were made up of larger, +heavier fish. Other buyers came, lingered awhile, cursed him and went +away. They could not run to Vancouver with small quantities of salmon +and meet his price. But MacRae in the _Blanco_ could take six, eight, +ten thousand salmon profitably on a margin which the other buyers said +was folly. + +The trolling fleet swelled in numbers. The fish were there. The +old-timers had prophesied a big blueback year, and for once their +prophecy was by way of being fulfilled. The fish schooled in great +shoals off Nanaimo, around Gray Rock, the Ballenas, passed on to +Sangster and Squitty. And the fleet followed a hundred strong, each day +increasing,--Indians, Greeks, Japanese, white men, raking the salmon +grounds with glittering spoon hooks, gathering in the fish. + +In early June MacRae was delivering eighteen thousand salmon a week to +the Terminal Fish Company. He was paying forty cents a fish, more than +any troller in the Gulf of Georgia had ever got for June bluebacks, more +than any buyer had ever paid before the opening of the canneries +heightened the demand. He was clearing nearly a thousand dollars a week +for himself, and he was putting unheard-of sums in the pockets of the +fishermen. MacRae believed these men understood how this was possible, +that they had a feeling of coöperating with him for their common good. +They had sold their catches on a take-it-or-leave-it basis for years. He +had put a club in their hands as well as money in their pockets. They +would stand with him against less scrupulous, more remorseless +exploiters of their labor. They would see that he got fish. They told +him 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 one +afternoon. They had been talking about canneries and competition. + +"Not if he was boosting the price up just to make you quit, and then cut +it in two when he had everything to himself," one man said. "That's been +done 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 this +fall. But there is going to be a scramble for the good canning fish. I +can pay as much as salmon are worth, but I can't go any further. If I +should have to pull my boats off in mid-season you can guess what +they'll pay around Squitty." + +MacRae was not crying "wolf." There were signs and tokens of uneasiness +and irritation among those who still believed it was their right and +privilege to hold the salmon industry in the hollows of their grasping +hands. Stubby Abbott was a packer. He had the ears of the other packers. +They were already complaining to Stubby, grouching about MacRae, unable +to understand that Stubby listened to them with his tongue in his cheek, +that one of their own class should have a new vision of industrial +processes, 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. You +could get those fish for thirty cents and you are paying forty. The +fishermen will want the earth when the canneries open. They hint around +that something will drop with a loud bang one of these days. I think +it's just hot air. They can't hurt either of us. I'll get a fair pack at +Crow Harbor, and I'll have this plant loaded. I've got enough money to +carry on. It makes me snicker to myself to imagine how they'll squirm +and squeal next winter when I put frozen salmon on the market ten cents +a pound below what they figure on getting. Oh, yes, our friends in the +fish business are going to have a lot of grievances. But just now they +are chiefly grouching at you." + +MacRae seldom set foot ashore those crowded days. But he passed within +sight of Squitty Cove and Poor Man's Rock once at least in each +forty-eight hours. For weeks he had seen smoke drifting blue from the +cottage chimney in Cradle Bay. He saw now and then the flutter of +something white or blue on the lawn that he knew must be Betty. Part of +the time a small power boat swung to the mooring in the bay where the +shining _Arrow_ nosed to wind and tide in other days. He heard current +talk among the fishermen concerning the Gowers. Gower himself was +spending his time between the cottage and Folly Bay. + +The cannery opened five days in advance of the sockeye season on the +Fraser. When the Gower collecting boats made their first round MacRae +knew that he had a fight on his hands. Gower, it seemed to him, had +bared 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 Georgia +neither fishermen, canners, nor the government ichthyologists were +greatly wiser concerning their nature or habits or life history. Grounds +where they swarmed one season might prove barren the next. Where they +came from, out of what depths of the far Pacific those silvery hordes +marshaled themselves, no man knew. Nor, when they vanished in late +August, could any man say whither they went. They did not ascend the +streams. No blueback was ever taken with red spawn in his belly. They +were a mystery which no man had unraveled, no matter that he took them +by thousands in order that he himself might subsist upon their flesh. +One thing the trollers did know,--where the small feed swarmed, in shoal +water or deep, those myriads of tiny fish, herring and nameless smaller +ones, there the blueback would appear, and when he did so appear he +could be taken by a spoon hook. + +Away beyond the Sisters--three gaunt gray rocks rising out of the sea +miles offshore in a fairway down which passed all the Alaska-bound +steamers, with a lone lighthouse on the middle rock--away north of Folly +Bay there opened wide trolling grounds about certain islands which lay +off the Vancouver Island shore,--Hornby, Lambert Channel, Yellow Rock, +Cape Lazo. In other seasons the blueback runs lingered about Squitty for +a while and then passed on to those kelp-grown and reef-strewed grounds. +This season these salmon appeared first far south of Squitty. The +trolling scouts, the restless wanderers of the fleet, who could not +abide sitting still and waiting in patience for the fish to come, first +picked them up by the Gulf Islands, very near that great highway to the +open sea known as the Strait of San Juan. The blueback pushed on the +Gray Rock to the Ballenas, as if the blackfish and seal and shark that +hung always about the schools to prey were herding them to some given +point. Very shortly after they could be taken in the shadow of the +Ballenas light the schools swarmed about the Cove end of Squitty Island, +between the Elephant on Sangster and Poor Man's Rock. For days on end +the sea was alive with them. In the gray of dawn and the reddened dusk +they played upon the surface of the sea as far as the eye reached. And +always at such times they struck savagely at a glittering spoon hook. +Beyond Squitty they vanished. Fifty and sixty salmon daily to a boat off +the Squitty headlands dwindled to fifteen and twenty at the Folly Bay +end. Those restless trollers who crossed the Gulf to Hornby and Yellow +Rock Light got little for their pains. Between Folly Bay and the +swirling tide races off the desolate head of Cape Mudge the blueback +disappeared. 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 bow +to stern, so many were they in that little space, on days when the +southeaster made the cliffs shudder under the shock of breaking seas. If +fishing slackened for a day or two they did not scatter as in other +days. There would be another run hard on the heels of the last. And +there was. + +MacRae ran the _Blanco_ into Squitty Cove one afternoon and made fast +alongside the _Bluebird_ which lay to fore and aft moorings in the +narrow gut of the Cove. The Gulf outside was speckled with trollers, but +there were many at anchor, resting, or cooking food. + +One of the mustard pots was there, a squat fifty-foot carrier painted a +gaudy yellow--the Folly Bay house color--flying a yellow flag with a +black C in the center. She was loading fish from two trollers, one lying +on 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's +paying fifty and hinting more if he has to." + +MacRae laughed. + +"We'll match Gower's price till he boosts us out of the bidding," he +said. "And he won't make much on his pack if he does that." + +"Say, Folly Bay," Jack called across to the mustard-pot carrier, "what +are 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 in +the Cove and more coming in. The ripple of laughter that ran over the +fleet was plainly audible. They could appreciate that. MacRae sat down +on the _Blanco's_ after cabin and lit a cigarette. + +"Looks like they mean to get the fish," Vin hazarded. "Can you tilt that +and make anything?" + +"Let them do the tilting," MacRae answered. "If the fish run heavy I can +make a little, even if prices go higher. If he boosts them to +seventy-five, I'd have to quit. At that price only the men who catch the +fish will make anything. I really don't know how much we will be able to +pay 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 pretty +much the same among all men. The trollers distrusted Folly Bay. They +said to one another that if Gower could kill off competition he would +cut the price to the bone. He had done that before. But when a fisherman +rises wearily from his bunk at three in the morning and spends the bulk +of the next eighteen hours hauling four one hundred and fifty foot +lines, each weighted with from six to fifteen pounds of lead, he feels +that 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, paying +fifty-five cents. A good many trollers sold him their fish before they +learned that MacRae was paying the same. And the mustard pot evidently +had his orders, for he tilted the price to sixty, which forced MacRae to +do the same. + +When the _Blanco_ unloaded her cargo of eight-thousand-odd salmon into +the Terminal and MacRae checked his receipts and expenditures for that +trip, 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 seiners +begin to take coho, that's certain," he declared. "How far can you go in +this 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 a +bit heavier as we go along. Well, I can certainly pack as cheaply as he +can. 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 cents +a fish commission. I don't believe he'll dare pay more than that before +late 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 a +five-cent commission,--if he could get the salmon within the price +limit. So for the next trip or two he contented himself with meeting +Gower's price and taking what fish came to him. The Folly Bay mustard +pots--three of them great and small--scurried here and there among the +trollers, dividing the catch with the _Bluebird_ and the _Blanco_. There +was always a mustard-pot collector in sight. The weather was getting +hot. Salmon would not keep in a troller's hold. Part of the old guard +stuck tight to MacRae. But there were new men fishing; there were +Japanese and illiterate Greeks. It was not to be expected that these men +should indulge in far-sighted calculations. But it was a trifle +disappointing to see how readily any troller would unload his catch into +a 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 know +what would happen. Gower would drop the price with a bang. You'd think +these damned idiots would know that. Yet they're feeding him fish by the +thousand. They don't appear to care a hoot whether you get any or not. I +used to think fishermen had some sense. These fellows can't see an inch +past their cursed noses. Pull off your boats for a couple of weeks and +let them get their bumps." + +"What do you expect?" MacRae said lightly. "It's a scramble, and they +are acting precisely as they might be expected to act. I don't blame +them. They're under the same necessity as the rest of us--to get it +while they can. Did you think they'd sell me fish for sixty if somebody +else offered sixty-five? You know how big a nickel looks to a man who +earns 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 soon +Gower got 'em as you. You paid more than Folly Bay all last season. You +put all kinds of money in their pockets that you didn't have to." + +"And when the pinch comes, they'll remember that," MacRae said. "You +watch, Vin. The season is young yet. Gower may beat me at this game, but +he won't make any money at it." + +MacRae kept abreast of Folly Bay for ten days and emerged from that +period with a slight loss, because at the close he was paying more than +the salmon were worth at the Terminal warehouse. But when he ran his +first load into Crow Harbor Stubby looked over the pile of salmon his +men were forking across the floor and drew Jack into his office. + +"I've made a contract for delivery of my entire sockeye and blueback +pack," he said. "I know precisely where I stand. I can pay up to ninety +cents 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 either +the _Blanco_ or the _Bluebird_ was on his heels. MacRae could cover more +ground and carry more cargo, and keep it fresh, than any mustard pot. +The _Bluebird_ covered little outlying nooks, the stragglers, the +rowboat men in their beach camps. The _Blanco_ kept mostly in touch with +the main fleet patrolling the southeastern end of Squitty like a naval +flotilla, wheeling and counterwheeling over the grounds where the +blueback played. MacRae forced the issue. He raised the price to +sixty-five, to seventy, to seventy-five, to eighty, and the boats under +the yellow house flag had to pay that to get a fish. MacRae crowded them +remorselessly to the limit. So long as he got five cents a fish he could +make money. He suspected that it cost Gower a great deal more than five +cents 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 north +the Japs abandoned trolling for the gill net. The white trollers +returned to their first love because he courted them assiduously. There +was always a MacRae carrier in the offing. It cost MacRae his sleep and +rest, 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 many +a time, after tallying fish all day. Three hours' sleep was like a gift +from the gods. But he kept it up. He had a sense of some approaching +crisis. + +By the third week in July MacRae was taking three fourths of the +bluebacks caught between the Ballenas and Folly Bay. He would lie +sometimes within a stone's throw of Gower's cannery, loading salmon. + +He was swinging at anchor there one day when a rowboat from the cannery +put out to the _Blanco_. The man in it told MacRae that Gower would like +to 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. Some +time or other he would have to meet his father's enemy, face him, talk +to him, listen to what he might say, tell him things. Curiosity was +roused in him a little now. He desired to know what Gower had to say. He +wondered 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 above +sun-browned forearms. He stood before Gower with his hands thrust in the +pockets of duck overalls speckled with fish scales, smelling of salmon. +Gower stared at him silently, critically, it seemed to MacRae, for a +matter 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 a +while. 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 into +his dinghy he glanced up at the wharf towering twenty feet above his +head. Betty Gower was sitting on a pile head. She was looking down at +him. But she was not smiling. And she did not speak. MacRae rowed back +to the _Blanco_ in an ugly mood. + +In the next forty-eight hours Folly Bay jumped the price of bluebacks to +ninety cents, to ninety-five, to a dollar. The _Blanco_ wallowed down to +Crow Harbor with a load which represented to MacRae a dead loss of four +hundred dollars cash. + +"He must be crazy," Stubby fumed. "There's no use canning salmon at a +loss." + +"Has he reached the loss point yet?" MacRae inquired. + +"He's shaving close. No cannery can make anything worth reckoning at a +dollar or so a case profit." + +"Is ninety cents and five cents' commission your limit?" MacRae +demanded. + +"Just about," Stubby grunted. "Well"--reluctantly--"I can stand a +dollar. 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 dead +loss, 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 had +determined to have the salmon. Very well, then, he should have them. But +he would have to take them at a loss, in so far as MacRae could inflict +loss upon him. He knew of no other way to hurt effectively such a man as +Gower. Money was life blood to him, and it was not of great value to +MacRae as yet. With deliberate calculation he decided to lose the +greater part of what he had made, if for every dollar he lost himself he +could inflict equal or greater loss on Gower. + +The trailers who combed the Squitty waters were taking now close to five +thousand salmon a day. Approximately half of these went to Folly Bay. +MacRae took the rest. In this battle of giants the fishermen had lost +sight of the outcome. They ceased to care who got fish. They only +watched eagerly for him who paid the biggest price. They were making +thirty, forty, fifty dollars a day. They no longer held salmon--only a +few of the old-timers--for MacRae's carriers. It was nothing to them who +made a profit or suffered a loss. Only a few of the older men wondered +privately how long MacRae could stand it and what would happen when he +gave up. + +MacRae met every raise Folly Bay made. He saw bluebacks go to a dollar +ten, then to a dollar fifteen. He ran cargo after cargo to Crow Harbor +and dropped from three to seven hundred dollars on each load, until even +Stubby lost patience with him. + +"What's the sense in bucking him till you go broke? I'm in too deep to +stand any loss myself. Quit. Tie up your boats, Jack. Let him have the +salmon. Let those blockheads of fishermen see what he'll do to 'em once +you stop." + +But MacRae held on till the first hot days of August were at hand and +his money was dwindling to the vanishing point. Then he ran the _Blanco_ +and the _Bluebird_ into Squitty Cove and tied them to permanent +moorings in shoal water near the head. For a day or two the salmon had +shifted mysteriously to the top end, around Folly Bay and the Siwash +Islands and Jenkins Pass. The bulk of the fleet had followed them. Only +a few stuck to the Cove and Poor Man's Rock. To these and the rowboat +trollers 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_ and +slept the clock around, the first decent rest he had taken in two +months. He had not realized till then how tired he was. + +When he wakened he washed, ate, changed his clothes and went for a walk +along the cliffs to stretch his legs. Vin had gone up to the Knob to see +Dolly and Uncle Peter. His helper on the _Bluebird_ was tinkering about +his engine. MacRae's two men loafed on the clean-slushed deck. They were +none of them company for MacRae in his present mood. He sought the +cliffs to be alone. + +Gower had beaten him, it would seem. And MacRae did not take kindly to +being beaten. But he did not think this was the end yet. Gower would do +as he had done before. When he felt himself secure in his monopoly he +would squeeze the fishermen, squeeze them hard. And as soon as he did +that MacRae would buy again. He could not make any money himself, +perhaps. But he could make Gower operate at a loss. That would be +something accomplished. + +MacRae walked along the cliffs until he saw the white cottage, and saw +also that some one sat on the steps in the sun. Whereupon he turned +back. He didn't want to see Betty. He conceived that to be an ended +chapter in his experiences. He had hurt her, and she had put on her +armor against another such hurt. There was a studied indifference about +her now, when he met her, which hurt him terribly. He supposed that in +addition to his own incomprehensible attitude which she resented, she +took sides with her father in this obvious commercial warfare which was +bleeding them both financially. Very likely she saw in this only the +open workings of his malice toward Gower. In which MacRae admitted she +would be quite correct. He had not been able to discover in that +flaring-up of passion for Betty any reason for a burial of his feud with +Gower. There was in him some curious insistence upon carrying this to +the 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. The +fighting instinct in MacRae lurked always very near the surface. + +He spent a good many hours during the next three or four days lying in +the shade of a gnarly arbutus which gave on the cliffs. He took a book +up there with him, but most of the time he lay staring up at the blue +sky through the leaves, or at the sea, or distant shore lines, thinking +always 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 its +business. There was not a great deal to be got in the Cove. The last gas +boat had scuttled away to the top end, where the blueback were schooling +in vast numbers. There were still salmon to be taken about Poor Man's +Rock. The rowboat men took a few fish each day and hoped for another big +run. + +There came a day when the mustard pot failed to show in the Cove. The +rowboat men had three hundred salmon, and they cursed Folly Bay with a +fine flow of epithet as they took their rotting fish outside the Cove +and dumped them in the sea. Nor did a Gower collector come, although +there was nothing in the wind or weather to stop them. The rowboat +trollers fumed and stewed and took their troubles to Jack MacRae. But he +could neither inform nor help them. + +Then upon an evening when the sun rested on the serrated backbone of +Vancouver Island, a fiery ball against a sky of burnished copper, +flinging a red haze down on a slow swell that furrowed the Gulf, Jack +MacRae, perched on a mossy boulder midway between the Cove and Point +Old, saw first one boat and then another come slipping and lurching +around Poor Man's Rock. Converted Columbia River sailboats, Cape +Flattery trollers, double-enders, all the variegated craft that +fishermen use and traffic with, each rounded the Rock and struck his +course for the Cove, broadside on to the rising swell, their twenty-foot +trolling poles lashed aloft against a stumpy mast and swinging in a +great arc as they rolled. One, ten, a dozen, an endless procession, +sometimes three abreast, again a string in single file. MacRae was +reminded 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 trolling +fleet normally shifted by pairs and dozens. This was a squadron +movement, the Grand Fleet steaming to some appointed rendezvous. MacRae +watched till the sun dipped behind the hills, and the reddish tint left +the sea to linger briefly on the summit of the Coast Range flanking the +mainland 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 fisherman +humped over his steering gear. From each cleaving stem the bow-wave +curled in white foam. + +There was something in the wind. MacRae felt it like a premonition. He +left his boulder and hurried back toward the Cove. + +The trolling boats were packed about the _Blanco_ so close that MacRae +left his dinghy on the outer fringe and walked across their decks to the +deck of his own vessel. The _Blanco_ loomed in the midst of these lesser +craft like a hen over her brood of chicks. The fishermen had gathered on +the 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 convention +of 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 if +you'd start buying again." + +MacRae sat down on one sheave of his deck winch. He took out a cigarette +and lighted it, swung one foot back and forth. He did not make haste to +reply. An expectant hush fell on the crowd. In the slow-gathering dusk +there was no sound but the creak of rubbing gunwales, the low snore of +the sea breaking against the cliffs, and the chug-chug of the last +stragglers beating into the shelter of the Cove. + +"He shut down the cannery," the fishermen's spokesman said at last. "We +ain't seen a buyer or collector for three days. The water's full of +salmon, an' we been suckin' our thumbs an' watching 'em play. If you +won't buy here again we got to go where there is buyers. And we'd +rather not do that. There's no place on the Gulf as good fishin' as +there is here now." + +"What was the trouble?" MacRae asked absently. "Couldn't you supply him +with fish?" + +"Nobody knows. There was plenty of salmon. He cut the price the day +after you tied up. He cut it to six bits. Then he shut down. Anyway, we +don't care why he shut down. It don't make no difference. What we want +is for you to start buyin' again. Hell, we're losin' money from daylight +to dark! The water's alive with salmon. An' the season's short. Be a +sport, MacRae." + +MacRae laughed. + +"Be a sport, eh?" he echoed with a trace of amusement in his tone. "I +wonder how many of you would have listened to me if I'd gone around to +you a week ago and asked you to give me a sporting chance?" + +No one answered. MacRae threw away his half-smoked cigarette. He stood +up. + +"All right, I'll buy salmon again," he said quietly. "And I won't ask +you to give me first call on your catch or a chance to make up some of +the money I lost bucking Folly Bay, or anything like that. But I want to +tell you something. You know it as well as I do, but I want to jog your +memory with it." + +He raised his voice a trifle. + +"You fellows know that I've always given you a square deal. You aren't +fishing for sport. You're at this to make a living, to make money if you +can. So am I. You are entitled to all you can get. You earn it. You work +for it. So am I entitled to what I can make. I work, I take certain +chances. Neither of us is getting something for nothing. But there is a +limit to what either of us can get. We can't dodge that. You fellows +have been dodging it. Now you have to come back to earth. + +"No fisherman can get the prices you have had lately. No cannery can +pack salmon at those prices. Sockeye, the finest canning salmon that +swims in the sea, is bringing eighty cents on the Fraser. Bluebacks are +sixty-five cents at Nanaimo, sixty at Cape Mudge, sixty at the +Euclataws. + +"I can do a little better than that," MacRae hesitated a second. "I can +pay a little more, because the cannery I'm supplying is satisfied with a +little less profit than most. Stubby Abbott is not a hog, and neither am +I. I can pay seventy-five cents and make money. I have told you before +that it is to your interest as well as mine to keep me running. I will +always pay as much as salmon are worth. But I cannot pay more. If your +appreciation of Folly Bay's past kindness to you is so keen that you +would rather sell him your fish, why, that's your privilege." + +"Aw, that's bunk," a man called. "You know blamed well we wouldn't. Not +after him blowin' up like this." + +"How do I know?" MacRae laughed. "If Gower opened up to-morrow again and +offered eighty or ninety cents, he'd get the salmon--even if you knew he +would make you take thirty once he got you where he wanted you." + +"Would he?" another voice uprose. "The next time a mustard pot gets any +salmon from me, it'll be because there's no other buyer and no other +grounds to fish." + +A growled chorus backed this reckless statement. + +"That's all right," MacRae said good-naturedly. "I don't blame you for +picking up easy money. Only easy money isn't always so good as it +looks. Fly at it in the morning, and I'll take the fish at the price +I'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 his +bunk, falling asleep to the slow beat of a dead swell breaking in the +Cove'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 stage +of the game?" + +MacRae shook his head. He was wondering that himself. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + +Top Dog + + +Some ten days later the _Bluebird_ swung at anchor in the kelp just +clear of Poor Man's Rock. From a speck on the horizon the _Blanco_ grew +to full shape, flaring bow and pilot house, walking up the Gulf with a +bone in her teeth. She bore down upon her consort, sidled alongside and +made fast with lines to the bitts fore and aft. Vin Ferrara threw back +his hatch covers. His helper forked up salmon with a picaroon. Vin +tossed them across into the _Blanco's_ hold. At the same time the larger +carrier'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 decks +clean with buckets of sea water. + +"Twenty-seven hundred," MacRae said. "Big morning. Every troller in the +Gulf must be here." + +"No, I have to go to Folly Bay and Siwash Islands to-night," Vin told +him. "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 beat +mercilessly, a dog-day sun blazing upon glassy waters, reflected upward +in eye-straining shafts. The heat seared. Within a radius of a mile +outside the Rock the trollers chug-chugged here and there, driving +straight ahead, doubling short, wheeling in slow circles, working the +eddies. They stood in the small cockpit aft, the short tiller between +their legs, leaving their hands free to work the gear. They stood out in +the hot sun without shade or cover, stripped to undershirt and duck +trousers, many of them barefooted, brown arms bare, wet lines gleaming. +Wherever a man looked some fisherman hauled a line. And everywhere the +mirror of the sea was broken by leaping salmon, silver crescents +flashing in the sun. + +"Say, what do you know about it?" Vin smiled at MacRae. "Old Gower is +trolling." + +"Trolling!" + +"Rowboat. Plugging around the Rock. He was at it when daylight came. He +sold me fifteen fish. Think of it. Old H.A. rowboat trolling. Selling +his fish to you." + +Vincent chuckled. His eyes rested curiously on Jack's face. + +"Haughty spirit that goes before destruction, as Dolly used to say," he +rambled on. "Some come-down for him. He must be broke flat as a +flounder." + +"He sold you his salmon?" + +"Sure. Nobody else to sell 'em to, is there? Said he was trying his +hand. Seemed good-natured about it. Kinda pleased, in fact, because he +had one more than Doug Sproul. He started joshin' Doug. You know what a +crab old Doug is. He got crusty as blazes. Old Gower just grinned at him +and rowed off." + +MacRae made no comment, and their talk turned into other channels until +Vin hauled his hook and bore away. MacRae saw to dropping the +_Blanco's_ anchor. He would lie there till dusk. Then he sat in the +shade 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 the +current talk reached MacRae through Stubby. That price-war had been +Gower's last kick, an incomprehensible, ill-judged effort to reëstablish +his hold on the Squitty grounds, so it was said. + +"He never was such a terribly big toad in the cannery puddle," Stubby +recited, "and I guess he has made his last splash. They always cut a +wide swath in town, and that sort of thing can sure eat up coin. I'm +kind of sorry for Betty. Still, she'll probably marry somebody with +money. I know two or three fellows who would be tickled to death to get +her." + +"Why don't _you_ go to the rescue?" MacRae had suggested, with an irony +that 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 a +microscope. And I've found a girl who seems to think a winged duck is +worth 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 he +can and try to make a fresh start. It seems there has been friction in +the family, and his wife refused to come through with any of her +available cash. Seems kind of a complicated hole he got into. He's +cleaned, anyway. Robbin-Steele got all his cannery tenders and took over +several thousand cases of salmon. I hear he still has a few debts to be +settled when the cannery is sold. Why don't you figure a way of getting +hold of that cannery, Jack?" + +"I'm no cannery man," MacRae replied. "Why don't you? I thought you +made him an offer." + +"I withdrew it," Stubby said. "I have my hands full without that. You've +knocked 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 that +end, 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. And +MacRae was ready to pay any price in reason to get it back. That seemed +a debt he owed old Donald MacRae, apart from his own craving to sometime +carry out plans they had made together long before he went away to +France. The lives of some men are rooted in the soil where they were +born, where they grow to manhood. Jack MacRae was of that type. He loved +the 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. All +seamen are. They come ashore when they are old and feeble, to give their +bodies at last to the earth. MacRae loved the sea, but he loved better +to stand on the slopes running back from Squitty's cliffs, to look at +those green meadows and bits of virgin forest and think that it would +all be his again, to have and to hold. + +So he had set a firm in Vancouver the task of approaching Gower, to +sound him, to see if he would sell, while he kept in the background. He +believed that it was necessary for him to remain in the background. He +believed that Gower would never willingly relinquish that land into his +hands. + +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 lonely +headland strange things had come to pass. Donald MacRae had felt his +first abiding grief there and cried his hurt to a windy sky. He had +lived his last years snatching a precarious living from the seas that +swirled about the Rock. The man who had been the club with which fate +bludgeoned 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 between +tides, the salmon would still play along the kelp beds, in the eddies +about 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 sea +endured and men were passing shadows. + +Afternoon waned. Faint, cool airs wavered off the land, easing the heat +and the sun-glare. MacRae saw Betty and her father come down to the +beach. She helped him slide his rowboat afloat. Then Gower joined the +rowers who were putting out to the Rock for the evening run. He passed +close by the _Blanco_ but MacRae gave him scant heed. His eyes were all +for the girl ashore. Betty sat on a log, bareheaded in the sun. MacRae +had a feeling that she looked at him. And she would be thinking,--God +only knew what. + +In MacRae's mind arose the inevitable question,--one that he had choked +back dozens of times: Was it worth while to hurt her so, and himself, +because their fathers had fought, because there had been wrongs and +injustices? MacRae shook himself impatiently. He was backsliding. +Besides that unappeasable craving for her, vivid images of her with +tantalizing mouth, wayward shining hair, eyes that answered the passion +in his own, besides these luring pictures of her which troubled him +sometimes both in waking hours and sleeping, there was a strange, +deep-seated distrust of Betty because she was the daughter of her +father. That was irrational, and Jack MacRae knew it was irrational. But +he could not help it. It colored his thought of her. It had governed his +reactions. + +MacRae himself could comprehend all too clearly the tragedy of his +father's life. But he doubted if any one else could. He shrank from +unfolding it even to Betty,--even to make clear to her why his hand must +be against her father. MacRae knew, or thought he knew--he had reasoned +the thing out many times in the last few months--that Betty would not +turn to him against her own flesh and blood without a valid reason. He +could not, even, in the name of love, cut her off from all that she had +been, from all that had made her what she was, and make her happy. And +MacRae knew that if they married and Betty were not happy and contented, +they would both be tigerishly miserable. There was only one possible +avenue, one he could not take. He could not seek peace with Gower, even +for 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: keep +Betty out of his mind as much as possible and go on determinedly making +his fight to be top dog in a world where the weak get little mercy and +even the strong do not always come off unscarred. + +Jack MacRae was no philosopher, nor an intellectual superman, but he +knew that love did not make the world go round. It was work. Work and +fighting. Men spent most of their energies in those two channels. + +This they could not escape. Love only shot a rosy glow across life. It +did not absolve a man from weariness or scars. By it, indeed, he might +suffer greater stress and deeper scars. To MacRae, love, such as had +troubled his father's life and his own, seemed to be an emotion pregnant +with sorrow. But he could not deny the strange power of this thing +called love, when it stirred men and women. + +His deck hand, who was also cook, broke into MacRae's reflections with a +call to supper. Jack went down the companion steps into a forepeak +stuffy with the heat of the sun and a galley stove, a cramped place +where they ate heartily despite faint odors of distillate and burned +lubricating oil from the engine room and bilge water that smelled of +fish. + +A troller's boat was rubbing against the _Blanco's_ fenders when they +came on deck again. Others were hoisting the trolling poles, coming in +to deliver. The sun was gone. The long northern twilight cast a pearly +haze along far shores. MacRae threw open his hatches and counted the +salmon as they came flipping off the point of a picaroon. For over an +hour he stood at one hatch and his engineer at the other, counting fish, +making out sale slips, paying out money. It was still light--light +enough to read. But the bluebacks had stopped biting. The rowboat men +quit 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 tow +around to the Cove. + +Gower had rowed back and forth for three hours. MacRae had seen him +swing around the Rock, up under the cliffs and back again, pulling slow +and steady. He was last to haul in his gear. He came up to the carrier +and lay alongside Doug Sproul while that crabbed ancient chucked his +salmon on deck. Then he moved into the place Sproul vacated. The bottom +of 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 another +with 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 that +was Gower's. He did not want to see him or talk to him. He desired, in +so far as he was conscious of any desire in the matter, that Gower +should keep his distance. But he had a horror of meanness, of petty +spite. 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 into +the chilly hold, marked a slip, handed Gower the money for them. The +hand 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 sun +on the Gulf. MacRae knew its bite and sting. So had his father known. He +wondered 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 took +his oars in hand, albeit a trifle gingerly. And he said to old Doug +Sproul, 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 deep +voice. But he laughed. And he rowed away to the beach before his house. +MacRae watched. Betty came down to meet him. Together they hauled the +heavy 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, occasionally +relieving him at the oars. No matter what the weather, if a rowboat +could work a line Gower was one of them. Rains came, and he faced them +in yellow oilskins. He sweltered under that fiery sun. If his life had +been soft and easy, softness and ease did not seem to be wholly +necessary to his existence, not even to his peace of mind. For he had +that. MacRae often wondered at it, knowing the man's history. Gower +joked his way to acceptance among the rowboat men, all but old Doug +Sproul, 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 their +lives. He sold his fish to the _Blanco_ or the _Bluebird_, whichever was +on the spot. The run held steady at the Cove end of Squitty, a +phenomenal 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 was +puzzled, not alone about Gower, but about himself. He had dreamed of a +fierce satisfaction in beating this man down, in making him know poverty +and work and privation,--rubbing his nose in the dirt, he had said to +himself. + +He had managed it. Gower had joined the ranks of broken men. He was +finished as a figure in industry, a financial power. MacRae knew that, +beyond a doubt. Gower had debts and no assets save his land on the +Squitty cliffs and the closed cannery at Folly Bay. The cannery was a +white elephant, without takers in the market. No cannery man would touch +it unless he could first make a contract with MacRae for the bluebacks. +They had approached him with such propositions. Like wolves, MacRae +thought, seeking to pick the bones of one of their own pack who had +fallen. + +And if MacRae needed other evidence concerning Gower, he had it daily +before his eyes. To labor at the oars, to troll early and late in +drizzling rain or scorching sunshine, a man only does that because he +must. MacRae's father had done it. As a matter of course, without +complaint, with unprotesting patience. + +So did Gower. That did not fit Jack MacRae's conception of the man. If +he 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 there +was no hint of rancor in his silences. It was simply as if he understood +that MacRae did not wish to talk to him, and that he conceded this to be +a proper attitude. He talked with the fishermen. He joked with them. If +one slammed out at him now and then with a touch of the old resentment +against Folly Bay he laughed as if he understood and bore no malice. He +baffled MacRae. How could this man who had walked on fishermen's faces +for twenty years, seeking and exacting always his own advantage, playing +the game under harsh rules of his own devising which had enabled him to +win--until this last time--how could he see the last bit of prestige +wrested from him and still be cheerful? How could he earn his daily +bread in the literal sweat of his brow, endure blistered hands and sore +muscles and the sting of slime-poison in fingers cut by hooks and +traces, with less outward protest than men who had never known anything +else? + +MacRae could find no answer to that. He could only wonder. He only knew +that some shift of chance had helped him to put Gower where Gower had +put his father. And there was no satisfaction in the achievement, no +sense of victory. He looked at the man and felt sorry for him, and was +uncomfortably aware that Gower, taking salmon for his living with other +poor men around Poor Man's Rock, was in no need of pity. This podgy man +with the bright blue eyes and heavy jaw, who had been Donald MacRae's +jealous Nemesis, had lost everything that was supposed to make life +worth living to men of his type. And he did not seem to care. He seemed +quite content to smoke a pipe and troll for salmon. He seemed to be a +stranger 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 and +hard, dirty work would be the fittest requital he could bestow. If Jack +MacRae had been gifted with omnipotence when he read that penned history +of his father's life, he would have devised no fitter punishment, no +more fitting vengeance for Gower than that he should lose his fortune +and his prestige and spend his last years getting his bread upon the +waters by Poor Man's Rock in sun and wind and blowy weather. + +And MacRae was conscious that if there were any suffering involved in +this matter now, it rested upon him, not upon Gower. Most men past +middle age, who have drunk deeply the pleasant wine of material +success, shrink from the gaunt specter of poverty. They have shot their +bolt. They cannot stand up to hard work. They cannot endure privation. +They lose heart. They go about seeking sympathy, railing against the +fate. They lie down and the world walks unheeding over their prone +bodies. + +Gower was not doing that. If he had done so, MacRae would have sneered +at him with contempt. As it was, in spite of the rancor he had nursed, +the feeling which had driven him to reprisal, he found himself +sorry--sorry for himself, sorry for Betty. He had set out to bludgeon +Gower, to humiliate him, and the worst arrows he could sling had blunted +their points against the man's invulnerable spirit. + +Betty had been used to luxury. It had not spoiled her. MacRae granted +that. It had not made her set great store by false values. MacRae was +sure of that. She had loved him simply and naturally, with an almost +primitive directness. Spoiled daughters of the leisure class are not so +simple and direct. MacRae began to wonder if she could possibly escape +resenting his share in the overturning of her father's fortunes, whereby +she herself must suffer. + +By the time MacRae came slowly to these half-formed, disturbing +conclusions he was already upon the verge of other disturbing +discoveries in the realm of material facts. + +For obvious reasons he could not walk up to Gower's house and talk to +Betty. At least he did not see how he could, although there were times +when he was tempted. When he did see her he was acutely sensitive to a +veiled reproach in her eyes, a courteous distance in her speech. She +came off the beach one day alone, a few minutes after MacRae dropped +anchor in the usual spot. She had a dozen salmon in the boat. When she +came alongside MacRae set foot over the bulwark with intent to load them +himself. She forestalled him by picking the salmon up and heaving them +on the _Blanco's_ deck. She was dressed for the work, in heavy nailed +shoes, a flannel blouse, a rough tweed skirt. + +"Oh, say, take the picaroon, won't you?" He held it out to her, the +six-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 and +jab that pointed thing through the bottom of the boat." + +She laughed lightly, with no particular mirth in her voice. And MacRae +was stricken dumb. She was angry. He knew it, felt it intuitively. Angry +at him, warning him to keep his distance. He watched her dabble her +hands in the salt chuck, dry them coolly on a piece of burlap. She took +the 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 in +everything. He had succeeded in his undertaking beyond all the +expectations which had spurred him so feverishly in the beginning. But +there was no joy in it; not when Betty Gower looked at him with that +cold gleam in her gray eyes. Yet he told himself savagely that if he had +to take his choice he would not have done otherwise. And when he had +accomplished 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 existed +to fill a man's days with unhappiness. That, it seemed to him, must be +the final disposition of this problem which his father and Horace Gower +and Elizabeth Morton had set for him years before he was born. + +There came a burst of afternoon westerlies which blew small hurricanes +from noon to sundown. But there was always fishing under the broad lee +of the cliffs. The _Bluebird_ continued to scuttle from one outlying +point to another, and the _Blanco_ wallowed down to Crow Harbor every +other day with her hold crammed. When she was not under way and the sea +was fit the big carrier rode at anchor in the kelp close by Poor Man's +Rock, convenient for the trollers to come alongside and deliver when +they chose. There were squalls that blew up out of nowhere and drove +them all to cover. There were days when a dead swell rolled and the +trolling boats dipped and swung and pointed their bluff bows skyward as +they climbed the green mountains,--for the salmon strike when a sea is +on, and a troller runs from heavy weather only when he can no longer +handle his gear. + +MacRae was much too busy to brood long at a time. The phenomenal run of +blueback still held, with here and there the hook-nosed coho coming in +stray schools. He had a hundred and forty fishermen to care for in the +matter of taking their catch, keeping them supplied with fuel, bringing +them foodstuffs such as they desired. The _Blanco_ came up from +Vancouver sometimes as heavily loaded as when she went down. But he +welcomed the work because it kept him from too intense thinking. He +shepherded his seafaring flock for his profit and theirs alike and +poured salmon by tens of thousands into the machines at Crow +Harbor,--red meat to be preserved in tin cans which in months to come +should feed the hungry in the far places of the earth. + +MacRae sometimes had the strange fancy of being caught in a vast machine +for feeding the world, a machine which did not reckon such factors as +pain and sorrow in its remorseless functioning. Men could live without +love or ease or content. They could not survive without food. + +He came up to Squitty one bright afternoon when the sea was flat and +still, unharassed by the westerly. The Cove was empty. All the fleet was +scattered over a great area. The _Bluebird_ was somewhere on her rounds. +MacRae dropped the _Blanco's_ hook in the middle of Cradle Bay, a spot +he seldom chose for anchorage. But he had a purpose in this. When the +bulky carrier swung head to the faint land breeze MacRae was sitting on +his berth in the pilot house, glancing over a letter he held in his +hand. It was from a land-dealing firm in Vancouver. One paragraph is +sufficiently 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 thoughtfully +through an open window which gave on shore and cottage. He could see +Gower sitting on the porch, the thick bulk of the man clean-cut against +the 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 sight +among the stunted, wind-twisted firs. + +He walked to the after deck, laid hold of the dinghy, and slid it +overboard. Five minutes later he had beached it and was walking up the +gravel path to the house. + +He was conscious of a queer irritation against Gower. If he were willing +to sell the place, why did he sit like a spider in his web and demand +that victims come to him? MacRae was wary, distrustful, suspicious, as +he walked up the slope. Some of the old rancor revived in him. Gower +might have a shaft in his quiver yet, and the will to use it. + + + + +CHAPTER XX + +The Dead and Dusty Past + + +Gower sat in a deep grass chair, a pipe sagging one corner of his mouth, +his slippered feet crossed on a low stool. His rubber sea boots lay on +the porch floor as if he had but discarded them. MacRae took in every +detail of his appearance in one photographic glance, as a man will when +his gaze rests upon another with whom he may be about to clash. + +Gower no longer resembled the well-fed plutocrat. He scarcely seemed the +same man who, nearly two years before, had absently bestowed upon MacRae +a dollar for an act of simple courtesy. He wore nondescript trousers +which betrayed a shrunken abdominal line, a blue flannel shirt that +bared his short, thick neck. And in that particular moment, at least, +the habitual sullenness of his heavy face was not in evidence. He looked +placid in spite of the fiery redness which sun and wind had burned into +his skin. He betrayed no surprise at MacRae's coming. The placidity of +his blue eyes did not alter in any degree. + +"Hello, MacRae," he said. + +"How d' do," MacRae answered. "I came to speak to you about a little +matter of business." + +"Yes?" Gower rumbled. "I've been sort of expecting you." + +"Oh?" MacRae failed to conceal altogether his surprise at this +statement. "I understand you are willing to sell this place. I want to +buy it." + +"It was yours once, wasn't it?" + +The words were more of a comment than a question, but MacRae answered: + +"You know that, I think." + +"And you want it back?" + +"Naturally." + +"If that's what you want," Gower said slowly. "I'll see you in----" + +He cut off the sentence. His round stomach--less round by far than it +had been two months earlier--shook with silent laughter. His eyes +twinkled. His thick, stubby fingers drummed on the chair arm. + +MacRae's face grew hot. He recognized the unfinished sentence as one of +his own, words he had flung in Gower's face not so long since. If that +was the way of it he could save his breath. He turned silently. + +"Wait." + +He faced about at the changed quality of Gower's tone. The amused +expression had vanished. Gower leaned forward a little. There was +something very like appeal in his expression. MacRae was suddenly +conscious of facing a still different man,--an oldish, fat man with +thinning hair and tired, wistful eyes. + +"I just happened to think of what you said to me not long ago," Gower +explained. "It struck me as funny. But that isn't how I feel. If you +want this land you can have it. Take a chair. Sit down. I want to talk +to you." + +"There is nothing the matter with my legs," MacRae said shortly. "I do +want this land. I will pay you the price you paid for it, in cash, when +you execute a legal transfer. Is that satisfactory?" + +"What about this house?" Gower asked casually. "It's worth something, +isn't it?" + +"Not to me," MacRae replied. "I don't want the house. You can take it +away with you, if you like." + +Gower looked at him thoughtfully. + +"The Scotch," he said, "cherish a grudge like a family heirloom." + +"Perhaps they do," MacRae answered. "Why not? If you knock a man down +you don't expect him to jump up and shake hands with you. You had your +inning. It was a long one." + +"I wonder," Gower said slowly, "why old Donald MacRae kept his mouth +closed to you about trouble between us until he was ready to die?" + +"How do you know he did that?" MacRae demanded harshly. + +"The night you came to ask for the _Arrow_ to take him to town you had +no such feeling against me as you have had since," Gower said. "I know +you didn't. You wouldn't have come if you had. I cut no figure in your +eyes, one way or the other, until after he was dead. So he must have +told you at the very last. What did he tell you? Why did he have to pass +that old poison on to another generation?" + +"Why shouldn't he?" MacRae demanded. "You made his life a failure. You +put a scar on his face--I can remember when I was a youngster wondering +how he got that mark--I remember how it stood like a ridge across his +cheek bone when he was dead. You put a scar upon his soul that no one +but himself ever saw or felt--except as I have been able to feel it +since I knew. You weren't satisfied with that. You had to keep on +throwing your weight against him for thirty years. You didn't even stop +when the war made everything seem different. You might have let up +then. We were doing our bit. But you didn't. You kept on until you had +deprived him of everything but the power to row around the Rock day +after day and take a few salmon in order to live. You made a pauper of +him and sat here gloating over it. It preyed on his mind to think that I +should come back from France and find myself a beggar because he was +unable to cope with you. He lived his life without whimpering to me, +except to say he did not like you. He only wrote this down for me to +read--when he began to feel that he would never see me again--the +reasons why he had failed in everything, lost everything. When I pieced +out the story, from the day you used your pike pole to knock down a man +whose fighting hands were tied by a promise to a woman he loved, from +then till the last cold-blooded maneuver by which you got this land of +ours, I hated you, and I set out to pay you back in your own coin. + +"But," MacRae continued after a momentary hesitation, "that is not what +I came here to say. Talk--talk's cheap. I would rather not talk about +these things, or think of them, now. I want to buy this land from you if +you are willing to sell. That's all." + +Gower scarcely seemed to hear him. He was nursing his heavy chin with +one hand, looking at MacRae with a curious concentration, looking at him +and seeing something far beyond. + +"Hell; it is a true indictment, up to a certain point," he said at last. +"What a curse misunderstanding is--and pride! By God, I have envied your +father, MacRae, many a time. I struck him an ugly blow once. Yes. I was +young and hot-headed, and I was burning with jealousy. But I did him a +good turn at that, I think. I--oh, well, maybe you wouldn't understand. +I suppose you wouldn't believe me if I say I didn't swoop down on him +every time I got a chance; that I didn't bushwhack--no matter if he +believed I did." + +"No?" MacRae said incredulously. "You didn't break up a logging venture +on the Claha when he had a chance to make a stake? You didn't show your +fine Italian hand in that marble quarry undertaking on Texada? Nor other +things that I could name as he named them. Why crawl now? It doesn't +matter. I'm not swinging a club over your head." + +Gower shook himself. + +"No," he declared slowly. "He interfered with the Morton interests in +that Claha logging camp, and they did whatever was done. The quarry +business I know nothing about, except that I had business dealings with +the people whom he ran foul of. I tell you, MacRae, after the first +short period of time when I was afire with the fury of jealousy, I did +not do these things. I didn't even want to do them. I wish you would get +that straight. I wanted Bessie Morton and I got her. That was an issue +between us, I grant. I gained my point there. I would have gone farther +to gain that point. But I paid for it. It was not so long before I knew +that I was going to pay dearly for it. I tell you I came to envy Donald +MacRae. I don't know if he nursed a disappointment--which I came to know +was an illusion. Perhaps he did. But he had nothing real to regret, +nothing to prick, prick him all the time. He married a woman who seemed +to care for him. At any rate, she respected him and was a mate, living +his life while she did live. + +"Look, MacRae. I married Bessie Morton because I wanted her, wanted her +on any terms. She didn't want me. She wanted Donald MacRae. But she had +wanted other men. That was the way she was made. She was facile. And +she never loved any one half so much as she loved herself. She was only +a beautiful peacock preening her feathers and sighing for homage. She +was--she is--the essence of self from the top of her head to her shoes. +Her feelings, her wants, her wishes, her whims, her two-by-four outlook, +nothing else counted. She couldn't comprehend anything outside of +herself. She would have made Donald MacRae's life a misery to him when +the novelty of that infatuation wore off. The Mortons are like that. +They want everything. They give nothing. + +"She was cowardly too. Do you think two old men and myself would have +taken her, or anything else, from your father out in the middle of the +Gulf, if she had had any spirit? You knew your father. He wasn't a tame +man. He would have fought--fought like a tiger. We might have killed +him. It is more likely that he would have killed us. But we could not +have beaten him. But she had to knuckle down--take the easy way for her. +She cried; and he promised." + +Gower lay back in his chair. His chin sunk on his breast. He spoke +slowly, groping for his words. MacRae did not interrupt. Something +compelled him to listen. There was a pained ring in Gower's voice that +held him. The man was telling him these things with visible reluctance, +with a simple dignity that arrested him, even while he felt that he +should not listen. + +"She used to taunt me with that," he went on, "taunt me with striking +Donald MacRae. For years after we were married she used to do that. Long +after--and that wasn't so long--she had ceased to care if such a man as +your father existed. That was only an episode to her, of which she was +snobbishly ashamed in time. But she often reminded me that I had struck +him like a hardened butcher, because she knew she could hurt me with +that. So that I used to wish to God I had never followed her out into +the Gulf. + +"For thirty years I've lived and worked and never known any real +satisfaction in living--or happiness. I've played the game, played it +hard. I've been hard, they say. Probably I have. I didn't care. A man +had to walk on others or be walked on himself. I made money. Money--I +poured it into her hands, like pouring sand in a rat-hole. She lived for +herself, her whims, her codfish-aristocracy standards, spending my money +like water to make a showing, giving me nothing in return, nothing but +whining and recrimination if I crossed her ever so little. She made a +lap dog of her son the first twenty-five years of his life. She would +have made Betty a cheap imitation of herself. But she couldn't do that." + +He stopped a moment and shook his head gently. + +"No," he resumed, "she couldn't do that. There's iron in that girl. +She's all Gower. I think I should have thrown up my hands long ago only +for Betty's sake." + +MacRae shifted uneasily. + +"You see," Gower continued, "my life has been a failure, too. When +Donald MacRae and I clashed, I prevailed. I got what I wanted. But it +was only a shadow. There was no substance. It didn't do me any good. I +have made money, barrels of it, and that has not done me any good. I've +been successful at everything I undertook--except lately--but succeeding +as the world reckons success hasn't made me happy. In my personal life +I've been a damned failure. I've always been aware of that. And if I +have held a feeling toward Donald MacRae these thirty-odd years, it was +a feeling of envy. I would have traded places with him and been the +gainer. I would have liked to tell him so. But I couldn't. He was a dour +Scotchman and I suppose he hated me, although he kept it to himself. I +suppose he loved Bessie. I know I did. Perhaps he cherished hatred of me +for wrecking his dream, and so saw my hand in things where it never was. +But he was wrong. Bessie would have wrecked it and him too. She would +have whined and sniffled about being a poor man's wife, once she learned +what it was to be poor. She could never understand anything but a +silk-lined existence. She loved herself and her own illusions. She would +have driven him mad with her petty whims, her petty emotions. She +doesn't know the meaning of loyalty, consideration, or even an open, +honest hatred. And I've stood it all these years--because I don't shirk +responsibilities, and I had brought it on myself." + +He stopped a second, staring out across the Gulf. + +"But apart from that one thing, I never consciously or deliberately +wronged Donald MacRae. He may honestly have believed I did. I have the +name of being hard. I dare say I am. The world is a hard place. When I +had to choose between walking on a man's face and having my own walked +on, I never hesitated. There was nothing much to make me soft. I moved +along the same lines as most of the men I know. + +"But, I repeat, I never put a straw in your father's way. I know that +things went against him. I could see that. I knew why, too. He was too +square for his time and place. He trusted men too much. You can't always +do that. He was too scrupulously honest. He always gave the other fellow +the best of it. That alone beat him. He didn't always consider his own +interest and follow up every advantage. I don't think he cared to +scramble for money, as a man must scramble for it these days. He could +have held this place if he had cast about for ways to do so. There were +plenty of loopholes. But he had that old-fashioned honor which doesn't +seek loopholes. He had borrowed money on it. He would have taken the +coat off his back, beggared himself any day to pay a debt. Isn't that +right?" + +MacRae nodded. + +"So this place came into my hands. It was deliberate on my part--but +only, mind you, when I knew that he was bound to lose it. Perhaps it was +bad judgment on my part. I didn't think that he would see it as an end +I'd been working for. As I grew older, I found myself wanting now and +then to wipe out that old score between us. I would have given a good +deal to sit down with him over a pipe. A woman, who wasn't much as women +go, had made us both suffer. So I built this cottage and came here to +stay now and then. I liked the place. I liked to think that now he and I +were getting to be old men, we could be friends. But he was too bitter. +And I'm human. I've got a bit of pride. I couldn't crawl. So I never got +nearer to him than to see him rowing around the Rock. And he died full +of that bitterness. I don't like to think of that. Still, it cannot be +helped. Do you grasp this, MacRae? Do you believe me?" + +Incredible as it seemed, MacRae had no choice but to accept that +explanation of strangely twisted motives, those misapprehensions, the +murky cloud of misunderstanding. The tone of Gower's voice, his +attitude, carried supreme conviction. And still-- + +"Yes," he said at last. "It is all a contradiction of things I have been +passionately sure of for nearly two years. But I can see--yes, it must +be as you say. I'm sorry." + +"Sorry? For what?" Gower regarded him soberly. + +"Many things. Why did you tell me this?" + +"Why should the anger and bitterness of two old men be passed on to +their children?" Gower asked him gently. + +MacRae stared at him. Did he know? Had he guessed? Had Betty told him? +He wondered. It was not like Betty to have spoken of what had passed +between them. Yet he did not know how close a bond might exist between +this father and daughter, who were, MacRae was beginning to perceive, +most singularly alike. And this was a shrewd old man, sadly wise in +human weaknesses, and much more tolerant than MacRae had conceived +possible. He felt a little ashamed of the malice with which he had +fought this battle of the salmon around Squitty Island. Yet Gower by his +own admission was a hard man. He had lived with a commercial sword in +his hand. He knew what it was to fall by that weapon. He had been hard +on the fishermen. He had exploited them mercilessly. Therein lay his +weakness, whereby he had fallen, through which MacRae had beaten him. +But had he beaten him? MacRae was not now so sure about that. But it was +only a momentary doubt. He struggled a little against the reaction of +kindliness, this curious sympathy for Gower which moved him now. He +hated sentimentalism, facile yielding to shallow emotions. He wanted to +talk and he was dumb. Dumb for appropriate words, because his mind kept +turning with passionate eagerness upon Betty Gower. + +"Does Betty know what you have just told me?" he asked at last. + +Gower shook his head. + +"She knows there is something. I can't tell her. I don't like to. It +isn't a nice story. I don't shine in it--nor her mother." + +"Nor do I," MacRae muttered to himself. + +He stood looking over the porch rail down on the sea where the _Blanco_ +swung at her anchor chain. There seemed nothing more to say. Yet he was +aware of Gower's eyes upon him with something akin to expectancy. An +uncertain smile flitted across MacRae's face. + +"This has sort of put me on my beam ends," he said, using a sailor's +phrase. "Don't you feel as if I'd rather done you up these two seasons?" + +Gower's heavy features lightened with a grimace of amusement. + +"Well," he said, "you certainly cost me a lot of money, one way and +another. But you had the nerve to go at it--and you used better judgment +of men and conditions than anybody has manifested in the salmon business +lately, unless it's young Abbott. So I suppose you are entitled to win +on your merits. By the way, there is one condition tacked to selling you +this ranch. I hesitated about bringing it up at first. I would like to +keep this cottage and a strip of ground a hundred and fifty feet wide +running down to the beach." + +"All right," MacRae agreed. "We can arrange that later. I'll come +again." + +He set foot on the porch steps. Then he turned back. A faint flush stole +up in his sun-browned face. He held out his hand. + +"Shall we cry quits?" he asked. "Shall we shake hands and forget it?" + +Gower rose to his feet. He did not say anything, but the grip in his +thick, stubby fingers almost made Jack MacRae wince,--and he was a +strong-handed man himself. + +"I'm glad you came to-day," Gower said huskily. "Come again--soon." + +He stood on the porch and watched MacRae stride down to the beach and +put off in his dinghy. Then he took out a handkerchief and blew his nose +with a tremendous amount of unnecessary noise and gesture. There was +something suspiciously like moisture brightening his eyes. + +But when he saw MacRae stand in the dinghy alongside the _Blanco_ and +speak briefly to his men, then row in under Point Old behind Poor Man's +Rock which the tide was slowly baring, when he climbed up over the Point +and took the path along the cliff edge, that suspicious brightness in +Gower's keen old eyes was replaced by a twinkle. He sat down in his +grass chair and hummed a little tune, the while one slippered foot kept +time, rat-a-pat, on the floor of the porch. + + + + +CHAPTER XXI + +As it Was in the Beginning + + +MacRae followed the path along the cliffs. He did not look for Betty. +His mind was on something else, engrossed in considerations which had +little to do with love. If it be true that a man keeps his loves and +hates and hobbies and ambitions and appetites in separate chambers, any +of which may be for a time so locked that what lies therein neither +troubles nor pleases him, then that chamber in which he kept Betty +Gower's image was hermetically sealed. Her figure was obscured by other +figures,--his father and Horace Gower and himself. + +Not until he had reached the Cove's head and come to his own house did +he recall that Betty had gone along the cliffs, and that he had not seen +her as he passed. But that could easily happen, he knew, in that mile +stretch of trees and thickets, those deep clefts and pockets in the +rocky wall that frowned upon the sea. + +He went into the house. Out of a box on a shelf in his room he took the +message his father had left him and sitting down in the shadowy coolness +of the outer room began to read it again, slowly, with infinite care for +the reality his father had meant to convey. + +All his life, as Jack remembered him, Donald MacRae had been a silent +man, who never talked of how he felt, how things affected him, who never +was stricken with that irresistible impulse to explain and discuss, to +relieve his troubled soul with words, which afflicts so many men. It +seemed as if he had saved it all for that final summing-up which was to +be delivered by his pen instead of his lips. He had become articulate +only at the last. It must have taken him weeks upon weeks to write it +all down, this autobiography which had been the mainspring of his son's +actions for nearly two years. There was wind and sun in it, and blue sky +and the gray Gulf heaving; somber colors, passion and grief, an apology +and a justification. + +MacRae laid down the last page and went outside to sit on the steps. +Shadows were gathering on the Cove. Far out, the last gleam of the sun +was touching the Gulf. A slow swell was rising before some far, +unheralded wind. The _Blanco_ came gliding in and dropped anchor. +Trollers began to follow. They clustered about the big carrier like +chickens under the mother wing. By these signs MacRae knew that the fish +had stopped biting, that it was lumpy by Poor Man's Rock. He knew there +was work aboard. But he sat there, absent-eyed, thinking. + +He was full of understanding pity for his father, and also for Horace +Gower. He was conscious of being a little sorry for himself. But then he +had only been troubled a short two years by this curious aftermath of +old passions, whereas they had suffered all their lives. He had got a +new angle from which to approach his father's story. He knew now that he +had reacted to something that was not there. He had been filled with a +thirst for vengeance, for reprisal, and he had declared war on Gower, +when that was not his father's intent. Old Donald MacRae had hated Gower +profoundly in the beginning. He believed that Gower hated him and had +put the weight of his power against him, wherever and whenever he +could. But life itself had beaten him,--and not Gower. That was what he +had been trying to tell his son. + +And life itself had beaten Gower in a strangely similar fashion. He too +was old, a tired, disappointed man. He had reached for material success +with one hand and happiness with the other. One had always eluded him. +The other Jack MacRae had helped wrest from him. MacRae could see +Gower's life in detached pictures, life that consisted of making money +and spending it, life with a woman who whined and sniffled and +complained. These things had been a slow torture. MacRae could no longer +regard this man as a squat ogre, merciless, implacable, ready and able +to crush whatsoever opposed him. He was only a short, fat, oldish man +with tired eyes, who had been bruised by forces he could not understand +or cope with until he had achieved a wistful tolerance for both things +and men. + +Both these old men, MacRae perceived, had made a terrible hash of their +lives. Neither of them had succeeded in getting out of life much that a +man instinctively feels that he should get. Both had been capable of +happiness. Both had struggled for happiness as all men struggle. Neither +had ever securely grasped any measure of it, nor even much of content. + +MacRae felt a chilly uncertainty as he sat on his doorstep considering +this. He had been traveling the same road for many months,--denying his +natural promptings, stifling a natural passion, surrendering himself to +an obsession of vindictiveness, planning and striving to return evil for +what he conceived to be evil, and being himself corrupted by the +corrosive forces of hatred. + +He had been diligently bestowing pain on Betty, who loved him quite +openly and frankly as he desired to be loved; Betty, who was innocent of +these old coils of bitterness, who was primitive enough in her emotions, +MacRae suspected, to let nothing stand between her and her chosen mate +when that mate beckoned. + +But she was proud. He knew that he had puzzled her to the point of +anger, hurt her in a woman's most vital spot. + +"I've been several kinds of a fool," MacRae said to himself. "I have +been fooling myself." + +He had said to himself once, in a somber mood, that life was nothing but +a damned dirty scramble in which a man could be sure of getting hurt. +But it struck him now that he had been sedulously inflicting those hurts +upon himself. Nature cannot be flouted. She exacts terrible penalties +for the stifling, the inhibition, the deflection of normal instincts, +fundamental impulses. He perceived the operation of this in his father's +life, in the thirty years of petty conflict between Horace Gower and his +wife. And he had unconsciously been putting himself and Betty in the way +of similar penalties by exalting revenge for old, partly imagined wrongs +above that strange magnetic something which drew them together. + +Twilight was at hand. Looking through the maple and alder fringe before +his house MacRae saw the fishing boats coming one after the other, +clustering about the _Blanco_. He went down and slid the old green +dugout afloat and so gained the deck of his vessel. For an hour +thereafter he worked steadily until all the salmon were delivered and +stowed in the _Blanco's_ chilly hold. + +He found it hard to keep his mind on the count of salmon, on money to be +paid each man, upon these common details of his business. His thought +reached out in wide circles, embracing many things, many persons: +Norman Gower and Dolly, who had had courage to put the past behind them +and reach for happiness together; Stubby Abbott and Etta Robbin-Steele, +who were being flung together by the same inscrutable forces within +them. Love might not truly make the world go round, but it was a +tremendous motive power in human actions. Like other dynamic forces it +had its dangerous phases. Love, as MacRae had experienced it, was a +curious mixture of affection and desire, of flaming passion and infinite +tenderness. Betty Gower warmed him like a living flame when he let her +take possession of his thought. She was all that his fancy could conjure +as desirable. She was his mate. He had felt that, at times, with a +conviction beyond reason or logic ever since the night he kissed her in +the Granada. If fate, or the circumstances he had let involve him, +should juggle them apart, he felt that the years would lead him down +long, drab corridors. + +And he was suddenly determined that should not happen. His imagination +flung before him kinetoscopic flashes of what his father's life had been +and Horace Gower's. That vision appalled MacRae. He would not let it +happen,--not to him and Betty. + +He washed, ate his supper, lay on his bunk in the pilot house and smoked +a cigarette. Then he went out on deck. The moon crept up in a cloudless +sky, dimming the stars. There was no wind about the island. But there +was wind loose somewhere on the Gulf. The glass was falling. The swells +broke more heavily along the cliffs. At the mouth of the Cove white +sheets of spray lifted as each comber reared and broke in that narrow +place. + +He recollected that he had left the _Blanco's_ dinghy hauled up on the +beach on the tip of Point Old. He got ashore now in the green dugout and +walked across to the Point. + +A man is seldom wholly single-track in his ideas, his impulses. MacRae +thought of the dinghy. He had a care for its possible destruction by the +rising sea. But he thought also of Betty. There was a pleasure in simply +looking at the house in which she lived. Lights glowed in the windows. +The cottage glistened in the moonlight. + +When he came out on the tip of the Point the dinghy, he saw, lay safe +where he had dragged it up on the rocks. And when he had satisfied +himself of this he stood with hands thrust deep in his pockets, looking +down on Poor Man's Rock, watching the swirl and foam as each swell ran +over its sunken head. + +MacRae had a subconscious perception of beauty, beauty of form and +color. It moved him without his knowing why. He was in a mood to respond +to beauty this night. He had that buoyant, grateful feeling which comes +to a man when he has escaped some great disaster, when he is suddenly +freed from some grim apprehension of the soul. + +The night was one of wonderful beauty. The moon laid its silver path +across the sea. The oily swells came up that moon-path in undulating +folds to break in silver fragments along the shore. The great island +beyond the piercing shaft of the Ballenas light and the mainland far to +his left lifted rugged mountains sharp against the sky. From the +southeast little fluffs of cloud, little cottony flecks white as virgin +snow, sailed before the wind that mothered the swells. But there was no +wind on Squitty yet. There was breathless stillness except for the low, +spaced mutter of the surf. + +He stood a long time, drinking in the beauty of it all,--the sea and +the moon-path, and the hushed, dark woods behind. + +Then his gaze, turning slowly, fell on something white in the shadow of +a bushy, wind-distorted fir a few feet away. He looked more closely. His +eyes gradually made out a figure in a white sweater sitting on a flat +rock, elbows on knees, chin resting in cupped palms. + +He walked over. Betty's eyes were fixed on him. He stared down at her, +suddenly tongue-tied, a queer constricted feeling in his throat. She did +not speak. + +"Were you sitting here when I came along?" he asked at last. + +"Yes," she said. "I often come up here. I have been sitting here for +half an hour." + +MacRae sat down beside her. His heart seemed to be trying to choke him. +He did not know where to begin, or how, and there was much he wanted to +say that he must say. Betty did not even take her chin out of her palms. +She stared out at the sea, rolling up to Squitty in silver windrows. + +MacRae put one arm around her and drew her up close to him, and Betty +settled against him with a little sigh. Her fingers stole into his free +hand. For a minute they sat like that. Then he tilted her head back, +looked down into the gray pools of her eyes, and kissed her. + +"You stood there looking down at the sea as if you were in a dream," she +whispered; "and all the time I was crying inside of me for you to come +to me. And presently, I suppose, you will go away." + +"No," he said. "This time I have come for good." + +"I knew you would, sometime," she murmured. "At least, I hoped you +would. I wanted you so badly." + +"But because one wants a thing badly it doesn't always follow that one +gets it." + +MacRae was thinking of his father when he spoke. + +"I know that," Betty said. "But I knew that you wanted me, you see. And +I had faith that you would brush away the cobwebs somehow. I've been +awfully angry at you sometimes. It's horrible to feel that there is an +imaginary wall between you and some one you care for." + +"There is no wall now," MacRae said. + +"Was there ever one, really?" + +"There seemed to be." + +"And now there is none?" + +"None at all." + +"Sure?" she murmured. + +"Honest Injun," MacRae smiled. "I went to see your father to-day about a +simple matter of business. And I found--I learned--oh, well, it doesn't +matter. I buried the hatchet. We are going to be married and live +happily ever after." + +"Well," Betty said judiciously, "we shall have as good a chance as any +one, I think. Look at Norman and Dolly. I positively trembled for +them--after Norman getting into that mess over in England. He never +exactly shone as a real he-man, that brother of mine, you know. But they +are really happy, Jack. They make me envious." + +"I think you're a little hard on that brother of yours," MacRae said. He +was suddenly filled with a great charity toward all mankind. "He never +had much of a chance, from all I can gather." + +He went on to tell her what Norman had told him that afternoon on the +hill above the Cove. But Betty interrupted. + +"Oh, I know that now," she declared. "Daddy told me just recently. +Daddy knew what Norman was doing over there. In fact, he showed me a +letter from some British military authority praising Norman for the work +he did. But Daddy kept mum when Norman came home and those nasty rumors +began to go around. He thought it better for Norman to take his +medicine. He was afraid mother would smother him with money and insist +on his being a proper lounge lizard again, and so he would gradually +drop back into his old uselessness. Daddy was simply tickled stiff when +Norman showed his teeth--when he cut loose from everything and married +Dolly, and all that. He's a very wise old man, that father of mine, +Jack. He hasn't ever got much real satisfaction in his life. He has been +more content this last month or so than I can ever remember him. We have +always had loads of money, and while it's nice to have plenty, I don't +think it did him any good. My whole life has been lived in an atmosphere +of domestic incompatibility. I think I should make a very capable +wife--I have had so many object lessons in how not to be. My mother +wasn't a success either as a wife or a mother. It is a horrible thing to +say, but it's really true, Jack. Mamma's a very well-bred, +distinguished-looking person with exquisite taste in dress and dinner +parties, and that's about the only kind thing I can say for her. Do you +really love me, Jack? Heaps and heaps?" + +She shot this question at him with a swift change of tone and an +earnestness which straightway drove out of MacRae's mind every +consideration save the proper and convincing answer to such intimate +questions. + +"Look," Betty said after a long interval. "Daddy has built a fire on the +beach. He does that sometimes, and we sit around it and roast clams in +the coals. Johnny, Johnny," she squeezed his arm with a quick pressure, +"we're going to have some good times on this island now." + +MacRae laughed indulgently. He was completely in accord with that +prophecy. + +The blaze Gower had kindled flickered and wavered, a red spot on the +duskier shore, with a yellow nimbus in which they saw him move here and +there, and sit down at last with his back to a log and his feet +stretched to the fire. + +"Let's go down," MacRae suggested, "and break the news to him." + +"I wonder what he'll say?" Betty murmured thoughtfully. + +"Haven't you any idea?" MacRae asked curiously. + +"No. Honestly, I haven't," Betty replied. "Daddy's something like you, +Jack. That is, he does and says unexpected things, now and then. No, I +really don't know what he will say." + +"We'll soon find out." + +MacRae took her hand. They went down off the backbone of the Point, +through ferns and over the long uncut grass, down to the fire where the +wash from the heavy swell outside made watery murmurs along the gravelly +beach. + +Gower looked up at them, waited for them to speak. + +"Betty and I are going to be married soon," MacRae announced abruptly. + +"Oh?" Gower took the pipe out of his mouth and rapped the ash out of it +in the palm of his hand. "You don't do things half-heartedly, do you, +MacRae? You deprive me of a very profitable business. You want my +ranch--and now my housekeeper." + +"Daddy!" Betty remonstrated. + +"Oh, well, I suppose I can learn to cook for myself," Gower rumbled. + +He was frowning. He looked at them staring at him, nonplussed. Suddenly +he burst into deep, chuckling laughter. + +"Sit down, sit down, and look at the fire," he said. "Bless your soul, +if you want to get married that's your own business. + +"Mind you," he chuckled after a minute, when Betty had snuggled down +beside him, and MacRae perched on the log by her, "I don't say I like +the idea. It don't seem fair for a man to raise a daughter and then have +some young fellow sail up and take her away just when she is beginning +to make herself useful." + +"Daddy, you certainly do talk awful nonsense," Betty reproved. + +"I expect you haven't talked much else the last little while," he +retorted. + +Betty subsided. MacRae smiled. There was a whimsicality about Gower's +way of taking this that pleased MacRae. + +They toasted their feet at the fire until the wavering flame burned down +to a bed of glowing coals. They talked of this and that, of everything +but themselves until the moon was swimming high and the patches of +cottony cloud sailing across the moon's face cast intense black patches +on the silvery radiance of the sea. + +"I've got some clams in a bucket," Gower said at last. "Let's roast +some. You get plates and forks and salt and pepper and butter, Bet, +while I put the clams on the fire." + +Betty went away to the house. Gower raked a flat rock, white-hot, out to +the edge of the coals and put fat quahaugs on it to roast. Then he sat +back and looked at MacRae. + +"I wonder if you realize how lucky you are?" he said. + +"I think I do," MacRae answered. "You don't seem much surprised." + +Gower smiled. + +"Well, no. I can't say I am. That first night you came to the cottage to +ask for the _Arrow_ I got a good look at you, and you struck me as a +fine, clean sort of boy, and I said to myself, 'Old Donald has never +told him anything and he has no grudge against me, and wouldn't it be a +sort of compensation if those two should fall naturally and simply in +love with each other?' Yes, it may seem sentimental, but that idea +occurred to me. Of course, it was just an idea. Betty would marry +whoever she wanted to marry. I knew that. Nothing but her own judgment +would influence her in a matter of that sort. I know. I've watched her +grow up. Maybe it's a good quality or maybe it's a bad one, but she has +always had a bull-dog sort of persistence about anything that strikes +her as really important. + +"And of course I had no way of knowing whether she would take a fancy to +you or you to her. So I just watched. And maybe I boosted the game a +little, because I'm a pretty wise old fish in my own way. I took a few +whacks at you, now and then, and she flew the storm signals without +knowing it." + +Gower smiled reminiscently, stroking his chin with his hand. + +"I had to fight you, after a fashion, to find out what sort of stuff you +were, for my own satisfaction," he continued. "I saw that you had your +Scotch up and were after my scalp, and I knew it couldn't be anything +but that old mess. That was natural. But I thought I could square that +if I could ever get close enough to you. Only I couldn't manage that +naturally. And this scramble for the salmon got me in deep before I +realized where I was. I used to feel sorry for you and Betty. I could +see it coming. You both talk with your eyes. I have seen you both when +you didn't know I was near. + +"So when I saw that you would fight me till you broke us both, and also +that if I kept on I would not only be broke but so deep in the hole that +I could never get out, I shut the damned cannery up and let everything +slide. I knew as soon as you were in shape you would try to get this +place back. That was natural. And you would have to come and talk to me +about it. I was sure I could convince you that I was partly human. So +you see this is no surprise to me. Lord, no! Why, I've been playing +chess for two years--old Donald MacRae's knight against my queen." + +He laughed and thumped MacRae on the flat of his sturdy back. + +"It might have been a stalemate, at that," MacRae said. + +"But it wasn't," Gower declared. "Well, I'll get something out of +living, after all. I've often thought I'd like to see a big, roomy house +somewhere along these cliffs, and kids playing around. You and Betty may +have your troubles, but you're starting right. You ought to get a lot +out of life. I didn't. I made money. That's all. Poured it into a rat +hole. Bessie is sitting over on Maple Point in a big drafty house with +two maids and a butler, a two-thousand-acre estate, and her pockets full +of Victory Bonds. She isn't happy, and she never can be. She never cared +for anybody but herself, not even her children, and nobody cares for +her, I'm all but broke, and I'm better off than she is. I hate to think +I ever fought for her. She wasn't worth it, MacRae. That's a hell of a +thing for a man to say about a woman he lived with for over thirty +years. But it's true. It took me a good many miserable years to admit +that to myself. + +"I suppose she'll cling to her money and go on playing the _grande +dame_. And if she can get any satisfaction out of that I'm willing. I've +never known as much real peace and satisfaction as I've got now. All I +need is a place to sleep and a comfortable chair to sit in. I don't want +to chase dollars any more. All I want is to row around the Rock and +catch a few salmon now and then and sit here and look at the sea when +I'm tired. You're young, and you have all your life before you--you and +Betty. If you need money, you are pretty well able to get it for +yourself. But I'm old, and I don't want to bother." + +He rambled on until Betty came down with plates and other things. The +fat clams were opening their shells on the hot rock. They put butter and +seasoning on the tender meat and ate, talking of this and that. And when +the last clam had vanished, Gower stuffed his pipe and lit it with a +coal. He gathered up the plates and forks and rose to his feet. + +"Good night," he said benevolently. "I'm going to the house and to bed. +Don't sit out here dreaming all night, you two." + +He stumped away up the path. MacRae piled driftwood on the fire. Then he +sat down with his back against the log, and Betty snuggled beside him, +in the crook of his arm. Beyond the Point the booming of the surf rose +like far thunder. The tide was on the ebb. Poor Man's Rock bared its +kelp-thatched head. The racing swells covered it with spray that shone +in the moonlight. + +They did not talk. Speech had become nonessential. It was enough to be +together. + +So they sat, side by side, their backs to the cedar log and their feet +to the fire, talking little, dreaming much, until the fluffy clouds +scudding across the face of the moon came thicker and faster and lost +their snowy whiteness, until the radiance of the night was dimmed. + +Across the low summit of Point Old a new sound was carried to them. +Where the moonlight touched the Gulf in patches, far out, whitecaps +showed. + +"Listen," MacRae murmured. + +The wind struck them with a puff that sent sparks flying. It rose and +fell and rose again until it whistled across the Point in a steady +drone,--the chill breath of the storm-god. + +MacRae turned up Betty's wrist and looked at her watch. + +"Look at the time, Betty mine," he said. "And it's getting cold. +There'll be another day." + +He walked with her to the house. When she vanished within, blowing him a +kiss from her finger tips, MacRae cut across the Point. He laid hold of +the _Blanco's_ dinghy and drew it high to absolute safety, then stood a +minute gazing seaward, looking down on the Rock. Clouds obscured the +moon now. A chill darkness hid distant shore lines and mountain ranges +which had stood plain in the moon-glow, a darkness full of rushing, +roaring wind and thundering seas. Poor Man's Rock was a vague bulk in +the gloom, forlorn and lonely, hidden under great bursts of spray as +each wave leaped and broke with a hiss and a roar. + +MacRae braced himself against the southeaster. It ruffled his hair, +clawed at him with strong, invisible fingers. It shrieked its fury among +the firs, stunted and leaning all awry from the buffeting of many +storms. + +He took a last look behind him. The lights in Gower's house were out and +the white-walled cottage stood dim against the darkened hillside. Then +MacRae, smiling to himself in the dark, set out along the path that led +to Squitty Cove. + + + + +THE END + + + + + +By the author of "Big Timber" + +NORTH OF FIFTY-THREE + +By BERTRAND W. SINCLAIR + +Illustrated. 12mo. Cloth. + + * * * * * + +He has created the atmosphere of the frozen North with wonderful +realism.--_Boston Globe_. + +Mr. Sinclair's two characters are exceptionally well-drawn and +sympathetic. His style is robust and vigorous. His pictures of Canadian +life stimulating.--_New York Nation_. + +Mr. Sinclair sketches with bold strokes as befits a subject set amid +limitless surroundings. The book is readable and shows consistent +progress in the art of novel writing.--_St. Louis Globe-Democrat_. + +An unusually good story of the conflict between a man and a woman. It is +a readable, well written book showing much observation and good sense. +The hero is a fine fellow and manages to have his fling at a good many +conventions without being tedious.--_New York Sun_. + +The story is well written. It is rich in strong situation, romance and +heart-stirring scenes, both of the emotional and courage-stirring order. +It ranks with the best of its type.--_Springfield Republican_. + + * * * * * + +LITTLE, BROWN & CO., Publishers + +34 Beacon St., Boston. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Poor Man's Rock, by Bertrand W. Sinclair + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POOR MAN'S ROCK *** + +***** This file should be named 16541-8.txt or 16541-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + https://www.gutenberg.org/1/6/5/4/16541/ + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Paul Ereaut and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. 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Sinclair. + </title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + p { margin-top: .75em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 { + text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ + clear: both; + } + hr { width: 33%; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; + clear: both; + } + + table {margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;} + + body{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + + .linenum {position: absolute; top: auto; left: 4%;} /* poetry number */ + .blockquot{margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 10%;} + .pagenum {position: absolute; left: 92%; font-size: smaller; text-align: right;} /* page numbers */ + .sidenote {width: 20%; padding-bottom: .5em; padding-top: .5em; + padding-left: .5em; padding-right: .5em; margin-left: 1em; + float: right; clear: right; margin-top: 1em; + font-size: smaller; background: #eeeeee; border: dashed 1px;} + + .bb {border-bottom: solid 2px;} + .bl {border-left: solid 2px;} + .bt {border-top: solid 2px;} + .br {border-right: solid 2px;} + .bbox {border: solid 2px;} + + .center {text-align: center;} + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + .u {text-decoration: underline;} + + .caption {font-weight: bold;} + + .figcenter {margin: auto; text-align: center;} + + .figleft {float: left; clear: left; margin-left: 0; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: + 1em; margin-right: 1em; padding: 0; text-align: center;} + + .figright {float: right; clear: right; margin-left: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; + margin-top: 1em; margin-right: 0; padding: 0; text-align: center;} + + .footnotes {border: dashed 1px;} + .footnote {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-size: 0.9em;} + .footnote .label {position: absolute; right: 84%; text-align: right;} + .fnanchor {vertical-align: super; font-size: .8em; text-decoration: none;} + + .poem {margin-left:10%; margin-right:10%; text-align: left;} + .poem br {display: none;} + .poem .stanza {margin: 1em 0em 1em 0em;} + .poem span.i0 {display: block; margin-left: 0em;} + .poem span.i2 {display: block; margin-left: 2em;} + .poem span.i4 {display: block; margin-left: 4em;} + // --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> + </head> +<body> + + +<pre> + +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Poor Man's Rock, by Bertrand W. Sinclair + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Poor Man's Rock + +Author: Bertrand W. Sinclair + +Illustrator: Frank Tenney Johnson + +Release Date: August 17, 2005 [EBook #16541] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POOR MAN'S ROCK *** + + + + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Paul Ereaut and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +</pre> + + +<p><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1"></a></p> + +<p>Novels by:<br /></p> +<p><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2"></a></p> +<p>BERTRAND W. SINCLAIR<br /><br /></p> +<p><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3"></a></p> +<p><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4"></a></p> +<p> +<span class="smcap">North of Fifty-Three</span><br /> +<span class="smcap">Big Timber</span><br /> +<span class="smcap">Burned Bridges</span><br /> +<span class="smcap">Poor Man's Rock</span><br /><br /> +</p> + +<div class="figcenter"> +<a name="frontispiece.gif" id="frontispiece.gif"></a> + <img src="images/frontispiece.gif" alt=""I'm afraid I must apologize for my father" she said simply" +title=""I'm afraid I must apologize for my father" she said simply" /> +<h3>"I'm afraid I must apologize for my father" she said simply.</h3> +<br /></div> +<h1>POOR MAN'S ROCK</h1> +<h3>BY</h3> +<p><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5"></a></p> +<h2>BERTRAND W. SINCLAIR</h2> +<h4>WITH FRONTISPIECE BY</h4> +<p><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6"></a></p> +<h4>FRANK TENNEY JOHNSON</h4> +<div class="figleft"> + <a name="publisher_symbol.png" id="publisher_symbol.png"></a> +<img src="images/publisher_symbol.png" alt="publisher symbol" +title="publisher symbol" /> +</div> +<p><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />BOSTON</p> + +<p>LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY</p> + +<p>Published September, 1920</p> + +<p>THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, MASS., U.S.A.<br /><br /><br /></p> + +<h2>CONTENTS</h2> + +<!-- Autogenerated TOC. Modify or delete as required. --> +<p> +<a href="#POOR_MANS_ROCK"><b>POOR MAN'S ROCK</b>__Prologue—Long, Long Ago</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_I"><b>CHAPTER I</b>__The House in Cradle Bay</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_II"><b>CHAPTER II</b>__His Own Country</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_III"><b>CHAPTER III</b>__The Flutter of Sable Wings</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_IV"><b>CHAPTER IV</b>__Inheritance</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_V"><b>CHAPTER V</b>__From the Bottom Up</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_VI"><b>CHAPTER VI</b>__The Springboard</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_VII"><b>CHAPTER VII</b>__Sea Boots and Salmon</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_VIII"><b>CHAPTER VIII</b>__Vested Rights</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_IX"><b>CHAPTER IX</b>__The Complexity of Simple Matters</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_X"><b>CHAPTER X</b>__Thrust and Counterthrust</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XI"><b>CHAPTER XI</b>__Peril of the Sea</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XII"><b>CHAPTER XII</b>__Between Sun and Sun</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XIII"><b>CHAPTER XIII</b>__An Interlude</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XIV"><b>CHAPTER XIV</b>__The Swing of the Pendulum</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XV"><b>CHAPTER XV</b>__Hearts are not Always Trumps</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XVI"><b>CHAPTER XVI</b>__En Famille</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XVII"><b>CHAPTER XVII</b>__Business as Usual</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XVIII"><b>CHAPTER XVIII</b>__A Renewal of Hostilities</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XIX"><b>CHAPTER XIX</b>__Top Dog</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XX"><b>CHAPTER XX</b>__The Dead and Dusty Past</a><br /> +<a href="#CHAPTER_XXI"><b>CHAPTER XXI</b>__As it was in the Beginning</a> +</p> +<!-- End Autogenerated TOC. --> + +<p><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9"></a></p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2>POOR MAN'S ROCK</h2> + +<p><a name="POOR_MANS_ROCK">PROLOGUE</a></p> +<p><span class="smcap">Long, Long Ago</span></p> + +<p>The Gulf of Georgia spread away endlessly, an immense, empty stretch of +water bared to the hot eye of an August sun, its broad face only saved +from oily smoothness by half-hearted flutterings of a westerly breeze. +Those faint airs blowing up along the Vancouver Island shore made +tentative efforts to fill and belly out strongly the mainsail and jib of +a small half-decked sloop working out from the weather side of Sangster +Island and laying her snub nose straight for the mouth of the Fraser +River, some sixty sea-miles east by south.</p> + +<p>In the stern sheets a young man stood, resting one hand on the tiller, +his navigating a sinecure, for the wind was barely enough to give him +steerageway. He was, one would say, about twenty-five or six, fairly +tall, healthily tanned, with clear blue eyes having a touch of steely +gray in their blue depths, and he was unmistakably of that fair type +which runs to sandy hair and freckles. He was dressed in a light-colored +shirt, blue serge trousers, canvas shoes; his shirt sleeves, rolled to +the elbows, bared flat, sinewy forearms.</p> +<p><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10"></a></p> +<p>He turned his head to look back to where in the distance a white speck +showed far astern, and his eyes narrowed and clouded. But there was no +cloud in them when he turned again to his companion, a girl sitting on +a box just outside the radius of the tiller. She was an odd-looking +figure to be sitting in the cockpit of a fishing boat, amid recent +traces of business with salmon, codfish, and the like. The heat was +putting a point on the smell of defunct fish. The dried scales of them +still clung to the small vessel's timbers. In keeping, the girl should +have been buxom, red-handed, coarsely healthy. And she was anything but +that. No frail, delicate creature, mind you,—but she did not belong in +a fishing boat. She looked the lady, carried herself like +one,—patrician from the top of her russet-crowned head to the tips of +her white kid slippers. Yet her eyes, when she lifted them to the man at +the tiller, glowed with something warm. She stood up and slipped a +silk-draped arm through his. He smiled down at her, a tender smile +tempered with uneasiness, and then bent his head and kissed her.</p> + +<p>"Do you think they will overtake us, Donald?" she asked at length.</p> + +<p>"That depends on the wind," he answered. "If these light airs hold they +<i>may</i> overhaul us, because they can spread so much more cloth. But if +the westerly freshens—and it nearly always does in the afternoon—I can +outsail the <i>Gull</i>. I can drive this old tub full sail in a blow that +will make the <i>Gull</i> tie in her last reef."</p> + +<p>"I don't like it when it's rough," the girl said wistfully. "But I'll +pray for a blow this afternoon."</p> + +<p>If indeed she prayed—and her attitude was scarcely prayerful, for it +consisted of sitting with one hand clasped tight in her lover's—her +prayer fell dully on the ears of the wind god. The light airs fluttered +gently off the bluish haze of Vancouver Island, wavered across the +Gulf, kept the sloop moving, but no more. Sixty miles away the mouth of +<a name="Page_11" id="Page_11"></a>the Fraser opened to them what security they desired. But behind them +power and authority crept up apace. In two hours they could distinguish +clearly the rig of the pursuing yacht. In another hour she was less than +a mile astern, creeping inexorably nearer.</p> + +<p> +The man in the sloop could only stand on, hoping for the usual afternoon +westerly to show its teeth.</p> + +<p> +In the end, when the afternoon was waxing late, the sternward vessel +stood up so that every detail of her loomed plain. She was full +cutter-rigged, spreading hundreds of feet of canvas. Every working sail +was set, and every light air cloth that could catch a puff of air. The +slanting sun rays glittered on her white paint and glossy varnish, +struck flashing on bits of polished brass. She looked her name, the +<i>Gull</i>, a thing of exceeding grace and beauty, gliding soundlessly +across a sun-shimmering sea. But she represented only a menace to the +man and woman in the fish-soiled sloop. +</p> + +<p>The man's face darkened as he watched the distance lessen between the +two craft. He reached under a locker and drew out a rifle. The girl's +high pinkish color fled. She caught him by the arm.</p> + +<p>"Donald, Donald," she said breathlessly, "there's not to be any +fighting."</p> + +<p>"Am I to let them lay alongside, hand you aboard, and then sail back to +Maple Point, laughing at us for soft and simple fools?" he said quietly. +"They can't take you from me so easily as that. There are only three of +them aboard. I won't hurt them unless they force me to it, but I'm not +so chicken-hearted as to let them have things all their own way. +Sometimes a man <i>must</i> fight, Bessie."</p> + +<p>"You don't know my father," the girl whimpered. "Nor grandpa. He's +there. I can see his white bear<a name="Page_12" id="Page_12"></a>d. They'll kill you, Donald, if you +oppose them. You mustn't do that. It is better that I should go back +quietly than that there should be blood spilled over me."</p> + +<p>"But I'm not intending to slaughter them," the man said soberly. "If I +warn them off and they board me like a bunch of pirates, then—then it +will be their lookout. Do you want to go back, Bessie? Are you doubtful +about your bargain already?"</p> + +<p>The tears started in her eyes.</p> + +<p>"For shame to say that," she whispered. "Lord knows I don't want to turn +back from anything that includes you, Don. But my father and grandpa +will be furious. They won't hesitate to vent their temper on you if you +oppose them. They are accustomed to respect. To have their authority +flouted rouses them to fury. And they're three to one. Put away your +gun, Donald. If we can't outsail the <i>Gull</i> I shall have to go back +without a struggle. There will be another time. They can't change my +heart."</p> + +<p>"They can break your spirit though—and they will, for this," he +muttered.</p> + +<p>But he laid the rifle down on the locker. The girl snuggled her hand +into his.</p> + +<p>"You will not quarrel with them, Donald—please, no matter what they +say? Promise me that," she pleaded. "If we can't outrun them, if they +come alongside, you will not fight? I shall go back obediently. You can +send word to me by Andrew Murdock. Next time we shall not fail."</p> + +<p>"There will be no next time, Bessie," he said slowly. "You will never +get another chance. I know the Gowers and Morton<a name="Page_13" id="Page_13"></a>s better than you do, +for all you're one of them. They'll make you wish you had never been +born, that you'd never seen me. I'd rather fight it out now. Isn't our +own happiness worth a blow or two?"</p> + +<p>"I can't bear to think what might happen if you defied them out here on +this lonely sea," she shuddered. "You must promise me, Donald."</p> + +<p>"I promise, then," he said with a sigh. "Only I know it's the end of our +dream, my dear. And I'm disappointed, too. I thought you had a stouter +heart, that wouldn't quail before two angry old men—and a jealous young +one. You can see, I suppose, that Horace is there, too.</p> + +<p>"Damn them!" he broke out passionately after a minute's silence. "It's a +free country, and you and I are not children. They chase us as if we +were pirates. For two pins I'd give them a pirate's welcome. I tell you, +Bessie, my promise to be meek and mild is not worth much if they take a +high hand with me. I can take their measure, all three of them."</p> + +<p>"But you must not," the girl insisted. "You've promised. We can't help +ourselves by violence. It would break my heart."</p> + +<p>"They'll do that fast enough, once they get you home," he answered +gloomily.</p> + +<p>The girl's lips quivered. She sat looking back at the cutter half a +cable astern. The westerly had failed them. The spreading canvas of the +yacht was already blanketing the little sloop, stealing what little wind +filled her sail. And as the sloop's way slackened the other slid down +upon her, a purl of water at her forefoot, her wide mainsail bellying +out in a snowy curve.</p> + +<p>There were three men in h<a name="Page_14" id="Page_14"></a>er. The helmsman was a patriarch, his head +showing white, a full white beard descending from his chin, a +fierce-visaged, vigorous old man. Near him stood a man of middle age, a +ruddy-faced man in whose dark blue eyes a flame burned as he eyed the +two in the sloop. The third was younger still,—a short, sturdy fellow +in flannels, tending the mainsheet with a frowning glance.</p> + +<p>The man in the sloop held his course.</p> + +<p>"Damn you, MacRae; lay to, or I'll run you down," the patriarch at the +cutter's wheel shouted, when a boat's length separated the two craft.</p> + +<p>MacRae's lips moved slightly, but no sound issued therefrom. Leaning on +the tiller, he let the sloop run. So for a minute the boats sailed, the +white yacht edging up on the sloop until it seemed as if her broaded-off +boom would rake and foul the other. But when at last she drew fully +abreast the two men sheeted mainsail and jib flat while the white-headed +helmsman threw her over so that the yacht drove in on the sloop and the +two younger men grappled MacRae's coaming with boat hooks, and side by +side they came slowly up into the wind.</p> + +<p>MacRae made no move, said nothing, only regarded the three with sober +intensity. They, for their part, wasted no breath on him.</p> + +<p>"Elizabeth, get in here," the girl's father commanded.</p> + +<p>It was only a matter of stepping over the rubbing gunwales. The girl +rose. She cast an appealing glance at MacRae. His face did not alter. +She stepped up on the guard, disdaining the hand young Gower extended to +help her, and sprang lightly into the cockpit of the <i>Gull</i>.</p> + +<p>"As for you, you calculating blackguard," her father addressed MacRae, +"if you ever set foot on Maple Point again, I'll have you horsewhipped +<a name="Page_15" id="Page_15"></a>first and jailed for trespass after."</p> + +<p>For a second MacRae made no answer. His nostrils dilated; his blue-gray +eyes darkened till they seemed black. Then he said with a curious +hoarseness, and in a voice pitched so low it was scarcely audible:</p> + +<p>"Take your boat hooks out of me and be on your way."</p> + +<p>The older man withdrew his hook. Young Gower held on a second longer, +matching the undisguised hatred in Donald MacRae's eyes with a fury in +his own. His round, boyish face purpled. And when he withdrew the boat +hook he swung the inch-thick iron-shod pole with a swift twist of his +body and struck MacRae fairly across the face.</p> + +<p>MacRae went down in a heap as the <i>Gull</i> swung away. The faint breeze +out of the west filled the cutter's sails. She stood away on a long tack +south by west, with a frightened girl cowering down in her cabin, +sobbing in grief and fear, and three men in the <i>Gull's</i> cockpit casting +dubious glances at one another and back to the fishing sloop sailing +with no hand on her tiller.</p> + +<p>In an hour the <i>Gull</i> was four miles to windward of the sloop. The +breeze had taken a sudden shift full half the compass. A southeast wind +came backing up against the westerly. There was in its breath a hint of +something stronger.</p> + +<p>Masterless, the sloop sailed, laid to, started off again erratically, +and after many shifts ran off before this stiffer wind. Unhelmed, she +laid her blunt bows straight for the opening between Sangster and +Squitty islands. On the cockpit floor Donald MacRae sprawled unheeding. +<a name="Page_16" id="Page_16"></a>Blood from his broken face oozed over the boards.</p> + +<p>Above him the boom swung creaking and he did not hear. Out of the +southeast a bank of cloud crept up to obscure the sun. Far southward the +Gulf was darkened, and across that darkened area specks and splashes of +white began to show and disappear. The hot air grew strangely cool. The +swell that runs far before a Gulf southeaster began to roll the sloop, +abandoned to all the aimless movements of a vessel uncontrolled. She +came up into the wind and went off before it again, her sails bellying +strongly, racing as if to outrun the swells which now here and there +lifted and broke. She dropped into a hollow, a following sea slewed her +stern sharply, and she jibed,—that is, the wind caught the mainsail and +flung it violently from port to starboard. The boom swept an arc of a +hundred degrees and put her rail under when it brought up with a jerk on +the sheet.</p> + +<p>Ten minutes later she jibed again. This time the mainsheet parted. Only +stout, heavily ironed backstays kept mainsail and boom from being blown +straight ahead. The boom end swung outboard till it dragged in the seas +as she rolled. Only by a miracle and the stoutest of standing gear had +she escaped dismasting. Now, with the mainsail broaded off to starboard, +and the jib by some freak of wind and sea winged out to port, the sloop +drove straight before the wind, holding as true a course as if the limp +body on the cockpit floor laid an invisible, controlling hand on sheet +and tiller.</p> + +<p>And he, while that fair wind grew to a yachtsman's gale and lashed the +Gulf of Georgia into petty convulsions, lay where he had fallen, his +head rolling as his vessel rolled, heedless when she rose and raced on a +wave-crest or fell laboring in the trough when a wave slid out from +under her.</p> + +<p>The sloop had all but doubled on her course,—nearly<a name="Page_17" id="Page_17"></a> but not +quite,—and the few points north of west that she shifted bore her +straight to destruction.</p> + +<p>MacRae opened his eyes at last. He was bewildered and sick. His head +swam. There was a series of stabbing pains in his lacerated face. But he +was of the sea, of that breed which survives by dint of fortitude, +endurance, stoutness of arm and quickness of wit. He clawed to his feet. +Almost before him lifted the bleak southern face of Squitty Island. +Point Old jutted out like a barrier. MacRae swung on the tiller. But the +wind had the mainsail in its teeth. Without control of that boom his +rudder could not serve him.</p> + +<p>And as he crawled forward to try to lower sail, or get a rope's end on +the boom, whichever would do, the sloop struck on a rock that stands +awash at half-tide, a brown hummock of granite lifting out of the sea +two hundred feet off the tip of Point Old.</p> + +<p>She struck with a shock that sent MacRae sprawling, arrested full in an +eight-knot stride. As she hung shuddering on the rock, impaled by a +jagged tooth, a sea lifted over her stern and swept her like a watery +broom that washed MacRae off the cabin top, off the rock itself into +deep water beyond.</p> + +<p>He came up gasping. The cool immersion had astonishingly revived him. He +felt a renewal of his strength, and he had been cast by luck into a +place from which it took no more than the moderate effort of an able +swimmer to reach shore. Point Old stood at an angle to the smashing +seas, making a sheltered bight behind it, and into this bight the +flooding tide set in a slow eddy. MacRae had only to keep himself +afloat.</p> +<p><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18"></a></p> +<p>In five minutes his feet touched on a gravel beach. He walked dripping +out of the languid swell that ran from the turbulence outside and turned +to look back. The sloop had lodged on the rock, bilged by the ragged +granite. The mast was down, mast and sodden sails swinging at the end of +a stay as each sea swept over the rock with a hissing roar.</p> + +<p>MacRae climbed to higher ground. He sat down beside a stunted, leaning +fir and watched his boat go. It was soon done. A bigger sea than most +tore the battered hull loose, lifted it high, let it drop. The crack of +breaking timbers cut through the boom of the surf. The next sea swept +the rock clear, and the broken, twisted hull floated awash. Caught in +the tidal eddy it began its slow journey to join the vast accumulation +of driftwood on the beach.</p> + +<p>MacRae glanced along the island shore. He knew that shore slightly,—a +bald, cliffy stretch notched with rocky pockets in which the surf beat +<a name="Page_19" id="Page_19"></a>itself into dirty foam. If he had grounded anywhere in that mile of +headland north of Point Old, his bones would have been broken like the +timbers of his sloop.</p> + +<p>But his eyes did not linger there nor his thoughts upon shipwreck and +sudden death. His gaze turned across the Gulf to a tongue of land +outthrusting from the long purple reach of Vancouver Island. Behind that +point lay the Morton estate, and beside the Morton boundaries, matching +them mile for mile in wealth of virgin timber and fertile meadow, spread +the Gower lands.</p> + +<p>His face, streaked and blotched with drying bloodstains, scarred with a +red gash that split his cheek from the hair above one ear to a corner of +his mouth, hardened into ugly lines. His eyes burned again.</p> + +<p>This happened many years ago, long before a harassed world had to +reckon with bourgeois and Bolshevik, when profiteer and pacifist had not +yet become words to fill the mouths of men, and not even the politicians +had thought of saving the world for democracy. Yet men and women were +strangely as they are now. A generation may change its manners, its +outward seeming; it does not change in its loving and hating, in its +fundamental passions, its inherent reactions.</p> + +<p>MacRae's face worked. His lips quivered as he stared across the troubled +sea. He lifted his hands in a swift gesture of appeal.</p> + +<p>"O God," he cried, "curse and blast them in all their ways and +enterprises if they deal with her as they have dealt with me."</p> + +<p><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20"></a></p> + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I</h2> + +<p><span class="smcap">The House in Cradle Bay</span></p> + + +<p>On an afternoon in the first week of November, 1918, under a sky bank +full of murky cloud and an air freighted with a chill which threatened +untimely snow, a man came rowing up along the western side of Squitty +Island and turned into Cradle Bay, which lies under the lee of Point +Old. He was a young man, almost boyish-looking. He had on a pair of fine +tan shoes, brown overalls, a new gray mackinaw coat buttoned to his +chin. He was bareheaded. Also he wore a patch of pink celluloid over his +right eye.</p> + +<p>When he turned into the small half-moon bight, he let up on his oars and +drifted, staring with a touch of surprise at a white cottage-roofed +house with wide porches sitting amid an acre square of bright green lawn +on a gentle slope that ran up from a narrow beach backed by a low +sea-wall of stone where the gravel ended and the earth began.</p> + +<p>"Hm-m-m," he muttered. "It wasn't built yesterday, either. Funny he +never mentioned <i>that</i>."</p> + +<p>He pushed on the oars and the boat slid nearer shore, the man's eyes +still steadfast on the house. It stood out bold against the grass and +the deeper green of the forest behind. Back of it opened a hillside +brown with dead ferns, dotted with great solitary firs and gnarly +branched arbutus.</p> + +<p>No life appeared there. The chimneys were dead. Two moorings bobbed in +the bay, but there was no craft save a white rowboat hauled high above +tidewater and canted on its side.</p><p><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21"></a></p> + +<p>"I wonder, now." He spoke again.</p> + +<p>While he wondered and pushed his boat slowly in on the gravel, a low +<i>pr-r-r</i> and a sibilant ripple of water caused him to look behind. A +high-bowed, shining mahogany cruiser, seventy feet or more over all, +rounded the point and headed into the bay. The smooth sea parted with a +whistling sound where her brass-shod stem split it like a knife. She +slowed down from this trainlike speed, stopped, picked up a mooring, +made fast. The swell from her rolled in, swashing heavily on the beach.</p> + +<p>The man in the rowboat turned his attention to the cruiser. There were +people aboard to the number of a dozen, men and women, clustered on her +flush afterdeck. He could hear the clatter of their tongues, low ripples +of laughter, through all of which ran the impatient note of a male voice +issuing peremptory orders.</p> + +<p>The cruiser blew her whistle repeatedly,—shrill, imperative blasts. The +man in the rowboat smiled. The air was very still. Sounds carry over +quiet water as if telephoned. He could not help hearing what was said.</p> + +<p>"Wise management," he observed ironically, under his breath.</p> + +<p>The power yacht, it seemed, had not so much as a dinghy aboard.</p> + +<p>A figure on the deck detached itself from the group and waved a +beckoning hand to the rowboat.</p> + +<p>The rower hesitated, frowning. Then he shrugged his shoulders and pulled +out and alongside. The deck crew lowered a set of steps.</p> + +<p>"Take a couple of us ashore, will you?" He was addressed by a short, +stout man. He was very round and pink of face, very well dressed, and by +the manner in which he spoke to the others, and the glances he cast +ashore, a person of some consequence in great impatience.</p> + +<p>The young man laid his rowboat against the steps.</p> + +<p>"Climb in," he said briefly.</p> + +<p>"You, Smith, come along," the round-faced one addressed a youth in tight +<a name="Page_22" id="Page_22"></a>blue jersey and peaked cap.</p> + +<p>The deck boy climbed obediently down. A girl in white duck and heavy +blue sweater put her foot on the steps.</p> + +<p>"I think I shall go too, papa," she said.</p> + +<p>Her father nodded and followed her.</p> + +<p>The rowboat nosed in beside the end of a narrow float that ran from the +sea wall. The boy in the jersey sprang out, reached a steadying hand to +his employer. The girl stepped lightly to the planked logs.</p> + +<p>"Give the boy a lift on that boat to the <i>chuck</i>, will you?" the stout +person made further request, indicating the white boat bottom up on +shore.</p> + +<p>A queer expression gleamed momentarily in the eyes of the boatman. But +it passed. He did not speak, but made for the dinghy, followed by the +hand from the yacht. They turned the boat over, slid it down and afloat. +The sailor got in and began to ship his oars.</p> + +<p>The man and the girl stood by till this was done. Then the girl turned +away. The man extended his hand.</p> + +<p>"Thanks," he said curtly.</p> + +<p>The other's hand had involuntarily moved. The short, stout man dropped a +silver dollar in it, swung on his heel and followed his +daughter,—passed her, in fact, for she had only taken a step or two and +halted.</p> + +<p>The young fellow eyed the silver coin in his hand with an expression +that passed from astonishment to anger and broke at last into a smile of +sheer amusement. He jiggled the coin, staring at it thoughtfully. Then +he faced about on the jerseyed youth about to dip his blades.</p> +<p><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23"></a></p> +<p>"Smith," he said, "I suppose if I heaved this silver dollar out into the +<i>chuck</i> you'd think I was crazy."</p> + +<p>The youth only stared at him.</p> + +<p>"You don't object to tips, do you, Smith?" the man in the mackinaw +inquired.</p> + +<p>"Gee, no," the boy observed. "Ain't you got no use for money?"</p> + +<p>"Not this kind. You take it and buy smokes."</p> + +<p>He flipped the dollar into the dinghy. It fell clinking on the slatted +floor and the youth salvaged it, looked it over, put it in his pocket.</p> + +<p>"Gee," he said. "Any time a guy hands me money, I keep it, believe me."</p> + +<p>His gaze rested curiously on the man with the patch over his eye. His +familiar grin faded. He touched his cap.</p> + +<p>"Thank y', sir."</p> + +<p>He heaved on his oars. The boat slid out. The man stood watching, hands +deep in his pockets. A displeased look replaced the amused smile as his +glance rested a second on the rich man's toy of polished mahogany and +shining brass. Then he turned to look again at the house up the slope +and found the girl at his elbow.</p> + +<p>He did not know if she had overheard him, and he did not at the moment +care. He met her glance with one as impersonal as her own.</p> + +<p>"I'm afraid I must apologize for my father," she said simply. "I hope +you aren't offended. It was awfully good of you to bring us ashore."</p> + +<p>"That's quite all right," he answered casually. "Why should I be +offended? When a roughneck does something for you, it's proper to hand +him some of your loose change. Perfectly natural."</p> + +<p>"But you aren't <a name="Page_24" id="Page_24"></a>anything of the sort," she said frankly. "I feel sure +you resent being tipped for an act of courtesy. It was very thoughtless +of papa."</p> + +<p>"Some people are so used to greasing their way with money that they'll +hand St. Peter a ten-dollar bill when they pass the heavenly gates," he +observed. "But it really doesn't matter. Tell me something. Whose house +is that, and how long has it been there?"</p> + +<p>"Ours," she answered. "Two years. We stay here a good deal in the +summer."</p> + +<p>"Ours, I daresay, means Horace A. Gower," he remarked. "Pardon my +curiosity, but you see I used to know this place rather well. I've been +away for some time. Things seem to have changed a bit."</p> + +<p>"You're just back from overseas?" she asked quickly.</p> + +<p>He nodded. She looked at him with livelier interest.</p> + +<p>"I'm no wounded hero," he forestalled the inevitable question. "I merely +happened to get a splinter of wood in one eye, so I have leave until it +gets well."</p> + +<p>"If you are merely on leave, why are you not in uniform?" she asked +quickly, in a puzzled tone.</p> + +<p>"I am," he replied shortly. "Only it is covered up with overalls and +<a name="Page_25" id="Page_25"></a>mackinaw. Well, I must be off. Good-by, Miss Gower."</p> + +<p>He pushed his boat off the beach, rowed to the opposite side of the bay, +and hauled the small craft up over a log. Then he took his bag in hand +and climbed the rise that lifted to the backbone of Point Old. Halfway +up he turned to look briefly backward over beach and yacht and house, up +the veranda steps of which the girl in the blue sweater was now +climbing.</p> + +<p>"It's queer," he muttered.</p> + +<p>He went on. In another minute he was on the ridge. The Gulf opened out, +a dead dull gray. The skies were hidden behind drab clouds. The air was +clammy, cold, hushed, as if the god of storms were gathering his breath +for a great effort.</p> + +<p>And Jack MacRae himself, when he topped the height which gave clear +vision for many miles of shore and sea, drew a deep breath and halted +for a long look at many familiar things.</p> + +<p>He had been gone nearly four years. It seemed to him but yesterday that +he left. The picture was unchanged,—save for that white cottage in its +square of green. He stared at that with a doubtful expression, then his +uncovered eye came back to the long sweep of the Gulf, to the brown +cliffs spreading away in a ragged line along a kelp-strewn shore. He put +down the bag and seated himself on a mossy rock close by a stunted, +leaning fir and stared about him like a man who has come a great way to +see some<a name="Page_26" id="Page_26"></a>thing and means to look his fill.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II</h2> + +<p><span class="smcap">His Own Country</span></p> + + +<p>Squitty Island lies in the Gulf of Georgia midway between a mainland +made of mountains like the Alps, the Andes, and the Himalayas all +jumbled together and all rising sheer from the sea, and the low +delta-like shore of Vancouver Island. Southward from Squitty the Gulf +runs in a thirty-mile width for nearly a hundred miles to the San Juan +islands in American waters, beyond which opens the sheltered beauty of +Puget Sound. Squitty is six miles wide and ten miles long, a blob of +granite covered with fir and cedar forest, with certain parklike patches +of open grassland on the southern end, and a hump of a mountain lifting +two thousand feet in its middle.</p> + +<p>The southeastern end of Squitty—barring the tide rips off Cape +Mudge—is the dirtiest place in the Gulf for small craft in blowy +weather. The surges that heave up off a hundred miles of sea tortured by +a southeast gale break thunderously against Squitty's low cliffs. These +walls face the marching breakers with a grim, unchanging front. There is +nothing hospitable in this aspect of Squitty.<a name="Page_27" id="Page_27"></a> It is an ugly shore to +have on the lee in a blow.</p> + +<p>Yet it is not so forbidding as it seems. The prevailing summer winds on +the Gulf are westerly. Gales of uncommon fierceness roar out of the +northwest in fall and early winter. At such times the storms split on +Squitty Island, leaving a restful calm under those brown, kelp-fringed +cliffs. Many a small coaster has crept thankfully into that lee out of +the whitecapped turmoil on either side, to lie there through a night +that was wild outside, watching the Ballenas light twenty miles away on +a pile of bare rocks winking and blinking its warning to less fortunate +craft. Tugs, fishing boats, salmon trollers, beach-combing launches, all +that mosquito fleet which gets its bread upon the waters and learns bar, +shoal, reef, and anchorage thoroughly in the getting,—these knew that +besides the half-moon bight called Cradle Bay, upon which fronted Horace +Gower's summer home, there opened also a secure, bottle-necked cove less +than a mile northward from Point Old.</p> + +<p>By day a stranger could only mark the entrance by eagle watch from a +course close inshore. By night even those who knew the place as they +knew the palm of their hand had to feel their way in. But once inside, a +man could lie down in his bunk and sleep soundly, though a southeaster +whistled and moaned, and the seas roared smoking into the narrow mouth. +No ripple of that troubled the inside of Squitty Cove. It was a finger +of the sea thrust straight into the land, a finger three hundred yards +long, forty yards wide, with an entrance so narrow that a man could +heave a sounding lead across it, and that entrance so masked by a rock +about the bigness of a six-room house that one holding the channel could +touch the rock with a pike pole as he passed in. There was a mud bottom, +twenty-foot depth at low tide, and a little stream of cold fresh water +<a name="Page_28" id="Page_28"></a>brawling in at the head. A cliff walled it on the south. A low, grassy +hill dotted with solitary firs, red-barked arbutus, and clumps of wild +cherry formed its northern boundary. And all around the mouth, in every +nook and crevice, driftwood of every size and shape lay in great heaps, +cast high above tidewater by the big storms.</p> + +<p>So Squitty had the three prime requisites for a harbor,—secure +anchorage, fresh water, and firewood. There was good fertile land, too, +behind the Cove,—low valleys that ran the length of the island. There +were settlers here and there, but these settlers were not the folk who +intermittently frequented Squitty Cove. The settlers stayed on their +land, battling with stumps, clearing away the ancient forest, tilling +the soil. Those to whom Squitty Cove gave soundest sleep and keenest joy +were tillers of the sea. Off Point Old a rock brown with seaweed, ringed +with a bed of kelp, lifted its ugly head now to the one good, blue-gray +eye of Jack MacRae, the same rock upon which Donald MacRae's sloop broke +her back before Jack MacRae was born. It was a sunken menace at any +stage of water, heartily cursed by the fishermen. In the years between, +the rock had acquired a name not written on the Admiralty charts. The +hydrographers would look puzzled and shake their heads if one asked +where in the Gulf waters lay Poor Man's Rock.</p> + +<p>But Poor Man's Rock it is. Greek and Japanese, Spaniard and Italian, +American and Canadian—and there are many of each—who follow the +silver-sided salmon when they run in the Gulf of Georgia, these know +that Poor Man's Rock lies half a cable south southwest of Point Old on +Squitty Island. Most of them know, too, why it is called Poor Man's +Rock.</p> +<p><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29"></a></p> +<p>Under certain conditions of sea and sky the Rock is as lonely and +forbidding a spot as ever a ship's timbers were broken upon. Point Old +thrusts out like the stubby thumb on a clenched first. The Rock and the +outer nib of the Point are haunted by quarreling flocks of gulls and +coots and the black Siwash duck with his stumpy wings and brilliant +yellow bill. The southeaster sends endless battalions of waves rolling +up there when it blows. These rear white heads over the Rock and burst +on the Point with shuddering impact and showers of spray. When the sky +is dull and gray, and the wind whips the stunted trees on the +Point—trees that lean inland with branches all twisted to the landward +side from pressure of many gales in their growing years—and the surf is +booming out its basso harmonies, the Rock is no place for a fisherman. +Even the gulls desert it then.</p> + +<p>But in good weather, in the season, the blueback and spring salmon swim +in vast schools across the end of Squitty. They feed upon small fish, +baby herring, tiny darting atoms of finny life that swarm in countless +numbers. What these inch-long fishes feed upon no man knows, but they +begin to show in the Gulf early in spring. The water is alive with +them,—minute, darting streaks of silver. The salmon follow these +schools, pursuing, swallowing, eating to live. Seal and dogfish follow +the salmon. Shark and the giant blackfish follow dogfish and seal. And +man follows them all, pursuing and killing that he himself may live.</p> + +<p>Around Poor Man's Rock the tide sets strongly at certain stages of ebb +and flood. The cliffs north of Point Old and the area immediately +surrounding the Rock are thick strewn with kelp. In these brown <a name="Page_30" id="Page_30"></a>patches +of seaweed the tiny fish, the schools of baby herring, take refuge from +their restless enemy, the swift and voracious salmon.</p> + +<p>For years Pacific Coast salmon have been taken by net and trap, to the +profit of the salmon packers and the satisfaction of those who cannot +get fish save out of tin cans. The salmon swarmed in millions on their +way to spawn in fresh-water streams. They were plentiful and cheap. But +even before the war came to send the price of linen-mesh net beyond most +fishermen's pocketbooks, men had discovered that salmon could be taken +commercially by trolling lines. The lordly spring, which attains to +seventy pounds, the small, swift blueback, and the fighting coho could +all be lured to a hook on a wobbling bit of silver or brass at the end +of a long line weighted with lead to keep it at a certain depth behind a +moving boat. From a single line over the stern it was but a logical step +to two, four, even six lines spaced on slender poles boomed out on each +side of a power launch,—once the fisherman learned that with this gear +he could take salmon in open water. So trolling was launched. Odd +trollers grew to trolling fleets. A new method became established in the +salmon industry.</p> + +<p>But there are places where the salmon run and a gasboat trolling her +battery of lines cannot go without loss of gear. The power boats cannot +troll in shallows. They cannot operate in kelp without fouling. So they +hold to deep open water and leave the kelp and shoals to the rowboats.</p> + +<p>And that is how Poor Man's Rock got its name. In the kelp that +surrounded it and the greater beds that fringed Point Old, the small +feed sought refuge from the salmon and the salmon pursued them there +among the weedy granite and the boulders<a name="Page_31" id="Page_31"></a>, even into shallows where their +back fins cleft the surface as they dashed after the little herring. The +foul ground and the tidal currents that swept by the Rock held no danger +to the gear of a rowboat troller. He fished a single short line with a +pound or so of lead. He could stop dead in a boat length if his line +fouled. So he pursued the salmon as the salmon pursued the little fish +among the kelp and boulders.</p> + +<p>Only a poor man trolled in a rowboat, tugging at the oars hour after +hour without cabin shelter from wind and sun and rain, unable to face +even such weather as a thirty by eight-foot gasboat could easily fish +in, unable to follow the salmon run when it shifted from one point to +another on the Gulf. The rowboat trollers must pick a camp ashore by a +likely ground and stay there. If the salmon left they could only wait +till another run began. Whereas the power boat could hear of schooling +salmon forty miles away and be on the spot in seven hours' steaming.</p> + +<p>Poor Man's Rock had given many a man his chance. Nearly always salmon +could be taken there by a rowboat. And because for many years old men, +men with lean purses, men with a rowboat, a few dollars, and a hunger +for independence, had camped in Squitty Cove and fished the Squitty +headlands and seldom failed to take salmon around the Rock, the name had +clung to that brown hummock of granite lifting out of the sea at half +tide. From April to November, any day a rowboat could live outside the +Cove, there would be half a dozen, eight, ten, more or less, of these +solitary rowers bending to their oars, circling the Rock.</p> + +<p>Now and again one of these would hastily drop his oars, stand up, and +haul in his line hand over hand. There would be a splashing and +splattering on the surface, a bright silver fish leaping and threshing +the water, to land at last with a plop! in the boat. Whereupon the +fisherman would hurriedly str<a name="Page_32" id="Page_32"></a>ike this dynamic, glistening fish over the +head with a short, thick club, lest his struggles snarl the line, after +which he would put out his spoon and bend to the oars again. It was a +daylight and dusk job, a matter of infinite patience and hard work, cold +and wet at times, and in midsummer the blaze of a scorching sun and the +eye-dazzling glitter of reflected light.</p> + +<p>But a man must live. Some who came to the Cove trolled long and +skillfully, and were lucky enough to gain a power troller in the end, to +live on beans and fish, and keep a strangle hold on every dollar that +came in until with a cabin boat powered with gas they joined the +trolling fleet and became nomads. They fared well enough then. Their +taking at once grew beyond a rowboat's scope. They could see new +country, hearken to the lure of distant fishing grounds. There was the +sport of gambling on wind and weather, on the price of fish or the +number of the catch. If one locality displeased them they could shift to +another, while the rowboat men were chained perforce to the monotony of +the same camp, the same cliffs, the same old weary round.</p> + +<p>Sometimes Squitty Cove harbored thirty or forty of these power trollers. +They would make their night anchorage there while the trolling held +good, filling the Cove with talk and laughter and a fine sprinkle of +lights when dark closed in. With failing catches, or the first breath of +a southeaster that would lock them in the Cove while it blew, they would +be up and away,—to the top end of Squitty, to Yellow Rock, to Cape +Lazo, anywhere that salmon might be found.</p> + +<p>And the rowboat men would lie in their tents and split-cedar lean-tos, +cursing the weather, the salmon that would not bite, grumbling at their +lot.</p> + +<p>There were two or three rowboat men who had fished the<a name="Page_33" id="Page_33"></a> Cove almost since +Jack MacRae could remember,—old men, fishermen who had shot their +bolt, who dwelt in small cabins by the Cove, living somehow from salmon +run to salmon run, content if the season's catch netted three hundred +dollars. All they could hope for was a living. They had become fixtures +there.</p> + +<p>Jack MacRae looked down from the bald tip of Point Old with an eager +gleam in his uncovered eye. There was the Rock with a slow swell lapping +over it. There was an old withered Portuguese he knew in a green dugout, +Long Tom Spence rowing behind the Portuguese, and they carrying on a +shouted conversation. He picked out Doug Sproul among three others he +did not know,—and there was not a man under fifty among them.</p> + +<p>Three hundred yards offshore half a dozen power trollers wheeled and +counterwheeled, working an eddy. He could see them haul the lines hand +over hand, casting the hooked fish up into the hold with an easy swing. +The salmon were biting.</p> + +<p>It was all familiar to Jack MacRae. He knew every nook and cranny on +<a name="Page_34" id="Page_34"></a>Squitty Island, every phase and mood and color of the sea. It is a grim +birthplace that leaves a man without some sentiment for the place where +he was born. Point Old, Squitty Cove, Poor Man's Rock had been the +boundaries of his world for a long time. In so far as he had ever +played, he had played there.</p> + +<p>He looked for another familiar figure or two, without noting them.</p> + +<p>"The fish are biting fast for this time of year," he reflected. "It's a +wonder dad and Peter Ferrara aren't out. And I never knew Bill Munro to +miss anything like this."</p> + +<p>He looked a little longer, over across the tip of Sangster Island two +miles westward, with its Elephant's Head,—the extended trunk of which +was a treacherous reef bared only at low tide. He looked at the +Elephant's unwinking eye, which was a twenty-foot hole through a hump of +sandstone, and smiled. He had fished for salmon along the kelp beds +there and dug clams under the eye of the Elephant long, long ago. It did +seem a long time ago that he had been a youngster in overalls, +adventuring alone in a dugout about these bold headlands.</p> + +<p>He rose at last. The November wind chilled him through the heavy +mackinaw. He looked back at the Gower cottage, like a snowflake in a +setting of emerald; he looked at the Gower yacht; and the puzzled frown +returned to his face.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35"></a>Then he picked up his bag and walked rapidly along the brow of the +cliffs toward Squitty Cove.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III</h2> + +<p><span class="smcap">The Flutter of Sable Wings</span></p> + + +<p>A path took form on the mossy rock as Jack MacRae strode on. He followed +this over patches of grass, by lone firs and small thickets, until it +brought him out on the rim of the Cove. He stood a second on the cliffy +north wall to look down on the quiet harbor. It was bare of craft, save +that upon the beach two or three rowboats lay hauled out. On the farther +side a low, rambling house of logs showed behind a clump of firs. Smoke +lifted from its stone chimney.</p> + +<p>MacRae smiled reminiscently at this and moved on. His objective lay at +the Cove's head, on the little creek which came whispering down from the +high land behind. He gained this in another two hundred yards, coming to +a square house built, like its neighbor, of stout logs with a +high-pitched roof, a patch of ragged grass in front, and a picket-fenced +area at the back in which stood apple trees and cherry and plum, +gaunt-limbed trees all bare of leaf and fruit. Ivy wound up the corners +of the house. Sturdy rosebushes stood before it, and the dead vines of +sweet peas bleached on their trellises.</p> + +<p>It had the look of an old place—as age is reckoned in so new a +country—old and bearing the marks of many years' labor bestowed to make +it what it was. Even from a distance it bore a homelike air. MacRae's +face lightened at the sight. His step quickened. He had come a long way +to get home.</p> +<p><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36"></a></p> +<p>Across the front of the house extended a wide porch which gave a look at +the Cove through a thin screen of maple and alder. From the +grass-bordered walk of beach gravel half a dozen steps lifted to the +floor level. As MacRae set foot on the lower step a girl came out on the +porch.</p> + +<p>MacRae stopped. The girl did not see him. Her eyes were fixed +questioningly on the sea that stretched away beyond the narrow mouth of +the Cove. As she looked she drew one hand wearily across her forehead, +tucking back a vagrant strand of dusky hair. MacRae watched her a +moment. The quick, pleased smile that leaped to his face faded to +soberness.</p> + +<p>"Hello, Dolly," he said softly.</p> + +<p>She started. Her dark eyes turned to him, and an inexpressible relief +glowed in them. She held up one hand in a gesture that warned +silence,—and by that time MacRae had come up the steps to her side and +seized both her hands in his. She looked at him speechlessly, a curious +passivity in her attitude. He saw that her eyes were wet.</p> + +<p>"What's wrong, Dolly?" he asked. "Aren't you glad to see Johnny come +marching home? Where's dad?"</p> + +<p>"Glad?" she echoed. "I never was so glad to see any one in my life. Oh, +Johnny MacRae, I wish you'd come sooner. Your father's a sick man. We've +done our best, but I'm afraid it's not good enough."</p> + +<p>"He's in bed, I suppose," said MacRae. "Well, I'll go in and see him. +Maybe it'll cheer the old boy up to see me back."</p> + +<p>"He won't know you," the girl murmured. "You mustn't disturb him just +now, anyway. He has fallen into a doze. When he comes out of that he'll +likely be delirious."</p> + +<p>"Good Lord," MacRae whispered, "as bad as that! What is it?"</p> +<p><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37"></a></p> +<p>"The flu," Dolly said quietly. "Everybody has been having it. Old Bill +Munro died in his shack a week ago."</p> + +<p>"Has dad had a doctor?"</p> + +<p>The girl nodded.</p> + +<p>"Harper from Nanaimo came day before yesterday. He left medicine and +directions; he can't come again. He has more cases than he can handle +over there."</p> + +<p>They went through the front door into a big, rudely furnished room with +a very old and worn rug on the floor, a few pieces of heavy furniture, +and bare, uncurtained windows. A heap of wood blazed in an open +cobblestone fireplace.</p> + +<p>MacRae stopped short just within the threshold. Through a door slightly +ajar came the sound of stertorous breathing, intermittent in its volume, +now barely audible, again rising to a labored harshness. He listened, a +look of dismayed concern gathering on his face. He had heard men in the +last stages of exhaustion from wounds and disease breathe in that +horribly distressed fashion.</p> + +<p>He stood a while uncertainly. Then he laid off his mackinaw, walked +softly to the bedroom door, looked in. After a minute of silent watching +he drew back. The girl had seated herself in a chair. MacRae sat down +facing her.</p> + +<p>"I never saw dad so thin and old-looking," he muttered. "Why, his hair +is nearly white. He's a wreck. How long has he been sick?"</p> + +<p>"Four days," Dolly answered. "But he hasn't grown old and thin in four +days, Jack. He's been going downhill for months. Too much work. Too much +worry also, I think—out there around the Rock ev<a name="Page_38" id="Page_38"></a>ery morning at +daylight, every evening till dark. It hasn't been a good season for the +rowboats."</p> + +<p>MacRae stirred uneasily in his chair. He didn't understand why his +father should have to drudge in a trolling boat. They had always fished +salmon, so far back as he could recall, but never of stark necessity. He +nursed his chin in his hand and thought. Mostly he thought with a +constricted feeling in his throat of how frail and old his father had +grown, the slow-smiling, slow-speaking man who had been father and +mother and chum to him since he was an urchin in knee breeches. He +recalled him at their parting on a Vancouver railway platform,—tall and +rugged, a lean, muscular, middle-aged man, bidding his son a restrained +farewell with a longing look in his eyes. Now he was a wasted shadow. +Jack MacRae shivered. He seemed to hear the sable angel's wing-beats +over the house.</p> + +<p>He looked up at the girl at last.</p> + +<p>"You're worn out, aren't you, Dolly?" he said. "Have you been caring for +him alone?"</p> + +<p>"Uncle Peter helped," she answered. "But I've stayed up and worried, and +I am tired, of course. It isn't a very cheerful home-coming, is it, +Jack? And he was so pleased when he got your cable from London. Poor old +man!"</p> + +<p>MacRae got up suddenly. But the clatter of his shoes on the floor +recalled him to himself. He sat down again.</p> + +<p>"I've got to do something," he asserted.</p> + +<p>"There's nothing you can do," Dolly Ferrara said wistfully. "He can't +be moved. You can't get a doctor or a nurse. The country's full of +people down with the flu. There's only one chance and I've taken that. I +wrote a message to Doctor Laidlaw—you remember he used to come here +every summer to fish—and Uncle Peter went across to Sechelt to wire it. +I think he'll come if he can,<a name="Page_39" id="Page_39"></a> or send some one, don't you? They were +such good friends."</p> + +<p>"That was a good idea," MacRae nodded. "Laidlaw will certainly come if +it's possible."</p> + +<p>"And I can keep cool cloths on his head and feed him broth and give him +the stuff Doctor Harper left. He said it depended mostly on his own +resisting power. If he could throw it off he would. If not—"</p> + +<p>She turned her palms out expressively.</p> + +<p>"How did you come?" she asked presently.</p> + +<p>"Across from Qualicum in a fish carrier to Folly Bay. I borrowed a boat +at the Bay and rowed up."</p> + +<p>"You must be hungry," she said. "I'll get you something to eat."</p> + +<p>"I don't feel much like eating,"—MacRae followed her into the +kitchen—"but I can drink a cup of tea."</p> + +<p>He sat on a corner of the kitchen table while she busied herself with +the kettle and teapot, marveling that in four years everything should +apparently remain the same and still suffer such grievous change. There +was an air of forlornness about the house which hurt him. The place had +run down, as the sands of his father's life were running down. Of the +things unchanged the girl he watched was one. Yet as he looked with +keener appraisal, he saw that Dolly Ferrara too had changed.</p> +<p><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40"></a></p> +<p>Her dusky cloud of hair was as of old; her wide, dark eyes still +mirrored faithfully every shift of feeling, and her incomparable creamy +skin was more beautiful than ever. Moving, she had lost none of her +lithe grace. And though she had met him as if it had been only yesterday +they parted, still there was a difference which somehow eluded him. He +could feel it, but it was not to be defined. It struck him for the first +time that many who had never seen a battlefield, never heard a screaming +shell, nor shuddered at the agony of a dressing station, might still +have suffered by and of and through the reactions of war.</p> + +<p>They drank their tea and ate a slice of toast in silence. MacRae's +comrades in France had called him "Silent" John, because of his lapses +into concentrated thought, his habit of a close mouth when he was hurt +or troubled or uncertain. One of the things for which he had liked Dolly +Ferrara had been her possession of the same trait, uncommon in a girl. +She could sit on the cliffs or lie with him in a rowboat lifting and +falling in the Gulf swell, staring at the sea and the sky and the +wheeling gulls, dreaming and keeping her dreams shyly to herself,—as he +did. They did not always need words for understanding. And so they did +not talk now for the sake of talking, pour out words lest silence bring +embarrassment. Dolly sat resting her chin in one hand, looking at him +impersonally, yet critically, he felt. He smoked a cigarette and held +his peace until the labored breathing of the sick man changed to +disjointed, muttering, incoherent fragments of speech.</p> + +<p>Dolly went to him at once. MacRae lingered to divest himself of the +brown overalls so that he stood forth in his uniform, the R.A.F. uniform +with the two black wings joined to a circle on his left breast and below +that the multicolored ribbon of a decoration. Then he went in to his +<a name="Page_41" id="Page_41"></a>father.</p> + +<p>Donald MacRae was far gone. His son needed no M.D. to tell him that. He +burned with a high fever which had consumed his flesh and strength in +its furnace. His eyes gleamed unnaturally, with no light of recognition +for either his son or Dolly Ferrara. And there was a peculiar tinge to +the old man's lips that chilled young MacRae, the mark of the Spanish +flu in its deadliest manifestation. It made him ache to see that gray +head shift from side to side, to listen to the incoherent babble, to +mark the feeble shiftings of the nervous hands.</p> + +<p>For a terrible half hour he endured the sight of his father struggling +for breath, being racked by spasms of coughing. Then the reaction came +and the sick man slept,—not a healthy, restful sleep; it was more like +the dying stupor of exhaustion. Young MacRae knew that.</p> + +<p>He knew with disturbing certainty that without skilled +treatment—perhaps even in spite of that—his father's life was a matter +of hours. Again he and Dolly Ferrara tiptoed out to the room where the +fire glowed on the hearth. MacRae sat thinking. Dusk was coming on, the +long twilight shortened by the overcast sky. MacRae glowered at the +fire. The girl watched him expectantly.</p> + +<p>"I have an idea," he said at last. "It's worth trying."</p> + +<p>He opened his bag and, taking out the wedge-shaped cap of the birdmen, +set it on his head and went out. He took the same path he had followed +home. On top of the cliff he stopped to look down on Squitty Cove. In a +camp or two ashore the supper fires of the rowboat trollers were +burning. Through the narrow entrance the gasboats were chugging in to +anchorage, one close upon the heels of another.</p> +<p><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42"></a></p> +<p>MacRae considered the power trollers. He shook his head.</p> + +<p>"Too slow," he muttered. "Too small. No place to lay him only a doghouse +cabin and a fish hold."</p> + +<p>He strode away along the cliffs. It was dark now. But he had ranged all +that end of Squitty in daylight and dark, in sun and storm, for years, +and the old instinctive sense of direction, of location, had not +deserted him. In a little while he came out abreast of Cradle Bay. The +Gower house, all brightly gleaming windows, loomed near. He struck down +through the dead fern, over the unfenced lawn.</p> + +<p>Halfway across that he stopped. A piano broke out loudly. Figures +flittered by the windows, gliding, turning. MacRae hesitated. He had +come reluctantly, driven by his father's great need, uneasily conscious +that Donald MacRae, had he been cognizant, would have forbidden harshly +the request his son had come to make. Jack MacRae had the feeling that +his father would rather die than have him ask anything of Horace Gower.</p> + +<p>He did not know why. He had never been told why. All he knew was that +his father would have nothing to do with Gower, never mentioned the name +voluntarily, let his catch of salmon rot on the beach before he would +sell to a Gower cannery boat,—and had enjoined upon his son the same +aloofness from all things Gower. Once, in answer to young Jack's curious +question, his natural "why," Donald MacRae had said:</p> + +<p>"I knew the man long before you were born, Johnny. I don't like him. I +despise him. Neither I nor any of mine shall ever truck and traffic with +him and his. When you are a man and can understand, I shall tell you +more of this."</p> +<p><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43"></a></p> +<p>But he had never told. It had never been a mooted point. Jack MacRae +knew Horace Gower only as a short, stout, elderly man of wealth and +consequence, a power in the salmon trade. He knew a little more of the +Gower clan now than he did before the war. MacRae had gone overseas with +the Seventh Battalion. His company commander had been Horace Gower's +son. Certain aspects of that young man had not heightened MacRae's +esteem for the Gower family. Moreover, he resented this elaborate summer +home of Gower's standing on land he had always known to be theirs, the +MacRaes'. That puzzled him, as well as affronted his sense of ownership.</p> + +<p>But these things, he told himself, were for the moment beside the point. +He felt his father's life trembling in the balance. He wanted to see +affectionate, prideful recognition light up those gray-blue eyes again, +even if briefly. He had come six thousand miles to cheer the old man +with a sight of his son, a son who had been a credit to him. And he was +willing to pocket pride, to call for help from the last source he would +have chosen, if that would avail.</p> + +<p>He crossed the lawn, waited a few seconds till the piano ceased its +syncopated frenzy and the dancers stopped.</p> + +<p>Betty Gower herself opened at his knock.</p> + +<p>"Is Mr. Gower here?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"Yes. Won't you come in?" she asked courteously.</p> + +<p>The door opened direct into a great living room, from the oak floor of +which the rugs had been rolled aside for dancing. As MacRae came in out +of the murk along the cliffs, his one good eye was dazzled at first. +Presently he made out a dozen or more persons in the room,—young people +nearly all. They were standing and sitting about. One or two were in +khaki—officers. There seemed to be a<a name="Page_44" id="Page_44"></a>n abrupt cessation of chatter and +laughing at his entrance. It did not occur to him at once that these +people might be avidly curious about a strange young man in the uniform +of the Flying Corps. He apprehended that curiosity, though, politely +veiled as it was. In the same glance he became aware of a middle-aged +woman sitting on a couch by the fire. Her hair was pure white, +elaborately arranged, her eyes were a pale blue, her skin very delicate +and clear. Her face somehow reminded Jack MacRae of a faded rose leaf.</p> + +<p>In a deep armchair near her sat Horace Gower. A young man, a very young +man, in evening clothes, holding a long cigarette daintily in his +fingers, stood by Gower.</p> + +<p>MacRae followed Betty Gower across the room to her father. She turned. +Her quick eyes had picked out the insignia of rank on MacRae's uniform.</p> + +<p>"Papa," she said. "Captain—" she hesitated.</p> + +<p>"MacRae," he supplied.</p> + +<p>"Captain MacRae wishes to see you."</p> + +<p>MacRae wished no conventionalities. He did not want to be introduced, to +be shaken by the hand, to have Gower play host. He forestalled all this, +if indeed it threatened.</p> + +<p>"I have just arrived home on leave," he said briefly. "I find my father +desperately ill in our house at the Cove. You have a very fast and able +cruiser. Would you care to put her at my disposal so that I may take my +father to Vancouver? I think that is his only chance."</p> + +<p>Gower had risen. He was not an imposing man. At his first glimpse of +MacRae's face, the pink-patched eye, the uniform, he flushed +slightly,—recalling that afternoon.</p> + +<p>"I'm sorry," he said. "You'd be welcome to the <i>Arrow</i> if she were here. +But I sent her to Nanaimo an hour after she landed us. Are you Donald +MacRae's boy?"</p><p><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45"></a></p> + +<p>"Yes," MacRae said. "Thank you. That's all."</p> + +<p>He had said his say and got his answer. He turned to go. Betty Gower put +a detaining hand on his arm.</p> + +<p>"Listen," she put in eagerly. "Is there anything any of us could do to +help? Nursing or—or anything?"</p> + +<p>MacRae shook his head.</p> + +<p>"There is a girl with him," he answered. "Nothing but skilled medical +aid would help him at this stage. He has the flu, and the fever is +burning his life out."</p> + +<p>"The flu, did you say?" The young man with the long cigarette lost his +bored air. "Hang it, it isn't very sporting, is it, to expose us—these +ladies—to the infection? I'll say it isn't."</p> + +<p>Jack MacRae fixed the young man—and he was not, after all, much younger +than MacRae—with a steady stare in which a smoldering fire glowed. He +bestowed a scrutiny while one might count five, under which the other's +gaze began to shift uneasily. A constrained silence fell in the room.</p> + +<p>"I would suggest that you learn how to put on a gas mask," MacRae said +coldly, at last.</p> + +<p>Then he walked out. Betty Gower followed him to the door, but he had +asked his question and there was nothing to wait for. He did not even +look back until he reached the cliff. He did not care if they thought +him rude, ill-bred. Then, as he reached the cliff, the joyous jazz broke +out again and shadows of dancing couples flitted by the windows. MacRae +<a name="Page_46" id="Page_46"></a>looked once and went on, moody because chance had decreed that he should +fail.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>When a ruddy dawn broke through the gray cloud battalions Jack MacRae +sat on a chair before the fireplace in the front room, his elbows on his +knees, his chin in his cupped palms. He had been sitting like that for +two hours. The fir logs had wasted away to a pile of white ash spotted +with dying coals. MacRae sat heedless that the room was growing cold.</p> + +<p>He did not even lift his head at the sound of heavy footsteps on the +porch. He did not move until a voice at the door spoke his name in +accents of surprise.</p> + +<p>"Is that you, yourself, Johnny MacRae?"</p> + +<p>The voice was deep and husky and kind, and it was not native to Squitty +Cove. MacRae lifted his head to see his father's friend and his own, +Doctor Laidlaw, physician and fisherman, bulking large. And beyond the +doctor he saw a big white launch at anchor inside the Cove.</p> + +<p>"Yes," MacRae said.</p> + +<p>"How's your father?" Laidlaw asked. "That wire worried me. I made the +best time I could."</p> + +<p>"He's dead," MacRae answered evenly. "He died <a name="Page_47" id="Page_47"></a>at midnight."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2> + +<p><span class="smcap">Inheritance</span></p> + + +<p>On a morning four days later Jack MacRae sat staring into the coals on +the hearth. It was all over and done with, the house empty and still, +Dolly Ferrara gone back to her uncle's home. Even the Cove was bare of +fishing craft. He was alone under his own rooftree, alone with an +oppressive silence and his own thoughts.</p> + +<p>These were not particularly pleasant thoughts. There was nothing mawkish +about Jack MacRae. He had never been taught to shrink from the +inescapable facts of existence. Even if he had, the war would have cured +him of that weakness. As it was, twelve months in the infantry, nearly +three years in the air, had taught him that death is a commonplace after +a man sees about so much of it, that it is many times a welcome relief +from suffering either of the body or the spirit. He chose to believe +that it had proved so to his father. So his feelings were not that +strange mixture of grief and protest which seizes upon those to whom +death is the ultimate tragedy, the irrevocable disaster, when it falls +upon some one near and dear.</p> + +<p>No, Jack MacRae, brooding by his fire, was lonely and saddened and +heavy-hearted. But beneath these neutral phases there was slowly +gathering a flood of feeling unrelated to his father's death, more +directly based indeed upon Donald MacRae's life, upon matters but now +revealed to him, which had their root in that misty period when his +father was a young man like himself.</p> + +<p>On the table bes<a name="Page_48" id="Page_48"></a>ide him lay an inch-thick pile of note paper all closely +written upon in the clear, small pen-script of his father.</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>My son: [MacRae had written] I have a feeling lately that I may +never see you again. Not that I fear you will be killed. I no +longer have that fear. I seem to have an unaccountable assurance +that having come through so much you will go on safely to the +end. But I'm not so sure about myself. I'm aging too fast. I've +been told my heart is bad. And I've lost heart lately. Things +have gone against me. There is nothing new in that. For thirty +years I've been losing out to a greater or less extent in most +of the things I undertook—that is, the important things.</p> + +<p>Perhaps I didn't bring the energy and feverish ambition I might +have to my undertakings. Until you began to grow up I accepted +things more or less passively as I found them.</p> + +<p>Until you have a son of your own, until you observe closely +other men and their sons, my boy, you will scarcely realize how +close we two have been to each other. We've been what they call +good chums. I've taken a secret pride in seeing you grow and +develop into a man. And while I tried to give you an +education—broken into, alas, by this unending war—such as +would enable you to hold your own in a world which deals harshly +with the ignorant, the incompetent, the untrained, it was also +my hope to pass on to you something of material value.</p> + +<p>This land which runs across Squitty Island from the Cove to +Cradle Bay and extending a mile back—in all a trifle over six +hundred acres—was to be your inheritance. You were born here. I +know that no other place means quite so much to you as this old +log house with the meadow behind it, and the woods, and the sea +grumbling always at our doorstep. Long ago this place came into +my hands at little more cost than the taking. It h<a name="Page_49" id="Page_49"></a>as proved a +refuge to me, a stronghold against all comers, against all +misfortune. I have spent much labor on it, and most of it has +been a labor of love. It has begun to grow valuable. In years to +come it will be of far greater value. I had hoped to pass it on +to you intact, unencumbered, an inheritance of some worth. Land, +you will eventually discover, Johnny, is the basis of +everything. A man may make a fortune in industry, in the market. +He turns to land for permanence, stability. All that is sterling +in our civilization has its foundation in the soil.</p> + +<p>Out of this land of ours, which I have partially and +half-heartedly reclaimed from the wilderness, you should derive +a comfortable livelihood, and your children after you.</p> + +<p>But I am afraid I must forego that dream and you, my son, your +inheritance. It has slipped away from me. How this has come +about I wish to make clear to you, so that you will not feel +unkindly toward me that you must face the world with no +resources beyond your own brain and a sound young body. If it +happens that the war ends soon and you come home while I am +still alive to welcome you, we can talk this over man to man. +But, as I said, my heart is bad. I may not be here. So I am +writing all this for you to read. There are many things which +you should know—or at least which I should like you to know.</p> + +<p>Thirty years ago—</p></div> + +<p>Donald MacRae's real communication to his son began at that point in the +long ago when the <i>Gull</i> outsailed his sloop and young<a name="Page_50" id="Page_50"></a> Horace Gower, +smarting with jealousy, struck that savage blow with a pike pole at a +man whose fighting hands were tied by a promise. Bit by bit, incident +by incident, old Donald traced out of a full heart and bitter memories +all the passing years for his son to see and understand. He made +Elizabeth Morton, the Morton family, Horace Gower and the Gower kin +stand out in bold relief. He told how he, Donald MacRae, a nobody from +nowhere, for all they knew, adventuring upon the Pacific Coast, questing +carelessly after fortune, had fallen in love with this girl whose +family, with less consideration for her feelings and desires than for +mutual advantages of land and money and power, favored young Gower and +saw nothing but impudent presumption in MacRae.</p> + +<p>Young Jack sat staring into the coals, seeing much, understanding more. +It was all there in those written pages, a powerful spur to a vivid +imagination.</p> + +<p>No MacRae had ever lain down unwhipped. Nor had Donald MacRae, his +father. Before his bruised face had healed—and young Jack remembered +well the thin white scar that crossed his father's cheek bone—Donald +MacRae was again pursuing his heart's desire. But he was forestalled +there. He had truly said to Elizabeth Morton that she would never have +another chance. By force or persuasion or whatsoever means were +necessary they had married her out of hand to Horace Gower.</p> + +<p>"That must have been she sitting on the couch," Jack MacRae whispered to +himself, "that middle-aged woman with the faded rose-leaf face. Lord, +Lord, how things get twisted!"</p> + +<p>Though they so closed the avenue to a mésalliance, still their pride +<a name="Page_51" id="Page_51"></a>must have smarted because of that clandestine affection, that boldly +attempted elopement. Most of all, young Gower must have hated +MacRae—with almost the same jealous intensity that Donald MacRae must +for a time have hated him—because Gower apparently never forgot and +never forgave. Long after Donald MacRae outgrew that passion Gower had +continued secretly to harass him. Certain things could not be otherwise +accounted for, Donald MacRae wrote to his son. Gower functioned in the +salmon trade, in timber, in politics. In whatever MacRae set on foot, he +ultimately discerned the hand of Gower, implacable, hidden, striking at +him from under cover.</p> + +<p>And so in a land and during a period when men created fortunes easily +out of nothing, or walked carelessly over golden opportunities, Donald +MacRae got him no great store of worldly goods, whereas Horace Gower, +after one venture in which he speedily dissipated an inherited fortune, +drove straight to successful outcome in everything he touched. By the +time young Jack MacRae outgrew the Island teachers and must go to +Vancouver for high school and then to the University of British +Columbia, old Donald had been compelled to borrow money on his land to +meet these expenses.</p> + +<p>Young Jack, sitting by the fire, winced when he thought of that. He had +taken things for granted. The war had come in his second year at the +university,—and he had gone to the front as a matter of course.</p> + +<p>Failing fish prices, poor seasons, other minor disasters had +followed,—and always in the background, as old Donald saw it, the Gower +influence, malign, vindictive, harboring that ancient grudge.</p> +<p><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52"></a></p> +<p>Whereas in the beginning MacRae had confidently expected by one resource +and another to meet easily the obligation he had incurred, the end of it +was the loss, during the second year of the war, of all the MacRae +lands on Squitty,—all but a rocky corner of a few acres which included +the house and garden. Old Donald had segregated that from his holdings +when he pledged the land, as a matter of sentiment, not of value. All +the rest—acres of pasture, cleared and grassed, stretches of fertile +ground, blocks of noble timber still uncut—had passed through the hands +of mortgage holders, through bank transfers, by devious and tortuous +ways, until the title rested in Horace Gower,—who had promptly built +the showy summer house on Cradle Bay to flaunt in his face, so old +Donald believed and told his son.</p> + +<p>It was a curious document, and it made a profound impression on Jack +MacRae. He passed over the underlying motive, a man justifying himself +to his son for a failure which needed no justifying. He saw now why his +father tabooed all things Gower, why indeed he must have hated Gower as +a man who does things in the open hates an enemy who strikes only from +cover.</p> + +<p>Strangely enough, Jack managed to grasp the full measure of what his +father's love for Elizabeth Morton must have been without resenting the +secondary part his mother must have played. For old Donald was frank in +his story. He made it clear that he had loved Bessie Morton with an +all-consuming passion, and that when this burned itself out he had never +experienced so headlong an affection again. He spoke with kindly regard +for his wife, but she played little or no part in his account. And Jack +had only a faint memory of his mother, for she had died when he was +seven. His father filled his eyes. His father's enemies were his. Family +ties superimposed on clan clannishness, which is t<a name="Page_53" id="Page_53"></a>he blood heritage of +the Highland Scotch, made it impossible for him to feel otherwise. That +blow with a pike pole was a blow directed at his own face. He took up +his father's feud instinctively, not even stopping to consider whether +that was his father's wish or intent.</p> + +<p>He got up out of his chair at last and went outside, down to where the +Cove waters, on a rising tide, lapped at the front of a rude shed. Under +this shed, secure on a row of keel-blocks, rested a small +knockabout-rigged boat, stowed away from wind and weather, her single +mast, boom, and gaff unshipped and slung to rafters, her sail and +running gear folded and coiled and hung beyond the wood-rats' teeth. +Beside this sailing craft lay a long blue dugout, also on blocks, half +filled with water to keep it from checking.</p> + +<p>These things belonged to him. He had left them lying about when he went +away to France. And old Donald had put them here safely against his +return. Jack stared at them, blinking. He was full of a dumb protest. It +didn't seem right. Nothing seemed right. In young MacRae's mind there +was nothing terrible about death. He had become used to that. But he had +imagination. He could see his father going on day after day, month after +month, year after year, enduring, uncomplaining. Gauged by what his +father had written, by what Dolly Ferrara had supplied when he +questioned her, these last months must have been gray indeed. And he had +died without hope or comfort or a sight of his son.</p> + +<p>That was what made young MacRae blink and struggle with a lump in his +throat. It hurt.</p> + +<p>He walked away around the end of the Cove without definite objective. He +was suddenly restless, seeking relief in movement. Sitting still and +thinking had become unbearable. He found himself <a name="Page_54" id="Page_54"></a>on the path that ran +along the cliffs and followed that, coming out at last on the neck of +Point Old where he could look down on the broken water that marked Poor +Man's Rock.</p> + +<p>The lowering cloud bank of his home-coming day had broken in heavy rain. +That had poured itself out and given place to a southeaster. The wind +was gone now, the clouds breaking up into white drifting patches with +bits of blue showing between, and the sun striking through in yellow +shafts which lay glittering areas here and there on the Gulf. The swell +that runs after a blow still thundered all along the southeast face of +Squitty, bursting <i>boom</i>—<i>boom</i>—<i>boom</i> against the cliffs, shooting +spray in white cascades. Over the Rock the sea boiled.</p> + +<p>There were two rowboats trolling outside the heavy backwash from the +cliffs. MacRae knew them both. Peter Ferrara was in one, Long Tom Spence +in the other. They did not ride those gray-green ridges for pleasure, +nor drop sidling into those deep watery hollows for joy of motion. They +were out for fish, which meant to them food and clothing. That was their +work.</p> + +<p>They were the only fisher folk abroad that morning. The gasboat men had +flitted to more sheltered grounds. MacRae watched these two lift and +fall in the marching swells. It was cold. Winter sharpened his teeth +already. The rowers bent to their oars, tossing and lurching. MacRae +reflected upon their industry. In France he had eaten canned salmon +bearing the Folly Bay label, salmon that might have been taken here by +the Rock, perhaps by the hands of these very men, by his own father. +Still, that was unlikely. Donald MacRae had never sold a fish to a Gower +collector. Nor would he himself,<a name="Page_55" id="Page_55"></a> young MacRae swore under his breath, +looking sullenly down upon the Rock.</p> + +<p>Day after day, month after month, his father had tugged at the oars, +hauled on the line, rowing around and around Poor Man's Rock, skirting +the kelp at the cliff's foot, keeping body and soul together with +unremitting labor in sun and wind and rain, trying to live and save that +little heritage of land for his son.</p> + +<p>Jack MacRae sat down on a rock beside a bush and thought about this +sadly. He could have saved his father much if he had known. He could +have assigned his pay. There was a government allowance. He could have +invoked the War Relief Act against foreclosure. Between them they could +have managed. But he understood quite clearly why his father made no +mention of his difficulties. He would have done the same under the same +circumstances himself, played the game to its bitter end without a cry.</p> + +<p>But Donald MacRae had made a long, hard fight only to lose in the end, +and his son, with full knowledge of the loneliness and discouragement +and final hopelessness that had been his father's lot, was passing +slowly from sadness to a cumulative anger. That cottage amid its green +grounds bright in a patch of sunshine did not help to soften him. It +stood on land reclaimed from the forest by his father's labor. It should +have belonged to him, and it had passed into hands that already grasped +too much. For thirty years Gower had made silent war on Donald MacRae +because of a woman. It seemed incredible that a grudge born of jealousy +should run so deep, endure so long. But there were the facts. Jack +MacRae accepted them; he could not do otherwise. He came of a breed +which has handed its feuds from generation to generation, interpreting +literally the code of an eye for an eye.</p> + +<p>So that as he sat there brooding, it was perhaps a little unfortunate +that the daughter of a man whom he was beginning to regard as a +forthright enemy should have chosen to come to him, tripping soundlessly +over the moss.</p> + +<p>He did not hear Betty Gower until she was beside him. Her foot clicked +on a stone and he looked up. Betty was all in white, a glow in h<a name="Page_56" id="Page_56"></a>er +cheeks and in her eyes, bareheaded, her reddish-brown hair shining in a +smooth roll above her ears.</p> + +<p>"I hear you have lost your father," she said simply. "I'm awfully +sorry."</p> + +<p>Some peculiar quality of sympathy in her tone touched MacRae deeply. His +eyes shifted for a moment to the uneasy sea. The lump in his throat +troubled him again. Then he faced her again.</p> + +<p>"Thanks," he said slowly. "I dare say you mean it, although I don't know +why you should. But I'd rather not talk about that. It's done."</p> + +<p>"I suppose that's the best way," she agreed, although she gave him a +doubtful sort of glance, as if she scarcely knew how to take part of +what he said. "Isn't it lovely after the storm? Pretty much all the +civilized world must feel a sort of brightness and sunshine to-day, I +imagine."</p> + +<p>"Why?" he asked. It seemed to him a most uncalled-for optimism.</p> + +<p>"Why, haven't you heard that the war is over?" she smiled. "Surely some +one has told you?"</p> + +<p>He shook his head.</p> + +<p>"It is a fact," she declared. "The armistice was signed yesterday at +eleven. Aren't you glad?"</p> + +<p>MacRae reflected <a name="Page_57" id="Page_57"></a>a second. A week earlier he would have thrown up his +cap and whooped. Now the tremendously important happening left him +unmoved, unbelievably indifferent. He was not stirred at all by the +fact of acknowledged victory, of cessation from killing.</p> + +<p>"I should be, I suppose," he muttered. "I know a lot of fellows will +be—and their people. So far as I'm concerned—right now—"</p> + +<p>He made a quick gesture with his hands. He couldn't explain how he +felt—that the war had suddenly and imperiously been relegated to the +background for him. Temporarily or otherwise, as a spur to his emotions, +the war had ceased to function. He didn't want to talk. He wanted to be +let alone, to think.</p> + +<p>Yet he was conscious of a wish not to offend, to be courteous to this +clear-eyed young woman who looked at him with frank interest. He +wondered why he should be of any interest to her. MacRae had never been +shy. Shyness is nearly always born of acute self-consciousness. Being +free from that awkward inturning of the mind Jack MacRae was not +thoroughly aware of himself as a likable figure in any girl's sight. +Four years overseas had set a mark on many such as himself. A man cannot +live through manifold chances of death, face great perils, do his work +under desperate risks and survive, without some trace of his deeds being +manifest in his bearing. Those tried by fire are sure of themselves, and +it shows in their eyes. Besides, Jack MacRae was twenty-four, +clear-skinned, vigorous, straight as a young fir tree, a handsome boy in +uniform. But he was not quick to apprehend that these things stirred a +girl's fancy, nor did he know that the gloomy something which clouded +his eyes made Betty Gower want to comfort him.</p> + +<p>"I think I understand," she said evenly,—when in truth she did not +understand at all. "But after a while you'll be glad. I know I should be +if I were in the army, although of course no matter how horrible it all +was it had to be done. For a long time I wanted to go to France myself, +to do <i>something</i>. I was simply wild to go. B<a name="Page_58" id="Page_58"></a>ut they wouldn't let me."</p> + +<p>"And I," MacRae said slowly, "didn't want to go at all—and I had to +go."</p> + +<p>"Oh," she remarked with a peculiar interrogative inflection. Her +eyebrows lifted. "Why did you have to? You went over long before the +draft was thought of."</p> + +<p>"Because I'd been taught that my flag and country really meant +something," he said. "That was all; and it was quite enough in the way +of compulsion for a good many like myself who didn't hanker to stick +bayonets through men we'd never seen, nor shoot them, nor blow them up +with hand grenades, nor kill them ten thousand feet in the air and watch +them fall, turning over and over like a winged duck. But these things +seemed necessary. They said a country worth living in was worth fighting +for."</p> + +<p>"And isn't it?" Betty Gower challenged promptly.</p> + +<p>MacRae looked at her and at the white cottage, at the great Gulf seas +smashing on the rocks below, at the far vista of sea and sky and the +shore line faintly purple in the distance. His gaze turned briefly to +the leafless tops of maple and alder rising out of the hollow in which +his father's body lay—in a corner of the little plot that was left of +all their broad acres—and came back at last to this fair daughter of +<a name="Page_59" id="Page_59"></a>his father's enemy.</p> + +<p>"The country is, yes," he said. "Anything that's worth having is worth +fighting for. But that isn't what they meant, and that isn't the way it +has worked out."</p> + +<p>He was not conscious of the feeling in his voice. He was thinking with +exaggerated bitterness that the Germans in Belgium had dealt less hardly +with a conquered people than this girl's father had dealt with his.</p> + +<p>"I'm afraid I don't quite understand what you mean by that," she +remarked. Her tone was puzzled. She looked at him, frankly curious.</p> + +<p>But he could not tell her what he meant. He had a feeling that she was +in no way responsible. He had an instinctive aversion to rudeness. And +while he was absolving himself of any intention to make war on her he +was wondering if her mother, long ago, had been anything like Miss Betty +Gower. It seemed odd to think that this level-eyed girl's mother might +have been <i>his</i> mother,—if she had been made of stiffer metal, or if +the west wind had blown that afternoon.</p> + +<p>He wondered if she knew. Not likely, he decided. It wasn't a story +either Horace Gower or his wife would care to tell their children.</p> + +<p>So he did not try to tell her what he meant. He withdrew into his shell. +And when Betty Gower seated herself on a rock and evinced an inclination +to quiz <a name="Page_60" id="Page_60"></a>him about things he did not care to be quizzed about, he lifted +his cap, bade her a courteous good-by, and walked back toward the Cove.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V</h2> + +<p><span class="smcap">From the Bottom Up</span></p> + + +<p><span class="smcap">MacRae</span> did nothing but mark time until he found himself a plain +citizen once more. He could have remained in the service for months +without 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 a +uniform subject to military orders while the politicians wrangled.</p> + +<p>But even when he found himself a civilian again, master of his +individual fortunes, he was still a trifle at a loss. He had no definite +plan. He was rather at sea, because all the things he had planned on +doing when he came home had gone by the board. So many things which had +seemed good and desirable had been contingent upon his father. Every +plan he had ever made for the future had included old Donald MacRae and +those wide acres across the end of Squitty. He had been deprived of +both, left without a ready mark to shoot at. The flood of war had +carried him far. The ebb of it had set him back on his native +shores,—stranded him there, so to speak, to pick up the broken threads +of his old life as best he could.</p> +<p><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61"></a></p> +<p>He had no quarrel with that. But he did have a feud with circumstance, a +profound 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 good +deal of this focused on Horace Gower and his works.</p> + +<p>"He might have let up on the old man," Jack MacRae would say to himself +resentfully. He would lie awake in the dark thinking about this. "We +were doing our bit. He might have stopped putting spokes in our wheel +while the war was on."</p> + +<p>The fact of the matter is that young MacRae was deeply touched in his +family pride as well as his personal sense of injustice. Gower had +deeply injured his father, therefore it was any MacRae's concern. It +made no difference that the first blow in this quarrel had been struck +before he was born. He smarted under it and all that followed. His only +difficulty was to discern a method of repaying in kind, which he was +thoroughly determined to do.</p> + +<p>He saw no way, if the truth be told. He did not even contemplate +inflicting physical injury on Horace Gower. That would have been absurd. +But he wanted to hurt him, to make him squirm, to heap trouble on the +man and watch him break down under the load. And he did not see how he +possibly could. Gower was too well fortified. Four years of war +experience, which likewise embraced a considerable social experience, +had amply shown Jack MacRae the subtle power of money, of political +influence, of family connections, of commercial prestige.</p> + +<p>All these things were on Gower's side. He was impregnable. MacRae was +not a fool. Neither was he inclined to pessimism. Yet so far as he could +see, the croakers were not lying when they said that h<a name="Page_62" id="Page_62"></a>ere at home the +war had made the rich richer and the poor poorer. It was painfully true +in his own case. He had given four years of himself to his country, +gained an honorable record, and lost everything else that was worth +having.</p> + +<p>What he had lost in a material way he meant to get back. How, he had not +yet determined. His brain was busy with that problem. And the dying down +of his first keen resentment and grief over the death of his father, and +that dead father's message to him, merely hardened into a cold resolve +to pay off his father's debt to the Gowers and Mortons. MacRae ran true +to the traditions of his Highland blood when he lumped them all +together.</p> + +<p>In this he was directed altogether by the promptings of emotion, and he +never questioned the justice of his attitude. But in the practical +adjustment of his life to conditions as he found them he adopted a +purely rational method.</p> + +<p>He took stock of his resources. They were limited enough. A few hundred +dollars in back pay and demobilization gratuities; a sound body, now +that his injured eye was all but healed; an abounding confidence in +himself,—which he had earned the right to feel. That was all. Ambition +for place, power, wealth, he did not feel as an imperative urge. He +perceived the value and desirability of these things. Only he saw no +short straight road to any one of them.</p> + +<p>For four years he had been fed, clothed, directed, master of his own +acts only in supreme moments. There was an unconscious reaction from +<a name="Page_63" id="Page_63"></a>that high pitch. Being his own man again and a trifle uncertain what to +do, he did nothing at all for a time. He made one trip to Vancouver, to +learn by just what legal processes the MacRae lands had passed into the +Gower possession. He found out what he wanted to know easily enough. +Gower had got his birthright for a song. Donald MacRae had borrowed six +thousand 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 the +mortgage in a pinch. A financial house had foreclosed and sold the place +to Gower,—who had been trying to buy it for years, through different +agencies. His father's papers told young MacRae plainly enough through +what channels the money had gone. Chance had functioned on the wrong +side for his father.</p> + +<p>So Jack went back to Squitty and stayed in the old house, talked with +the 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 him +scope for two things upon which his mind was set: to get the title to +that six hundred acres revested in the MacRae name, and, in Jack's own +words to Dolores Ferrara, to take a fall out of Horace Gower that would +jar the bones of his ancestors.</p> + +<p>With Christmas the Ferrara clan gathered at the Cove, all the stout and +able company of Dolly Ferrara's menfolk. It had seemed to MacRae a +curious thing that Dolly was the only woman of all the Ferraras. There +had been mothers in the Ferrara family, or there could not have been so +many capable un<a name="Page_64" id="Page_64"></a>cles and cousins. But in MacRae's memory there had never +been any mothers or sisters or daughters save Dolly.</p> + +<p>There were nine male Ferraras when Jack MacRae went to France. Dolores' +father was dead. Uncle Peter was a bachelor. He had two brothers, and +each brother had bred three sons. Four of these sons had left their +boats and gear to go overseas. Two of them would never come back. The +other two were home,—one after a whiff of gas at Ypres, the other with +a leg shorter by two inches than when he went away. These two made +nothing of their disabilities, however; they were home and they were +nearly as good as ever. That was enough for them. And with the younger +boys and their fathers they came to old Peter's house for a week at +Christmas, after an annual custom. These gatherings in the old days had +always embraced Donald MacRae and his son. And his son was glad that it +included him now. He felt a little less alone.</p> + +<p>They were of the sea, these Ferraras, Castilian Spanish, tempered and +diluted by three generations in North America. Their forebears might +have sailed in caravels. They knew the fishing grounds of the British +Columbia coast as a schoolboy knows his <i>a, b, c</i>'s. They would never +get rich, but they were independent fishermen, making a good living. And +they were as clannish as the Scotch. All of them had chipped in to send +Dolly 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 too +young to take thought of the commercial end of salmon fishing. He was +about sixty-five now, a lean, hardy old fellow, but he seldom went far +from Squitty Cove. There was Steve and Frank and Vincent and Manuel of +the younger generation, and Manuel and Peter and Joaquin of the elder. +Those three had been contemporary with Donald MacRae. They esteemed old +Donald. Jack heard many things about his father's early days on the Gulf +that were new to him, that made his blood tingle and made him wish he +had lived then too. Thirty years back the Gulf of Georgia was no place +for any but two-handed men.</p> +<p><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65"></a></p> +<p>He heard also, in that week of casual talk among the Ferraras, certain +things said, statements made that suggested a possibility which never +seemed to have occurred to the Ferraras themselves.</p> + +<p>"The Folly Bay pack of blueback was a whopper last summer," Vincent +Ferrara said once. "They must have cleaned up a barrel of money."</p> + +<p>Folly Bay was Gower's cannery.</p> + +<p>"Well, he didn't make much of it out of us," old Manuel grunted. "We +should worry."</p> + +<p>"Just the same, he ought to be made to pay more for his fish. He ought +to pay what they're worth, for a change," Vincent drawled. "He makes +about a hundred trollers eat out of his hand the first six weeks of the +season. If somebody would put on a couple of good, fast carriers, and +start buying fish as soon as he opens his cannery, I'll bet he'd pay +more than twenty-five cents for a five-pound salmon."</p> + +<p>"Maybe. But that's been tried and didn't work. Every buyer that ever cut +in on Gower soon found himself up against the Packers' Association when +he went into the open market with his fish. And a wise man," old Manuel +grinned, "don't even figure on monkeying with a buzz saw, sonny."</p> + +<p>Not long afterward Jack MacRae got old Manuel in a corner and asked him +what he meant.</p> + +<p>"Well," he said, "it's like this. When the bluebacks first run here in +the spring, they're pretty small, too small for canning. But the fresh +fish ma<a name="Page_66" id="Page_66"></a>rkets in town take 'em and palm 'em off on the public for salmon +trout. So there's an odd fresh-fish buyer cruises around here and picks +up a few loads of salmon between the end of April and the middle of +June. The Folly Bay cannery opens about then, and the buyers quit. They +go farther up the coast. Partly because there's more fish, mostly +because nobody has ever made any money bucking Gower for salmon on his +own grounds."</p> + +<p>"Why?" MacRae asked bluntly.</p> + +<p>"Nobody knows <i>exactly</i> why," Manuel replied. "A feller can guess, +though. You know the fisheries department has the British Columbia coast +cut up into areas, and each area is controlled by some packer as a +concession. Well, Gower has the Folly Bay license, and a couple of +purse-seine licenses, and that just about gives him the say-so on all +the waters around Squitty, besides a couple of good bays on the +Vancouver Island side and the same on the mainland. He belongs to the +Packers' Association. They ain't supposed to control the local market. +But the way it works out they really do. At least, when an independent +fish buyer gets to cuttin' in strong on a packer's territory, he +generally finds himself in trouble to sell in Vancouver unless he's got +a cast-iron contract. That is, he can't sell enough to make any money. +Any damn fool can make a living.</p> + +<p>"At the top of the island here there's a bunch that has homesteads. They +troll in the summer. They deal at the Folly Bay cannery store. Generally +they're in the hole by spring. Even if they ain't they have to depend on +Folly Bay to market their catch. The cannery's a steady buyer, once it +opens. They can't always depend on the fresh-fish buyer, even if he pays +a few cents more. So once the cannery opens, Gower has a bunch of +trollers 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 no +<a name="Page_67" id="Page_67"></a>competition for a month or so. If there is a little there's ways of +killin' it. So he sets his own price. The trollers can take it or leave +it."</p> + +<p>Old Manuel stopped to light his pipe.</p> + +<p>"For three seasons," said he, "Gower has bought blueback salmon the +first month of the season for twenty-five cents or less—fish that run +three to four pounds. And there hasn't been a time when salmon could be +bought in a Vancouver fresh-fish market for less than twenty-five cents +a pound."</p> + +<p>"Huh!" MacRae grunted.</p> + +<p>It set him thinking. He had a sketchy knowledge of the salmon packer's +monopoly of cannery sites and pursing licenses and waters. He had heard +more or less talk among fishermen of agreements in restraint of +competition among the canneries. But he had never supposed it to be +quite so effective as Manuel Ferrara believed.</p> + +<p>Even if it were, a gentleman's agreement of that sort, being a matter of +profit rather than principle, was apt to be broken by any member of the +combination who saw a chance to get ahead of the rest.</p> + +<p>MacRae took passage for Vancouver the second week in January with a +certain pl<a name="Page_68" id="Page_68"></a>an weaving itself to form in his mind,—a plan which promised +action and money and other desirable results if he could carry it +through.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI</h2> + +<p><span class="smcap">The Springboard</span></p> + + +<p>With a basic knowledge to start from, any reasonably clever man can +digest an enormous amount of information about any given industry in a +very brief time. Jack MacRae spent three weeks in Vancouver as a one-man +commission, self-appointed, to inquire into the fresh-salmon trade. He +talked to men who caught salmon and to men who sold them, both wholesale +and retail. He apprised himself of the ins and outs of salmon canning, +and of the independent fish collector who owned his own boat, financed +himself, and chanced the market much as a farmer plants his seed, trusts +to the weather, and makes or loses according to the yield and +market,—two matters over which he can have no control.</p> + +<p>MacRae learned before long that old Manuel Ferrara was right when he +said no man could profitably buy salmon unless he had a cast-iron +agreement either with a cannery or a big wholesaler. MacRae soon saw +that the wholesaler stood like a wall between the fishermen and those +who ate fish. They could make or break a buyer. MacRae was not long +running afoul of the rumor that the wholesale fish men controlled the +retail price of fresh fish by the simple method of controlling th<a name="Page_69" id="Page_69"></a>e +supply, which they managed by coöperation instead of competition among +themselves. He heard this stated. And more,—that behind the big dealers +stood the shadowy figure of the canning colossus. This was told him +casually by fishermen. Fish buyers repeated it, sometimes with a touch +of indignation. That was one of their wails,—the fish combine. It was +air-tight, they said. The packers had a strangle hold on the fishing +waters, and the big local fish houses had the same unrelenting grip on +the market.</p> + +<p>Therefore the ultimate consumer—whose exploitation was the prize plum +of commercial success—paid thirty cents per pound for spring salmon +that a fisherman chivied about in the tumbling Gulf seas fifty miles +up-coast had to take fourteen cents for. As for the salmon packers, the +men who pack the good red fish in small round tins which go to all the +ends of the earth to feed hungry folk,—well, no one knew <i>their</i> +profits. Their pack was all exported. The back yards of Europe are +strewn with empty salmon cans bearing a British Columbia label. But they +made money enough to be a standing grievance to those unable to get in +on this bonanza.</p> + +<p>MacRae, however, was chiefly concerned with the local trade in fresh +salmon. His plan didn't look quite so promising as when he mulled over +it at Squitty Cove. He put out feelers and got no hold. A fresh-fish +buyer operating without approved market connections might make about +such a living as the fishermen he bought from. To Jack MacRae, eager and +sanguine, making a living was an inconspicuous detail. Making a +living,—that was nothing to him. A more definite spur roweled his +flank.</p> +<p><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70"></a></p> +<p>It looked like an air-tight proposition, he admitted, at last. But, he +said to himself, anything air-tight could be punctured. And undoubtedly +a fine flow of currency would result from such a puncture. So he kept +on looking about, asking casual questions, listening. In the language of +the street he was getting wise.</p> + +<p>Incidentally he enjoyed himself. The battle ground had been transferred +to Paris. The pen, the typewriter, and the press dispatch, with immense +reserves of oratory and printer's ink, had gone into action. And the +soldiers were coming home,—officers of the line and airmen first, since +to these leave and transportation came easily, now that the guns were +silent. MacRae met fellows he knew. A good many of them were well off, +had homes in Vancouver. They were mostly young and glad the big show was +over. And they had the social instinct. During intervals of fighting +they had rubbed elbows with French and British people of consequence. +They had a mind to enjoy themselves.</p> + +<p>MacRae had a record in two squadrons. He needed no press-agenting when +he met another R.A.F. man. So he found himself invited to homes, the +inside of which he would otherwise never have seen, and to pleasant +functions among people who would never have known of his existence save +for the circumstance of war. Pretty, well-bred girls smiled at him, +partly because airmen with notable records were still a novelty, and +partly because Jack MacRae was worth a second look from any girl who was +fancy-free. Matrons were kind to him because their sons said he was the +right sort, and some of these same matrons mothered him because he was +like boys they knew who had gone away to France and would never come +back.</p> + +<p>This was very pleasant. MacRae was normal in every respect. He liked to +dance. He liked glittering lights and soft music. He liked nice people. +He liked people who were nice to him. But he seldom lost sight of his +objective. These people could relax and give themselves up to enjoyment +because they were "heeled"—as a boy lieutenant <a name="Page_71" id="Page_71"></a>slangily put it—to +MacRae.</p> + +<p>"It's a great game, Jack, if you don't weaken," he said. "But a fellow +can't play it through on a uniform and a war record. I'm having a +top-hole time, but it'll be different when I plant myself at a desk in +some broker's office at a hundred and fifty a month. It's mixed pickles, +for a fact. You can't buy your way into this sort of thing. And you +can't stay in it without a bank roll."</p> + +<p>Which was true enough. Only the desire to "see it through" socially was +not driving Jack MacRae. He had a different target, and his eye did not +wander far from the mark. And perhaps because of this, chance and his +social gadding about gave him the opening he sought when he least +expected to find one.</p> + +<p>To be explicit, he happened to be one of an after-theater party at an +informal supper dance in the Granada, which is to Vancouver what the +Biltmore is to New York or the Fairmont to San Francisco,—a place where +one can see everybody that is anybody if one lingers long enough. And +almost the first man he met was a stout, ruddy-faced youngster about his +own age. They had flown in the same squadron until "Stubby" Abbott came +a cropper and was invalided home.</p> + +<p>Stubby fell upon Jack MacRae, pounded him earnestly on the back, and +haled him straight to a table where two women were sitting.</p> + +<p>"Mother," he said to a plump, middle-aged woman, "here's Silent John +MacRae."</p> + +<p>Her eyes lit up pleasantly.</p> + +<p>"I've heard of you," she said, and her extended hand put the pressure +of the seal of sincerity on her words. "I've wanted to thank you. You +<a name="Page_72" id="Page_72"></a>can scarcely know what you did for us. Stubby's the only man in the +family, you know."</p> + +<p>MacRae smiled.</p> + +<p>"Why," he said easily, "little things like that were part of the game. +Stubb used to pull off stuff like that himself now and then."</p> + +<p>"Anyway, we can thank God it's over," Mrs. Abbott said fervently. +"Pardon me,—my daughter, Mr. MacRae."</p> + +<p>Nelly Abbott was small, tending to plumpness like her mother. She was +very fair with eyes of true violet, a baby-doll sort of young woman, and +she took possession of Jack MacRae as easily and naturally as if she had +known him for years. They drifted away in a dance, sat the next one out +together with Stubby and a slim young thing in orange satin whose talk +ran undeviatingly upon dances and sports and motor trips, past and +anticipated. Listening to her, Jack MacRae fell dumb. Her father was +worth half a million. Jack wondered how much of it he would give to +endow his daughter with a capacity for thought. A label on her program +materialized to claim her presently. Stubby looked after her and +grinned. MacRae looked thoughtful. The girl was pretty, almost +beautiful. She looked like Dolores Ferrara, dark, creamy-skinned, +seductive. And MacRae was comparing the two to Dolores' advantage.</p> + +<p>Nelly Abbott was eying MacRae.</p> + +<p>"Tessie bores you, eh?" she said bluntly.</p> + +<p>MacRae smiled. "Her flow of profound utterance carries me out of my +depth, I'm afraid," said he. "I can't follow her."</p> + +<p>"She'd lead you a chase if you tried," Stubby grinned and sauntered +away to smoke.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73"></a>"Is that sarcasm?" Nelly drawled. "I wonder if you are called Silent +John because you stop talking now and then to think? Most of us don't, +you know. Tell me," she changed the subject abruptly, "did you know +Norman Gower overseas?"</p> + +<p>"He was an officer in the battalion I went over with," MacRae replied. +"I went over in the ranks, you see. So I couldn't very well know him. +And I never met him after I transferred to the air service."</p> + +<p>"I just wondered," Nelly went on. "I know Norman rather well. It has +been whispered about that he pulled every string to keep away from the +front,—that all he has done over there is to hold down cushy jobs in +England. Did you ever hear any such talk?"</p> + +<p>"We were too busy to gossip about the boys at home, except to envy +them." MacRae evaded direct reply, and Nelly did not follow it up.</p> + +<p>"I see his sister over there. Betty is a dear girl. That's she talking +to Stubby. Come over and meet her. They've been up on their island for a +long time, while the flu raged."</p> + +<p>MacRae couldn't very well avoid it without seeming rude or making an +explanation which he did not intend to make to any one. His grudge +against the Gower clan was focused on Horace Gower. His feeling had not +abated a jot. But it was a personal matter, something to remain locked +in his own breast. So he perforce went with Nelly Abbott and was duly +presented to Miss Elizabeth Gower. And he had the next dance with her, +also for convention's sake.</p> + +<p>While they stood chatting a moment, the four of them, Stubby said to +MacRae:</p> + +<p>"Who are you with, Jack?"</p> + +<p>"The Robbin-Steeles."</p> + +<p>"If I don't get a chance to talk to you again, come out to the house +to-morrow," Stubby said. "The mater said so, and I want to talk to you +<a name="Page_74" id="Page_74"></a>about something."</p> + +<p>The music began and MacRae and Betty Gower slid away in the one-step, +that most conversational of dances. But Jack couldn't find himself +chatty with Betty Gower. She was graceful and clear-eyed, a vigorously +healthy girl with a touch of color in her cheeks that came out of +Nature's rouge pot. But MacRae was subtly conscious of a stiffness +between them.</p> + +<p>"After all," Betty said abruptly, when they had circled half the room, +"it was worth fighting for, don't you really think?"</p> + +<p>For a second MacRae looked down at her, puzzled. Then he remembered.</p> + +<p>"Good Heavens!" he said, "is that still bothering you? Do you take +everything a fellow says so seriously as that?"</p> + +<p>"No. It wasn't so much what you said as the way you said it," she +replied. "You were uncompromisingly hostile that day, for some reason. +Have you acquired a more equable outlook since?"</p> + +<p>"I'm trying," he answered.</p> + +<p>"You need coaching in the art of looking on the bright side of things," +she smiled.</p> + +<p>"Such as clusters of frosted lights, cut glass, diamonds, silk dre<a name="Page_75" id="Page_75"></a>sses +and ropes of pearls," he drawled. "Would you care to take on the +coaching job, Miss Gower?"</p> + +<p>"I might be persuaded." She looked him frankly in the eyes.</p> + +<p>But MacRae would not follow that lead, whatever it might mean. Betty +Gower was nice,—he had to admit it. To glide around on a polished floor +with his arm around her waist, her soft hand clasped in his, and her +face close to his own, her grayish-blue eyes, which were so very like +his own, now smiling and now soberly reflective, was not the way to +carry on an inherited feud. He couldn't subject himself to that +peculiarly feminine attraction which Betty Gower bore like an aura and +nurse a grudge. In fact, he had no grudge against Betty Gower except +that she was the daughter of her father. And he couldn't explain to her +that he hated her father because of injustice and injury done before +either of them was born. In the genial atmosphere of the Granada that +sort of thing did not seem nearly so real, so vivid, as when he stood on +the cliffs of Squitty listening to the pound of the surf. Then it welled +up in him like a flood,—the resentment for all that Gower had made his +father suffer, for those thirty years of reprisal which had culminated +in reducing his patrimony to an old log house and a garden patch out of +all that wide sweep of land along the southern face of Squitty. He +looked at Betty and wished silently that she were,—well, Stubby +Abbott's sister. He could be as nice as he wanted to then. Whereupon, +instinctively feeling himself upon dangerous ground, he diverged from +the personal, talked without saying much until the music stopped and +they found seats. And when another partner claimed Betty, Jack as a +matter of courtesy had to rejoin his own party.</p> + +<p>The affair broke up at length. MacRae slept late the next morning. By +the time he had dressed and breakfasted and taken a flying trip to Coal +Harbor to look over a forty-five-foot fish carrier which was advertised +for sale, he bethought himself of Stubby Abbott's request and, getting +on a car, rode out to the Abbott home. This was a roomy stone house +<a name="Page_76" id="Page_76"></a>occupying a sightly corner in the West End,—that sharply defined +residential area of Vancouver which real estate agents unctuously speak +of as "select." There was half a block of ground in green lawn bordered +with rosebushes. The house itself was solid, homely, built for use, and +built to endure, all stone and heavy beams, wide windows and deep +porches, and a red tile roof lifting above the gray stone walls.</p> + +<p>Stubby permitted MacRae a few minutes' exchange of pleasantries with his +mother and sister.</p> + +<p>"I want to extract some useful information from this man," Stubby said +at length. "You can have at him later, Nell. He'll stay to dinner."</p> + +<p>"How do you know he will?" Nelly demanded. "He hasn't said so, yet."</p> + +<p>"Between you and me, he can't escape," Stubby said cheerfully and led +Jack away upstairs into a small cheerful room lined with bookshelves, +warmed by glowing coals in a grate, and with windows that gave a look +down on a sandy beach facing the Gulf.</p> + +<p>Stubby pushed two chairs up to the fire, waved Jack to one, and extended +his own feet to the blaze.</p> + +<p>"I've seen the inside of a good many homes in town lately," MacRae +observed. "This is the homiest one yet."</p> + +<p>"I'll say it is," Stubby agreed. "A place that has been lived in and +cared for a long time gets that way, though. Remember some of those old, +old places in England and France? This is new compared to that country. +Still, my father built this house when the West End was covered with +virgin timber."</p> + +<p>"How'd you like to be born and grow up in a house that your father +built with a vision of future generations of his blood growing up in," +<a name="Page_77" id="Page_77"></a>Stubby murmured, "and come home crippled after three years in the red +mill and find you stood a fat chance of losing it?"</p> + +<p>"I wouldn't like it much," MacRae agreed.</p> + +<p>But he did not say that he had already undergone the distasteful +experience Stubby mentioned as a possibility. He waited for Stubby to go +on.</p> + +<p>"Well, it's a possibility," Stubby continued, quite cheerfully, however. +"I don't propose to allow it to happen. Hang it, I wouldn't blat this to +any one but you, Jack. The mater has only a hazy idea of how things +stand, and she's an incurable optimist anyway. Nelly and the Infant—you +haven't met the Infant yet—don't know anything about it. I tell you it +put the breeze up when I got able to go into our affairs and learned how +things stood. I thought I'd get mended and then be a giddy idler for a +year or so. But it's up to me. I have to get into the collar. Otherwise +I should have stayed south all winter. You know we've just got home. I +had to loaf in the sun for practically a year. Now I have to get busy. I +don't mean to say that the poorhouse stares us in the face, you know, +but unless a certain amount of revenue is forthcoming, we simply can't +afford to keep up this place.</p> + +<p>"And I'd damn well like to keep it going." Stubby paused to light a +cigarette. "I like it. It's our home. We'd be deucedly sore at seeing +anybody else hang up his hat and call it home. So behold in me an active +cannery operator when the season opens, a conscienceless profiteer for +sentiment's sake. You live up where the blueback salmon run, don't you, +Jack?"</p> + +<p>MacRae nodded.</p> + +<p>"How many trollers fish those waters?"</p> + +<p>"Anywhere from forty to a hundred, from ten to thirty rowboats."</p> +<p><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78"></a></p> +<p>"The Folly Bay cannery gets practically all that catch?"</p> + +<p>MacRae nodded again.</p> + +<p>"I'm trying to figure a way of getting some of those blueback salmon," +Abbott said crisply. "How can it best be done?"</p> + +<p>MacRae thought a minute. A whole array of possibilities popped into his +mind. He knew that the Abbotts owned the Crow Harbor cannery, in the +mouth of Howe Sound just outside Vancouver Harbor. When he spoke he +asked a question instead of giving an answer.</p> + +<p>"Are you going to buck the Packers' Association?"</p> + +<p>"Yes and no," Stubby chuckled. "You do know something about the cannery +business, don't you?"</p> + +<p>"One or two things," MacRae admitted. "I grew up in the Gulf, remember, +among salmon fishermen."</p> + +<p>"Well, I'll be a little more explicit," Stubby volunteered. "Briefly, my +father, as you know, died while I was overseas. We own the Crow Harbor +cannery. I will say that while I was still going to school he started in +teaching me the business, and he taught me the way he learned it +himself—in the cannery and among fishermen. If I do say it, I know the +salmon business from gill net and purse seine to the Iron Chink and bank +advances on the season's pack. But Abbott, senior, it seems, wasn't a +profiteer. He took the war to heart. His patriotism didn't consist of +buying war bonds in fifty-thousand dollar lots and calling it square. He +got in wrong by trying to keep the price of fresh fish down locally, and +the last year he lived the Crow Harbor cannery o<a name="Page_79" id="Page_79"></a>nly made a normal +profit. Last season the plant operated at a loss in the hands of hired +men. They simply didn't get the fish. The Fraser River run of sockeye +has been going downhill. The river canneries get the fish that do run. +Crow Harbor, with a manager who wasn't up on his toes, got very few. I +don't believe we will ever see another big sockeye run in the Fraser +anyway. So we shall have to go up-coast to supplement the Howe Sound +catch and the few sockeyes we can get from gill-netters.</p> + +<p>"The Packers' Association can't hurt me—much. For one thing, I'm a +member. For another, I can still swing enough capital so they would +hesitate about using pressure. You understand. I've got to make that +Crow Harbor plant pay. I must have salmon to do so. I have to go outside +my immediate territory to get them. If I could get enough blueback to +keep full steam from the opening of the sockeye season until the coho +run comes—there's nothing to it. I've been having this matter looked +into pretty thoroughly. I can pay twenty per cent. over anything Gower +has ever paid for blueback and coin money. The question is, how can I +get them positively and in quantity?"</p> + +<p>"Buy them," MacRae put in softly.</p> + +<p>"Of course," Stubby agreed. "But buying direct means collecting. I have +the carriers, true. But where am I going to find men to whom I can turn +over a six-thousand-dollar boat and a couple of thousand dollars in cash +and say to him, 'Go buy me salmon'? His only interest in the matter is +his wage."</p> + +<p>"Bonus the crew. Pay 'em percentage on what salmon they bring in."</p> + +<p>"I've thought of that," Stubby said between puffs. "But—"</p> + +<p>"Or," MacRae made the plunge<a name="Page_80" id="Page_80"></a> he had been coming to while Stubby talked, +"I'll get them for you. I was going to buy bluebacks around Squitty +anyway for the fresh-fish market in town if I can make a sure-delivery +connection. I know those grounds. I know a lot of fishermen. If you'll +give me twenty per cent. over Gower prices for bluebacks delivered at +Crow Harbor I'll get them."</p> + +<p>"This grows interesting." Stubby straightened in his chair. "I thought +you were going to ranch it! Lord, I remember the night we sat watching +for the bombers to come back from a raid and you first told me about +that place of yours on Squitty Island. Seems ages ago—yet it isn't +long. As I remember, you were planning all sorts of things you and your +father would do."</p> + +<p>"I can't," MacRae said grimly. "You've been in California for months. +You wouldn't hear any mention of my affairs, anyway, if you'd been home. +I got back three days before the armistice. My father died of the flu +the night I got home. The ranch, or all of it but the old log house I +was born in and a patch of ground the size of a town lot, has gone the +way you mentioned your home might go if you don't buck up the business. +Things didn't go well with us lately. I have no land to turn to. So I'm +for the salmon business as a means to get on my feet."</p> + +<p>"Gower got your place?" Abbott hazarded.</p> + +<p>"Yes. How did you know?"</p> + +<p>"Made a guess. I heard he had built a summer home on the southeast end +of Squitty. In fact Nelly was up there last summer for a week or so. +Hurts, eh, Jack? That little trip to France cost us both something."</p> + +<p>MacRae sprang up and walked over to a window. He stood for half a minute +staring out to sea, looking in that direction by chance, because the +window happened to face that way, to where the Gulf haze lifted above a +faint purple patch that <a name="Page_81" id="Page_81"></a>was Squitty Island, very far on the horizon.</p> + +<p>"I'm not kicking," he said at last. "Not out loud, anyway."</p> + +<p>"No," Stubby said affectionately, "I know you're not, old man. Nor am I. +But I'm going to get action, and I have a hunch you will too. Now about +this fish business. If you think you can get them, I'll certainly go you +on that twenty per cent. proposition—up to the point where Gower boosts +me out of the game, if that is possible. We shall have to readjust our +arrangement then."</p> + +<p>"Will you give me a contract to that effect?" MacRae asked.</p> + +<p>"Absolutely. We'll get together at the office to-morrow and draft an +agreement."</p> + +<p>They shook hands to bind the bargain, grinning at each other a trifle +self-consciously.</p> + +<p>"Have you a suitable boat?" Stubby asked after a little.</p> + +<p>"No," MacRae admitted. "But I have been looking around. I find that I +can charter one cheaper than I can build—until such time as I make +enough to build a fast, able carrier."</p> + +<p>"I'll charter you one," Stubby offered. "That's where part of our money +is uselessly tied up, in expensive boats that never carried their weight +in salmon. I'm going to sell two fifty-footers and a seine boat. There's +one called the <i>Blackbird</i>, fast, seaworthy rig, you can have at a +<a name="Page_82" id="Page_82"></a>nominal rate."</p> + +<p>"All right," MacRae nodded. "By chartering I have enough cash in hand to +finance the buying. I'm going to start as soon as the bluebacks come +and run fresh fish, if I can make suitable connections."</p> + +<p>Stubby grinned.</p> + +<p>"I can fix that too," he said. "I happen to own some shares in the +Terminal Fish Company. The pater organized it to give Vancouver people +cheap fish, but somehow it didn't work as he intended. It's a fairly +strong concern. I'll introduce you. They'll buy your salmon, and they'll +treat you right."</p> + +<p>"And now," Stubby rose and stretched his one good arm and the other that +was visibly twisted and scarred between wrist and elbow, above his head, +"let's go downstairs and prattle. I see a car in front, and I hear +twittering voices."</p> + +<p>Halfway down the stairs Stubby halted and laid a hand on MacRae's arm.</p> + +<p>"Old Horace is a two-fisted old buccaneer," he said. "And I don't go +much on Norman. But I'll say Betty Gower is some girl. What do you +think, Silent John?"</p> + +<p>And Jack MacRae had to admit that Betty was. Oddly enough, Stubby Ab<a name="Page_83" id="Page_83"></a>bott +had merely put into words an impression to which MacRae himself was +slowly and reluctantly subscribing.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII</h2> + +<p><span class="smcap">Sea Boots and Salmon</span></p> + + +<p>From November to April the British Columbian coast is a region of +weeping skies, of intermittent frosts and fog, and bursts of sleety +snow. The frosts, fogs, and snow squalls are the punctuation points, so +to speak, of the eternal rain. Murky vapors eddy and swirl along the +coast. The sun hides behind gray banks of cloud, the shining face of him +a rare miracle bestowed upon the sight of men as a promise that bright +days and blossoming flowers will come again. When they do come the coast +is a pleasant country. The mountains reveal themselves, duskily green +upon the lower slopes, their sky-piercing summits crowned with snow caps +which endure until the sun comes to his full strength in July. The Gulf +is a vista of purple-distant shore and island, of shimmering sea. And +the fishermen come out of winter quarters to overhaul boats and gear +against the first salmon run.</p> + +<p>The blueback, a lively and toothsome fish, about which rages an +ichthyological argument as to whether he is a distant species of the +salmon tribe or merely a half-grown coho, is the first to show in great +schools. The spring salmon is always in the Gulf, but the spring is a +finny mystery with no known rule for his comings and goings, nor his +numbers. All the others, the blueba<a name="Page_84" id="Page_84"></a>ck, the sockeye, the hump, the coho, +and the dog salmon, run in the order named. They can be reckoned on as +a man reckons on changes of the moon. These are the mainstay of the +salmon canners. Upon their taking fortunes have been built—and +squandered—men have lived and died, loved and hated, gone hungry and +dressed their women in silks and furs. The can of pink meat some inland +chef dresses meticulously with parsley and sauces may have cost some +fisherman his life; a multiplicity of cases of salmon may have produced +a divorce in the packer's household. We eat this fine red fish and heave +its container into the garbage tin, with no care for the tragedy or +humors that have attended its getting for us.</p> + +<p>In the spring, when life takes on a new prompting, the blueback salmon +shows first in the Gulf. He cannot be taken by net or bait,—unless the +bait be a small live herring. He may only be taken in commercial +quantities by a spinner or a wobbling spoon hook of silver or brass or +copper drawn through the water at slow speed. The dainty gear of the +trout spinner gave birth to the trolling fleets of the Pacific Coast.</p> + +<p>At first the schools pass into the Straits of San Juan. Here the joint +fleets of British Columbia and of Puget Sound begin to harry them. A +week or ten days later the vanguard will be off Nanaimo. And in another +week they will be breaking water like trout in a still pool around the +rocky base of the Ballenas Light and the kelp beds and reefs of Squitty +Island.</p> + +<p>By the time they were there, in late April, there were twenty local +power boats to begin taking them, for Jack MacRae made the rounds of +Squitty to tell the fishermen that he was putting on a carrier to take +the first run of blueback to Vancouver markets.</p><p><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85"></a></p> + +<p>They were a trifle pessimistic. Other buyers had tried it, men gambling +on a shoestring for a stake in the fish trade, buyers unable to make +regular trips, whereby there was a tale of many salmon rotted in waiting +fish holds, through depending on a carrier that did not come. What was +the use of burning fuel, of tearing their fingers with the gear, of +catching fish to rot? Better to let them swim.</p> + +<p>But since the Folly Bay cannery never opened until the fish ran to +greater size and number, the fishermen, chafing against inaction after +an idle winter, took a chance and trolled for Jack MacRae.</p> + +<p>To the trailers' surprise they found themselves dealing with a new type +of independent buyer,—a man who could and did make his market trips +with clocklike precision. If MacRae left Squitty with a load on Monday, +saying that he would be at Squitty Cove or Jenkins Island or Scottish +Bay by Tuesday evening, he was there.</p> + +<p>He managed it by grace of an able sea boat, engined to drive through sea +and wind, and by the nerve and endurance to drive her in any weather. +There were times when the Gulf spread placid as a mill pond. There were +trips when he drove through with three thousand salmon under battened +hatches, his decks awash from boarding seas, ten and twelve and fourteen +hours of rough-and-tumble work that brought him into the Narrows and the +docks inside with smarting eyes and tired muscles, his head splitting +from the pound and clank of the engine and the fumes of gas and burned +oil.</p> + +<p>It was work, strain of mind and body, long hours filled with discomfort. +<a name="Page_86" id="Page_86"></a>But MacRae had never shrunk from things like that. He was aware that few +things worth while come easy. The world, so far as he knew, seldom +handed a man a fortune done up in tissue paper merely because he +happened to crave its possession. He was young and eager to do. There +was a reasonable satisfaction in the doing, even of the disagreeable, +dirty tasks necessary, in beating the risks he sometimes had to run. +There was a secret triumph in overcoming difficulties as they arose. And +he had an object, which, if it did not always lie in the foreground of +his mind, he was nevertheless keen on attaining.</p> + +<p>The risks and work and strain, perhaps because he put so much of himself +into the thing, paid from the beginning more than he had dared hope. He +made a hundred dollars his first trip, paid the trollers five cents a +fish more on the second trip and cleared a hundred and fifty. In the +second week of his venture he struck a market almost bare of fresh +salmon with thirty-seven hundred shining bluebacks in his hold. He made +seven hundred dollars on that single cargo.</p> + +<p>A Greek buyer followed the <i>Blackbird</i> out through the Narrows that +trip. MacRae beat him two hours to the trolling fleet at Squitty, a +fleet that was growing in numbers.</p> + +<p>"Bluebacks are thirty-five cents," he said to the first man who ranged +alongside to deliver. "And I want to tell you something that you can +talk over with the rest of the crowd. I have a market for every fish +this bunch can catch. If I can't handle them with the <i>Blackbird</i>, I'll +put on another boat. I'm not here to buy fish just till the Folly Bay +cannery opens. I'll be making regular trips to the end of the salmon +season. My price will be as good as anybody's, better than some. If +Gower gets your bluebacks <a name="Page_87" id="Page_87"></a>this season for twenty-five cents, it will be +because you want to make him a present. Meantime, there's another buyer +an hour behind me. I don't know what he'll pay. But whatever he pays +there aren't enough salmon being caught here yet to keep two carriers +running. You can figure it out for yourself."</p> + +<p>MacRae thought he knew his men. Nor was his judgment in error. The Greek +hung around. In twenty-four hours he got three hundred salmon. MacRae +loaded nearly three thousand.</p> + +<p>Once or twice after that he had competitive buyers in Squitty Cove and +the various rendezvous of the trolling fleet. But the fishermen had a +loyalty born of shrewd reckoning. They knew from experience the way of +the itinerant buyer. They knew MacRae. Many of them had known his +father. If Jack MacRae had a market for all the salmon he could buy on +the Gower grounds all season, they saw where Folly Bay would buy no fish +in the old take-it-or-leave it fashion. They were keenly alive to the +fact that they were getting mid-July prices in June, that Jack MacRae +was the first buyer who had not tried to hold down prices by pulling a +poor mouth and telling fairy tales of poor markets in town. He had +jumped prices before there was any competitive spur. They admired young +MacRae. He had nerve; he kept his word.</p> + +<p>Wherefore it did not take them long to decide that he was a good man to +keep going. As a result of this decision other casual buyers got few +fish even when they met MacRae's price.</p> + +<p>When he had run a little over a month MacRae took stock. He paid the +Crow Harbor Canning Company, which was Stubby Abbott's trading name, two +hundred and fifty a month for charter of the <i>Blackbird</i>. He had +operating outlay for gas, oil, crushed ice, and wages for Vincent +Ferrara, whom he took on when he reached the limit of single-handed +endurance. Over and above these expenses he had cleared twenty-six +hundred dollars.</p> + +<p>That was only a beginning he knew,—only a beginning of profits and of +work. He purposely thrust the taking of salmon on young Ferrara, let him +<a name="Page_88" id="Page_88"></a>handle the cash, tally in the fish, watched Vincent nonchalantly chuck +out overripe salmon that careless trollers would as nonchalantly heave +in for fresh ones if they could get away with it. For Jack MacRae had it +in his mind to go as far and as fast as he could while the going was +good. That meant a second carrier on the run as soon as the Folly Bay +cannery opened, and it meant that he must have in charge of the second +boat an able man whom he could trust. There was no question about +trusting Vincent Ferrara. It was only a matter of his ability to handle +the job, and that he demonstrated to MacRae's complete satisfaction.</p> + +<p>Early in June MacRae went to Stubby Abbott.</p> + +<p>"Have you sold the <i>Bluebird</i> yet?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"I want to let three of those <i>Bird</i> boats go," Stubby told him. "I +don't need 'em. They're dead capital. But I haven't made a sale yet."</p> + +<p>"Charter me the <i>Bluebird</i> on the same terms," Jack proposed.</p> + +<p>"You're on. Things must be going good."</p> + +<p>"Not too bad," MacRae admitted.</p> + +<p>"Folly Bay opens the twentieth. We open July first," Stubby said +abruptly. "How many bluebacks are you going to get for us?"</p> + +<p>"Just about all that are caught around Squitty Island," MacRae said +quietly. "That's why I want another carrier."</p> + +<p>"Huh!" Stubby grunted. His tone was slightly incredulous. "You'll have +to go some. Wish you luck though. More you get the better for me."</p> + +<p>"I expect to deliver sixty thousand bluebacks to Crow Harbor in July," +MacRae said.</p> + +<p>Stubby stared at him. His eyes twinkled.</p> +<p><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89"></a></p> +<p>"If you can do that in July, and in August too," he said, "I'll <i>give</i> +you the <i>Bluebird</i>."</p> + +<p>"No," MacRae smiled. "I'll buy her."</p> + +<p>"Where will Folly Bay get off if you take that many fish away?" Stubby +reflected.</p> + +<p>"Don't know. And I don't care a hoot." MacRae shrugged his shoulders. +"I'm fairly sure I can do it. You don't care?"</p> + +<p>"Do I? I'll shout to the world I don't," Stubby replied. "It's +self-preservation with me. Let old Horace look out for himself. He had +his fingers in the pie while we were in France. I don't have to have +four hundred per cent profit to do business. Get the fish if you can, +Jack, old boy, even if it busts old Horace. Which it won't—and, as I +told you, lack of them may bust me."</p> + +<p>"By the way," Stubby said as MacRae rose to go, "don't you ever have an +hour to spare in town? You haven't been out at the house for six weeks."</p> + +<p>MacRae held out his hands. They were red and cut and scarred, roughened, +and sore from salt water and ice-handling and fish slime.</p> + +<p>"Wouldn't they look well clasping a wafer and a teacup," he laughed. +"I'm working, Stub. When I have an hour to spare I lie down and sleep. +If I stopped to play every time I came to town—do you think you'd get +your sixty thousand bluebacks in July?"</p> + +<p>Stubb<a name="Page_90" id="Page_90"></a>y looked at MacRae a second, at his work-torn hands and weary eyes.</p> + +<p>"I guess you're right," he said slowly. "But the old stone house will +still be up on the corner when the salmon run is over. Don't forget +that."</p> + +<p>MacRae went off to Coal Harbor to take over the second carrier. And he +wondered as he went if it would all be such clear sailing, if it were +possible that at the first thrust he had found an open crack in Gower's +armor through which he could prick the man and make him squirm.</p> + +<p>He looked at his hands. When they fingered death as a daily task they +had been soft, white, delicate,—dainty instruments equally fit for the +manipulation of aerial controls, machine guns or teacups. Why should +honest work prevent a man from meeting pleasant people amid pleasant +surroundings? Well, it was not the work itself, it was simply the +effects of that gross labor. On the American continent, at least, a man +did not lose caste by following any honest occupation,—only he could +not work with the workers and flutter with the butterflies. MacRae, +walking down the street, communing with himself, knew that he must pay a +penalty for working with his hands. If he were a drone in +uniform—necessarily a drone since the end of war—he could dance and +play, flirt with pretty girls, be a welcome guest in great houses, make +the heroic past pay social dividends.</p> + +<p>It took nearly as much courage and endurance to work as it had taken to +fight; indeed it took rather more, at times, to keep on working. +Theoretically he should not lose caste. Yet MacRae knew he +would,—unless he made a barrel of money. There had been stray straws in +the past month. There were, it seemed, very nice people who could not +quite understand why an officer and a gentleman should do work that +<a name="Page_91" id="Page_91"></a>wasn't,—well, not even clean. Not clean in the purely objective, +physical sense, like banking or brokerage, or teaching, or any of those +semi-genteel occupations which permit people to make a living without +straining their backs or soiling their hands. He wasn't even sure that +Stubby Abbott—MacRae was ashamed of his cynicism when he got that far. +Stubby was a real man. Even if he needed a man or a man's activities in +his business Stubby wouldn't cultivate that man socially merely because +he needed his producing capacity.</p> + +<p>The solace for long hours and aching flesh and sleep-weary eyes was a +glimpse of concrete reward,—money which meant power, power to repay a +debt, opportunity to repay an ancient score. It seemed to Jack MacRae +that his personal honor was involved in getting back all that broad +sweep of land which his father had claimed from the wilderness, that he +must exact an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. That was the why +of his unceasing energy, his uncomplaining endurance of long hours in +sea boots, the impatient facing of storms that threatened to delay. Man +strives under the spur of a vision, a deep longing, an imperative +squaring of needs with desires. MacRae moved under the whip of all +three.</p> + +<p>He was quite sanguine that he would succeed in this undertaking. But he +had not looked much beyond the first line of trenches which he planned +to storm. They did not seem to him particularly formidable. The Scotch +had been credited with uncanny knowledge of the future. Jack MacRae, +however, though his Highland blood ran undiluted, had n<a name="Page_92" id="Page_92"></a>o such gift of +prescience. He did not know that the highway of modern industry is +strewn with the casualties of commercial warfare.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h2> + +<p><span class="smcap">Vested Rights</span></p> + + +<p>A small balcony over the porch of Gower's summer cottage commanded a +wide sweep of the Gulf south and east. That was one reason he had built +there. He liked to overlook the sea, the waters out of which he had +taken a fortune, the highway of his collecting boats. He had to keep in +touch with the Folly Bay cannery while the rush of the pack was on. But +he was getting more fastidious as he grew older, and he no longer +relished the odors of the cannery. There were other places nearer the +cannery than Cradle Bay, if none more sightly, where he could have built +a summer house. People wondered why he chose the point that frowned over +Poor Man's Rock. Even his own family had questioned his judgment. +Particularly his wife. She complained of the isolation. She insisted on +a houseful of people when she was there, and as Vancouver was full of +eligible week-enders of both sexes her wish was always gratified. And no +one except Betty Gower ever knew that merely to sit looking out on the +Gulf from that vantage point afforded her father some inscrutable +satisfaction.</p> + +<p>On a day in mid-July Horace Gower stepped out on this balcony. He +carried in his hand a pair of p<a name="Page_93" id="Page_93"></a>rism binoculars. He took a casual look +around. Then he put the glasses to his eyes and scanned the Gulf with a +slow, searching sweep. At first sight it seemed empty. Then far +eastward toward Vancouver his glass picked up two formless dots which +alternately showed and disappeared.</p> + +<p>Gower put down the glasses, seated himself in a grass chair, lighted a +cigar and leaned back, looking impersonally down on Point Old and the +Rock. A big, slow swell rolled up off the Gulf, breaking with a +precisely spaced <i>boom</i> along the cliffs. For forty-eight hours a +southeaster had swept the sea, that rare phenomenon of a summer gale +which did not blow itself out between suns. This had been a wild +tantrum, driving everything of small tonnage to the nearest shelter, +even delaying the big coasters.</p> + +<p>One of these, trailing black smoke from two funnels, lifting white +superstructure of cabins high above her main deck, standing bold and +clear in the mellow sunshine, steamed out of the fairway between Squitty +and Vancouver Island. But she gained scant heed from Gower. His eyes +kept turning to where those distant specks showed briefly between +periods in the hollows of the sea. They drew nearer. Gower finished his +cigar in leisurely fashion. He focused the glass again. He grunted +something unintelligible. They were what he fully expected to behold as +soon as the southeaster ceased to whip the Gulf,—the <i>Bluebird</i> and the +<i>Blackbird</i>, Jack MacRae's two salmon carriers. They were walking up to +Squitty in eight-knot boots. Through his glass Gower watched them lift +and fall, lurch and yaw, running with short bursts of speed on the crest +of a wave, laboring heavily in the trough, plowing steadily up through +uneasy waters to take the salmon that should<a name="Page_94" id="Page_94"></a> go to feed the hungry +machines at Folly Bay.</p> + +<p>Gower laid aside the glasses. He smoked a second cigar down to a stub, +resting his plump hands on his plump stomach. He resembled a thoughtful +Billiken in white flannels, a round-faced, florid, middle-aged Billiken. +By that time the two <i>Bird</i> boats had come up and parted on the head of +Squitty. The <i>Bluebird</i>, captained by Vin Ferrara, headed into the Cove. +The <i>Blackbird</i>, slashing along with a bone in her teeth, rounded Poor +Man's Rock, cut across the mouth of Cradle Bay, and stood on up the +western shore.</p> + +<p>"He knows every pot-hole where a troller can lie. He's not afraid of +wind or sea or work. No wonder he gets the fish. Those damned—"</p> + +<p>Gower cut his soliloquy off in the middle to watch the <i>Blackbird</i> slide +out of sight behind a point. He knew all about Jack MacRae's operations, +the wide swath he was cutting in the matter of blueback salmon. The +Folly Bay showing to date was a pointed reminder. Gower's cannery +foreman and fish collectors gave him profane accounts of MacRae's +indefatigable raiding,—as it suited them to regard his operations. What +Gower did not know he made it his business to find out. He sat now in +his grass chair, a short, compact body of a man, with a heavy-jawed, +powerful face frowning in abstraction. Gower looked younger than his +fifty-six years. There was little gray in his light-brown hair. His blue +eyes were clear and piercing. The thick roundness of his body was not +altogether composed of useless tissue. Even considered superficially he +looked what he really was, what he had been for many years,—a man +accustomed to getting things done according to his desire. He did not +look like a man who would fight with crude weapons—such as a pike +pole—but nevertheless there was the undeniable impression of latent +force, of aggressive possibilities, of the will and the ability to +rudely dispose of things which might become obstacles in his way. And +the current history of him in the Gulf of Georgia did not belie such an +impression.</p> + +<p>He left the balcony at last. He appeared next moving, with the stumpy, +<a name="Page_95" id="Page_95"></a>ungraceful stride peculiar to the short and thick-bodied, down the walk +to a float. From this he hailed the <i>Arrow</i>, and a boy came in, rowing a +dinghy.</p> + +<p>When Gower reached the cruiser's deck he cocked his ear at voices in the +after cabin. He put his head through the companion hatch. Betty Gower +and Nelly Abbott were curled up on a berth, chuckling to each other over +some exchange of confidences.</p> + +<p>"Thought you were ashore," Gower grunted.</p> + +<p>"Oh, the rest of the crowd went off on a hike into the woods, so we came +out here to look around. Nelly hasn't seen the <i>Arrow</i> inside since it +was done over," Betty replied.</p> + +<p>"I'm going to Folly Bay," Gower said. "Will you go ashore?"</p> + +<p>"Far from such," Betty returned. "I'd as soon go to the cannery as +anywhere. Can't we, daddy?"</p> + +<p>"Oh, yes. Bit of a swell though. You may be sick."</p> + +<p>Betty laughed. That was a standing joke between them. She had never been +seasick. Nelly Abbott declared that if there was anything she loved it +was to ride the dead swell that ran after a storm. They came up out of +the cabin to watch the mooring line cast off, and to wave handkerchiefs +at the empty cottage porches as the <i>Arrow</i> backed and straightened and +swept out of the bay.</p> + +<p>The <i>Arrow</i> was engined to justify her name. But the swell was heavier +than it looked from shore. No craft, even a sixty-footer built for +<a name="Page_96" id="Page_96"></a>speed, finds her speed lines a thing of comfort in heavy going. Until +the <i>Arrow</i> passed into the lee of an island group halfway along +Squitty she made less time than a fishing boat, and she rolled and +twisted uncomfortably. If Horace Gower had a mind to reach Folly Bay +before the <i>Blackbird</i> he could not have done so. However, he gave no +hint of such intention. He kept to the deck. The girls stayed below +until the big cruiser struck easier going and a faster gait. Then they +joined Gower.</p> + +<p>The three of them stood by the rail just abaft the pilot house when the +<i>Arrow</i> turned into the half-mile breadth of Folly Bay. The cannery +loomed white on shore, with a couple of purse seiners and a tender or +two tied at the slips. And four hundred yards off the cannery wharf the +<i>Blackbird</i> had dropped anchor and lay now, a dozen trolling boats +clustered about her to deliver fish.</p> + +<p>"Slow up and stop abreast of that buyer," Gower ordered.</p> + +<p>The <i>Arrow's</i> skipper brought his vessel to a standstill within a +boat-length of the <i>Blackbird</i>.</p> + +<p>"Why, that's Jack MacRae," Nelly Abbott exclaimed. "Hoo-hoo, Johnny!"</p> + +<p>She waved both hands for good measure. MacRae, bareheaded, sleeves +rolled above his elbows, standing in hip boots of rubber on a deck wet +and slippery with water and fish slime, amid piles of gleaming salmon, +recognized her easily enough. He waved greeting, but his gaze only for +that one recognizing instant left the salmon that were landing <i>flop, +flop</i> on the <i>Blackbird's</i> deck out of a troller's fish well. He made +out a slip, handed the troller some currency. There was a brief exchange +of words between them. The man nodded, pushed off his boat. Instantly +another edged into the vacant place. Salmon began to fall on the deck, +heaved up on a picaroon. At the other end of the fish hold another of +the Ferrara boys was tallying in fish.</p> + +<p>"Old crab," Nelly Abbott murmured. "He doesn't even look at us."</p> + +<p><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97"></a>"He's counting salmon, silly," Betty explained. "How can he?"</p> + +<p>There was no particular inflection in her voice. Nevertheless Horace +Gower shot a sidelong glance at his daughter. She also waved a hand +pleasantly to Jack MacRae, who had faced about now.</p> + +<p>"Why don't you say you're glad to see us, old dear?" Nelly Abbott +suggested bluntly, and smiling so that all her white teeth gleamed and +her eyes twinkled mischievously.</p> + +<p>"Tickled to death," MacRae called back. He went through the pantomime of +shaking hands with himself. His lips parted in a smile. "But I'm the +busiest thing afloat right now. See you later."</p> + +<p>"Nerve," Horace Gower muttered under his breath.</p> + +<p>"Not if we see you first," Nelly Abbott retorted.</p> + +<p>"It's not likely you will," MacRae laughed.</p> + +<p>He turned back to his work. The fisherman alongside was tall and surly +looking, a leathery-faced individual with a marked scowl. He heaved half +a dozen salmon up on the <i>Blackbird</i>. Then he climbed up himself. He +towered over Jack MacRae, and MacRae was not exactly a small man. He +said something, his hands on his hips. MacRae looked at him. He seemed +to be making some reply. And he stepped back from the man. Every other +fisherman turned his face toward the <i>Blackbird's</i> deck. Their +clattering talk stopped short.</p> + +<p>The man leaned forward. His hands left his hips, drew into doubled +fists, extended threateningly. He took a step toward MacRae.</p> + +<p>And MacRae suddenly lunged forward, as if propelled by some invisible +spring of tremendous force. With incredible swiftne<a name="Page_98" id="Page_98"></a>ss his left hand and +then his right shot at the man's face. The two blows sounded like two +open-handed smacks. But the fisherman sagged, went lurching backward. +His heels caught on the <i>Blackbird's</i> bulwark and he pitched backward +head-first into the hold of his own boat.</p> + +<p>MacRae picked up the salmon and flung them one by one after the man, +with no great haste, but with little care where they fell, for one or +two spattered against the fellow's face as he clawed up out of his own +hold. There was a smear of red on his lips.</p> + +<p>"Oh! My goodness gracious, sakes alive!"</p> + +<p>Nelly Abbott grasped Betty by the arm and murmured these expletives as +much in a spirit of deviltry as of shock. Her eyes danced.</p> + +<p>"Did you see that?" she whispered. "I never saw two men fight before. +I'd hate to have Jack MacRae hit <i>me</i>."</p> + +<p>But Betty was holding her breath, for MacRae had picked up a twelve-foot +pike pole, a thing with an ugly point and a hook of iron on its tip. He +only used it, however, to shove away the boat containing the man he had +so savagely smashed. And while he did that Gower curtly issued an order, +and the <i>Arrow</i> slid on to the cannery wharf.</p> + +<p>Nelly went below for something. Betty stood by the rail, staring back +thoughtfully, unaware that her father was keenly watching the look on +her face, with an odd expression in his own eyes.</p> + +<p>"You saw quite a lot of young MacRae last spring, didn't you?" he asked +abruptly. "Do you like him?"</p> + +<p>A faint touch of color leaped into her cheeks. She met her father's +glance with an inquiring one of her own.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99"></a>"Well—yes. Rather," she said at last. "He's a nice boy."</p> + +<p>"Better not," Gower rumbled. His frown grew deeper. His teeth clamped a +cigar in one corner of his mouth at an aggressive angle. "Granted that +he is what you call a nice boy. I'll admit he's good-looking and that he +dances well. And he seems to pack a punch up his sleeve. I'd suggest +that you don't cultivate any romantic fancy for him. Because he's making +himself a nuisance in my business—and I'm going to smash him."</p> + +<p>Gower turned away. If he had lingered he might have observed +unmistakable signs of temper. Betty flew storm signals from cheek and +eye. She looked after her father with something akin to defiance, +likewise with an air of astonishment.</p> + +<p>"As if I—" she left the whispered sentence unfinished.</p> + +<p>She perched herself on the mahogany-capped rail, and while she waited +for Nelly Abbott she gave herself up to thinking of herself and her +father and her father's amazing warning which carried a veiled +threat,—an open threat so far as Jack MacRae was concerned. Why should +he cut loose like that on her?</p> + +<p>She stared thoughtfully at the <i>Blackbird</i>, marked the trollers slipping +in from the grounds and clustering around the chunky carrier.</p> + +<p>It might have interested Mr. Horace Gower could he have received a +verbatim report of his daughter's reflections for<a name="Page_100" id="Page_100"></a> the next five minutes. +But whether it would have pleased him it is hard to say.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX</h2> + +<p><span class="smcap">The Complexity of Simple Matters</span></p> + + +<p>The army, for a period extending over many months, had imposed a rigid +discipline on Jack MacRae. The Air Service had bestowed upon him a less +rigorous discipline, but a far more exacting self-control. He was not +precisely aware of it, but those four years had saved him from being a +firebrand of sorts in his present situation, because there resided in +him a fiery temper and a capacity for passionate extremes, and those +years in the King's uniform, whatever else they may have done for him, +had placed upon his headlong impulses manifold checks, taught him the +vital necessity of restraint, the value of restraint.</p> + +<p>If the war had made human life seem a cheap and perishable commodity, it +had also worked to give men like MacRae a high sense of honor, to +accentuate a natural distaste for lying and cheating, for anything that +was mean, petty, ignoble. Perhaps the Air Service was unique in that it +was at once the most dangerous and the most democratic and the most +individual of all the organizations that fought the Germans. It had high +standards. The airmen were all young, the pick of the nations, clean, +eager, vigorous boys whose ideals were still undimmed. They lived +and—as it happened—died in big moments. They trained with the gods in +airy spaces and became men, those who survived.</p> + +<p>And the gods may launch destroying thunderbolts, but they do not lie or +cheat or steal. An honest man may respect an honest enemy, and be roused +to murderous fury by a common rascal's trickery.</p> + +<p>When MacRae dropped his hook in Folly Bay he was two days overdue, for +the first time in his fish-running venture. The trollers had promised to +hold their fish. The<a name="Page_101" id="Page_101"></a> first man alongside to deliver reminded him of +this.</p> + +<p>"Southeaster held you up, eh?" said he. "We fished in the lee off the +top end. But we might as well have laid in. Held 'em too long for you."</p> + +<p>"They spoiled before you could slough them on the cannery, eh?" MacRae +observed.</p> + +<p>"Most of mine did. They took some."</p> + +<p>"How many of your fish went bad?" Jack asked.</p> + +<p>"About twenty-five, I guess."</p> + +<p>MacRae finished checking the salmon the fisherman heaved up on the deck. +He made out two slips and handed the man his money.</p> + +<p>"I'm paying you for the lost fish," he said. "I told you to hold them +for me. I want you to hold them. If I can't get here on time, it's my +loss, not yours."</p> + +<p>The fisherman looked at the money in his hand and up at MacRae.</p> + +<p>"Well," he said, "you're the first buyer I ever seen do that. You're all +right, all right."</p> + +<p>There were variations of this. Some of the trollers, weatherwise old +sea-dogs, had foreseen that the <i>Blackbird</i> could not face that blow, +and they had sold their fish. Others had held on. These, who were all +men MacRae knew, he paid according to their own estimate of loss. He did +not argue. He accepted their word. It was an astonishing experience for +the trolling fleet. They had never found a buyer willing to make good a +loss of that kind.</p><p><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102"></a></p> + +<p>But there were other folk afloat besides simple, honest fishermen who +would not lie for the price of one salmon or forty. When the <i>Arrow</i> +drew abreast and stopped, a boat had pushed in beside the <i>Blackbird</i>. +The fisherman in it put half a dozen bluebacks on the deck and clambered +up himself.</p> + +<p>"You owe me for thirty besides them," he announced.</p> + +<p>"How's that?" MacRae asked coolly.</p> + +<p>But he was not cool inside. He knew the man, a preemptor of Folly Bay, a +truckler to the cannery because he was always in debt to the +cannery,—and a quarrelsome individual besides, who took advantage of +his size and strength to browbeat less able men.</p> + +<p>MacRae had got few salmon off Sam Kaye since the cannery opened. He had +never asked Kaye to hold fish for him. He knew instantly what was in +Kaye's mind; it had flitted from one boat to another that MacRae was +making good the loss of salmon held for him, and Kaye was going to get +in on this easy money if he could bluff it through.</p> + +<p>He stood on the <i>Blackbird's</i> deck, snarlingly demanding payment for +thirty fish. MacRae looked at him silently. He hated brawling, +acrimonious dispute. He was loth to a common row at that moment, because +he was acutely conscious of the two girls watching. But he was even more +conscious of Gower's stare and the curious expectancy of the fishermen +clustered about his stern.</p> + +<p>Kaye was simply trying to do him out of fifteen doll<a name="Page_103" id="Page_103"></a>ars. MacRae knew it. +He knew that the fishermen knew it,—and he had a suspicion that Folly +Bay might not be unaware, or averse, to Sam Kaye taking a fall out of +him. Folly Bay had tried other unpleasant tricks.</p> + +<p>"That doesn't go for you, Kaye," he said quietly. "I know your game. Get +off my boat and take your fish with you."</p> + +<p>Sam Kaye glowered threateningly. He had cowed men before with the +fierceness of his look. He was long-armed and raw-boned, and he rather +fancied himself in a rough and tumble. He was quite blissfully ignorant +that Jack MacRae was stewing under his outward calmness. Kaye took a +step forward, with an intimidating thrust of his jaw.</p> + +<p>MacRae smashed him squarely in the mouth with a straight left, and +hooked him somewhere on the chin with a wicked right cross. Either blow +was sufficient to knock any ordinary man down. There was a deceptive +power in MacRae's slenderness, which was not so much slenderness as +perfect bodily symmetry. He weighed within ten pounds as much as Sam +Kaye, although he did not look it, and he was as quick as a playful +kitten. Kaye went down, as told before. He lifted a dazed countenance +above the cockpit as MacRae shoved his craft clear.</p> + +<p>The fishermen broke the silence with ribald laughter. They knew Kaye's +game too.</p> + +<p>MacRae left Folly Bay later in the afternoon, poorer by many dollars +paid for rotten salmon. He wasn't in a particularly genial mood. The Sam +Kaye affair had come at an inopportune moment. He didn't care to stand +out as a bruiser. Still, he asked himself irritably, why should he care +because Nelly Abbott and Betty Gower had seen him using his fists? He +was perfectly justified. Indeed, he knew very well he could have done +nothing else. The trailers had chortled over the outcome. These were +matters they could understand and <a name="Page_104" id="Page_104"></a>appreciate. Even Steve Ferrara looked +at him enviously.</p> + +<p>"It makes me wish I'd dodged the gas," Steve said wistfully. "It's hell +to wheeze your breath in and out. By jiminy, you're wicked with your +hands, Jack. Did you box much in France?"</p> + +<p>"Quite a lot," MacRae replied. "Some of the fellows in our squadron were +pretty clever. We used the gloves quite a bit."</p> + +<p>"And you're naturally quick," Steve drawled. "Now, me, the gas has +cooked my goose. I'd have to bat Kaye over the head with an oar. Gee, he +sure got a surprise."</p> + +<p>They both laughed. Even upon his bloody face—as he rose out of his own +fish hold—bewildered astonishment had been Sam Kaye's chief expression.</p> + +<p>The <i>Blackbird</i> went her rounds. At noon the next day she met Vincent +Ferrara with her sister ship, and the two boats made one load for the +<i>Blackbird</i>. She headed south. With high noon, too, came the summer +westerly, screeching and whistling and lashing the Gulf to a brief fury.</p> + +<p>It was the regular summer wind, a yachtsman's gale. Four days out of six +its cycle ran the same, a breeze rising at ten o'clock, stiffening to a +healthy blow, a mere sigh at sundown. Midnight would find the sea smooth +as a mirror, the heaving swell killed by changing tides.</p> + +<p>So the <i>Blackbird</i> ran down Squitty, rolling and yawing through a +following sea, and turned into Squitty Cove to rest till night and calm +settled on the Gulf.</p> +<p><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105"></a></p> +<p>When her mudhook was down in that peaceful nook, Steve Ferrara turned +into his bunk to get a few hours' sleep against the long night watch. +MacRae stirred wakeful on the sun-hot deck, slushing it down with +buckets of sea water to save his ice and fish. He coiled ropes, made his +vessel neat, and sat him down to think. Squitty Cove always stirred him +to introspection. His mind leaped always to the manifold suggestions of +any well-remembered place. He could shut his eyes and see the old log +house behind its leafy screen of alder and maple at the Cove's head. The +rosebushes before it were laden with bloom now. At his hand were the +gray cliffs backed by grassy patches, running away inland to virgin +forest. He felt dispossessed of those noble acres. He was always seeing +them through his father's eyes, feeling as Donald MacRae must have felt +in those last, lonely years of which he had written in simple language +that had wrung his son's heart.</p> + +<p>But it never occurred to Jack MacRae that his father, pouring out the +tale of those troubled years, had bestowed upon him an equivocal +heritage.</p> + +<p>He slid overboard the small skiff the <i>Blackbird</i> carried and rowed +ashore. There were rowboat trollers on the beach asleep in their tents +and rude lean-tos. He walked over the low ridge behind which stood Peter +Ferrara's house. It was hot, the wooded heights of the island shutting +off the cool westerly. On such a day Peter Ferrara should be dozing on +his porch and Dolly perhaps mending stockings or sewing in a rocker +beside him.</p> + +<p>But the porch was bare. As MacRae drew near the house a man came out the +door and down the three low steps. He was short and thick-set, young, +quite fair, inclined already to floridness of skin. MacRae knew him at +once for Norman Gower. He was a typical Gower,—a second edition of his +father, save that his face was less suggestive of power, less heavily +marked with sullenness.</p><p><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106"></a></p> + +<p>He glanced with blank indifference at Jack MacRae, passed within six +feet and walked along the path which ran around the head of the Cove. +MacRae watched him. He would cross between the boathouse and the roses +in MacRae's dooryard. MacRae had an impulse to stride after him, to +forbid harshly any such trespass on MacRae ground. But he smiled at that +childishness. It was childish, MacRae knew. But he felt that way about +it, just as he often felt that he himself had a perfect right to range +the whole end of Squitty, to tramp across greensward and through forest +depths, despite Horace Gower's legal title to the land. MacRae was aware +of this anomaly in his attitude, without troubling to analyze it.</p> + +<p>He walked into old Peter's house without announcement beyond his +footsteps on the floor, as he had been accustomed to do as far back as +he could remember. Dolly was sitting beside a little table, her chin in +her palms. There was a droop to her body that disturbed MacRae. She had +sat for hours like that the night his father died. And there was now on +her face something of the same look of sad resignation and pity. Her +big, dark eyes were misty, troubled, when she lifted them to MacRae.</p> + +<p>"Hello, Jack," she said.</p> + +<p>He came up to her, put his hands on her shoulders.</p> + +<p>"What is it now?" he demanded. "I saw Norman Gower leaving as I came up. +And here you're looking—what's wrong?"</p> + +<p>His tone was imperative.</p> + +<p>"Nothing, Johnny."</p> + +<p>"You don't cry for nothing. You're not that kind," MacRae replied. +"That chunky lobster hasn't given you the glooms, surely?"</p> + +<p>Dolly's eyes flashed.</p> +<p><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107"></a></p> +<p>"It isn't like you to call names," she declared. "It isn't nice. +And—and what business of yours is it whether I laugh or cry?"</p> + +<p>MacRae smiled. Dolly in a temper was not wholly strange to him. He was +struck with her remarkable beauty every time he saw her. She was +altogether too beautiful a flower to be blushing unseen on an island in +the Gulf. He shook her gently.</p> + +<p>"Because I'm big brother. Because you and I were kids together for years +before we ever knew there could be serpents in Eden. Because anything +that hurts you hurts me. I don't like anything to make you cry, <i>mia +Dolores</i>. I'd wring Norman Gower's chubby neck with great pleasure if I +thought he could do that. I didn't even know you knew him."</p> + +<p>Dolly dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief.</p> + +<p>"There are lots of things you don't know, Jack MacRae," she murmured. +"Besides, why shouldn't I know Norman?"</p> + +<p>MacRae threw out his hands helplessly.</p> + +<p>"No law against it, of course," he admitted. "Only—well—"</p> + +<p>He was conscious of floundering, with her grave, dark eyes searching his +face. There was no reason save his own hostility to anything Gower,—and +Dolly knew no basis for that save the fact that Horace Gower had +acquired his father's ranch. That could not possibly be a ground for +Dolores Ferrara to frown on any Gower, male or female, who happened to +come her way.</p> + +<p>"Why, I suppose it really is none of my business," he said slowly. +"Except that I can't help being concerned in anything that makes you +unhappy. That's all."</p> + +<p>He sat down on the arm of her chair and patted her cheek. To his utter +<a name="Page_108" id="Page_108"></a>amazement Dolly broke into a storm of tears. Long ago he had seen Dolly +cry when she had hurt herself, because he had teased her, because she +was angry or disappointed. He had never seen any woman cry as she did +now. It was not just simple grieved weeping. It was a tempest that shook +her. Her body quivered, her breath came in gasping bursts between +racking sobs.</p> + +<p>MacRae gathered her into his arms, trying to dam that wild flood. She +put her face against him and clung there, trembling like some hunted +thing seeking refuge, mysteriously stirring MacRae with the passionate +abandon of her tears, filling him with vague apprehensions, with a +strange excitement.</p> + +<p>Like the tornado, swift in its striking and passing, so this storm +passed. Dolly's sobbing ceased. She rested passively in his arms for a +minute. Then she sighed, brushed the cloudy hair out of her eyes, and +looked up at him.</p> + +<p>"I wonder why I should go all to pieces like that so suddenly?" she +muttered. "And why I should somehow feel better for it?"</p> + +<p>"I don't know," MacRae said. "Maybe I could tell you if I knew <i>why</i> you +went off like that. You poor little devil. Something has stung you deep, +I know."</p> + +<p>"Yes," she admitted. "I hope nothing like it ever comes to you, Jack. +I'm bleeding internally. Oh, it hurts, it hurts!"</p> + +<p>She laid her head against him and cried again softly.</p> + +<p>"Tell me," he whispered.</p> + +<p>"Why not?" She lifted her head after a little. "You could always keep +things to yourself. It wasn't much wonder they called you Silent John. +Do you know I never really grasped The Ancient Mariner until now? People +<i>must</i> tell their troubles to some one—or they'd corrode inside."</p> +<p><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109"></a></p> +<p>"Go ahead," MacRae encouraged.</p> + +<p>"When Norman Gower went overseas we were engaged," she said bluntly, and +stopped. She was not looking at MacRae now. She stared at the opposite +wall, her fingers locked together in her lap.</p> + +<p>"For four years," she went on, "I've been hoping, dreaming, waiting, +loving. To-day he came home to tell me that he married in England two +years ago. Married in the madness of a drunken hour—that is how he puts +it—a girl who didn't care for anything but the good time his rank and +pay could give her."</p> + +<p>"I think you're in luck," MacRae said soberly.</p> + +<p>"What queer creatures men are!" She seemed not to have heard him—to be +thinking her own thoughts out loud. "He says he loves me, that he has +loved me all the time, that he feels as if he had been walking in his +sleep and fallen into some muddy hole. And I believe him. It's terrible, +Johnny."</p> + +<p>"It's impossible," MacRae declared savagely. "If he's got in that kind +of a hole, let him stay there. You're well out of it. You ought to be +glad."</p> + +<p>"But I'm not," she said sadly. "I'm not made that way. I can't let a +thing become a vital part of my life and give it up without a pang."</p> + +<p>"I don't see what else you can do," MacRae observed. "Only brace up and +forget it."</p> + +<p>"It isn't quite so simple as that," she sighed. "Norman's w—this woman +presently got tired of him. Evidently she had no scruples about getting +what she wanted, nor how. She went away with another man. Norman is +getting a divorce—the decree absolute will be granted in March next. He +wants me to marry him."</p><p><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110"></a></p> + +<p>"Will you?"</p> + +<p>Dolly looked up to meet MacRae's wondering stare. She nodded.</p> + +<p>"You're a triple-plated fool," he said roughly.</p> + +<p>"I don't know," she replied thoughtfully. "Norman certainly has been. +Perhaps I am too. We should get on—a pair of fools together."</p> + +<p>The bitterness in her voice stung MacRae.</p> + +<p>"You really should have loved me," he said, "and I you."</p> + +<p>"But you don't, Jack. You have never thought of that before."</p> + +<p>"I could, quite easily."</p> + +<p>Dolly considered this a moment.</p> + +<p>"No," she said. "You like me. I know that, Johnny. I like you, too. You +are a man, and I'm a woman. But if you weren't bursting with sympathy +you wouldn't have thought of that. If Norman had some of your +backbone—but it wouldn't make any difference. If you know what it is +that draws a certain man and woman together in spite of themselves, in +spite of things they can see in each other that they don't quite like, I +dare say you'd understand. I don't think I do. Norman Gower has made me +dreadfully unhappy. But I loved him before he went away, and I love him +yet. I want him just the same. And he says—he says—that he never +stopped caring for me—that it was like a bad dream. I believe him. I'm +sure of it. He didn't lie to me. And I can't hate him. I can't punish +him without punishing myself. I don't want to punish him, any more than +I would want to punish a baby, if I had one, for a naughtiness it +couldn't help."</p> + +<p>"So you'll marry him eventually?" MacRae asked.</p><p><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111"></a></p> + +<p>Dolly nodded.</p> + +<p>"If he doesn't change his mind," she murmured. "Oh, I shouldn't say ugly +things like that. It sounds cheap and mean."</p> + +<p>"But it hurts, it hurts me so to think of it," she broke out +passionately. "I can forgive him, because I can see how it happened. +Still it hurts. I feel cheated—cheated!"</p> + +<p>She lay back in her chair, fingers locked together, red lips parted over +white teeth that were clenched together. Her eyes glowed somberly, +looking away through distant spaces.</p> + +<p>And MacRae, conscious that she had said her say, feeling that she wanted +to be alone, as he himself always wanted to fight a grief or a hurt +alone and in silence, walked out into the sunshine, where the westerly +droned high above in the swaying fir tops.</p> + +<p>He went up the path around the Cove's head to the porch of his own +house, sat down on the top step, and cursed the Gowers, root and branch. +He hated them, everything of the name and blood, at that moment, with a +profound and active hatred.</p> + +<p>They were like a blight, as their lives touched the lives of other +people. They sat in the seats of the mighty, and for their pleasure or +their whims others must sweat and suffer. So it seemed to Jack MacRae.</p> + +<p>Home, thes<a name="Page_112" id="Page_112"></a>e crowded, hurrying days, was aboard the <i>Blackbird</i>. It was +pleasant now to sit on his own doorstep and smell the delicate perfume +of the roses and the balsamy odors from the woods behind. But the rooms +depressed him when he went in. They were dusty and silent, abandoned to +that forsaken air which rests upon uninhabited dwellings. MacRae went +out again, to stride aimlessly along the cliffs past the mouth of the +Cove.</p> + +<p>Beyond the lee of the island the westerly still lashed the Gulf. The +<a name="Page_113" id="Page_113"></a>white horses galloped on a gray-green field. MacRae found a grassy place +in the shade of an arbutus, and lay down to rest and watch. Sunset would +bring calm, a dying wind, new colors to sea and sky and mountains. It +would send him away on the long run to Crow Harbor, driving through the +night under the cool stars.</p> + +<p>No matter what happened people must be fed. Food was vital. Men lost +their lives at the fishing, but it went on. Hearts might be torn, but +hands still plied the gear. Life had a bad taste in Jack MacRae's mouth +as he lay there under the red-barked tree. He was moody. It seemed a +struggle without mercy or justice, almost without reason, a blind +obedience to the will-to-live. A tooth-and-toenail contest. He surveyed +his own part in it with cynical detachment. So long as salmon ran in the +sea they would be taken for profit in the markets and the feeding of the +hungry. And the salmon would run and men would pursue them, and the game +would be played without slackening for such things as broken faith or +aching hearts or a woman's tears.</p> + +<p>MacRae grew drowsy puzzling over things like that. Life was a jumble +beyond his understanding, he concluded at last. Men strove to a godlike +mastery of circumstances,—and achieved three meals a day and a squalid +place to sleep. Sometimes, when they were pluming themselves on having +beaten the game, Destiny was laughing in her sleeve and spreading a +snare for their feet. A man never knew what was coming next. It was +just a damned scramble! A disorderly scr<a name="Page_114" id="Page_114"></a>amble in which a man could be +sure of getting hurt.</p> + +<p>He wondered if that were really true.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X"></a>CHAPTER X</h2> + +<p><span class="smcap">Thrust and Counterthrust</span></p> + + +<p>By the time Jack MacRae was writing August on his sales slips he was +conscious of an important fact; namely, that nearly a hundred gas-boat +fishermen, trolling Squitty Island, the Ballenas, Gray Rock, even +farther afield to Yellow Rock Light and Lambert Channel, were compactly +behind him. They were still close to a period when they had been +remorselessly exploited. They were all for MacRae. Prices being equal, +they preferred that he should have their fish. It was still vivid in +their astonished minds that he had shared profits with them without +compulsion, that he had boosted prices without competition, had put a +great many dollars in their pockets. Only those who earn a living as +precariously, as riskily and with as much patient labor as a salmon +fisherman, can so well value a dollar. They had an abiding confidence, +by this time, in Jack MacRae. They knew he was square, and they said so. +In the territory his two carriers covered, MacRae was becoming the +uncrowned salmon king. Other buyers cut in from time to time. They did +not fare well. The trollers would hold their salmon, even when some +sporting independent offered to shade the current price. They would +shake their heads if they knew either of the <i>Bird</i> boats would be there +to take the fish. For when MacRae said he would be there, he was always +there. In the old days they had been compelled to play one buyer +<a name="Page_115" id="Page_115"></a>against another. They did not have to do that with MacRae.</p> + +<p>The Folly Bay collectors fared little better than outside buyers. In +July Gower met MacRae's price by two successive raises. He stopped at +that. MacRae did not. Each succeeding run of salmon averaged greater +poundage. They were worth more. MacRae paid fifty, fifty-five cents. +When Gower stood pat at fifty-five, MacRae gave up a fourth of his +contract percentage and paid sixty. It was like draw poker with the +advantage of the last raise on his side.</p> + +<p>The salmon were worth the price. They were worth double to a cannery +that lay mostly idle for lack of fish. The salmon, now, were running +close to six pounds each. The finished product was eighteen dollars a +case in the market. There are forty-eight one-pound cans in a case. To a +man familiar with packing costs it is a simple sum. MacRae often +wondered why Gower stubbornly refused to pay more, when his collecting +boats came back to the cannery so often with a few scattered salmon in +their holds. They were primitive folk, these salmon trollers. They +jeered the unlucky collectors. Gower was losing his fishermen as well as +his fish. For the time, at least, the back of his long-held monopoly was +broken.</p> + +<p>MacRae got a little further light on this attitude from Stubby Abbott.</p> + +<p>"He's figuring on making out a season's pack with cohoes, humps, and dog +salmon," Stubby told MacRae at the Crow Harbor cannery. "He expects to +work his purse seiners overtime, and to hell with the individual +fisherman. Norman was telling me. Old Horace has put Norman in charge at +Folly Bay, you know."</p> + +<p>MacRae nodded. He knew about that.</p> +<p><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116"></a></p> +<p>"The old boy is sore as a boil at you and me," Stubby chuckled. "I +don't blame him much. He has had a cinch there so long he thinks it's +his private pond. You've certainly put a crimp in the Folly Bay blueback +pack—to my great benefit. I don't suppose any one but you could have +done it either."</p> + +<p>"Any one could," MacRae declared, "if he knew the waters, the men, and +was wise enough to play the game square. The trouble has been that each +buyer wanted to make a clean-up on each trip. He wanted easy money. The +salmon fisherman away up the coast practically has to take what is +offered him day by day, or throw his fish overboard. Canneries and +buyers alike have systematically given him the worst of the deal. You +don't cut your cannery hands' pay because on certain days your pack +falls off."</p> + +<p>"Hardly."</p> + +<p>"But canneries and collectors and every independent buyer have always +used any old pretext to cut the price to the fisherman out on the +grounds. And while a fisherman has to take what he is offered he doesn't +have to keep on taking it. He can quit, and try something else. Lots of +them have done that. That's why there are three Japanese to every white +salmon fisherman on the British Columbia coast. That is why we have an +Oriental problem. The Japs are making the canneries squeal, aren't +they?"</p> + +<p>"Rather." Stubby smiled. "They are getting to be a bit of a problem."</p> +<p><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117"></a></p> +<p>"The packers got them in here as cheap labor in the salmon fishing," +MacRae went on. "The white fisherman was too independent. He wanted all +he could get out of his work. He was a kicker, as well as a good +fisherman. The packers thought they could keep wages down and profits +up by importing the Jap—cheap labor with a low standard of living. And +the Jap has turned the tables on the big fellows. They hang together, as +aliens always do in a strange country, and the war has helped them +freeze the white fisherman out on one hand and exact more and more from +the canneries on the other. And that would never have happened if this +had been kept a white man's country, and the white fisherman had got a +square deal."</p> + +<p>"To buy as cheaply as you can and sell for as much as you can," Stubby +reminded him, "is a fundamental of business. You can't get away from it. +My father abandoned that maxim the last two years of his life, and it +nearly broke us. He was a public-spirited man. He took war and war-time +conditions to heart. In a period of jumping food costs he tried to give +people cheaper food. As I said, he nearly went broke trying to do a +public service, because no one else in the same business departed from +the business rule of making all they could. In fact, men in the same +business, I have since learned, were the first to sharpen their knives +for him. He was establishing a bad precedent. I don't know but their +attitude is sound, after all. In sheer self-defense a man must make all +he can when he has a chance. You cannot indulge in philanthropy in a +business undertaking these days, Silent John."</p> + +<p>"Granted," MacRae made answer. "I don't propose to be a philanthropist +myself. But you will get farther with a salmon fisherman, or any other +man whose labor you must depend on, if you accept the principle that he +is entitled to make a dollar as well as yourself, if you don't stretch +every point to take advantage of his necessity. These fellows who fish +around Squitty have been gouged and cheated a lot. They aren't fools. +They know pretty well who makes the long profit, who pile up moderate +fortunes while they get only a living, and not a particularly good +living at that."</p> + +<p>"Are you turning Bolshevik?" Stubby inquired with mock solicitude.</p> +<p><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118"></a></p> +<p>MacRae smiled.</p> + +<p>"Hardly. Nor are the fishermen. They know I'm making money. But they +know also that they are getting more out of it than they ever got +before, and that if I were not on the job they would get a lot less."</p> + +<p>"They certainly would," Abbott drawled. "You have been, and are now, +paying more for blueback salmon than any buyer on the Gulf."</p> + +<p>"Well, it has paid me. And it has been highly profitable to you, hasn't +it?" MacRae said. "You've had a hundred thousand salmon to pack which +you would not otherwise have had."</p> + +<p>"Certainly," Stubby agreed. "I'm not questioning your logic. In this +case it has paid us both, and the fisherman as well. But suppose +everybody did it?"</p> + +<p>"If you can pay sixty cents a fish, and fifteen per cent, on top of that +and pack profitably, why can't other canneries? Why can't Folly Bay meet +that competition? Rather, why won't they?"</p> + +<p>"Matter of policy, maybe," Stubby hazarded. "Matter of keeping costs +down. Apart from a few little fresh-fish buyers, you are the only +operator on the Gulf who is cutting any particular ice. Gower may figure +that he will eventually get these fish at his own price. If I were +eliminated, he would."</p> + +<p>"I'd still be on the job," MacRae ventured.</p> + +<p>"Would you, though?" Stubby asked doubtfully.</p> + +<p>"Yes." MacRae made his reply positive in tone. "You could buy all +right. That Squitty Island bunch of trollers seem convinced you are the +whole noise in the salmon line. But without Crow Harbor where could you +<a name="Page_119" id="Page_119"></a>unload such quantities of fish?"</p> + +<p>It struck MacRae that there was something more than mere casual +speculation in Stubby's words. But he did not attempt to delve into +motives.</p> + +<p>"A good general," he said with a dry smile, "doesn't advertise his plan +of campaign in advance. Without Crow Harbor as a market I could not have +done what I have done this season. But Crow Harbor could shut down +to-morrow—and I'd go on just the same."</p> + +<p>Stubby poked thoughtfully with a pencil at the blotter on his desk.</p> + +<p>"Well, Jack, I may as well be quite frank with you," he said at last. "I +have had hints that may mean something. The big run will be over at +Squitty in another month. I don't believe I can be dictated to on short +notice. But I cannot positively say. If you can see your way to carry +on, it will be quite a relief to me. Another season it may be +different."</p> + +<p>"I think I can."</p> + +<p>But though MacRae said this confidently, he was privately not so sure. +From the very beginning he had expected pressure to come on Stubby, as +the active head of Crow Harbor. It was as Stubby said. Unless +he—MacRae—had a market for his fish, he could not buy. And within the +limits of British Columbia the salmon market was subject to control; by +just what m<a name="Page_120" id="Page_120"></a>eans MacRae had got inklings here and there. He had not been +deceived by the smoothness of his operations so far. Below the clear +horizon there was a storm gathering. A man like Gower did not lie down +and submit passively to being beaten at his own game.</p> + +<p>But MacRae believed he had gone too far to be stopped now, even if his +tactics did not please the cannery interests. They could have squelched +him easily enough in the beginning, when he had no funds to speak of, +when his capital was mostly a capacity for hard, dirty work and a +willingness to take chances. Already he had run his original shoestring +to fifteen thousand dollars cash in hand. It scarcely seemed possible. +It gave him a startling vision of the profits in the salmon industry, +and it was not a tenable theory that men who had controlled such a +source of profits would sit idle while he undermined their monopoly. +Nevertheless he had made that much money in four months. He had at his +back a hundred fishermen who knew him, liked him, trusted him, who were +anxious that he should prosper, because they felt that they were sharing +in that prosperity. Ninety per cent. of these men had a grievance +against the canneries. And he had the good will of these men with +sun-browned faces and hook-scarred hands. The human equation in +industrial processes is a highly important one, as older, wiser men than +Jack MacRae had been a longer time discovering.</p> + +<p>He did not try to pin Stubby to a more definite statement. A hint was +enough for MacRae. Stubby Abbott could also be depended upon to see +things beyond the horizon. If a storm broke Stubby was the most +vulnerable, because in a sense he was involved with the cannery +interests in general, and they would consider him an apostate and knife +him without mercy,—if they could. If the Abbott estate had debts, +obligations which could be manipulated, if through the financial +convolutions of marketing the Crow Harbor pack Stubby could be reached, +the Abbott family had property, a standard of living that stood for +comfort, appearance, luxury almost. There are always plenty of roads +open to a flank attack on people like that; many <a name="Page_121" id="Page_121"></a>levers, financial and +otherwise, can be pulled for or against them.</p> + +<p>So MacRae, knowing that Stubby must protect himself in a showdown, set +about fortifying his own approaches.</p> + +<p>For a first move he hired an engineer, put Steve Ferrara in charge of +the <i>Blackbird</i>, and started him back to Squitty. Then MacRae took the +next train to Bellingham, a cannery town which looks out on the southern +end of the Gulf of Georgia from the American side of the boundary. He +extended his journey to Seattle. Altogether, he was gone three days.</p> + +<p>When he came back he made a series of calls,—at the Vancouver offices +of three different canneries and one of the biggest cold-storage +concerns on the Pacific Coast. He got a courteous but unsatisfactory +reception from the cannery men. He fared a little better with the +manager of the cold-storage plant. This gentleman was tentatively +agreeable in the matter of purchasing salmon, but rather vague in the +way of terms.</p> + +<p>"Beginning with May next I can deliver any quantity up to two thousand a +day, perhaps more, for a period of about four months," MacRae stated. +"What I should like to know is the percentage over the up-coast price +you would pay."</p> + +<p>But he could not pin the man down to anything definite. He would only +speak pleasantly of the market and possible arrangements, utter vague +commonplaces in business terminology. MacRae rose.</p> + +<p>"I'm wasting your time and my own," he said. "You don't want my fish. +Why not say so?"</p> + +<p>"We always want fish," the man declared, bending a shrewdly appraising +eye on MacRae. "Bring in the salmon and we will do business."</p> +<p><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122"></a></p> +<p>"On your own terms when my carriers are tied to your dock with a +capacity load which I must sell or throw overboard within forty-eight +hours," MacRae smiled. "No, I don't intend to go up against any +take-it-or-leave proposition like that. I don't have to."</p> + +<p>"Well, we might allow you five per cent. That's about the usual thing on +salmon. And we would rather have salmon now than a promise of them next +season."</p> + +<p>"Oh, rats!" MacRae snorted. "I'm in the business to make money—not +simply to create dividends for your Eastern stockholders while I eke out +a living and take all the risks. Come again."</p> + +<p>The cold storage man smiled.</p> + +<p>"Come and see me in the spring. Meantime, when you have a cargo of +salmon, you might run them in to us. We'll pay market prices. It's up to +you to protect yourself in the buying."</p> + +<p>MacRae went on about his business. He had not expected much +encouragement locally, so he did not suffer disappointment. He knew +quite well what he could expect in Vancouver if Crow Harbor canceled his +contract. He would bring in boatloads of salmon, and the dealers would +squeeze him, all but the Terminal Fish Company. And if the market could +be controlled, if the men behind could dictate the Crow Harbor policy, +they might also bring the Terminal into line. Even if they did not the +Terminal could only handle a minor portion of the salmon he could get +while the big run swirled around Squitty Island.</p> + +<p>But MacRae was not downcast. He was only sober and thoughtful, which had +become characteristic of him in the last four months. He was forgetting +<a name="Page_123" id="Page_123"></a>how to laugh, to be buoyant, to see the world through the rose-colored +glasses of sanguine youth. He was becoming a living exampler of his +nickname. Even Stubby Abbott marked this when Jack came back from +Bellingham.</p> + +<p>"Come on out to the house," Stubby urged. "Your men can handle the job a +day or two longer. Forget the grind for once. It's getting you."</p> + +<p>"No, I don't think it is," MacRae denied. "But a man can't play and +produce at the same time. I have to keep going."</p> + +<p>He did go out to Abbott's one evening, however, and suffered a good deal +of teasing from Nelly over his manhandling of Sam Kaye. A lot of other +young people happened to foregather there. They sang and flirted and +presently moved the rugs off the living-room floor and danced to a +phonograph. MacRae found himself a little out of it, by inclination. He +was tired, without knowing quite what was the matter with him. A man, +even a young and sturdy man, cannot work like a horse for months on end, +eating his meals anyhow and sleeping when he can, without losing +temporarily the zest for careless fun. For another thing, he found +himself looking at these immaculate young people as any hard-driven +worker must perforce look upon drones.</p> + +<p>They were sons and daughters of the well-to-do, divorced from all +uncouthness, with pretty manners and good clothes. They seemed serene in +the assurance—MacRae got this impression for the first time in his +social contact with them—that wearing good clothes, behaving well, +giving themselves whole-heartedly to having a good time, was the most +important and satisfying thing in the world. They moved in an atmosphere +of consi<a name="Page_124" id="Page_124"></a>dering these things their due, a birthright, their natural and +proper condition of well-being.</p> + +<p>And MacRae found himself wondering what they gave or ever expected to +give in return for this pleasant security of mind and body. Some one had +to pay for it, the silks and georgettes and white flannels, furs and +strings of pearls and gold trinkets, the good food, the motor cars, and +the fun.</p> + +<p>He knew a little about every one he met that evening, for in Vancouver +as in any other community which has developed a social life beyond the +purely primitive stages of association, people gravitate into sets and +cliques. They lived in good homes, they had servants, they week-ended +here and there. Of the dozen or more young men and women present, only +himself and Stubby Abbott made any pretense at work.</p> + +<p>Yet somebody paid for all they had and did. Men in offices, in shops, in +fishing boats and mines and logging camps worked and sweated to pay for +all this well-being in which they could have no part. MacRae even +suspected that a great many men had died across the sea that this sort +of thing should remain the inviolate privilege of just such people as +these. It was not an inspiring conclusion.</p> + +<p>He smiled to himself. How they would stare if he should voice these +stray thoughts in plain English. They would cry out that he was a +Bolshevik. Absolutely! He wondered why he should think such things. He +wasn't disgruntled. He wanted a great many things which these young +people of his own age had gotten from fairy godmothers,—in the shape of +pioneer parents who had skimmed the cream off the resources of a +developing fr<a name="Page_125" id="Page_125"></a>ontier and handed it on to their children, and who +themselves so frequently kept in the background, a little in awe of +their gilded offspring. MacRae meant to beat the game as it was being +played. He felt that he was beating it. But nothing would be handed him +on a silver salver. Fortune would not be bestowed upon him in any easy, +soft-handed fashion. He would have to render an equivalent for what he +got. He wondered if the security of success so gained would have any +greater value for him than it would have for those who took their +blessings so lightly.</p> + +<p>This kink of analytical reasoning was new to MacRae, and it kept him +from entering whole-heartedly into the joyous frivolity which functioned +in the Abbott home that evening. He had never found himself in that +critical mood before. He did not want to prattle nonsense. He did not +want to think, and he could not help thinking. He had a curious sense of +detachment from what was going on, even while he was a part of it. So he +did not linger late.</p> + +<p>The <i>Blackbird</i> had discharged at Crow Harbor late in the afternoon. She +lay now at a Vancouver slip. By eleven o'clock he was aboard in his +bunk, still thinking when he should have been asleep, staring wide-eyed +at dim deck beams, his mind flitting restlessly from one thing to +another. Steve Ferrara lay in the opposite bunk, wheezing his breath in +and out of lungs seared by poison gas in Flanders. Smells of seaweed and +tide-flat wafted in through open hatch and portholes. A full moon thrust +silver fingers through deck openings. Gradually the softened medley of +harbor noises lulled MacRae into a dreamless sleep. He only wakened at +the clank of the engine and the shudder of the <i>Blackbird's</i> timbers as +Steve backed her out of her berth in the first faint gleam of dawn.</p> + +<p>The <i>Blackbird</i> made her trip and a second and a third, which brought +the date late in August. On his delivery, when the salmon in her hold +had been picarooned to the cannery fl<a name="Page_126" id="Page_126"></a>oor, MacRae went up to the office. +Stubby had sent for him. He looked uncomfortable when Jack came in.</p> + +<p>"What's on your mind now?" MacRae asked genially.</p> + +<p>"Something damned unpleasant," Stubby growled.</p> + +<p>"Shoot," MacRae said. He sat down and lit a cigarette.</p> + +<p>"I didn't think they could do it," Abbott said slowly. "But it seems +they can. I guess you'll have to lay off the Gower territory after all, +Jack."</p> + +<p>"You mean <i>you</i> will," MacRae replied. "I've been rather expecting that. +Can Gower hurt you?"</p> + +<p>"Not personally. But the banks—export control—there are so many angles +to the cannery situation. There's nothing openly threatened. But it has +been made perfectly clear to me that I'll be hampered and harassed till +I won't know whether I'm afoot or on horseback, if I go on paying a few +cents more for salmon in order to keep my plant working efficiently. +Damn it, I hate it. But I'm in no position to clash with the rest of the +cannery crowd and the banks too. I hate to let you down. You've pulled +me out of a hole. I don't know a man who would have worked at your pitch +and carried things off the way you have. If I had this pack marketed, I +could snap my fingers at them. But I haven't. There's the rub. I hate to +ditch you in order to insure myself—get in line at somebody else's +dictation."</p> + +<p>"Don't worry about me," MacRae said gently. "I have no cannery and no +pack to market through the regular channels. Nor has the bank advanced +me any funds. You are not responsible for what I do. And neither Gower +nor the Packers' Association nor the banks can stop me from buying +salmon so long as I have the money to pay the fishermen and carriers to +haul them, can they?"</p> + +<p>"No, but the devil of it is they can stop<a name="Page_127" id="Page_127"></a> you <i>selling</i>," Stubby +lamented bitterly. "I tell you there isn't a cannery on the Gulf will +pay you a cent more than they pay the fishermen. What's the use of +buying if you can't sell?"</p> + +<p>MacRae did not attempt to answer that.</p> + +<p>"Let's sum it up," he said. "You can't take any more bluebacks from +Gower's territory. That, I gather, is the chief object. I suppose they +know as much about your business as you know yourself. Am I to be +deprived of the two boat charters into the bargain?"</p> + +<p>"No, by the Lord," Stubby swore. "Not if you want them. My general +policy may be subject to dictation, but not the petty details of my +business. There's a limit. I won't stand for that."</p> + +<p>"Put a fair price on the <i>Birds</i>, and I'll buy 'em both," MacRae +suggested. "You had them up for sale, anyway. That will let you out, so +far as my equipment is concerned."</p> + +<p>"Five thousand each," Stubby said promptly.</p> + +<p>"They're good value at that. And I can use ten thousand dollars to +advantage, right now."</p> + +<p>"I'll give you a check. I want the registry transferred to me at once," +MacRae continued. "That done, you can cease worrying over me, Stub. +You've been square, and I've made money on the deal. You would be +foolish to fight unless you have a fighting chance. Oh, another thing. +Will the Terminal shut off on me, too?"</p> + +<p>"No," Stubby declared. "The Terminal is one of the weapons I intend +ultimately to use as a club on the heads of this group of gentlemen who +want to make a close corporation of the salmon industry on the British +Columbia coast. If I get by this season, I shall b<a name="Page_128" id="Page_128"></a>e in shape to show +them something. They will not bother about the Terminal, because the +Terminal is small. All the salmon they could take from you wouldn't hurt +Gower. What they want is to enable Gower to get up his usual fall pack. +It has taken him this long to get things shaped so he could call me off. +He can't reach a local concern like the Terminal. No, the Terminal will +continue to buy salmon from you, Jack. But you know they haven't the +facilities to handle a fourth of the salmon you have been running +lately."</p> + +<p>"I'll see they get whatever they can use," MacRae declared. "And if it +is any satisfaction to you personally, Stub, I can assure you that I +shall continue to do business as usual."</p> + +<p>Stubby looked curious.</p> + +<p>"You've got something up your sleeve?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," MacRae admitted. "No stuffed club, either. It's loaded. You wait +and keep your ears open."</p> + +<p>MacRae's face twisted into a mirthless smile. His eyes glowed with the +fire that always blazed up in them when he thought too intensely of +Horace Gower and the past, or of Gower's various shifts to defeat him in +what he undertook. He had anticipated this move. He was angrily +determined that Gower should not get one more salmon, or buy what he got +a cent cheaper, by this latest strategy.</p> + +<p>"You appear to like old Horace," Stubby said thoughtfully, "about as +much as our fellows used to like Fritz when he dropped high explosives +on supposedly bomb-proof shelters."</p> + +<p>"Just about as much," MacRae said shortly. "Well, you'll transfer that +<a name="Page_129" id="Page_129"></a>registry—when? I want to get back to Squitty as soon as possible."</p> + +<p>"I'll go to town with you now, if you like," Stubby offered.</p> + +<p>They acted on that. Within two hours MacRae was the owner of two motor +launches under British registry. Payment in full left him roughly with +five thousand dollars working capital, enough by only a narrow margin. +At sunset Vancouver was a smoky smudge on a far horizon. At dusk he +passed in the narrow mouth of Squitty Cove. The <i>Bluebird</i> was swinging +about to go when her sister ship ranged alongside. Vincent Ferrara +dropped his hook again. There were forty trollers in the Cove. MacRae +called to them. They came in skiffs and dinghys, and when they were all +about his stern and some perched in sea boots along the <i>Blackbird's</i> +low bulwarks, MacRae said what he had to say.</p> + +<p>"Gower has come alive. My market for fish bought in Gower's territory is +closed, so far as Crow Harbor is concerned. If I can't sell salmon I +can't buy them from you. How much do you think Folly Bay will pay for +your fish?"</p> + +<p>He waited a minute. The fishermen looked at him in the yellow lantern +light, at each other. They shifted uneasily. No one answered his +question.</p> + +<p>MacRae went on.</p> + +<p>"You can guess what will happen. You will be losers. So will I. I don't +like the idea of being frozen out of the salmon-buying business, now +that I have got my hand in. I don't intend to be. As long as I can +handle a load of salmon I'll make the run. But I've got to run them +<a name="Page_130" id="Page_130"></a>farther, and you fellows will have to wait a bit for me now and then, +perhaps. The cannery men hang together. They are making it bad for me +because I'm paying a few cents more for salmon. They have choked off +Crow Harbor. Gower is hungry for cheap salmon. He'll get them, too, if +you let him head off outside buyers. Since I'm the only buyer covering +these grounds, it's up to you, more than ever, to see that I keep +coming. That's all. Tell the rest of the fishermen what I say whenever +you happen to run across them."</p> + +<p>They became articulate. They plied MacRae with questions. He answered +tersely, as truthfully as he could. They cursed Folly Bay and the +canneries in general. But they were not downcast. They did not seem +apprehensive that Folly Bay would get salmon for forty cents. MacRae had +said he would still buy. For them that settled it. They would not have +to sell their catch to Folly Bay for whatever price Gower cared to set. +Presently they began to drift away to their boats, to bed, for their +work began in that gray hour between dawn and sunrise when the schooling +salmon best strike the trolling spoon.</p> + +<p>One lingered, a returned soldier named Mullen, who had got his discharge +in May and gone fishing. Mullen had seen two years in the trenches. He +sat in his skiff, scowling up at MacRae, talking about the salmon +packers, about fishing.</p> + +<p>"Aw, it's the same everywhere," he said cynically. "They all want a +cinch, easy money, big money. Looks like the more you have, the more you +can grab. Folly Bay made barrels of coin while the war was on. Why can't +they give us fellers a show to make a littl<a name="Page_131" id="Page_131"></a>e now? But they don't give a +damn, so long as they get theirs. And then they wonder why some of us +guys that went to France holler about the way we find things when we +come home."</p> + +<p>He pushed his skiff away into the gloom that rested upon the Cove.</p> + +<p>The <i>Bluebird</i> was packed with salmon to her hatch covers. There had +been a fresh run. The trollers were averaging fifty fish to a man daily. +MacRae put Vincent Ferrara aboard the <i>Blackbird</i>, himself took over the +loaded vessel, and within the hour was clear of Squitty's dusky +headlands, pointing a course straight down the middle of the Gulf. His +man turned in to sleep. MacRae stood watch alone, listening to the +ka-<i>choof</i>, ka-<i>choof</i> of the exhaust, the murmuring swash of calm water +cleft by the <i>Bluebird's</i> stem. Away to starboard the Ballenas light +winked and blinked its flaming eye to seafaring men as it had done in +his father's time. Miles to port the Sand Heads lightship swung to its +great hawsers off the Fraser River shoals.</p> + +<p>MacRae smiled contentedly. There was a long run ahead. But he felt that +he had beaten Gower in this first definite brush. Moving in devious +channels to a given end Gower had closed the natural markets to MacRae.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132"></a>But there was no law against the export of raw salmon to a foreign +country. MacRae could afford to smile. Over in Bellingham there were +salmon packers who, like Folly Bay, were hungry for fish to feed their +great machines. But—unlike Folly Bay—they were willing to pay the +price, any price in reason, for a supply of salmon. Their own carriers +later in the season would invade Canadian waters, so many thorns in the +ample sides of the British Columbia packers. "The damned Americans!" +they sometimes growled, and talked about legislation to keep American +fish buyers out. Because the American buyer and canner alike would spend +a dollar to make a dollar. And the British Columbia packers wanted a +cinch, a monopoly, which in a measure they had. They were an +anachronism, MacRae felt. They regarded the salmon and the salmon waters +of the British Columbia coast as the feudal barons of old jealously +regarded their special prerogatives. MacRae could see them growling and +grumbling, he could see most clearly the scowl that would spread over +the face of Mr. Horace A. Gower, when he learned that ten to twenty +thousand Squitty Island salmon were passing down the Gulf each week to +an American cannery; that a smooth-faced boy out of the Air Service was +putting a crimp in the ancient order of things so far as one particular +cannery was concerned.</p> + +<p>This notion amused MacRae, served to while away the hours of monotonous +plowing over an unruffled sea, until he drove down abreast the Fraser +River's mouth and passed in among the nets and lights of the sockeye +fleet drifting, a thousand strong, on the broad bosom of the Gulf. Then +he had to stand u<a name="Page_133" id="Page_133"></a>p to his steering wheel and keep a sharp lookout, lest +he foul his propellor in a net or cut down some careless fisherman who +did not show a riding light.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI"></a>CHAPTER XI</h2> + +<p><span class="smcap">Peril of the Sea</span></p> + + +<p>The last of August set the Red Flower of the Jungle books blooming along +the British Columbia coast. The seeds of it were scattered on hot, dry, +still days by pipe and cigarette, by sparks from donkey engines, by +untended camp fires, wherever the careless white man went in the great +coastwise forests. The woods were like a tinder box. One unguarded +moment, and the ancient firs were wrapped in sheets of flame. Smoke lay +on the Gulf like a pall of pungent fog, through which vessels ran by +chart and compass, blind between ports, at imminent risk of collision.</p> + +<p>Through this, well on into September, MacRae and Vincent Ferrara +gathered cargoes of salmon and ran them down the Gulf to Bellingham, +making their trips with the regularity of the tides, despite the murk +that hid landmarks by day and obscured the guiding lighthouse flashes +when dark closed in. They took their chances in the path of coastwise +traffic, straining their eyes for vessels to leap suddenly out of the +thickness that shut them in, their ears for fog s<a name="Page_134" id="Page_134"></a>ignals that blared +warning. There were close shaves, but they escaped disaster. They got +the salmon and they delivered them, and Folly Bay still ran a bad second +wherever the <i>Bird</i> boats served the trolling fleet. Even when Gower at +last met MacRae's price, his collectors got few fish. The fishermen took +no chances. They were convinced that if MacRae abandoned buying for +lack of salmon Folly Bay would cut the price in two. It had been done +before. So they held their fish for the <i>Bird</i> boats. MacRae got them +all. Even when American buyers trailed MacRae to the source of his +supply their competition hurt Gower instead of MacRae. The trollers +supplied MacRae with all the salmon he could carry. It was still fresh +in their minds that he had come into the field that season as their +special Providence.</p> + +<p>But the blueback run tapered off at Squitty. September ushered in the +annual coho run on its way to the spawning grounds. And the coho did not +school along island shores, feeding upon tiny herring. Stray squadrons +of coho might pass Squitty, but they did not linger in thousands as the +blueback did. The coho swept into the Gulf from mysterious haunts in +blue water far offshore, myriads of silver fish seeking the streams +where they were spawned, and to which as mature fish they now returned +to reproduce themselves. They came in great schools. They would loaf +awhile in some bay at a stream mouth, until some irresistible urge drove +them into fresh water, up rivers and creeks, over shoal and rapid, +through pool and canyon, until the stream ran out to a whimpering +trickle and the backs of the salmon stuck out of the water. Up there, in +the shadow of great mountains, in the hidden places of the Coast range, +those that escaped their natural enemies would spawn and die.</p> +<p><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135"></a></p> +<p>While the coho and the humpback, which came about the same time, and the +dog salmon, which comes last of all—but each to function in the same +manner and sequence—laid in the salt-water bays, resting, it would +seem, before the last and most terrible struggle of their brief +existence, the gill-net fishermen and the cannery purse-seine boats took +toll of them. The trollers harried them from the moment they showed in +the Gulf, because the coho will strike at a glittering spoon anywhere in +salt water. But the net boats take them in hundreds at one drift, and +the purse seiners gather thousands at a time in a single sweep of the +great bag-like seine.</p> + +<p>When September days brought the cohoes in full force along with cooler +nights and a great burst of rain that drowned the forest fires and +cleared away the enshrouding smoke, leaving only the pleasant haze of +autumn, the Folly Bay purse-seine boats went out to work. The trolling +fleet scattered from Squitty Island. Some steamed north to the troubled +waters of Salmon River and Blackfish Sound, some to the Redondas where +spring salmon could be taken. Many put by their trolling gear and hung +their gill nets. A few gas boats and a few rowboat men held to the +Island, depending upon stray schools and the spring salmon that haunted +certain reefs and points and beds of kelp. But the main fleet scattered +over two hundred miles of sea.</p> + +<p>MacRae could have called it a season and quit with honor and much +profit. Or he might have gone north and bought salmon here and there, +free-lancing. He did neither. There were enough gill-netters operating +on Gower's territory to give him fair cargoes. Every salmon he could +divert from the cans at Folly Bay meant,—well, he did not often stop to +ask precisely what that did mean to him. But he never passed Poor Man's +Rock, bleak and brown at low tide, or with seas hissing over it when the +<a name="Page_136" id="Page_136"></a>tide was at flood, without thinking of his father, of the days and +months and years old Donald MacRae had lived and worked in sight of the +Rock,—a life at the last lonely and cheerless and embittered by the +sight of his ancient enemy preening his feathers in Cradle Bay. Old +Donald had lived for thirty years unable to return a blow which had +scarred his face and his heart in the same instant. But his son felt +that he was making better headway. It is unlikely that Donald MacRae +ever looked at Gower's cottage nestling like a snowflake in the green +lee of Point Old, or cast his eyes over that lost estate of his, with +more unchristian feelings than did his son. In Jack MacRae's mind the +Golden Rule did not apply to Horace Gower, nor to aught in which Gower +was concerned.</p> + +<p>So he stayed on Folly Bay territory with a dual purpose: to make money +for himself, and to deprive Gower of profit where he could. He was wise +enough to know that was the only way he could hurt a man like Gower. And +he wanted to hurt Gower. The intensity of that desire grew. It was a +point of honor, the old inborn clan pride that never compromised an +injury or an insult or an injustice, which neither forgave nor forgot.</p> + +<p>For weeks MacRae in the <i>Blackbird</i> and Vin Ferrara in her sister ship +flitted here and there. The purse seiners hunted the schooling salmon, +the cohoes and humps. The gill-netters hung on the seiner's heels, +because where the purse seine could get a haul so could they. And the +carriers and buyers sought the fishermen wherever they went, to buy and +carry away their catch.</p> + +<p>Folly Bay suffered bad luck from the beginning. Gower had four +purse-seine boats in commission. Within a week one broke a crankshaft in +half a gale off Sangster Island. The wind put her ashore under the nose +of the sandstone Elephant and the seas destroyed her.</p><p><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137"></a></p> + +<p>Fire gutted a second not long after, so that for weeks she was laid up +for repairs. That left him but two efficient craft. One operated on his +concessions along the mainland shore. The other worked three stream +mouths on Vancouver Island, straight across from Folly Bay.</p> + +<p>Still, Gower's cannery was getting salmon. In those three bays no other +purse seiner could shoot his gear. Folly Bay held them under exclusive +license. Gill nets could be drifted there, but the purse seiner was +king.</p> + +<p>A gill net goes out over a boat's stern. When it is strung it stands in +the sea like a tennis net across a court, a web nine hundred feet long, +twenty feet deep, its upper edge held afloat by corks, its lower sunk by +lead weights spaced close together. The outer end is buoyed to a float +which carries a flag and a lantern; the inner is fast to the bitts of +the launch. Thus set, and set in the evening, since salmon can only be +taken by the gills in the dark, fisherman, launch, and net drift with +the changing tides till dawn. Then he hauls. He may have ten salmon, or +a hundred, or treble that. He may have none, and the web be torn by +sharks and fouled heavy with worthless dogfish.</p> + +<p>The purse seiner works in daylight, off a powerfully engined sixty-foot, +thirty-ton craft. He pays the seine out over a roller on a revolving +platform aft. His vessel moves slowly in a sweeping circle as the net +goes out,—a circle perhaps a thousand feet in diameter. When the circle +is complete the two ends of the net meet at the seiner's stern. A power +winch hauls on ropes and the net closes. Nothing escapes. It draws +together until it is a bag, a "purse" drawn up under the vessel's +counter, full of glistening fish.</p><p><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138"></a></p> + +<p>The salmon is a surface fish, his average depth seldom below four +fathoms. He breaks water when he feeds, when he plays, when he runs in +schools. The purse seiner watches the signs. When the salmon rise in +numbers he makes a set. To shoot the gear and purse the seine is a +matter of minutes. A thousand salmon at a haul is nothing. Three +thousand is common. Five thousand is far below the record. Purse seines +have been burst by the dead weight of fish against the pull of the +winch.</p> + +<p>The purse seine is a deadly trap for schooling salmon. And because the +salmon schools in mass formation, crowding nose to tail and side to +side, in the entrance to a fresh-water stream, the Fisheries Department +having granted a monopoly of seining rights to a packer has also +benevolently decreed that no purse seine or other net shall operate +within a given distance of a stream mouth,—that the salmon, having won +to fresh water, shall go free and his kind be saved from utter +extinction.</p> + +<p>These regulations are not drawn for sentimental reasons, only to +preserve the salmon industry. The farmer saves wheat for his next year's +seeding, instead of selling the last bushel to the millers. No man +willfully kills the goose that lays him golden eggs. But the salmon +hunter, eagerly pursuing the nimble dollar, sometimes grows rapacious in +the chase and breaks laws of his own devising,—if a big haul promises +and no Fisheries Inspector is by to restrain him. The cannery purse +seiners are the most frequent offenders. They can make their haul +quickly in forbidden waters and get away. Folly Bay, shrewdly paying its +seine crews a bonus per fish on top <a name="Page_139" id="Page_139"></a>of wages, had always been notorious +for crowding the law.</p> + +<p>Solomon River takes its rise in the mountainous backbone of Vancouver +Island. It is a wide, placid stream on its lower reaches, flowing +through low, timbered regions, emptying into the Gulf in a half-moon bay +called the Jew's Mouth, which is a perfect shelter from the Gulf storms +and the only such shelter in thirty miles of bouldery shore line. The +beach runs northwest and southeast, bleak and open, undented. In all +that stretch there is no point from behind which a Fisheries Patrol +launch could steal unexpectedly into the Jew's Mouth.</p> + +<p>Upon a certain afternoon the <i>Blackbird</i> lay therein. At her stern, fast +by light lines to her after bitts, clung half a dozen fish boats, blue +wisps of smoke drifting from the galley stovepipes, the fishermen +variously occupied. The <i>Blackbird's</i> hold was empty except for ice. She +was waiting for fish, and the <i>Bluebird</i> was due on the same errand the +following day.</p> + +<p>Nearer shore another cluster of gill-netters was anchored, a Jap or two, +and a Siwash Indian with his hull painted a gaudy blue. And in the +middle of the Jew's Mouth, which was a scant six hundred yards across at +its widest, the <i>Folly Bay No. 5</i> swung on her anchor chain. A tubby +cannery tender lay alongside. The crews were busy with picaroons forking +salmon out of the seiner into the tender's hold. The flip-flop of the +fish sounded distinctly in that quiet place. Their silver bodies flashed +in the sun as they were thrown across the decks.</p> + +<p>When the tender drew clear and passed out of the bay she rode deep with +the weight of salmon aboard. Without the Jew's Mouth, around the +<i>Blackbird</i> and the fish boats and the <i><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140"></a>No. 5</i> the salmon were threshing +water. <i>Klop.</i> A flash of silver. Bubbles. A series of concentric rings +that ran away in ripples, till they merged into other widening rings. +They were everywhere. The river was full of them. The bay was alive with +them.</p> + +<p>A boat put off from the seiner. The man rowed out of the Jew's Mouth and +stopped, resting on his oars. He remained there, in approximately the +same position. A sentry.</p> + +<p>The <i>No. 5</i> heaved anchor, the chain clanking and chattering in a +hawsepipe. Her exhaust spat smoky, gaseous fumes. A bell clanged. She +moved slowly ahead, toward the river's mouth, a hundred yards to one +side of it. Then the brown web of the seine began to spin out over the +stern. She crossed the mouth of the Solomon, holding as close in as her +draft permitted, and kept on straight till her seine was paid out to the +end. Then she stopped, lying still in dead water with her engine idling.</p> + +<p>The tide was on the flood. Salmon run streams on a rising tide. And the +seine stood like a wall across the river's mouth.</p> + +<p>Every man watching knew what the seiner was about, in defiance of the +law. The salmon, nosing into the stream, driven by that imperative urge +which is the law of their being, struck the net, turned aside, swam in a +slow circle and tried again and again, seeking free passage, until +thousands of them were massed behind the barrier of the net. Then the +<i>No. 5</i> would close the net, tauten the ropes which made it a purse, and +haul out into deep water.</p> + +<p>It was the equivalent of piracy on the high seas. To be taken in the act +meant fines, imprisonment, confiscation of boat and gear. But the <i>No. +5</i> would not be caught. She had a guard posted. Cannery seiners were +never caught. When they were they got off with a warning and a +reprimand. Only gill-netters, the small fry of the salmon industry, ever +<a name="Page_141" id="Page_141"></a>paid the utmost penalty for raids like that. So the fishermen said, with +a cynical twist of their lips.</p> + +<p>"Look at 'em," one said to MacRae. "They make laws and break 'em +themselves. They been doin' that every day for a week. If one of us set +a piece of net in the river and took three hundred salmon the canners +would holler their heads off. There'd be a patrol boat on our heels all +the time if they thought we'd take a chance."</p> + +<p>"Well, I'm about ready to take a chance," another man growled. "They +clear the bay in daylight and all we get is their leavings at night."</p> + +<p>The <i>No. 5</i> pursed her seine and hauled out until she was abreast of the +<i>Blackbird</i>. She drew close up to her massive hull a great heap of +salmon, struggling, twisting, squirming within the net. The loading +began. Her men laughed and shouted as they worked. The gill-net +fishermen watched silently, scowling. It was like taking bread out of +their mouths. It was like an honest man restrained by a policeman's club +from taking food when he is hungry, and seeing a thief fill his pockets +and walk off unmolested.</p> + +<p>"Four thousand salmon that shot," Dave Mullen said, the same Mullen who +had talked to MacRae in Squitty one night. "Say, why should we stand for +that? We can get salmon that way too."</p> + +<p>He spoke directly to MacRae.</p> + +<p>"What's sauce for the goose ought to be sauce for the gander," MacRae +<a name="Page_142" id="Page_142"></a>replied. "I'll take the fish if you get them."</p> + +<p>"You aren't afraid of getting in wrong yourself?" the man asked him.</p> + +<p>MacRae shook his head. He did not lean to lawlessness. But the cannery +men had framed this law. They cried loudly and continually for its +strict enforcement. And they violated it flagrantly themselves, or +winked at its violation when that meant an added number of cases to +their pack. Not alone in the Jew's Mouth; all along the British Columbia +coast the purse seiners forgot the law when the salmon swarmed in a +stream mouth and they could make a killing. Only canneries could hold a +purse-seine license. If the big men would not honor their own law, why +should the lesser? So MacRae felt and said.</p> + +<p>The men in the half-dozen boats about his stern had dealt all the season +with MacRae. They trusted him. They neither liked nor trusted Folly Bay. +Folly Bay was not only breaking the law in the Jew's Mouth, but in +breaking the law they were making it hard for these men to earn a dollar +legitimately. Superior equipment, special privilege, cold-blooded +violation of law because it was safe and profitable, gave the purse +seiner an unfair advantage. The men gathered in a little knot on the +deck of one boat. They put their heads together and lowered their +voices. MacRae knew they were angry, that they had reached the point of +fighting fire with fire. And he smiled to himself. He did not know what +they were planning, but he could guess. It would not be the first time +the individual fishermen had kicked over the traces and beaten the purse +seiners at their own game. They did not include him in their council. He +was a buyer. It was not his function to inquire how they took their +fish. If they could take salmon which otherwise the <i>No. 5</i> would take, +so much the worse for Folly Bay,—and so much the better for the +<a name="Page_143" id="Page_143"></a>fishermen, who earned their living precariously at best.</p> + +<p>It was dusk when the purse seiner finished loading her catch and stowed +the great net in a dripping heap on the turntable aft. At daylight or +before, a cannery tender would empty her, and she would sweep the Jew's +Mouth bare of salmon again.</p> + +<p>With dusk also the fishermen were busy over their nets, still riding to +the <i>Blackbird's</i> stern. Then they moved off in the dark. MacRae could +hear nets paying out. He saw lanterns set to mark the outer end of each +net. Silence fell on the bay. A single riding light glowed at the <i>No. +5's</i> masthead. Her cabin lights blinked out. Her crew sprawled in their +bunks, sound asleep.</p> + +<p>Under cover of the night the fishermen took pattern from the seiner's +example. A gill net is nine hundred feet long, approximately twenty feet +deep. They stripped the cork floats off one and hung it to the lead-line +of another. Thus with a web forty feet deep they went stealthily up to +the mouth of the Solomon. With a four-oared skiff manning each end of +the nine hundred-foot length they swept their net around the Jew's +Mouth, closed it like a purse seine, and hauled it out into the shallows +of a small beach. They stood in the shallow water with sea boots on and +forked the salmon into their rowboats and laid the rowboats alongside +the <i>Blackbird</i> to deliver,—all in the dark without a lantern flicker, +with muffled oarlocks and hushed voices. Three times they swept the bay.</p> + +<p>At five in the morning, before it was lightening in the east, the +<i>Blackbird</i> rode four inches below her load water line with a mixed +cargo of coho and dog salmon, the heaviest cargo ever stowed under her +hatches,—and eight fishermen divided two thousand dollars share and +share alike for their night's work.</p> +<p><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144"></a></p> +<p>MacRae battened his hatch covers, started his engine, heaved up the +hook, and hauled out of the bay.</p> + +<p>In the Gulf the obscuring clouds parted to lay a shaft of silver on +smooth, windless sea. The <i>Blackbird</i> wallowed down the moon-trail. +MacRae stood at the steering wheel. Beside him Steve Ferrara leaned on +the low cabin.</p> + +<p>"She's getting day," Steve said, after a long silence. He chuckled. +"Some raid. If they can keep that lick up those boys will all have new +boats for next season. You'll break old Gower if you keep on, Jack."</p> + +<p>The thought warmed MacRae. To break Gower, to pull him down to where he +must struggle for a living like other common men, to deprive him of the +power he had abused, to make him suffer as such a man would suffer under +that turn of fortune,—that would help to square accounts. It would be +only a measure of justice. To be dealt with as he had dealt with +others,—MacRae asked no more than that for himself.</p> + +<p>But it was not likely, he reflected. One bad season would not seriously +involve a wary old bird like Horace Gower. He was too secure behind +manifold bulwarks. Still in the end,—more spectacular things had come +to pass in the affairs of men on this kaleidoscopic coast. MacRae's face +was hard in the moonlight. His eyes were somber. It was an ugly feeling +to nurse. For thirty years that sort of impotent bitterness must have +rankled in his father's breast—with just cause, MacRae told himself +moodily. No wonder old Donald had been a grave and silent man; a just, +kindly, generous man, too.<a name="Page_145" id="Page_145"></a> Other men had liked him, respected him. Gower +alone had been implacable.</p> + +<p>Well into the red and yellow dawn MacRae stood at the wheel, thinking of +this, an absent look in eyes which still kept keen watch ahead. He was +glad when it came time for Steve's watch on deck, and he could lie down +and let sleep drive it out of his mind. He did not live solely to +revenge himself upon Horace Gower. He had his own way to make and his +own plans—even if they were still a bit nebulous—to fulfill. It was +only now and then that the past saddened him and made him bitter.</p> + +<p>The week following brought great runs of salmon to the Jew's Mouth. Of +these the <i>Folly Bay No. 5</i> somehow failed to get the lion's share. The +gill-net men laughed in their soiled sleeves and furtively swept the bay +clear each night and all night, and the daytime haul of the seine fell +far below the average. The <i>Blackbird</i> and the <i>Bluebird</i> waddled down a +placid Gulf with all they could carry.</p> + +<p>And although there was big money-making in this short stretch, and the +secret satisfaction of helping put another spoke in Gower's wheel, +MacRae did not neglect the rest of his territory nor the few trollers +that still worked Squitty Island. He ran long hours to get their few +fish. It was their living, and MacRae would not pass them up because +their catch meant no profit compared to the time he spent and the fuel +he burned making this round. He would drive straight up the Gulf from +Bellingham to Squitty, circle the Island and then across to the mouth of +the Solomon. The weather was growing cool now. Salmon would keep +unspoiled a long time in a trailer's hold. It did not matter to him +whether it was day or night around Squitty. He drove his carrier into<a name="Page_146" id="Page_146"></a> +any nook or hole where a troller might lie waiting with a few salmon.</p> + +<p>The <i>Blackbird</i> came pitching and diving into a heavy southeast swell up +along the western side of Squitty at ten o'clock in the black of an +early October night. There was a storm brewing, a wicked one, reckoned +by the headlong drop of the aneroid. MacRae had a hundred or so salmon +aboard for all his Squitty round, and he had yet to pick up those on the +boats in the Cove. He cocked his eye at a cloud-wrack streaking above, +driving before a wind which had not yet dropped to the level of the +Gulf, and he said to himself that it would be wise to stay in the Cove +that night. A southeast gale, a beam sea, and the tiny opening of the +Jew's Mouth was a bad combination to face in a black night. As he stood +up along Squitty he could hear the swells break along the shore. Now and +then a cold puff of air, the forerunner of the big wind, struck him. +Driving full speed the <i>Blackbird</i> dipped her bow deep in each sea and +rose dripping to the next. He passed Cradle Bay at last, almost under +the steep cliffs, holding in to round Poor Man's Rock and lay a compass +course to the mouth of Squitty Cove.</p> + +<p>And as he put his wheel over and swept around the Rock and came clear of +Point Old a shadowy thing topped by three lights in a red and green and +white triangle seemed to leap at him out of the darkness. The lights +showed, and under the lights white water hissing. MacRae threw his +weight on the wheel. He shouted to Steve Ferrara, lying on his bunk in +the little cabin aft.</p> + +<p>He knew the boat instantly,—the <i>Arrow</i> shooting through the night at +twenty miles an hour, scurrying to shelter under the full thrust of her +tremendous power. For an appreciable instant her high bow loomed over +<a name="Page_147" id="Page_147"></a>him, while his hands twisted the wheel. But the <i>Blackbird</i> was heavy, +sluggish on her helm. She swung a little, from square across the rushing +<i>Arrow</i>, to a slight angle. Two seconds would have cleared him. By the +rules of the road at sea the <i>Blackbird</i> had the right of way. If MacRae +had held by the book this speeding mass of mahogany and brass and steel +would have cut him in two amidships. As it was, her high bow, the stem +shod with a cast bronze cutwater edged like a knife, struck him on the +port quarter, sheared through guard, planking, cabin.</p> + +<p>There was a crash of riven timbers, the crunching ring of metal, quick +oaths, a cry. The <i>Arrow</i> scarcely hesitated. She had cut away nearly +the entire stern works of the <i>Blackbird</i>. But such was her momentum +that the shock barely slowed her up. Her hull bumped the <i>Blackbird</i> +aside. She passed on. She did not even stand by to see what she had +done. There was a sound of shouting on her decks, but she kept on.</p> + +<p>MacRae could have stepped aboard her as she brushed by. Her rail was +within reach of his hand. But that did not occur to him. Steve Ferrara +was asleep in the cabin, in the path of that destroying stem. For a +stunned moment MacRae stood as the <i>Arrow</i> drew clear. The <i>Blackbird</i> +began to settle under his feet.</p> + +<p>MacRae dived down the after companion. He went into water to his waist. +<a name="Page_148" id="Page_148"></a>His hands, groping blindly, laid hold of clothing, a limp body. He +struggled back, up, gained the deck, dragging Steve after him. The +<i>Blackbird</i> was deep by the holed stern now, awash to her after fish +hatch. She rose slowly, like a log, on each swell. Only the buoyancy of +her tanks and timbers kept her from the last plunge. There was a light +skiff bottom up across her hatches by the steering wheel. MacRae moved +warily toward that, holding to the bulwark with one hand, dragging Steve +with the other lest a sea sweep them both away.</p> + +<p>He noticed, with his brain functioning unruffled, that the <i>Arrow</i> +drove headlong into Cradle Bay. He could hear her exhaust roaring. He +could still hear shouting. And he could see also that the wind and the +tide and the roll of the swells carried the water-logged hulk of the +<i>Blackbird</i> in the opposite direction. She was past the Rock, but she +was edging shoreward, in under the granite walls that ran between Point +Old and the Cove. He steadied himself, keeping his hold on Steve, and +reached for the skiff. As his fingers touched it a comber flung itself +up out of the black and shot two feet of foam and green water across the +swamped hull. It picked up the light cedar skiff like a chip and cast it +beyond his reach and beyond his sight. And as he clung to the cabin +pipe-rail, drenched with the cold sea, he heard that big roller burst +against the shore very near at hand. He saw the white spray lift ghostly +in the black.</p> + +<p>MacRae held his hand over Steve's heart, <a name="Page_149" id="Page_149"></a>over his mouth to feel if he +breathed. Then he got Steve's body between his legs to hold him from +slipping away, and bracing himself against the sodden lurch of the +wreck, began to take off his clothes.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII"></a>CHAPTER XII</h2> + +<p><span class="smcap">Between Sun and Sun</span></p> + + +<p>Walking when he could, crawling on hands and knees when his legs buckled +under him, MacRae left a blood-sprinkled trail over grass and moss and +fallen leaves. He lived over and over that few minutes which had seemed +so long, in which he had been battered against broken rocks, in which he +had clawed over weedy ledges armored with barnacles that cut like +knives, hauling Steve Ferrara's body with him so that it should not +become the plaything of the tides. MacRae was no stranger to death. He +had seen it in many terrible forms. He had heard the whistle of the +invisible scythe that cuts men down. He knew that Steve was dead when he +dragged him at last out of the surf, up where nothing but high-flung +drops of spray could reach him. He left him there on a mossy ledge, +knowing that he could do nothing more for Steve Ferrara and that he must +do something for himself. So he came at last to the end of that path +which led to his own house and crept and stumbled up the steps into the +deeper darkness of those hushed, lonely rooms.</p> + +<p>MacRae knew he had suffered no vital hurt, no broken bones. But he had +been fearfully buffeted among those sea-drenched rocks, bruised from +<a name="Page_150" id="Page_150"></a>head to foot, shocked by successive blows. He had spent his strength to +keep the sea from claiming Steve. He had been unmercifully slashed by +the barnacles. He was weak from loss of blood, and he was bleeding yet, +in oozy streams,—face, hands, shoulders, knees, wherever those +lance-edged shells had raked his flesh.</p> + +<p>He was sick and dizzy. But he could still think and act. He felt his way +to matches on a kitchen shelf, staggered into his bedroom, lit a lamp. +Out of a dresser drawer he took clean white cloth, out of another +carbolic acid. He got himself a basin of water.</p> + +<p>He sat down on the edge of his bed. As he tore the first strip of linen +things began to swim before his eyes. He sagged back on a pillow. The +room and the lamp and all that was near him blended in a misty swirl. He +had the extraordinary sensation of floating lightly in space that was +quiet and profoundly dark—and still he was cloudily aware of footsteps +ringing hollow on the bare floor of the other room.</p> + +<p>He became aware—as if no interval had elapsed—of being moved, of hands +touching him, of a stinging sensation of pain which he understood to be +the smarting of the cuts in his flesh. But time must have gone winging +by, he knew, as his senses grew clearer. He was stripped of his sodden, +bloody undershirt and overalls, partly covered by his blanket. He could +feel bandages on his legs, on one badly slashed arm. He made out Betty +Gower's face with its unruly mass of reddish-brown hair and two rose +spots of color glowing on her smooth cheeks. There was also a tall young +man, coatless, showing a white expanse of flannel shirt with the sleeves +rolled above his elbows. MacRae could only see this out of one corner of +his eye, for he was being turned gently over on his face. Weak and +passive as he was, the firm pressure of Betty's soft hands on his skin +gave him a curiously pleasant sensation.</p> + +<p>He heard her draw her breath sh<a name="Page_151" id="Page_151"></a>arply and make some exclamation as his +bare back turned to the light.</p> + +<p>"This chap has been to the wars, eh, Miss Gower?" he heard the man say. +"Those are machine-gun marks, I should say—close range, too. I saw +plenty of that after the Argonne."</p> + +<p>"Such scars. How could a man live with holes like that through his +body?" Betty said. "He was in the air force."</p> + +<p>"Some Hun got in a burst of fire on him, sometime, then," the man +commented. "Didn't get him, either, or he wouldn't be here. Why, two or +three bullet holes like that would only put a fellow out for a few +weeks. Look at him," he tapped MacRae's back with a forefinger. +"Shoulders and chest and arms like a champion middle weight ready to go +twenty rounds. And you can bet all your pin money, Miss Gower, that this +man's heart and lungs and nerves are away above par or he would never +have got his wings. Takes a lot to down those fellows. Looks in bad +shape now, doesn't he? All cut and bruised and exhausted. But he'll be +walking about day after to-morrow. A little stiff and sore, but +otherwise well enough."</p> + +<p>"I wish he'd open his eyes and speak," Betty said. "How can you tell? He +may be injured internally."</p> + +<p>The man chuckled. He did not cease work as he talked. He was using a +damp cloth, with a pungent medicated smell. Dual odors familiar to every +man who has ever been in hospital assailed MacRae's nostrils. Wherever +that damp cloth touched a cut it burned. MacRae listened drowsily. He +had not the strength or the wish to do anything else.</p> + +<p>"Heart a<a name="Page_152" id="Page_152"></a>ction's normal. Respiration and temperature, ditto," he heard +above him. "Unconsciousness is merely natural reaction from shock, +nerve strain, loss of blood. You can guess what sort of fight he must +have made in those breakers. If you were a sawbones, Miss Gower, you +wouldn't be uneasy. I'll stake my professional reputation on his +injuries being superficial. Quite enough to knock a man out, I grant. +But a physique of this sort can stand a tremendous amount of strain +without serious effect. Hand me that adhesive, will you, please?"</p> + +<p>There was an air of unreality about the whole proceeding in MacRae's +mind. He wondered if he would presently wake up in his bunk opposite +Steve and find that he had been dreaming. Yet those voices, and the +hands that shifted him tenderly, and the pyjama coat that was slipped on +him at last, were not the stuff of dreams. No, the lights of the +<i>Arrow</i>, the smash of the collision, the tumbling seas which had flung +him against the rocks, the dead weight of Steve's body in his bleeding +arms, were not illusions.</p> + +<p>He opened his eyes when they turned him on his back.</p> + +<p>"Well, old man, how do you feel?" Betty's companion asked genially.</p> + +<p>"All right," MacRae said briefly. He found that speech required effort. +His mind worked clearly enough, but his tongue was uncertain, his voice +low-pitched, husky. He turned his eyes on Betty. She tried to smile. But +her lips quivered in the attempt. MacRae looked at her curiously. But he +did not say anything. In the face of accomplished facts, words were +rather futile.</p> + +<p>He closed his eyes again, only to get a mental picture of the <i>Arrow</i> +leaping at him out of the gloom, the thunder of the swells bursting +against the foot of the cliffs, of Steve lying on that ledge alone. But +nothing could harm Steve. Storm and cold and pain and loneliness were +nothing to him, now.</p> + +<p>He heard Betty speak.</p> + +<p>"Can we do anything more?"</p> +<p><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153"></a></p> +<p>"Um—no," the man answered. "Not for some time, anyway."</p> + +<p>"Then I wish you would go back to the house and tell them," Betty said. +"They'll be worrying. I'll stay here."</p> + +<p>"I suppose it would be as well," he agreed. "I'll come back."</p> + +<p>"There's no need for either of you to stay here," MacRae said wearily. +"You've stopped the bleeding, and you can't do any more. Go home and go +to bed. I'm as well alone."</p> + +<p>There was a brief interval of silence. MacRae heard footsteps crossing +the floor, receding, going down the steps. He opened his eyes. Betty +Gower sat on a low box by his bed, her hands in her lap, looking at him +wistfully. She leaned a little toward him.</p> + +<p>"I'm awfully sorry," she whispered.</p> + +<p>"So was the little boy who cut off his sister's thumb with the hatchet," +MacRae muttered. "But that didn't help sister's thumb. If you'll run +down to old Peter Ferrara's house and tell him what has happened, and +then go home yourself, we'll call it square."</p> + +<p>"I have already done that," Betty said. "Dolly is away. The fishermen +are bringing Steve Ferrara's body to his uncle's house. They are going +to try to save what is left of your boat."</p> + +<p>"It is kind of you, I'm sure, to pick up the pieces," MacRae gibed.</p> + +<p>"I <i>am</i> sorry," the girl breathed.</p> +<p><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154"></a></p> +<p>"After the fact. Belting around a point in the dark at train speed, +regardless of the rules of the road. Destroying a valuable boat, killing +a man. Property is supposed to be sacred—if life has no market value. +Were you late for dinner?"</p> + +<p>In his anger he made a quick movement with his arms, flinging the +blanket off, sending intolerable pangs through his bruised and torn +body.</p> + +<p>Betty rose and bent over him, put the blanket back silently, tucked him +in like a mother settling the cover about a restless child. She did not +say anything for a minute. She stood over him, nervously plucking bits +of lint off the blanket. Her eyes grew wet.</p> + +<p>"I don't blame you for feeling that way," she said at last. "It was a +terrible thing. You had the right of way. I don't know why or how +Robertson let it happen. He has always been a careful navigator. The +nearness when he saw you under his bows must have paralyzed him, and +with our speed—oh, it isn't any use, I know, to tell you how sorry I +am. That won't bring that poor boy back to life again. It won't—"</p> + +<p>"You killed him—your kind of people—twice," MacRae said thickly. "Once +in France, where he risked his life—all he had to risk—so that you and +your kind should continue to have ease and security. He came home +wheezing and strangling, suffering all the pains of death without +death's relief. And when he was beginning to think he had another chance +you finish him off. But that's nothing. A mere incident. Why should you +care? The country is full of Ferraras. What do they matter? Men of no +<a name="Page_155" id="Page_155"></a>social or financial standing, men who work with their hands and smell of +fish. If it's a shock to you to see one man dead and another cut and +bloody, think of the numbers that suffer as great pains and hardships +that you know nothing about—and wouldn't care if you did. You couldn't +be what you are and have what you have if they didn't. Sorry! Sympathy +is the cheapest thing in the market, cheaper than salmon. You can't help +Steve Ferrara with that—not now. Don't waste any on me. I don't need +it. I resent it. You may need it all for your own before I get through. +I—I am—"</p> + +<p>MacRae's voice trailed off into an incoherent murmur. He seemed to be +floating off into those dark shadowy spaces again. In reality he was +exhausted. A man with his veins half emptied of blood cannot get in a +passion without a speedy reaction. MacRae went off into an unconscious +state which gradually became transformed into natural, healthy sleep, +the deep slumber of utter exhaustion.</p> + +<p>At intervals thereafter he was hazily aware of some one beside him, of +soft hands that touched him. Once he wakened to find the room empty, the +lamp turned low. In the dim light and the hush the place seemed +unutterably desolate and forsaken, as if he were buried in a crypt. When +he listened he could hear the melancholy drone of the southeaster and +the rumble of the surf, two sounds that fitted well his mood. He felt a +strange relief when Betty came tiptoeing in from the kitchen. She bent +over him. MacRae closed his eyes and slept again.</p> + +<p>He awakened at last, alert, refreshed, free of that depression which had +rested so heavily on him. And he found that weariness had caught Betty +Gower in its overpowering grip<a name="Page_156" id="Page_156"></a>. She had drawn her box seat up close +beside him. Her body had drooped until her arms rested on the side of +the bed, and her head rested on her arms. MacRae found one of his hands +caught tight in both hers. She was asleep, breathing lightly, regularly. +He twisted his stiffened neck to get a better look at her. He could +only see one side of her face, and that he studied a long time. Pretty +and piquant, still it was no doll's face. There was character in that +firm mouth and round chin. Betty had a beautiful skin. That had been +MacRae's first impression of her, the first time he saw her. And she had +a heavy mass of reddish-brown hair that shone in the sunlight with a +decided wave in it which always made it seem unruly, about to escape +from its conventional arrangement.</p> + +<p>MacRae made no attempt to free his hand. He was quite satisfied to let +it be. The touch of her warm flesh against his stirred him a little, +sent his mind straying off into strange channels. Queer that the first +woman to care for him when he crept wounded and shaken to the shelter of +his own roof should be the daughter of his enemy. For MacRae could not +otherwise regard Horace Gower. Anything short of that seemed treason to +the gray old man who had died in the next room, babbling of his son and +the west wind and some one he called Bessie.</p> + +<p>MacRae's eyes blurred unexpectedly. What a damned shame things had to be +the way they were. Behind this girl, who was in herself lovely and +desirable as a woman should be, loomed the pudgy figure of her father, +ruthless, vindictively unjust. Gower hadn't struck at him openly; but +that, MacRae believed, was merely for lack of suitable opening.</p> +<p><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157"></a></p> +<p>But that did not keep Jack MacRae from thinking—what every normal man +begins to think, or rather to feel, soon or late—that he is incomplete, +insufficient, without some particular woman to love him, upon whom to +bestow love. It was like a revelation. He caught himself wishing that +Betty would wake up and smile at him, bend over him with a kiss. He +stared up at the shadowy roof beams, feeling the hot blood leap to his +face at the thought. There was an uncanny magic in the nearness of her, +a lure in the droop of her tired body. And MacRae struggled against that +seduction. Yet he could not deny that Betty Gower, innocently sleeping +with his hand fast in hers, filled him with visions and desires which +had never before focused with such intensity on any woman who had come +his way. Mysteriously she seemed absolved of all blame for being a +Gower, for any of the things the Gower clan had done to him and his, +even to the misfortune of that night which had cost a man his life.</p> + +<p>"It isn't <i>her</i> fault," MacRae said to himself. "But, Lord, I wish she'd +kept away from here, if <i>this</i> sort of thing is going to get me."</p> + +<p>What <i>this</i> was he did not attempt to define. He did not admit that he +was hovering on the brink of loving Betty Gower—it seemed an incredible +thing for him to do—but was vividly aware that she had kindled an +incomprehensible fire in him, and he suspected, indeed he feared with a +fear that bordered on spiritual shrinking, that it would go on glowing +after she was gone. And she would go presently. This spontaneous rushing +to his aid was merely what a girl like that, with generous impulses and +quick sympathy, would do for any one in dire need. She would leave +behind her an inescapable longing, an emptiness, a memory of sweetly +disturbing visions. MacRae seemed to see with remarkable clarity and +sureness that he would be penalized for yielding to that bewitching +fancy. By what magic had she so suddenly made herself a shining figure +in a golden dream? Some necromancy of the spirit, invisible but +wonderfully potent? Or was it purely physical,—the soft reddish-brown +of her hair; her frank gray eyes, very like his own; the marvelous, +smooth clearness and coloring of her skin; her v<a name="Page_158" id="Page_158"></a>oice, that was given to +soft cadences? He did not know. No man ever quite knows what positive +qualities in a woman can make his heart leap. MacRae was no wiser than +most. But he was not prone to cherish illusions, to deceive himself. He +had imagination. That gave him a key to many things which escape a +sluggish mind.</p> + +<p>"Well," he said to himself at last, with a fatalistic humor, "if it +comes that way, it comes. If I am to be the goat, I shall be, and that's +all there is to it."</p> + +<p>Under his breath he cursed Horace Gower deeply and fervently, and he was +not conscious of anything incongruous in that. And then he lay very +thoughtful and a little sad, his eyes on the smooth curve of Betty's +cheek swept by long brown lashes, the corner of a red mouth made for +kissing. His fingers were warm in hers. He smiled sardonically at a +vagrant wish that they might remain there always.</p> + +<p>Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad. MacRae wondered if the +gods thus planned his destruction?</p> + +<p>A tremulous sigh warned him. He shut his eyes, feigned sleep. He felt +rather than saw Betty sit up with a start, release his hand. Then very +gently she moved that arm back under the blanket, reached across him and +patted the covers close about his body, stood looking down at him.</p> + +<p>And MacRae stirred, opened his eyes.</p> + +<p>"What time is it?" he asked.</p> + +<p>She looked at a wrist watch. "Four o'clock." She shivered.</p> + +<p>"You've been here all this time without a fire. You're chilled through. +Why didn't you go home? You should go now."</p> + +<p>"I have been sitting here dozing," she said. "I wasn't aware of the cold +until now. But there is wood and kindling in the kitchen, and I am going +to make a fire. Aren't you h<a name="Page_159" id="Page_159"></a>ungry?"</p> + +<p>"Starving," he said. "But there is nothing to eat in the house. It has +been empty for months."</p> + +<p>"There is tea," she said. "I saw some on a shelf. I'll make a cup of +that. It will be something warm, refreshing."</p> + +<p>MacRae listened to her at the kitchen stove. There was the clink of iron +lids, the smell of wood smoke, the pleasant crackle of the fire. +Presently she came in with two steaming cups.</p> + +<p>"I have a faint recollection of talking wild and large a while ago," +MacRae remarked. Indeed, it seemed hazy to him now. "Did I say anything +nasty?"</p> + +<p>"Yes," she replied frankly; "perhaps the sting of what you said lay in +its being partly true. A half truth is sometimes a deadly weapon. I +wonder if you do really hate us as much, as your manner implied—and +why?"</p> + +<p>"Us. Who?" MacRae asked.</p> + +<p>"My father and me," she put it bluntly.</p> + +<p>"What makes you think I do?" MacRae asked. "Because I have set up a +fierce competition in a business where your father has had a monopoly so +long that he thinks this part of the Gulf belongs to him? Because I +resent your running down one of my boats? Because I go about my affairs +in my own way, regardless of Gower interests?"</p> + +<p>"What do these things amount to?" Bet<a name="Page_160" id="Page_160"></a>ty answered impatiently. "It's in +your manner, your attitude. Sometimes it even shows in your eyes. It +was there the morning I came across you sitting on Point Old, the day +after the armistice was signed. I've danced with you and seen you look +at me as if—as if," she laughed self-consciously, "you would like to +wring my neck. I have never done anything to create a dislike of that +sort. I have never been with you without being conscious that you were +repressing something, out of—well, courtesy, I suppose. There is a +peculiar tension about you whenever my father is mentioned. I'm not a +fool," she finished, "even if I happen to be one of what you might call +the idle rich. What is the cause of this bad blood?"</p> + +<p>"What does it matter?" MacRae parried.</p> + +<p>"There is something, then?" she persisted.</p> + +<p>MacRae turned his head away. He couldn't tell her. It was not wholly his +story to tell. How could he expect her to see it, to react to it as he +did? A matter involving her father and mother, and his father. It was +not a pretty tale. He might be influenced powerfully in a certain +direction by the account of it passed on by old Donald MacRae; he might +be stirred by the backwash of those old passions, but he could not lay +bare all that to any one—least of all to Betty Gower. And still MacRae, +for the moment, was torn between two desires. He retained the same +implacable resentment toward Gower, and he found himself wishing to set +Gower's daughter apart and outside the consequences of that ancient +feud. And that, he knew, was trying to reconcile the irreconcilable. It +couldn't be done.</p> + +<p>"Was the <i>Arrow</i> holed in the crash?"</p> + +<p>Betty stood staring at him. She blinked. Her fingers began again that +nervous plucking at the blanket. But her face settled presently into +its normal composure and she answered evenly.</p> + +<p>"Rather badly up forward. She was settling fast when they beached her in +the Bay."</p> + +<p>"And then," she continued after a pause, "Doctor Wallis and I got ashore +<a name="Page_161" id="Page_161"></a>as quickly as we could. We got a lantern and came along the cliffs. And +two of the men took our big lifeboat and rowed along near the shore. +They found the <i>Blackbird</i> pounding on the rocks, and we found Steve +Ferrara where you left him. And we followed you here by the blood you +spattered along the way."</p> + +<p>A line from the Rhyme of the Three Sealers came into MacRae's mind as +befitting. But he was thinking of his father and not so much of himself +as he quoted:</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 8em;">"'Sorrow is me, in a lonely sea,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 8em;">And a sinful fight I fall.'"</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>"I'm afraid I don't quite grasp that," Betty said. "Although I know +Kipling too, and could supply the rest of those verses. I'm afraid I +don't understand."</p> + +<p>"It isn't likely that you ever will," MacRae answered slowly. "It is not +necessary that you should."</p> + +<p>Their voices ceased. In the stillness the whistle of the wind and the +deep drone of the seas shattering themselves on the granite lifted a +dreary monotone. And presently a quick step sounded on the porch. Doctor +Wallis came hurriedly in.</p> + +<p>"Upon my soul," he said apologetically. "I ought to be shot, Miss +Grower. I got everybody calmed down over at the cottage and chased them +all to bed. Then I sat down in a soft chair before that cheerful fire in +your living room. And I didn't wake up for hours. You must be worn out."</p> + +<p>"That's quite all right," Betty assured him. "Don't be +conscience-stricken. Did mamma have hysterics?"</p> + +<p>Wallis grinned cheerfull<a name="Page_162" id="Page_162"></a>y.</p> + +<p>"Well, not quite," he drawled. "At any rate, all's quiet along the +Potomac now. How's the patient getting on?"</p> + +<p>"I'm O.K.," MacRae spoke for himself, "and much obliged to you both for +tinkering me up. Miss Gower ought to go home."</p> + +<p><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163"></a>"I think so myself," Wallis said. "I'll take her across the point. Then +I'll come back and have another look over you."</p> + +<p>"It isn't necessary," MacRae declared. "Barring a certain amount of +soreness I feel fit enough. I suppose I could get up and walk now if I +had to. Go home and go to bed, both of you."</p> + +<p>"Good night, or perhaps it would be better to say good morning." Betty +gave him her hand. "Pleasant dreams."</p> + +<p>It seemed to MacRae that there was a touch of reproach, a hint of the +sardonic in her tone and words.</p> + +<p>Then he was alone in the quiet house, with his thoughts for company, and +the distant noises of the storm muttering in the outer darkness.</p> + +<p>They were not particularly pleasant processes of thought. The sins of +the fathers shall be visited even unto the third and fourth generation. +Why, in the name of God, should they be, he asked himself?</p> + +<p>Betty Gower liked him. She had been trying to tell him so. MacRae felt +that. He did not question too closely the quality of the feeling for her +which had leaped up so unexpectedly. He was afraid to dig too deep. He +had got a glimpse of depths and eddies that night which if they did not +wholly frighten him, at least served to confuse him. They were like +flint and steel, himself and Betty Gower. They could not come together +without striking sparks. And a man may long to warm himself by fire, +MacRae reflected gloomily, but he shrinks from being burned.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII"></a>CHAPTER XIII</h2> + +<p><span class="smcap"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164"></a>An Interlude</span></p> + + +<p>At daybreak Peter Ferrara came to the house.</p> + +<p>"How are you?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"Sore. Wobbly." MacRae had tried his legs and found them wanting.</p> + +<p>"It was a bad night all round, eh, lad?" Peter rumbled in his rough old +voice. "Some of the boys got a line on the <i>Blackbird</i> and hauled what +was left of her around into the Cove. But she's a ruin. The engine went +to pieces while she was poundin' on the rocks. Steve lays in the house. +He looks peaceful—as if he was glad to be through."</p> + +<p>"I couldn't save him. It was done like that." MacRae snapped his +fingers.</p> + +<p>"I know," Old Peter said. "You're not to blame. Perhaps nobody is. Them +things happen. Manuel'll feel it. He's lost both sons now. But Steve's +better off. He'd 'a' died of consumption or something, slow an' painful. +His lungs was gone. I seen him set for weeks on the porch wheezin' after +he come home. He didn't get no pleasure livin'. He said once a bullet +would 'a' been mercy. No, don't worry about Steve. We all come to it +soon or late, John. It's never a pity for the old or the crippled to +die."</p> + +<p>"You old Spartan," MacRae muttered.</p> + +<p>"What's that?" Peter asked. But MacRae did not explain. He asked about +Dolly instead.</p> +<p><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165"></a></p> +<p>"She was up to Potter's Landing. I sent for her and she's back," Peter +told him. "She'll be up to see you presently. There's no grub in the +house, is there? Can you eat? Well, take it easy, lad."</p> + +<p>An hour or so later Dolly Ferrara brought him a steaming breakfast on a +tray. She sat talking to him while he ate.</p> + +<p>"Gower will have to pay for the <i>Blackbird</i>, won't he?" she asked. "The +fishermen say so."</p> + +<p>"If he doesn't in one way he will another," MacRae answered +indifferently. "But that doesn't help Steve. The boat doesn't matter. +One can build boats. You can't bring a man back to life when he's dead."</p> + +<p>"If Steve could talk he'd say he didn't care," Dolly declared sadly. +"You know he wasn't getting much out of living, Jack. There was nothing +for him to look forward to but a few years of discomfort and +uncertainty. A man who has been strong and active rebels against dying +by inches. Steve told me—not so very long ago—that if something would +finish him off quickly he would be glad."</p> + +<p>If that had been Steve's wish, MacRae thought, then fate had hearkened +to him. He knew it was true. He had lived at elbows with Steve all +summer. Steve never complained. He was made of different stuff. It was +only a gloomy consolation, after all, to think of Steve as being better +off. MacRae knew how men cling to life, even when it has lost all its +savor. There is that imperative will-to-live which refuses to be denied.</p> + +<p>Dolly went away. After a time Wallis came over from the cottage at +Cradle Bay. He was a young and genial m<a name="Page_166" id="Page_166"></a>edico from Seattle, who had just +returned from service with the American forces overseas, and was +holidaying briefly before he took up private practice again. He had +very little more than a casual interest in MacRae, however, and he did +not stay long once he had satisfied himself that his patient had little +further need of professional services. And MacRae, who was weaker than +he expected to find himself, rested in his bed until late afternoon +brought bars of sunlight streaming through openings in the cloud bank +which still ran swift before the wind.</p> + +<p>Then he rose, dressed, made his way laboriously and painfully down to +the Cove's edge and took a brief look at the hull of the <i>Blackbird</i> +sunk to her deck line, her rail and cabins broken and twisted. After +that he hailed a fisherman, engaged him to go across to Solomon River +and apprise the <i>Bluebird</i>. That accomplished he went back to the house. +Thereafter he spent days lying on his bed, resting in a big chair before +the fireplace while his wounds healed and his strength came back to him, +thinking, planning, chafing at inaction.</p> + +<p>There was a perfunctory inquest, after which Steve's body went away to +Hidalgo Island to rest beside the bodies of other Ferraras in a plot of +ground their grandfather had taken for his own when British Columbia was +a Crown colony.</p> + +<p>MacRae carried insurance on both his carriers. There was no need for him +to move against Gower in the matter. The insurance people would attend +efficiently to that. The adjusters came, took over the wreck, made +inquiries. MacRae made his formal claim, and it was duly paid.</p> + +<p>But long before the payment was made he was at work, he and Vin Ferrara +together, on the <i>Blueb<a name="Page_167" id="Page_167"></a>ird</i>, plowing the Gulf in stormy autumn weather. +The season was far gone, the salmon run slackening to its close. It was +too late to equip another carrier. The cohoes were gone. The dog +salmon, great-toothed, slimy fish which are canned for European +export—for cheap trade, which nevertheless returned much profit to the +canneries—were still running.</p> + +<p>MacRae had taken ninety per cent. of the Folly Bay bluebacks. He had +made tremendous inroads on Folly Bay's take of coho and humpback. He did +not care greatly if Gower filled his cans with "dogs." But the +Bellingham packers cried for salmon of whatsoever quality, and so MacRae +drove the <i>Bluebird</i> hard in a trade which gave him no great profit, +chiefly to preserve his connection with the American canners, to harass +Folly Bay, and to let the fishermen know that he was still a factor and +could serve them well.</p> + +<p>He was sick of the smell of salmon, weary of the eternal heaving of the +sea under his feet, of long cold tricks at the wheel, of days in somber, +driving rain and nights without sleep. But he kept on until the salmon +ceased to run, until the purse seiners tied up for the season, and the +fishermen put by their gear.</p> + +<p>MacRae had done well,—far better than he expected. His knife had cut +both ways. He had eighteen thousand dollars in cash and the <i>Bluebird</i>. +The Folly Bay pack was twelve thousand cases short. How much that +shortage meant in lost profit MacRae could only guess, but it was a +pretty sum. Another season like that,—he smiled grimly. The next season +would be better,—for him. The trollers were all for him. They went out +of their <a name="Page_168" id="Page_168"></a>way to tell him that. He had organized good will behind him. +The men who followed the salmon schools believed he did not want the +earth, only a decent share. He did not sit behind a mahogany desk in +town and set the price of fish. These men had labored a long time under +the weighty heel of a controlled industry, and they were thankful for a +new dispensation. It gave MacRae a pleasant feeling to know this. It +gave him also something of a contempt for Gower, who had sat tight with +a virtual monopoly for ten years and along with his profits had earned +the distrust and dislike of a body of men who might as easily have been +loyal laborers in his watery vineyards,—if he had not used his power to +hold them to the most meager return they could wring from the sea.</p> + +<p>He came home to the house at Squitty Cove with some odds and ends from +town shops to make it more comfortable, flooring to replace the old, +worn boards, a rug or two, pictures that caught his fancy, new cushions +for the big chairs old Donald MacRae had fashioned by hand years before, +a banjo to pick at, and a great box of books which he had promised to +read some day when he had time. And he knew he would have time through +long winter evenings when the land was drenched with rain, when the +storm winds howled in the swaying firs and the sea beat clamorously +along the cliffs. He would sit with his feet to a glowing fire and read +books.</p> + +<p>He did, for a time. When late November laid down a constant barrage of +rain and the cloud battalions marched and countermarched along the +coast, MacRae had settled down. He had no present care upon his +shoulders. Although he presumed himself to be res<a name="Page_169" id="Page_169"></a>ting, he was far from +idle. He found many ways of occupying himself about the old place. It +was his pleasure that the old log house should be neat within and +without, the yard clean, the garden restored to order. It had suffered a +season's neglect. He remedied that with a little labor and a little +money, wishing, as the place took on a sprightlier air, that old Donald +could be there to see. MacRae was frank in his affection for the spot. +No other place that he had ever seen meant quite the same to him. He was +always glad to come back to it; it seemed imperative that he should +always come back there. It was home, his refuge, his castle. Indeed he +had seen castles across the sea from whose towers less goodly sights +spread than he could command from his own front door, now that winter +had stripped the maple and alder of their leafy screen. There was the +sheltered Cove at his feet, the far sweep of the Gulf—colored according +to its mood and the weather—great mountain ranges lifting sheer from +blue water, their lower slopes green with forest and their crests white +with snow. Immensities of land and trees. All his environment pitched +upon a colossal scale. It was good to look at, to live among, and MacRae +knew that it was good.</p> + +<p>He sat on a log at the brink of the Cove one morning, in a burst of +sunshine as grateful as it was rare. He looked out at the mainland +shore, shading away from deep olive to a faint and misty blue. He cast +his gaze along Vancouver Island, a three-hundred-mile barrier against +the long roll of the Pacific. He thought of England, with its scant area +and its forty million souls. He smiled. An empire opened within range of +his vision. He had had to go to Europe to appreciate his own country. +Old, old peoples over there. Outworn, bewildered aristocracies and vast +populations troubled with the specter of want, swarming like rabbits, +pressing always close upon the means of subsistence. No room; no chance. +Born in social stratas solidified by centuries. No wonder Europe was +full of race and class hatred, of war and pestilenc<a name="Page_170" id="Page_170"></a>e. Snap +judgment,—but Jack MacRae had seen the peasants of France and Belgium, +the driven workmen of industrial France and England. He had seen also +something of the forces which controlled them, caught glimpses of the +iron hand in the velvet glove, a hand that was not so sure and steady as +in days gone by.</p> + +<p>Here a man still had a chance. He could not pick golden apples off the +fir trees. He must use his brains as well as his hands. A reasonable +measure of security was within a man's grasp if he tried for it. To pile +up a fortune might be a heavy task. But getting a living was no +insoluble problem. A man could accomplish either without selling his +soul or cutting throats or making serfs of his fellow men. There was +room to move and breathe,—and some to spare.</p> + +<p>Perhaps Jack MacRae, in view of his feelings, his cherished projects, +was a trifle inconsistent in the judgments he passed, sitting there on +his log in the winter sunshine. But the wholly consistent must die +young. Their works do not appear in this day and hour. The normal man +adjusts himself to, and his actions are guided by, moods and +circumstances which are seldom orderly and logical in their sequence.</p> + +<p>MacRae cherished as profound an animosity toward Horace Gower as any +Russian ever felt for bureaucratic tyranny. He could smart under +injustice and plan reprisal. He could appreciate his environment, his +opportunities, be glad that his lines were cast amid rugged beauty. But +he did not on that account feel tolerant toward those whom he conceived +to be his enemies. He was not, however, thinking concretely of his +personal affairs or tendencies that bright morning. He was merely +sitting more or less quiesc<a name="Page_171" id="Page_171"></a>ent on his log, nursing vagrant impressions, +letting the sun bathe him.</p> + +<p>He was not even conscious of trespassing on Horace Gower's land. When +he thought of it, of course he realized that this was legally so. But +the legal fact had no reality for MacRae. Between the Cove and Point +Old, for a mile back into the dusky woods, he felt free to come and go +as he chose. He had always believed and understood and felt that area to +be his, and he still held to that old impression. There was not a foot +of that six hundred acres that he had not explored alone, with his +father, with Dolly Ferrara, season after season. He had gone barefoot +over the rocks, dug clams on the beaches, fished trout in the little +streams, hunted deer and grouse in the thickets, as far back as he could +remember. He had loved the cliffs and the sea, the woods around the Cove +with an affection bred in use and occupancy, confirmed by the sense of +inviolate possession. Old things are dear, if a man has once loved them. +They remain so. The aura of beloved familiarity clings to them long +after they have passed into alien hands. When MacRae thought of this and +turned his eyes upon this noble sweep of land and forest which his +father had claimed for his own from the wilderness, it was as if some +one had deprived him of an eye or an arm by trickery and unfair +advantage.</p> + +<p>He was not glooming over such things this rare morning which had come +like a benediction after ten days of rain and wind. He was sitting on +his log bareheaded, filled with a passive content rare in his recent +experience.</p> + +<p>From this perch, in the idle wandering of his gaze, his eyes at length +rested upon Peter Ferrara's house. He saw a man and a woman come out of +the front door and stand for a minute or two on the steps. He could not +recognize the man at the distance, but he could guess. The man presently +walked away around the end of the Cove, MacRae perceived that his guess +was correct, for Norman Gower came out on the brow of the cliff that +bordered the south side of the Cove. He appeared a short distance away, +walking slowly, his eyes <a name="Page_172" id="Page_172"></a>on the Cove and Peter Ferrara's house. He did +not see MacRae till he was quite close and glanced that way.</p> + +<p>"Hello, MacRae," he said.</p> + +<p>"How d' do," Jack answered. There was no cordiality in his tone. If he +had any desire at that moment it was not for speech with Norman Gower, +but rather a desire that Gower should walk on.</p> + +<p>But the other man sat down on MacRae's log.</p> + +<p>"Not much like over the pond, this," he remarked.</p> + +<p>"Not much," MacRae agreed indifferently.</p> + +<p>Young Gower took a cigarette case out of his pocket, extended it to +MacRae, who declined with a brief shake of his head. Norman lighted a +cigarette. He was short and stoutly built, a compact, muscular man +somewhat older than MacRae. He had very fair hair and blue eyes, and the +rose-leaf skin of his mother had in him taken on a masculine floridity. +But he had the Gower mouth and determined chin. So had Betty, MacRae was +reminded, looking at her brother.</p> + +<p>"You sank your harpoon pretty deep into Folly Bay this season," Norman +said abruptly. "Did you do pretty well yourself?"</p> + +<p>"Pretty well," MacRae drawled. "Did it worry you?"</p> + +<p>"Me? Hardly," young Gower smiled. "It did not cost <i>me</i> anything to +operate Folly Bay at a loss while I was in charge. I had neither money +nor reputation to lose. You may have worried the governor. I dare say +you did. He never did take kindly to anything or any one that interfered +<a name="Page_173" id="Page_173"></a>with his projects. But I haven't heard him commit himself. He doesn't +confide in me, anyway, nor esteem me very highly in any capacity. I +wonder if your father ever felt that way about you?"</p> + +<p>"No," MacRae said impulsively. "By God, no!"</p> + +<p>"Lucky. And you came home with a record behind you. Nothing to handicap +you. You jumped into the fray to do something for yourself and made good +right off the bat. There is such a thing as luck," Norman said soberly. +"A man can do his best—and fail. I have, so far. I was expected to come +home a credit to the family, a hero, dangling medals on my manly chest. +Instead, I've lost caste with my own crowd. Girls and fellows I used to +know sneer at me behind my back. They put their tongues in their cheek +and say I was a crafty slacker. I suppose you've heard the talk?"</p> + +<p>"No," MacRae answered shortly; he had forgotten Nelly Abbott's +questioning almost the first time he met her. "I don't run much with +your crowd, anyway."</p> + +<p>"Well, they can think what they damn please," young Gower grumbled. +"It's quite true that I was never any closer to the front than the Dover +cliffs. Perhaps at home here in the beginning they handed me a captain's +commission on the family pull. But I tried to deliver the goods. These +people think I dodged the trenches. They don't know my eyesight spoiled +my chances of going into action. I couldn't get to France. So I did my +bit where headquarters told me I could do it or go home. And all I have +got out of it is the veiled contempt of nearly everybody I know, my +father included, for not killing Germans with my own hands."</p> + +<p>MacRae kept still. It was a curious statement. Young Gower twisted and +ground his boot heel into the soft earth.</p> + +<p>"Being a rich man's son has proved a considerable handicap i<a name="Page_174" id="Page_174"></a>n my case," +he continued at last. "I was petted and coddled all my life. Then the +war came along. Everybody expected a lot of me. And I am as good as +excommunicated for not coming up to expectations. Beautiful irony. If my +eyes had been normal, I should be another of Vancouver's heroes,—alive +or dead. The spirit doesn't seem to count. The only thing that matters, +evidently, is that I stayed on the safe side of the Channel. They take +it for granted that I did so because I valued my own skin above +everything. Idiots."</p> + +<p>"You can easily explain," MacRae suggested.</p> + +<p>"I won't. I'd see them all in Hades first," Norman growled. "I'll admit +it stings me to have people think so and rub it in, in their polite way. +But I'm getting more or less indifferent. There are plenty of real +people in England who know I did the only work I could do and did it +well. Do you imagine I fancied sitting on the side lines when all the +fellows I knew were playing a tough game? But I can't go about telling +that to people at home. I'll be damned if I will. A man has to learn to +stand the gaff sometime, and the last year or so seems to be my period +of schooling."</p> + +<p>"Why tell all this to me?" MacRae asked quietly.</p> + +<p>Norman rose from the log. He chucked the butt of his cigarette away. He +looked directly, rather searchingly, at MacRae.</p> + +<p>"Really, I don't know," he said in a flat, expressionless. Then he +walked on.</p> + +<p>MacRae watched him pass out of sight among the thickets. Young Gower had +succeeded in dispelling the passive contentment of basking in the sun. +He had managed to start buzzing trains of not too agreeable reflection. +MacRae got to his feet before long and tr<a name="Page_175" id="Page_175"></a>amped back around the Cove's +head. He had known, of course, that the Gowers still made more or less +use of their summer cottage. But he had not come in personal contact +with any of them since the night Betty had given him that new, +disturbing angle from which to view her. He had avoided her purposely. +Now he was afflicted with a sudden restlessness, a desire for other +voices and faces besides his own, and so, as he was in the habit of +doing when such a mood seized him, he went on to Peter Ferrara's house.</p> + +<p>He walked in through a wide-open door, unannounced by aught save his +footsteps, as he was accustomed to do, and he found Dolly Ferrara and +Betty Gower laughing and chatting familiarly in the kitchen over teacups +and little cakes.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I beg pardon," said he. "I didn't know you were entertaining."</p> + +<p>"I don't entertain, and you know it," Dolly laughed. "Come down from +that lofty altitude and I'll give you a cup of tea."</p> + +<p>"Mr. MacRae, being an aviator of some note," Betty put in, "probably +finds himself at home in the high altitudes."</p> + +<p>"Do I seem to be up in the air?" MacRae inquired dryly. "I shall try to +come down behind my own lines, and not in enemy territory."</p> + +<p>"You might have to make a forced landing," Dolly remarked.</p> + +<p>Her great dusky eyes rested upon him with a singular quality of +speculation. MacRae wondered if those two had been talking about him<a name="Page_176" id="Page_176"></a>, +and why.</p> + +<p>There was an astonishing contrast between these two girls, MacRae +thought, his mind and his eyes busy upon them while his tongue uttered +idle words and his hands coped with a teacup and cakes. They were the +product of totally dissimilar environments. They were the physical +antithesis of each other,—in all but the peculiar feline grace of young +females who are healthily, exuberantly alive. Yet MacRae had a feeling +that they were sisters under their skins, wonderfully alike in their +primary emotions. Why, then, he wondered, should one be capable of +moving him to violent emotional reactions (he had got that far in his +self-admissions concerning Betty Gower), and the other move him only to +a friendly concern and latterly a certain pity?</p> + +<p>Certainly either one would quite justify a man in seeking her for his +mate, if he found his natural instincts urging him along ways which +MacRae was beginning to perceive no normal man could escape traveling. +And if he had to tread that road, why should it not have been his desire +to tread it with Dolly Ferrara? That would have been so much simpler. +With unconscious egotism he put aside Norman Gower as a factor. If he +had to develop an unaccountable craving for some particular woman, why +couldn't it have centered upon a woman he knew as well as he knew Dolly, +whose likes and dislikes, little tricks of speech and manner, habits of +thought, all the inconsiderable traits that go to make up what we call +personality, were pleasantly familiar?</p> + +<p>Strange thoughts over a teacup, MacRae decided. It seemed even more +strange that he should be considering such intimately personal things in +the very act of carrying on an impersonal triangular conv<a name="Page_177" id="Page_177"></a>ersation; as if +there were two of him present, one being occupied in the approved teacup +manner while the other sat by speculating with a touch of moroseness +upon distressingly important potentialities. This duality persisted in +functioning even when Betty looked at her watch and said, "I must go."</p> + +<p>He walked with her around to the head of the Cove. He had not wanted to +do that,—and still he did. He found himself filled with an intense and +resentful curiosity about this calm, self-possessed young woman. He +wondered if she really had any power to hurt him, if there resided in +her any more potent charm than other women possessed, or if it were a +mere sentimental befogging of his mind due to the physical propinquity +of her at a time when he was weak and bruised and helpless. He could +feel the soft warmth of her hands yet, and without even closing his eyes +he could see her reddish-brown hair against the white of his bed covers +and the tired droop of her body as she slept that night.</p> + +<p>Curiously enough, before they were well clear of the Ferrara house they +had crossed swords. Courteously, to be sure. MacRae could not afterward +recall clearly how it began,—something about the war and the +after-effect of the war. British Columbia nowise escaped the muddle into +which the close of the war and the wrangle of the peacemakers had +plunged both industry and politics. There had been a recent labor +disturbance in Vancouver in which demobilized soldiers had played a +part.</p> + +<p>"You can't blame these men much. They're bewildered at some of the +things they get up against, and exasperated by others. A lot of them +have found the going harder at home than it was in France. A lot of +promises and preachments don't fit in with performance since the guns +have stopped talking. I suppose that doesn't seem reasonable to people +like you," MacRae found himself saying. "You don't have to gouge and +claw a living out of the world. Or at least, if there is any gouging +and clawing to be done, you are not personally involved in it. You get +it done by proxy."</p> + +<p>Betty flushed slightly.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178"></a>"Do you always go about with a chip on your shoulder?" she asked. "I +should think you did enough fighting in France."</p> + +<p>"I learned to fight there," he said. "I was a happy-go-lucky kid before +that. Rich and poor looked alike to me. I didn't covet anything that +anybody had, and I didn't dream that any one could possibly wish to take +away from me anything that I happened to have. I thought the world was a +kind and pleasant place for everybody. But things look a little +different to me now. They sent us fellows to France to fight Huns. But +there are a few at home, I find. Why shouldn't I fight them whenever I +see a chance?"</p> + +<p>"But <i>I'm</i> not a Hun," Betty said with a smile.</p> + +<p>"I'm not so sure about that."</p> + +<p>The words leaped out before he was quite aware of what they might imply. +They had come to a point on the path directly in front of his house. +Betty stopped. Her gray eyes flashed angrily. Storm signals blazed in +her cheeks, bright above the delicate white of her neck.</p> + +<p>"Jack MacRae," she burst out hotly, "you are a—a—a first-class idiot!"</p> + +<p>Then she turned her back on him and went off up the path with a quick, +springy step that somehow suggested extreme haste.</p> + +<p>MacRae stood looking after her fully a minute. Then he climbed the +steps, went into the front room and sat himself down in a deep, +cushioned chair. He glowered into the fireplace with a look as black as +the charred remains of his morning fire. He uttered one brief word after +a long period of fixed staring.</p> + +<p>"Damn!" he said.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179"></a>It seemed a very inadequate manner of expressing his feelings, but it +was the best he could do at the moment.</p> + +<p>He sat there until the chill discomfort of the room stirred him out of +his abstraction. Then he built a fire and took up a book to read. But +the book presently lay unheeded on his knees. He passed the rest of the +short forenoon sprawled in that big chair before the fireplace, +struggling with chaotic mental processes.</p> + +<p>It made him unhappy, but he could not help it. A tremendous assortment +of mental images presented themselves for inspection, flickering up +unbidden out of his brain-stuff,—old visions and new, familiar things +and vague, troublesome possibilities, all strangely jumbled together. +His mind hopped from Squitty Cove to Salisbury Plain, to the valley of +the Rhone, to Paris, London, Vancouver, turned up all sorts of +recollections, cameralike flashes of things that had happened to him, +things he had seen in curious places, bits of his life in that somehow +distant period when he was a youngster chumming about with his father. +And always he came back to the Gowers,—father, son and daughter, and +the delicate elderly woman with the faded rose-leaf face whom he had +seen only once. Whole passages of Donald MacRae's written life story +took form in living words. He could not disentangle himself from these +Gowers.</p> + +<p>And he hated them!</p> + +<p>Dark came down at last. MacRae went out on the porch. The few scattered +clouds had vanished completely. A starry sky glittered above horizons +edged by mountain ranges, serrated outlines astonishingly distinct. The +sea spread duskily mysterious from duskier shores. It was very still, to +MacRae suddenly very lonely, empty, depressing.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180"></a>The knowledge that just across a narrow neck of land the Gowers, +father, daughter and son, went carelessly, securely about their own +affairs, made him infinitely more lonely, irritated him, stirred up a +burning resentment against the lot of them. He lumped them all together, +despite a curious tendency on the part of Betty's image to separate +itself from the others. He hated them, the whole damned, profiteering, +arrogant, butterfly lot. He nursed an unholy satisfaction in having made +some inroad upon their comfortable security, in having "sunk his +harpoon" into their only vulnerable spot.</p> + +<p>But that satisfaction did not give him relief or content as he stood +looking out into the clear frost-tinged night. Squitty had all at once +become a ghostly place, haunted with sadness. Old Donald MacRae was +living over again in him, he had a feeling, reliving those last few +cheerless, hopeless years which, MacRae told himself savagely, Horace +Gower had deliberately made more cheerless and hopeless.</p> + +<p>And he was in a fair way to love that man's flesh and blood? MacRae +sneered at himself in the dark. Never to the point of staying his hand, +of foregoing his purpose, of failing to strike a blow as chance offered. +Not so long as he was his father's son.</p> + +<p>"Hang it, I'm getting morbid," MacRae muttered at last. "I've been +sticking around here too close. I'll pack a bag to-morrow and go to town +for a while."</p> +<p><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181"></a></p> +<p>He closed the door on the crisp, empty night, and set about getting +himself something to eat.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV"></a>CHAPTER XIV</h2> + +<p><span class="smcap">The Swing of the Pendulum</span></p> + + +<p>MacRae did himself rather well, as the English say, when he reached +Vancouver. This was a holiday, and he was disposed to make the most of +it. He put up at the Granada. He made a few calls and presently found +himself automatically relaunched upon Vancouver's social waters. There +were a few maids and more than one matron who recalled pleasantly this +straight up-standing youngster with the cool gray eyes who had come +briefly into their ken the winter before. There were a few fellows he +had known in squadron quarters overseas, home for good now that +demobilization was fairly complete. MacRae danced well. He had the +faculty of making himself agreeable without effort. He found it pleasant +to fall into the way of these careless, well-dressed folk whose greatest +labor seemed to be in amusing themselves, to keep life from seeming +"slow." Buttressed by revenues derived from substantial sources, mines, +timber, coastal fisheries, land, established industries, these sons and +daughters of the pioneers, many but one degree removed from pioneering +uncouthness, were patterning their lives upon the plan of equivalent +classes in older regions. If it takes six generations in Europe to make +a gentleman<a name="Page_182" id="Page_182"></a>, western America quite casually dispenses with five, and the +resulting product seldom suffers by comparison.</p> + +<p>As the well-to-do in Europe flung themselves into revelry with the +signing of the armistice, so did they here. Four years of war had corked +the bottle of gayety. The young men were all overseas. Life was a little +too cloudy during that period to be gay. Shadows hung over too many +homes. But that was past. They had pulled the cork and thrown it away, +one would think. Pleasure was king, to be served with light abandon.</p> + +<p>It was a fairly vigorous place, MacRae discovered. He liked it, gave +himself up to it gladly,—for a while. It involved no mental effort. +These people seldom spoke of money, or of work, or politics, the high +cost of living, international affairs. If they did it was jocularly, +sketchily, as matters of no importance. Their talk ran upon dances, +clothes, motoring, sports indoors and afield, on food,—and sometimes +genially on drink, since the dry wave had not yet drained their cellars.</p> + +<p>MacRae floated with this tide. But he was not wholly carried away with +it. He began to view it impersonally, to wonder if it were the real +thing, if this was what inspired men to plot and scheme and struggle +laboriously for money, or if it were just the froth on the surface of +realities which he could not quite grasp. He couldn't say. There was a +dash and glitter about it that charmed him. He could warm and thrill to +the beauty of a Granada ballroom, music that seduced a man's feet, +beauty of silk and satin, of face and figure, of bright eyes and +gleaming jewels, a blending of all the primary colors and every shade +between, flashing over a polished floor under high, carved ceilings.</p> + +<p>He had surrendered Nelly Abbott to a claimant and stood watching the +swirl and glide of the dancers in the Granada one night. His eyes were +on the brilliance a little below the raised area at one end of the +floor, and so was his mind, inquiringly, with the curious concentration +of which his mind was capable. Presently he became aware of some one +speaking to him, tugging at his elbow.</p> + +<p>"Oh, come out of it," a voice said derisively.</p> + +<p>He looked around at Stubb<a name="Page_183" id="Page_183"></a>y Abbott.</p> + +<p>"Regular trance. I spoke to you twice. In love?"</p> + +<p>"Uh-uh. Just thinking," MacRae laughed.</p> + +<p>"Deep thinking, I'll say. Want to go down to the billiard room and +smoke?"</p> + +<p>They descended to a subterranean chamber where, in a pit lighted by +low-hung shaded globes, men in shirt sleeves clicked the red and white +balls on a score of tables. Rows of leather-upholstered chairs gave +comfort to spectators. They commandeered seats and lighted cigarettes. +"Look," Stubby said. "There's Norman Gower."</p> + +<p>Young Gower sat across a corner from them. He was in evening clothes. He +slumped in his chair. His hands were limp along the chair arms. He was +not watching the billiard players. He was staring straight across the +room with the sightless look of one whose mind is far away.</p> + +<p>"Another deep thinker," Stubby drawled. "Rather rough going for Norman +these days."</p> + +<p>"How?" MacRae asked.</p> + +<p>"Funked it over across," Stubby replied. "So they say. Careful to stay +on the right side of the Channel. Paying the penalty now. Girls rather +rub it in. Fellows not too—well, cordial. Pretty rotten for Norman."</p> + +<p>"Think he slacked deliberately?" MacRae inquired.</p> + +<p>"That's the story. Lord, I don't know," Stubby answered. "He stuck in +England four years. Everybody else that was fit went up the line. +That's all I know. By their deeds ye shall judge them—eh?"</p> +<p><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184"></a></p> +<p>"Perhaps. What does he say about that himself?"</p> + +<p>"Nothing, so far as I know. Keeps strictly mum on the war subject," +Stubby said.</p> + +<p>Young Gower did not alter his position during the few minutes they sat +there. He sat staring straight ahead of him, unseeingly. MacRae suddenly +felt sorry for him. If he had told the truth he was suffering a +peculiarly distressing form of injustice, of misconception. MacRae +recalled the passionate undertone in Gower's voice when he said, "I did +the only thing I could do in the way I was told to do it." Yes, he was +sorry for Norman. The poor devil was not getting a square deal.</p> + +<p>But MacRae's pity was swiftly blotted out. He had a sudden uncomfortable +vision of old Donald MacRae rowing around Poor Man's Rock, back and +forth in sun and rain, in frosty dawns and stormy twilights, coming home +to a lonely house, dying at last a lonely death, the sordid culmination +of an embittered life.</p> + +<p>Let him sweat,—the whole Gower tribe. MacRae was the ancient Roman, for +the moment, wishing all his enemies had but a single head that he might +draw his sword and strike it off. Something in him hardened against that +first generous impulse to repeat to Stubby Abbott what Norman had told +him on the cliff at Squitty. Let the beggar make his own defense. Yet +that stubborn silence, the proud refusal to make words take the place of +valiant deeds expected, wrung a gleam of reluctant admiration from +MacRae. He would have done just that himself.</p> + +<p>"Let's get back," Stubby suggested. "I've got the next dance with Betty +Gower. I don't want to miss it."</p> +<p><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185"></a></p> +<p>"Is she here to-night? I haven't noticed her."</p> + +<p>"Eyesight affected?" Stubby bantered. "Sure she's here. Looking like a +dream."</p> + +<p>MacRae felt a pang of envy. There was nothing to hold Stubby back,—no +old scores, no deep, abiding resentment. MacRae had the conviction that +Stubby would never take anything like that so seriously as he, Jack +MacRae, did. He was aware that Stubby had the curious dual code common +in the business world,—one set of inhibitions and principles for +business and another for personal and social uses. A man might be +Stubby's opponent in the market and his friend when they met on a common +social ground. MacRae could never be quite like that. Stubby could fight +Horace Gower, for instance, tooth and toenail, for an advantage in the +salmon trade, and stretch his legs under Gower's dining table with no +sense of incongruity, no matter what shifts the competitive struggle had +taken or what weapons either had used. That was business; and a man left +his business at the office. A curious thing, MacRae thought. A +phenomenon in ethics which he found hard to understand, harder still to +endorse.</p> + +<p>He stood watching Stubby, knowing that Stubby would go straight to Betty +Gower. Presently he saw her, marked the cut and color of her gown, +watched them swing into the gyrating wave of couples that took the floor +when the orchestra began. Indeed, MacRae stood watching them until he +recalled with a start that he had this dance with Etta Robbin-Steele, +who would, in her own much-used phrase, be "simply furious" at anything +that might be construed as neglect; only Etta's fury would consist of +showing her white, even teeth in a pert smile with a challenging twinkle +in her very black eyes.</p> + +<p>He went to Betty as soon as he found opportunity. He did not quite know +why. He did not stop to ask himself why. It was a purely instinctive +propulsion. He followed his impulse as the needle swings to the pole; as +an object released from the hand at a great height obeys the force of +gravity; as water flows downhill.</p> +<p><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186"></a></p> +<p>He took her programme.</p> + +<p>"I don't see any vacancies," he said. "Shall I create one?"</p> + +<p>He drew his pencil through Stubby Abbott's name. Stubby's signature was +rather liberally inscribed there, he thought. Betty looked at him a +trifle uncertainly.</p> + +<p>"Aren't you a trifle—sweeping?" she inquired.</p> + +<p>"Perhaps. Stubby won't mind. Do you?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"I seem to be defenseless." Betty shrugged her shoulders. "What shall we +quarrel about this time?"</p> + +<p>"Anything you like," he made reckless answer.</p> + +<p>"Very well, then," she said as they got up to dance. "Suppose we begin +by finding out what there is to quarrel over. Are you aware that +practically every time we meet we nearly come to blows? What is there +about me that irritates you so easily?"</p> + +<p>"Your inaccessibility."</p> + +<p>MacRae spoke without weighing his words. Yet that was the truth, +although he knew that such a frank truth was neither good form nor +policy. He was sorry before the words were out of his mouth. Betty could +not possibly understand what he meant. He was not sure he wanted her to +understand. MacRae felt himself riding to a fall. As had happened +briefly the night of the <i>Blackbird's</i> wrecking, he experienced that +feeling of dumb protest against the shaping of events in which he moved +helpless. This bit of flesh and blood swaying in his arms in effortless +rhythm to sensuous music was something he had to reckon with powerfully, +whether he liked or not. MacRae was beginning dimly to see that. When he +was with her—</p> + +<p>"But I'm not inaccessible."</p> + +<p>She dropped her voice to a cooing whisper. Her eyes glowed as they met +his with steadfast concern. There was a smile and a question in them.</p> +<p><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187"></a></p> +<p>"What ever gave you that idea?"</p> + +<p>"It isn't an idea; it's a fact."</p> + +<p>The resentment against circumstances that troubled MacRae crept into his +tone.</p> + +<p>"Oh, silly!"</p> + +<p>There was a railing note of tenderness in Betty's voice. MacRae felt his +moorings slip. A heady recklessness of consequences seized him. He drew +her a little closer to him. Irresistible prompting from some wellspring +of his being urged him on to what his reason would have called sheer +folly, if that reason had not for the time suffered eclipse, which is a +weakness of rational processes when they come into conflict with a +genuine emotion.</p> + +<p>"Do you like me, Betty?"</p> + +<p>Her eyes danced. They answered as well as her lips:</p> + +<p>"Of course I do. Haven't I been telling you so plainly enough? I've been +ashamed of myself for being so transparent—on such slight provocation."</p> + +<p>"How much?" he demanded.</p> + +<p>"Oh—well—"</p> + +<p>The ballroom was suddenly shrouded in darkness, saved only from a +cavelike black by diffused street light through the upper windows. A +blown fuse. A mis-pulled switch. One of those minor accidents common to +electric lighting systems. Th<a name="Page_188" id="Page_188"></a>e orchestra hesitated, went on. From a +momentary silence the dancers broke into chuckles, amused laughter, a +buzz of exclamatory conversation. But no one moved, lest they collide +with other unseen couples.</p> + +<p>Jack and Betty stood still. They could not see. But MacRae could feel +the quick beat, of Betty's heart, the rise and fall of her breast, a +trembling in her fingers. There was a strange madness stirring in him. +His arm tightened about her. He felt that she yielded easily, as if +gladly. Their mouths sought and clung in the first real kiss Jack MacRae +had ever known. And then, as they relaxed that impulse-born embrace, the +lights flashed on again, blazed in a thousand globes in great frosted +clusters high against the gold-leaf decorations of the ceiling. The +dancers caught step again. MacRae and Betty circled the polished floor +silently. She floated in his arms like thistledown, her eyes like twin +stars, a deeper color in her cheeks.</p> + +<p>Then the music ceased, and they were swept into a chattering group, out +of which presently materialized another partner to claim Betty. So they +parted with a smile and a nod.</p> + +<p>But MacRae had no mind for dancing. He went out through the lobby and +straight to his room. He flung off his coat and sat down in a chair by +the window and blinked out into the night. He had looked, it seemed to +him, into the very gates of paradise,—and he could not go in.</p> + +<p>It wasn't possible. He sat peering out over the dusky roofs of the city, +damning with silent oaths the coil in which he found himself +inextricably involved. History was repeating itself. Like father, <a name="Page_189" id="Page_189"></a>like +son.</p> + +<p>There was a difference though. MacRae, as he grew calmer, marked that. +Old Donald had lost his sweetheart by force and trickery. His son must +forego love—if it were indeed love—of his own volition. He had no +choice. He saw no way of winning Betty Gower unless he stayed his hand +against her father. And he would not do that. He could not. It would be +like going over to the enemy in the heat of battle. Gower had wronged +and persecuted his father. He had beaten old Donald without mercy in +every phase of that thirty-year period. He had taken Donald MacRae's +woman from him in the beginning and his property in the end. Jack MacRae +had every reason to believe Gower merely sat back awaiting a favorable +opportunity to crush him.</p> + +<p>So there could be no compromising there; no inter-marrying and +sentimental burying of the old feud. Betty would tie his hands. He was +afraid of her power to do that. He did not want to be a Samson shorn. +His ego revolted against love interfering with the grim business of +everyday life. He bit his lip and wished he could wipe out that kiss. He +cursed himself for a slavish weakness of the flesh. The night was old +when MacRae lay down on his bed. But he could find no ease for the +throbbing ferment within him. He suffered with a pain as keen as if he +had been physically wounded, and the very fact that he could so suffer +filled him with dismay. He had faced death many times with less emotion +than he now was facing life.</p> + +<p>He had no experience of love. Nothing remotely connected with women had +ever suggested such possibilities of torment. He had known first-hand +the pangs of hunger and thirst, of cold and weariness, of anger and +hate, of burning wounds in his flesh. He had always been able to grit +his teeth and endure; none of it had been able to wring his soul. This +did. He had come to manhood, to a full understanding of sex, at a time +when he played the greatest game of all, when all his energies were +<a name="Page_190" id="Page_190"></a>fiercely centered upon preservation for himself and certain destruction +for other men. Perhaps because he had come back clean, having never +wasted himself in complaisant liaisons overseas, the inevitable focusing +of passion stirred him more profoundly. He was neither a varietist nor a +male prude. He was aware of sex. He knew desire. But the flame Betty +Gower had kindled in him made him look at women out of different eyes. +Desire had been revealed to him not as something casual, but as an +imperative. As if nature had pulled the blinkers off his eyes and shown +him his mate and the aim and object and law and fiery urge of the mating +instinct all in one blinding flash.</p> + +<p>He lay hot and fretful, cursing himself for a fool, yet unable to find +ease, wondering dully if Betty Gower must also suffer as he should, or +if it were only an innocent, piquant game that Betty played. Always in +the background of his mind lurked a vision of her father, sitting back +complacently, fat, smug, plump hands on a well-rounded stomach, +chuckling a brutal satisfaction over another MacRae beaten.</p> + +<p>MacRae wakened from an uneasy sleep at ten o'clock. He rose and dressed, +got his breakfast, went out on the streets. But Vancouver had all at +once grown insufferable. The swarming streets irritated him. He +smoldered inside, and he laid it to the stir and bustle and noise. He +conceived himself to crave hushed places and solitude, where he could +sit and think.</p> + +<p>By mid-afternoon he was far out in the Gulf of Georgia, aboard a +coasting steamer sailing for island ports. If it occurred to him that he +was merely running away from temptation, he did not admit the fact.</p> +<p><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191"></a></p> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XV" id="CHAPTER_XV"></a>CHAPTER XV</h2> + +<p><span class="smcap">Hearts are Not Always Trumps</span></p> + + +<p>If MacRae reckoned on tranquillity in his island seclusion he failed in +his reckoning. A man may fly from temptation, run from a threatening +danger, but he cannot run away from himself. He could not inhibit +thought, reflection, surges of emotion generated mysteriously within +himself.</p> + +<p>He did his best. He sought relief in action. There were a great many +things about his freehold upon which he bestowed feverish labor for a +time. He cleared away all the underbrush to the outer limits of his +shrunken heritage. He built a new enclosing fence of neatly split cedar, +installed a pressure system of water in the old house.</p> + +<p>"You goin' to get married?" old Peter inquired artlessly one day. "You +got all the symptoms—buzzin' around in your nest like a bumblebee."</p> + +<p>And Dolly smiled her slow, enigmatic smile.</p> + +<p>Whereupon MacRae abandoned his industry and went off to Blackfish Sound +with Vincent in the <i>Bluebird</i>. The salmon run was long over, but the +coastal<a name="Page_192" id="Page_192"></a> waters still yielded a supply of edible fish. There were always +a few spring salmon to be taken here and there. Ling, red and rock cod +knew no seasons. Nor the ground fish, plaice, sole, flounders, halibut. +Already the advance guard of the great run of mature herring began to +show. For a buyer there was no such profit in running these fish to +market as the profit of the annual salmon run. Still it paid moderately. +So MacRae had turned the <i>Bluebird</i> over to Vin to operate for a time on +a share basis. It gave Vin, who was ambitious and apparently tireless, a +chance to make a few hundred dollars in an off season.</p> + +<p>Wherefore MacRae, grown suddenly restless beyond all restraining upon +his island, made a trip or two north with Vin—a working guest on his +own vessel—up where the Gulf of Georgia is choked to narrow passages +through which the tidal currents race like mountain streams pent in a +gorge, up where the sea is a maze of waterways among wooded islands. +They anchored in strange bays. They fared once into Queen Charlotte +Sound and rode the great ground swell that heaves up from the far coast +of Japan to burst against the rocky outpost of Cape Caution. They +doubled on their tracks and gathered their toll of the sea from fishing +boats here and there until the <i>Bluebird</i> rode deep with cargo, fresh +fish to be served on many tables far inland. MacRae often wondered if +the housewife who ordered her weekly ration of fish and those who picked +daintily at the savory morsels with silver forks ever thought how they +came by this food. Men till the sea with pain and risk and infinite +labor, as they till the land; only the fisherman with his nets and hooks +and gear does not sow, he only reaps. Nature has attended diligently to +the sowing, from the Cape of Good Hope to Martha's Vineyard, from Bering +Strait to Botany Bay.</p> +<p><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193"></a></p> +<p>But MacRae soon had enough of that and came back to Squitty, to his +fireplace and his books. He had been accustomed to enjoy the winters, +the clear crisp mornings that varied weeks of drenching rain which +washed the land clean; to prowl about in the woods with a gun when he +needed meat; to bask before a bed of coals in the fireplace through long +evenings when the wind howled and the rain droned on the roof and the +sea snored along the rocky beaches. That had been in days before he +learned the weight of loneliness, when his father had been there to sit +quietly beside the fire smoking a pipe, when Dolly Ferrara ran wild in +the woods with him or they rode for pure sport the tumbling seas in a +dugout canoe.</p> + +<p>Now winter was a dull inaction, a period of discontent, in which thought +gnawed at him like an ingrowing toenail. Everything seemed out of joint. +He found himself feverishly anxious for spring, for the stress and +strain of another tilt with Folly Bay. Sometimes he asked himself where +he would come out, even if he won all along the line, if he made money, +gained power, beat Gower ultimately to his knees, got back his land. He +did not try to peer too earnestly into the future. It seemed a little +misty. He was too much concerned with the immediate present, looming big +with possibilities of good or evil for himself. Things did not seem +quite so simple as at first. A great many complications, wholly +unforeseen, had arisen since he came back from France. But he was +committed to certain undertakings from which he neither wished nor +intended to turn aside,—not so long as he had the will to choose.</p> + +<p>Christmas came again, and with it the gathering of the Ferraras for +their annual reunion,—Old Manuel and Joaquin, young Manuel and Ambrose +and Vincent. Steve they could spe<a name="Page_194" id="Page_194"></a>ak of now quite casually. He had died +in his sea boots like many another Ferrara. It was a pity, of course, +but it was the chance of his calling. And the gathering was stronger in +numbers, even with Steve gone. Ambrose had taken himself a wife, a +merry round-cheeked girl whose people were coaxing Ambrose to quit the +sea for a more profitable undertaking in timber. And also Norman Gower +was there.</p> + +<p>MacRae did not quite know how to take that young man. He had had stray +contacts with Norman during the last few weeks. For a rich man's son he +was not running true to form. He and Long Tom Spence had struck up a +partnership in a group of mineral claims on the Knob, that conical +mountain which lifted like one of the pyramids out of the middle of +Squitty Island. There had been much talk of those claims. Years ago Bill +Munro—he who died of the flu in his cabin beside the Cove—had staked +those claims. Munro was a young man then, a prospector. He had inveigled +other men to share his hopes and labors, to grubstake him while he drove +the tunnel that was to cut the vein. MacRae's father had taken a hand in +this. So had Peter Ferrara. But these informal partnerships had always +lapsed. Old Bill Munro's prospects had never got beyond the purely +prospective stage. The copper was there, ample traces of gold and +silver. But he never developed a showing big enough to lure capital. +When Munro died the claims had been long abandoned.</p> + +<p>Long Tom Spence had suddenly relocated them. Some working agreement had +included Uncle Peter and young Gower. Long Tom went about hinting +mysteriously of fortunes. Peter Ferrara even admitted that there was a +good showing. Norman had been there for weeks, living with Spence in a +shack, sweating day after day in the tunnel. They were all begin<a name="Page_195" id="Page_195"></a>ning to +speak of it as "the mine."</p> + +<p>Norman had rid himself of that grouchy frown. He was always singing or +whistling or laughing. His fair, rather florid face glowed with a +perpetual good nature. He treated MacRae to the same cheerful, careless +air that he had for everything and everybody. And when he was about +Uncle Peter's house at the Cove he monopolized Dolly, an attitude which +Dolly herself as well as her uncle seemed to find agreeable and proper.</p> + +<p>MacRae finally found himself compelled to accept Norman Gower as part of +the group. He was a little surprised to find that he harbored no decided +feeling about young Gower, one way or the other. If he felt at all, it +was a mild impatience that another man had established a relation with +Dolly Ferrara which put aside old friendships. He found himself +constrained more and more to treat Dolly like any other pleasant young +woman of his acquaintance. He did not quite like that. He and Dolly +Ferrara had been such good chums. Besides, he privately considered that +Dolly was throwing herself away on a man weak enough to make the tragic +blunder young Gower had made in London. But that was their own affair. +Altogether, MacRae found it quite impossible to muster up any abiding +grudge against young Gower on his own account.</p> + +<p>So he let matters stand and celebrated Christmas with them. Afterward +they got aboard the <i>Bluebird</i> and went to a dance at Potter's Landing, +where for all that Jack MacRae was the local hero, both of the great war +and the salmon war of the past season, both Dolly and Norman, he +privately conceded, enjoyed themselves a great deal mor<a name="Page_196" id="Page_196"></a>e than he did. +Their complete absorption in each other rather irritated him.</p> + +<p>They came back to the Cove early in the morning. The various Ferraras +disposed themselves about Peter's house to sleep, and MacRae went on to +his own place. About an hour after daybreak he saw Norman Gower pass up +the bush trail to the mine with a heavy pack of provisions on his back. +And MacRae wondered idly if Norman was bucking the game in earnest, +strictly on his own, and why?</p> + +<p>Late in January the flash of a white skirt and a sky-blue sweater past +his dooryard apprised MacRae that Betty was back. And he did not want to +see Betty or talk with her. He hoped her stay would be brief. He even +asked himself testily why people like that wanted to come to a summer +dwelling in the middle of winter. But her sojourn was not so brief as he +hoped. At divers times thereafter he saw her in the distance, faring to +and fro from Peter Ferrara's house, out on the trail that ran to the +Knob, several times when the sea was calm paddling a canoe or rowing +alongshore. Also he had glimpses of the thickset figure of Horace Gower +walking along the cliffs. MacRae avoided both. That was easy enough, +since he knew every nook and bush and gully on that end of the island. +But the mere sight of Gower was an irritation. He resented the man's +presence. It affected him like a challenge. It set him always pondering +ways and means to secure ownership of those acres again and forever bar +Gower from walking along those cliffs with that masterful air of +possession. Only a profound distaste for running away from anything kept +him from quitting the island while they were there, those two, one of +whom he was growing to hate far beyond the original provocation, the +other whom he loved,—for MacRae admitted reluctantly, resentfully, that +he did love Betty, and he was afraid of where that emotion might lead +him. He recognized the astonishing power of passion. It troubled him, +stirred up an amazing conflict at times between his reason and his +impulses. He fell back always upon the conclusion that love was an +irrational thing anyway, that it should not be permitted to upset a +man's logical plan of existence. But he was never very sure that this +conclusion would stand a practical test.</p> +<p><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197"></a></p> +<p>The southern end of Squitty was not of such vast scope that two people +could roam here and there without sometime coming face to face, +particularly when these two were a man and a woman, driven by a spirit +of restlessness to lonely wanderings. MacRae went into the woods with +his rifle one day in search of venison. He wounded a buck, followed him +down a long canyon, and killed his game within sight of the sea. He took +the carcass by a leg and dragged it through the bright green salal +brush. As he stepped out of a screening thicket on to driftwood piled by +storm and tide, he saw a rowboat hauled up on the shingle above reach of +short, steep breakers, and a second glance showed him Betty sitting on a +log close by, looking at him.</p> + +<p>"Stormbound?" he asked her.</p> + +<p>"Yes. I was rowing and the wind came up."</p> + +<p>She rose and came over to look at the dead deer.</p> + +<p>"What beautiful animals they are!" she said. "Isn't it a pity to kill +them?"</p> + +<p>"It's a pity, too, to kill cattle and sheep and pigs, to haul fish by +the gills out of the sea," MacRae replied; "to trap marten and mink and +fox and beaver and bear for their skins. But men must eat and women must +wear furs."</p> + +<p>"How horribly logical you are," Betty murmured. "You make a natural +sympathy appear wishy-washy sentimentalism."</p> + +<p>She reseated herself on the log. MacRae sat down beside her. He looked +at her searchingly. He could not keep his eyes away. A curious +inconsistency was revealed to him. He sat beside Betty, responding to +the potent stimuli of her nearness and wishing pettishly that she were a +thousand miles away, so that he would not be troubled by the magic of +her lips and eyes and unruly hair, the musical cadences of her voice. +There was a subtle quality of expectancy about her, as if she sat there +waiting for him to say something, do something, as if her mere presence +<a name="Page_198" id="Page_198"></a>were powerful to compel him to speak and act as she desired. MacRae +realized the fantasy of those impressions. Betty sat looking at him +calmly, her hands idle in her lap. If there were in her soul any of the +turmoil that was fast rising in his, it was not outwardly manifested by +any sign whatever. For that matter, MacRae knew that he himself was +placid enough on the surface. Nor did he feel the urge of +inconsequential speech. There was no embarrassment in that mutual +silence, only the tug of a compelling desire to take her in his arms, +which he must resist.</p> + +<p>"There are times," Betty said at last, "when you live up to your +nickname with a vengeance."</p> + +<p>"There are times," MacRae replied slowly, "when that is the only wise +thing for a man to do."</p> + +<p>"And you, I suppose, rather pride yourself on being wise in your day and +generation."</p> + +<p>There was gentle raillery in her tone.</p> + +<p>"I don't like you to be sarcastic," he said.</p> + +<p>"I don't think you like me sarcastic or otherwise," Betty observed, +after a moment's silence.</p> + +<p>"But I do," he protested. "That's the devi<a name="Page_199" id="Page_199"></a>l of it. I do—and you know I +do. It would be a great deal better if I didn't."</p> + +<p>Betty's fingers began to twist in her lap. The color rose faintly in her +smooth cheeks. Her eyes turned to the sea.</p> + +<p>"I don't know why," she said gently. "I'd hate to think it would."</p> + +<p>MacRae did not find any apt reply to that. His mind was in an agonized +muddle, in which he could only perceive one or two things with any +degree of clearness. Betty loved him. He was sure of that. He could tell +her that he loved her. And then? Therein arose the conflict. Marriage +was the natural sequence of love. And when he contemplated marriage with +Betty he found himself unable to detach her from her background, in +which lurked something which to MacRae's imagination loomed sinister, +hateful. To make peace with Horace Gower—granting that Gower was +willing for such a consummation—for love of his daughter struck MacRae +as something very near to dishonor. And if, contrariwise, he repeated to +Betty the ugly story which involved her father and his father, she would +be harassed by irreconcilable forces even if she cared enough to side +with him against her own people. MacRae was gifted with acute +perception, in some things. He said to himself despairingly—nor was it +the first time that he had said it—that you cannot mix oil and water.</p> + +<p>He could do nothing at all. That was the sum of his ultimate +conclusions. His hands were tied. He could not go back and he could not +go on. He sat beside Betty, longing to take her in his arms and still +fighting stoutly against that impulse. He was afraid of his impulses.</p> + +<p>A faint moisture broke out on his face with that acute nervous strain. A +lump rose chokingly in his throat. He stared out at the white-crested +seas that came marching up the Gulf before a rising wind until his eyes +grew misty. Then he slid down off the log and laid his head on Betty's +knee. A weight of dumb grief oppressed him. He wanted to cry, and he was +ashamed of his weakness.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200"></a>Betty's fingers stole caressingly over his bare head, rumpled his hair, +stroked his hot cheek.</p> + +<p>"Johnny-boy," she said at last, "what is it that comes like a fog +between you and me?"</p> + +<p>MacRae did not answer.</p> + +<p>"I make love to you quite openly," Betty went on. "And I don't seem to +be the least bit ashamed of doing so. I'm not a silly kid. I'm nearly as +old as you are, and I know quite well what I want—which happens to be +you. I love you, Silent John. The man is supposed to be the pursuer. But +I seem to have that instinct myself. Besides," she laughed tremulously, +"this is leap year. And, remember, you kissed me. Or did I kiss you? +Which was it, Jack?"</p> + +<p>MacRae seated himself on the log beside her. He put his arm around her +and drew her close to him. That disturbing wave of emotion which had +briefly mastered him was gone. He felt only a passionate tenderness for +Betty and a pity for them both. But he had determined what to do.</p> + +<p>"I do love you, Betty," he said—"your hair and your eyes and your lips +and the sound of your voice and the way you walk and everything that is +you. Is that quite plain enough? It's a sort of emotional madness."</p> + +<p>"Well, I am afflicted with the same sort of madness," she admitted. "And +I like it. It is natural."</p> + +<p>"But you wouldn't like it if you knew it meant a series of mental and +spiritual conflicts that would be almost like physical torture," he said +slowly. "You'd be afraid of it."</p> + +<p>"And you?" she demanded.</p> +<p><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201"></a></p> +<p>"Yes," he said simply. "I am."</p> + +<p>"Then you're a poor sort of lover," she flung at him, and freed herself +from his arms with a quick twist of her body. Her breast heaved. She +moved away from him.</p> + +<p>"I'll admit being a poor lover, perhaps," MacRae said. "I didn't want to +love you. I shouldn't love you. I really ought to hate you. I don't, but +if I was consistent, I should. I ought to take every opportunity to hurt +you just because you are a Gower. I have good reason to do so. I can't +tell you why—or at least I am not going to tell you why. I don't think +it would mend matters if I did. I dare say I'm a better fighter than a +lover. I fight in the open, on the square. And because I happen to care +enough to shrink from making you risk things I can't dodge, I'm a poor +lover. Well, perhaps I am."</p> + +<p>"I didn't really mean that, Jack," Betty muttered.</p> + +<p>"I know you didn't," he returned gently. "But I mean what I have just +said."</p> + +<p>"You mean that for some reason which I do not know and which you will +not tell me, there is such bad blood between you and my father that you +can't—you won't—won't even take a chance on me?"</p> + +<p>"Something like that," MacRae admitted. "Only you put it badly. You'd +either tie my hands, which I couldn't submit to, or you'd find yourself +torn between two factions, and life would be a pretty sad affair."</p> + +<p>"I asked you once before, and you told me it was something that happened +before either of us was born," Betty said thoughtfully. "I am going to +get at the bottom of this somehow. I wonder if you do really care, or +if this is all camouflage,—if you're just playing with me to see how +<a name="Page_202" id="Page_202"></a>big a fool I <i>will</i> make of myself."</p> + +<p>That queer mistrust of him which suddenly clouded Betty's face and made +her pretty mouth harden roused Jack MacRae to an intolerable fury. It +was like a knife in a tender spot. He had been stifling the impulse to +forget and bury all these ancient wrongs and injustices for which +neither of them was responsible but for which, so far as he could see, +they must both suffer. Something cracked in him at Betty's words. She +jumped, warned by the sudden blaze in his eyes. But he caught her with a +movement quicker than her own. He held her by the arms with fingers that +gripped like iron clamps. He shook her.</p> + +<p>"You wonder if I really care," he cried. "My God, can't you see? Can't +you feel? Must a man grovel and weep and rave?"</p> + +<p>Betty whitened a little at this storm which she had evoked. But she did +not flinch. Her eyes looked straight into his, fearlessly.</p> + +<p>"You are raving now," she said. "And you are hurting my arms terribly."</p> + +<p>MacRae released his hold on her. His hands dropped to his sides.</p> + +<p>"I suppose I was," he said in a flat, lifeless tone. "But don't say that +to me again, ever. You can say anything you like, Betty, except that I'm +not in earnest. I don't deserve that."</p> + +<p>Betty retreated a little. MacRae was not even looking at her now. His +eyes were turned to the sea, to hide the blur that crept into them in +spite of his will.</p> +<p><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203"></a></p> +<p>"You don't deserve anything," Betty said distinctly. She moved warily +away as she spoke. "You have the physical courage to face death; but you +haven't the moral courage to face a problem in living, even though you +love me. You take it for granted that I'm as weak as you are. You won't +even give me a chance to prove whether love is strong or weak in the +face of trouble. And I will never give you another chance—never."</p> + +<p>She sprang from the beach to the low pile of driftwood and from that +plunged into the thicket. MacRae did not try to follow. He did not even +move. He looked after her a minute. Then he sat down on the log again +and stared at the steady march of the swells. There was a sense of +finality in this thing which made him flounder desperately. Still, he +assured himself, it had to be. And if it had to be that way it was +better to have it so understood. Betty would never look at him again +with that disturbing message in her eyes. He would not be troubled by a +futile longing. But it hurt. He had never imagined how so abstract a +thing as emotion could breed such an ache in a man's heart.</p> + +<p>After a little he got up. There was a trail behind that thicket, an old +game trail widened by men's feet, that ran along the seaward slope to +Cradle Bay. He went up now to this path. His eye, used to the practice +of woodcraft, easily picked up tiny heel marks, toe prints, read their +message mechanically. Betty had been running. She had gone home.</p> + +<p>He went back to the beach. The rowboat and the rising tide caught his +attention. He hauled the boat up on the driftwood so that it should not +float away. Then he busied himself on the deer's legs with a knife for a +minute and shouldered the carcass.</p> + +<p>It was a mile and a half across country to the head of Squitty Cove. He +had intended to hang his deer i<a name="Page_204" id="Page_204"></a>n a tree by the beach and come for it +later with a boat. Now he took up this hundred-pound burden for the +long carry over steep hills and through brushy hollows in the spirit of +the medieval flagellantes, mortifying his flesh for the ease of his +soul.</p> + +<p>An hour or so later he came out on a knoll over-looking all the +southeastern face of Squitty. Below, the wind-harassed Gulf spread its +ruffled surface. He looked down on the cliffs and the Cove and Cradle +Bay. He could see Gower's cottage white among the green, one chimney +spitting blue smoke that the wind carried away in a wispy banner. He +could see a green patch behind his own house with the white headboard +that marked his father's grave. He could see Poor Man's Rock bare its +kelp-grown head between seas, and on the point above the Rock a solitary +figure, squat and brown, that he knew must be Horace Gower.</p> + +<p>MacRae laid down his pack to rest his aching shoulders. But there was no +resting the ache in his heart. Nor was it restful to gaze upon any of +these things within the span of his eye. He was reminded of too much +which it was not good to remember. As he sat staring down on the distant +Rock and a troubled sea with an intolerable heaviness in his breast, he +recalled that so must his father have looked down on Poor Man's Rock in +much the same anguished spirit long ago. And Jack MacRae's mind reacted +morbidly to the suggestion, the parallel. His eyes turned with +smoldering fire to the stumpy figure on the tip of Point Old.</p> + +<p>"I'll pay it all back yet," he gritted. "Betty or no Betty, I'll make +him wish he'd kept his hands off the MacRaes."</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>About the time Jack MacRae with his burden of venison drew near his own +dooryard, Betty Gower came out upon the winter-sodden lawn before their +cottage and having crossed it ran lightly up the steps to the wide +porch. From there she saw her father standing on the Point. She called +to him. At her hail he came trudging to the house. Betty was piling wood +in the living-room fireplace when he came in.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205"></a>"I was beginning to worry about you," he said.</p> + +<p>"The wind got too much for me," she answered, "so I put the boat on the +beach a mile or so along and walked home."</p> + +<p>Gower drew a chair up to the fire.</p> + +<p>"Blaze feels good," he remarked. "There's a chill in this winter air."</p> + +<p>Betty made no comment.</p> + +<p>"Getting lonesome?" he inquired after a minute. "It seems to me you've +been restless the last day or two. Want to go back to town, Betty?"</p> + +<p>"I wonder why we come here and stay and stay, out of reach of everything +and everybody?" she said at last.</p> + +<p>"Blest if I know," Gower answered casually. "Except that we like to. +It's a restful place, isn't it? You work harder at having a good time in +town than I ever did making money. Well, we don't have to be hermits +unless we like. We'll go back to mother and the giddy whirl to-morrow, +if you like."</p> + +<p>"We might as well, I think," she said absently.</p> + +<p>For a minute neither spoke. The fire blazed up in a roaring flame. +Raindrops slashed suddenly against the windows out of a storm-cloud +driven up by the wind. Betty turned her eyes on her father.</p> + +<p>"Did you ever do anything to Jack MacRae that would give him reason to +hate you?" she asked bluntly.</p> + +<p>Gower shook his head without troubling to look at her. He kept his face +steadfastly to the fire.</p> + +<p>"No," he said. "The other way about, if anything. He put a crimp in me +last season."</p><p><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206"></a></p> + +<p>"I remember you said you were going to smash him," she said +thoughtfully.</p> + +<p>"Did I?" he made answer in an indifferent tone. "Well, I might. And then +again I might not. He may do the smashing. He's a harder proposition +than I figured he would be, in several ways."</p> + +<p>"That isn't it," Betty said, as if to herself. "Then you must have had +some trouble with his father—long ago. Something that hurt him enough +for him to pass a grudge on to Jack. What was it, daddy? Anything real?"</p> + +<p>"Jack, eh?" Gower passed over the direct question. "You must be getting +on. Have you been seeing much of that young man lately?"</p> + +<p>"What does that matter?" Betty returned impatiently. "Of course I see +him. Is there any reason I shouldn't?"</p> + +<p>Gower picked up a brass poker. He leaned forward, digging aimlessly at +the fire, stirring up tiny cascades of sparks that were sucked glowing +into the black chimney throat.</p> + +<p>"Perhaps no reason that would strike you as valid," he said slowly. +"Still—I don't know. Do you like him?"</p> + +<p>"You won't answer my questions," Betty complained. "Why should I answer +yours?"</p> + +<p>"There are plenty of nice young fellows in your own crowd," Gower went +on, still poking mechanically at the fire. "Why pick on young MacRae?"</p> + +<p>"You're evading, daddy," Betty murmured. "Why <i>shouldn't</i> I pick on +Jack MacRae if I like him—if he likes me? That's what I'm trying to +find out."</p> + +<p>"Does he?" Gower asked pointblank.</p> + +<p>"Yes," Betty admitted in a reluctant whisper. "He does—but—why don't +you tell me, daddy, what I'm up against, as you would say? What did you +ever do to old Donald MacRae that his son should have a feeling that is +<a name="Page_207" id="Page_207"></a>stronger than love?"</p> + +<p>"You think he loves you?"</p> + +<p>"I know it," Betty murmured.</p> + +<p>"And you?" Gower's deep voice seemed harsh.</p> + +<p>Betty threw out her hands in an impatient gesture.</p> + +<p>"Must I shout it out loud?" she cried.</p> + +<p>"You always were different from most girls, in some things," Gower +observed reflectively. "Iron under your softness. I never knew you to +stop trying to get anything you really wanted, not while there was a +chance to get it. Still—don't you think it would be as well for you to +stop wanting young MacRae—since he doesn't want you bad enough to try +to get you? Eh?"</p> + +<p>He still kept his face studiously averted. His tone was kind, full of a +peculiar tenderness that he kept for Betty alone.</p> + +<p>She rose and perched herself on the arm of his chair, caught and drew +his head against her, forced him to look up into eyes preternaturally +bright.</p> + +<p>"You don't seem to understand," she said. "It isn't that Jack doesn't +want me badly enough. He could have me, and I think he knows that too. +But there is something, something that drives him the other way. He +loves me. I know he does. And still he has spells of hating all us +Gowers—especially you. I know he wouldn't do that without reason."</p> + +<p>"Doesn't he tell you the reason?"</p> + +<p>Betty shook her head.</p> + +<p>"Would I be asking you, daddy?"</p> +<p><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208"></a></p> +<p>"I can't tell you, either," Gower rumbled deep in his throat.</p> + +<p>"Is it something that can't be mended?" Betty put her face down against +his, and he felt the tears wet on her cheek. "Think, daddy. I'm +beginning to be terribly unhappy."</p> + +<p>"That seems to be a family failing," Gower muttered. "I can't mend it, +Betty. I don't know what young MacRae knows or what he feels, but I can +guess. I'd make it worse if I meddled. Should I go to this hot-headed +young fool and say, 'Come on, let's shake hands, and you marry my +daughter'?"</p> + +<p><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209"></a>"Don't be absurd," Betty flashed. "I'm not asking you to <i>do</i> anything."</p> + +<p>"I couldn't do anything in this case if I wanted to," Gower declared. +"As a matter of fact, I think I'd put young MacRae out of my head, if I +were you. I wouldn't pick him for a husband, anyway."</p> + +<p>Betty rose to her feet.</p> + +<p>"You brought me into the world," she said passionately. "You have fed me +and clothed me and educated me and humored all my whims ever since I can +remember. But you can't pick a husband for me. I shall do that for +myself. It's silly to tell me to put Jack MacRae out of my head. He +isn't in my head. He's in my—my—heart. And I can keep him there, if I +can't have him in my arms. Put him out of my head! You talk as if loving +and marrying were like dealing in fish."</p> + +<p>"I wish it were," Gower rumbled. "I might have had some success at it +myself."</p> + +<p>Betty did not even vouchsafe reply. Probably she did not even hear what +he said. She turned and went to the window, stood looking out at the +rising turmoil of the sea, at the lowering scud of the clouds, dabbing +surreptitiously at her eyes with a handkerchief. After a little she +walked out of the room. Her feet sounded lightly on the stairs.</p> + +<p>Gower bent to the fire again. He resumed his aimless stirring of the +coals. A grim, twisted smile played about his lips. But his eyes were as +somber as the st<a name="Page_210" id="Page_210"></a>orm-blackened winter sky.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVI" id="CHAPTER_XVI"></a>CHAPTER XVI</h2> + +<p><span class="smcap">En Famille</span></p> + + +<p>Horace Gower's town house straddled the low crest of a narrow peninsula +which juts westward into the Gulf from the heart of the business section +of Vancouver. The tip of this peninsula ends in the green forest of +Stanley Park, which is like no other park in all North America, either +in its nature or its situation. It is a sizable stretch of ancient +forest, standing within gunshot of skyscrapers, modern hotels, great +docks where China freighters unload tea and silk. Hard on the flank of a +modern seaport this area of primitive woodland broods in the summer sun +and the winter rains not greatly different from what it must have been +in those days when only the Siwash Indians penetrated its shadowy +depths.</p> + +<p>The rear of Gower's house abutted against the park, neighbor to great +tall firs and massive, branchy cedars and a jungle of fern and thicket +bisected by a few paths and drives, with the sea lapping all about three +sides of its seven-mile boundary. From Gower's northward windows the +Capilano canyon opened between two mountains across the Inlet. Southward +other windows gave on English Bay and beach sands where one could count +a thousand swimmers on a summer afternoon.</p><p><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211"></a></p> + +<p>The place was only three blocks from Abbott's. The house itself was not +unlike Abbott's, built substantially of gray stone and set in ample +grounds. But it was a good deal larger, and both within and without it +was much more elaborate, as befitted the dwelling of a successful man +whose wife was socially a leader instead of a climber,—like so many of +Vancouver's newly rich. There was order and system and a smooth, +unobtrusive service in that home. Mrs. Horace A. Gower rather prided +herself on the noiseless, super-efficient operation of her domestic +machinery. Any little affair was sure to go off without a hitch, to be +quite charming, you know. Mrs. Gower had a firmly established prestige +along certain lines. Her business in life was living up to that +prestige, not only that it might be retained but judiciously expanded.</p> + +<p>Upon a certain March morning, however, Mrs. Gower seemed to be a trifle +shaken out of her usual complacency. She sat at a rather late breakfast, +facing her husband, flanked on either hand by her son and daughter. +There was an injured droop to Mrs. Gower's mouth, a slightly indignant +air about her. The conversation had reached a point where Mrs. Gower +felt impelled to remove her pince-nez and polish them carefully with a +bit of cloth. This was an infallible sign of distress.</p> + +<p>"I cannot see the least necessity for it, Norman," she resumed in a +slightly agitated, not to say petulant tone. "It's simply ridiculous for +a young man of your position to be working at common labor with such +terribly common people. It's degrading."</p> + +<p>Norman was employing himself upon a strip of bacon.</p> + +<p>"That's a mere matter of opinion," he replied at length. "Somebody has +to work. I have to do something for myself sometime, and it suits me to +begin now, in this particular manner which annoys you so much. I don't +mind work. And those copper claims are a rattling good prospect. +Everybody says so. We'll make a barrel of money out of them yet. Why +shouldn't I peel off my coa<a name="Page_212" id="Page_212"></a>t and go at it?"</p> + +<p>"By the way," Gower asked bluntly, "what occasioned this flying trip to +England?"</p> + +<p>Norman pushed back his chair a trifle, thrust his hands in his trousers +pockets and looked straight at his father.</p> + +<p>"My own private business," he answered as bluntly.</p> + +<p>"You people," he continued after a brief interval, "seem to think I'm +still in knee breeches."</p> + +<p>But this did not serve to turn his mother from her theme.</p> + +<p>"It is quite unnecessary for you to attempt making money in such a +primitive manner," she observed. "We have plenty of money. There is +plenty of opportunity for you in your father's business, if you must be +in business."</p> + +<p>"Huh!" Norman grunted. "I'm no good in my father's business, nor +anywhere else, in his private opinion. It's no good, mamma. I'm on my +own for keeps. I'm going through with it. I've been a jolly fizzle so +far. I'm not even a blooming war hero. You just stop bothering about +me."</p> + +<p>"I really can't think what's got into you," Mrs. Gower complained in a +tone which implied volumes of reproach. "It's bad enough for your father +and Betty to be running off and spending so much time at that miserable +<a name="Page_213" id="Page_213"></a>cottage when so much is going on here. I'm simply exhausted keeping +things up without any help from them. But this vagary of yours—I really +can't consider it anything else—is most distressing. To live in a dirty +little cabin and cook your own food, to associate with such men—it's +simply dreadful! Haven't you any regard for our position?"</p> + +<p>"I'm fed up with our position," Norman retorted. A sullen look was +gathering about his mouth. "What does it amount to? A lot of people +running around in circles, making a splash with their money. You, and +the sort of thing you call our position, made a sissy of me right up +till the war came along. There was nothing I was good for but parlor +tricks. And you and everybody else expected me to react from that and +set things afire overseas. I didn't. I didn't begin to come up to your +expectations at all. But if I didn't split Germans with a sword or do +any heroics I did get some horse sense knocked into me—unbelievable as +that may appear to you. I learned that there was a sort of satisfaction +in doing things. I'm having a try at that now. And you needn't imagine +I'm going to be wet-nursed along by your money.</p> + +<p>"As for my associates, and the degrading influences that fill you with +such dismay," Norman's voice flared into real anger, "they may not have +much polish—but they're human. I like them, so far as they go. I've +been frostbitten enough by the crowd I grew up with, since I came home, +to appreciate being taken for what I am, not what I may or may not have +done. Since I have discovered myself to have a funny sort of feeling +about living on your money, it behooves me to get out and make what +money I need for myself—in view of the fact that I'm going to be +married quite soon. I am going to marry"—Norman rose and looked down at +his mother with something like a flicker of amusement in his eyes as he +exploded his final bombshell—"a fisherman's daughter. A poor but worthy +maiden," he finished with unexpected irony.</p> + +<p>"Norman!" His mother's voice was a wail. "A common fisherman's +daughter? Oh, my son, my son."</p> + +<p>She shed a few beautifully restrained tears.</p> + +<p>"A common fisherman's daughter. Exactly," Norman drawled. "Terrible +thing, of course. Funny the fish scales on the family income never +trouble you."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Gower glared at him through her glasses.</p> + +<p>"Who is this—this woman?" she demanded.</p> +<p><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214"></a></p> +<p>"Dolly," Betty whispered under her breath.</p> + +<p>"Miss Dolores Ferrara of Squitty Cove," Norman answered imperturbably.</p> + +<p>"A foreigner besides. Great Heavens! Horace," Mrs. Gower appealed to her +husband, "have you no influence whatever with your son?"</p> + +<p>"Mamma," Betty put in, "I assure you you are making a tremendous fuss +about nothing. I can tell you that Dolly Ferrara is really quite a nice +girl. <i>I</i> think Norman is rather lucky."</p> + +<p>"Thanks, Bet," Norman said promptly. "That's the first decent thing I've +heard in this discussion."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Gower turned the battery of her indignant eyes on her daughter.</p> + +<p>"You, I presume," she said spitefully, "will be thinking of marrying +some fisherman next?"</p> + +<p>"If she did, Bessie," Gower observed harshly, "it would only be history +repeating itself."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Gower flushed, paled a little, and reddened again. She glared—no +other word describes her expression—at her husband for an instant. Then +she took refuge behind her dignity.</p> + +<p>"There is a downright streak of vulgarity in you, Horace," she said, +"which I am sorry to see crop out in my children."</p> + +<p>"Thank you, mamma," Betty remarked evenly.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Gower whirled on Norman.</p> + +<p>"I wash my hands of you completely," she said imperiously. "I am ashamed +of you."</p> + +<p>"I'd rather you'd be ashamed of me," Norman retorted, "than that I +should be ashamed of myself."</p> + +<p><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215"></a>"And you, sir,"—he faced his father, speaking in a tone of formal +respect which did not conceal a palpable undercurrent of defiance—"you +also, I suppose, wash your hands of me?"</p> + +<p>Gower looked at him for a second. His face was a mask, devoid of +expression.</p> + +<p>"You're a man grown," he said. "Your mother has expressed herself as she +might be expected to. I say nothing."</p> + +<p>Norman walked to the door.</p> + +<p>"I don't care a deuce of a lot what you say or what you don't say, nor +even what you think," he flung at them angrily, with his hand on the +knob. "I have my own row to hoe. I'm going to hoe it my own style. And +that's all there is to it. If you can't even wish me luck, why, you can +go to the devil!"</p> + +<p>"Norman!" His mother lifted her voice in protesting horror. Gower +himself only smiled, a bit cynically. And Betty looked at the door which +closed upon her brother with a wistful sort of astonishment.</p> + +<p>Gower first found occasion for speech.</p> + +<p>"While we are on the subject of intimate family affairs, Bessie," he +addressed his wife casually, "I may as well say that I shall have to +call on you for some funds—about thirty thousand dollars. Forty +thousand would be better."</p> + +<p>Mrs. Gower stiffened to attention. She regarded her husband with an air +of complete disapproval, slightly tinctured with surprise.</p> + +<p>"Oh," she said, "really?"</p> + +<p>"I shall need that much properly to undertake<a name="Page_216" id="Page_216"></a> this season's operations," +he stated calmly, almost indifferently.</p> + +<p>"Really?" she repeated. "Are you in difficulties again?"</p> + +<p>"Again?" he echoed. "It is fifteen years since I was in a corner where I +needed any of your money."</p> + +<p>"It seems quite recent to me," Mrs. Gower observed stiffly.</p> + +<p>"Am I to understand from that that you don't care to advance me whatever +sum I require?" he asked gently.</p> + +<p>"I don't see why I should," Mrs. Gower replied after a second's +reflection, "even if I were quite able to do so. This place costs +something to keep up. I can't very well manage on less than two thousand +a month. And Betty and I must be clothed. You haven't contributed much +recently, Horace."</p> + +<p>"No? I had the impression that I had been contributing pretty freely for +thirty years," Gower returned dryly. "I paid the bills up to December. +Last season wasn't a particularly good one—for me."</p> + +<p>"That was chiefly due to your own mismanagement, I should say," Mrs. +Gower commented tartly. "Putting the whole cannery burden on Norman when +the poor boy had absolutely no experience. Really, you must have +mismanaged dreadfully. I heard only the other day that the Robbin-Steele +plants did better last season than they ever did. I'm sure the Abbotts +made money last year. If the banks have lost faith in your business +ability, I—well, I should consider you a bad risk, Horace. I can't +afford to gamble."</p> + +<p>"You never do. You only play cinches," Gower grunted. "However, your +money will be safe eno<a name="Page_217" id="Page_217"></a>ugh. I didn't say the banks refuse me credit. I +have excellent reasons for borrowing of you."</p> + +<p>"I really do not see how I can possibly let you have such a sum," she +said. "You already have twenty thousand dollars of my money tied up in +your business, you know."</p> + +<p>"You have an income of twelve thousand a year from the Maple Point +place," Gower recited in that unchanging, even tone. "You have over +twenty thousand cash on deposit. And you have eighty thousand dollars in +Victory Bonds. You mean you don't want to, Bessie."</p> + +<p>"You may accept that as my meaning," she returned.</p> + +<p>"There are times in every man's career," Gower remarked dispassionately, +"when the lack of a little money might break him."</p> + +<p>"That is all the more reason why I should safeguard my funds," Mrs. +Gower replied. "You are not as young as you were, Horace. If you should +fail now, you would likely never get on your feet again. But we could +manage, I dare say, on what I have. That is why I do not care to risk +any of it."</p> + +<p>"You refuse then, absolutely, to let me have this money?" he asked.</p> + +<p>"I do," Mrs. Gower replied, with an air of pained but conscious +rectitude. "I should consider myself most unwise to do so."</p> + +<p>"All right," Gower returned indifferently. "You force me to a showdown. +I have poured money into your hands for years for you to squander in +keeping up your position—as you call it. I'm about through doing that. +I'm sick of aping millionaires. All I need is a comfortable place where +I can smoke a pipe in peace. This house is mine. I shall sell it and +repay you your twenty thousand. You—"</p> +<p><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218"></a></p> +<p>"Horace! Sell this house. Our home! <i>Horace.</i>"</p> + +<p>"Our home?" Gower continued inflexibly. "The place where we eat and +sleep and entertain, you mean. We never had a home, Bessie. You will +have your ancestral hall at Maple Point. You will be quite able to +afford a Vancouver house if you choose. But this is mine, and it's going +into the discard. I shall owe you nothing. I shall still have the +cottage at Cradle Bay, if I go smash, and that is quite good enough for +me. Do I make myself clear?"</p> + +<p>Mrs. Gower was sniffing. She had taken refuge with the pince-nez and the +polishing cloth. But her fingers were tremulous, and her expression was +that of a woman who feels herself sadly abused and who is about to +indulge in luxurious weeping.</p> + +<p>"But, Horace, to sell this house over my head—what will p-people say?"</p> + +<p>"I don't care two whoops what people say," Mr. Gower replied +unfeelingly.</p> + +<p>"This is simp-ply outrageous! How is Betty going to m-meet p-people?"</p> + +<p>"You mean," her husband retorted, "how are you going to contrive the +proper background against which Betty shall display her charms to the +different varieties of saphead which you hit upon as being eligible to +marry her? Don't worry. With the carefully conserved means at your +disposal you will still be able to maintain yourself in the station in +which it has pleased God to place you. You will be able to see that +Betty has the proper advantages."</p> + +<p>This straw broke the camel's back, if it is proper so to speak of a +middle-aged, delicate-featured lady, delightfully gowned and coiffed +and manicured. Mrs. Gower's grief waxed crescendo. Whereupon her +husband, with no manifest change of expression beyond an unpleasant +narrowing of his eyes, heaved his short, flesh-burdened body out of the +<a name="Page_219" id="Page_219"></a>chair and left the room.</p> + +<p>Betty had sat silent through this conversation, a look of profound +distaste slowly gathering on her fresh young face. She gazed after her +father. When the door closed upon him Betty's gray eyes came to rest on +her mother's bowed head and shaking shoulders. There was nothing in +Betty Gower's expression which remotely suggested sympathy. She said +nothing. She leaned her elbows on the table and rested her pretty chin +in her cupped palms.</p> + +<p>Mrs. Gower presently became aware of this detached, observing, almost +critical attitude.</p> + +<p>"Your f-father is p-positively b-brutal," she found voice to declare.</p> + +<p>"There are various sorts of brutality," Betty observed enigmatically. "I +don't think daddy has a corner on the visible supply. Are you going to +let him have that money?"</p> + +<p>"No. Never," Mrs. Gower snapped.</p> + +<p>"You may lose a great deal more than the house by that," Betty murmured.</p> + +<p>But if Mrs. Gower heard the words they conveyed no meaning to her +agitated mind. She was rapidly approaching that incomprehensible state +in which a woman laughs and cries in the same breath, and Betty got up +with a faintly contemptuous curl to her red lips. She went out into the +hall and pressed a button. A maid materialized.</p> + +<p>"Go into the dining room and attend to mamma, if you please, Mary," +Betty said.</p> + +<p>Then she skipped nimbly upstairs, two steps at a time, and went into a +room on the second floor, a room furnished something after the fashion +of a library in which her father sat in a big leather chair chewing on +an unlighted cigar.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220"></a>Betty perched on the arm of his chair and ran her fingers through a +patch on top of his head where the hair was growing a bit thin.</p> + +<p>"Daddy," she asked, "did you mean that about going smash?"</p> + +<p>"Possibility," he grunted.</p> + +<p>"Are you really going to sell this house and live at Cradle Bay?"</p> + +<p>"Sure. You sorry?"</p> + +<p>"About the house? Oh, no. It's only a place for mamma to make a splash, +<a name="Page_221" id="Page_221"></a>as Norman said. If you hibernate at the cottage I'll come and keep house +for you."</p> + +<p>Gower considered this.</p> + +<p>"You ought to stay with your mother," he said finally. "She'll be able +to give you a lot I wouldn't make an effort to provide. You don't know +what it means really to work. You'd find it pretty slow at Squitty."</p> + +<p>"Maybe," Betty said. "But we managed very well last winter, just you and +me. If there is going to be a break-up of the family I shall stay with +you. I'm a daddy's girl."</p> + +<p>Gower drew her face down and kissed it.</p> + +<p>"You are that," he said huskily. "You're all Gower. There's real stuff +in you. You're free of that damned wishy-washy Morton blood. She made a +poodle dog of Norman, but she couldn't spoil you. We'll manage, eh, +Betty?"</p> + +<p>"Of course," Betty returned. "But I don't know that Norman is such a +hopeless case. Didn't he rather take your breath away with his +declaration of independence?"</p> + +<p>"It takes more than a declaration to win independence," Gower answered +grimly. "Wait till the going gets hard. However, I'll say there'<a name="Page_222" id="Page_222"></a>s a +chance for Norman. Now, you run along, Betty. I've got some figuring to +do."</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVII" id="CHAPTER_XVII"></a>CHAPTER XVII</h2> + +<p><span class="smcap">Business as Usual</span></p> + + +<p>Late in March Jack MacRae came down to Vancouver and quartered himself +at the Granada again. He liked the quiet luxury of that great hostelry. +It was a trifle expensive, but he was not inclined to worry about +expense. At home, or aboard his carriers in the season, living was a +negligible item. He found a good deal of pleasure in swinging from one +extreme to the other. Besides, a man stalking big game does not arm +himself with a broomstick.</p> + +<p>He had not come to town solely for his pleasure, although he was not +disposed to shy from any diversion that offered. He had business in +hand, business of prime importance since it involved spending a little +matter of twelve thousand dollars. In brief, he had to replace the +<i>Blackbird</i>, and he was replacing her with a carrier of double the +capacity, of greater speed, equipped with special features of his own +choosing. The new boat was designed to carry ten thousand salmon. There +was installed in her holds an ammonia refrigerating plant which would +free him from the labor and expense and uncertainty of crushed ice. +Science bent to the service of money-making. MacRae grinned to himself +when he surveyed the coiled pipes, the pumping engine. His new boat was +a floating, self-<a name="Page_223" id="Page_223"></a>contained cold-storage plant. He could maintain a +freezing temperature so long as he wished by chemico-mechanical means. +That meant a full load every trip, since he could follow the trollers +till he got a load, if it took a week, and his salmon would still be +fresh.</p> + +<p>He wondered why this had not been done before. Stubby enlightened him.</p> + +<p>"Partly because it's a costly rig to install. But mostly because salmon +and ice have always been both cheap and plentiful, and people have got +into a habit of doing things in the same old way. You know. Until the +last season or two salmon have been so cheap that neither canneries nor +buyers bothered about anything so up-to-date. If they lost their ice in +hot weather and the fish rotted—why, there were plenty more fish. There +have been times when the Fraser River stunk with rotten salmon. They +used to pay the fishermen ten cents apiece for six-pound sockeyes and +limit them to two hundred fish to the boat if there was a big run. The +gill-netter would take five hundred in one drift, come in to the cannery +loaded to the guards, find himself up against a limit. He would sell the +two hundred and dump more than that overboard. And the Fraser River +canneries wonder why sockeye is getting scarce. My father used to rave +about the waste. Criminal, he used to say."</p> + +<p>"When the fishermen were getting only ten cents apiece for sockeyes, +salmon was selling at fifteen cents a pound tin," MacRae observed.</p> + +<p>"Oh, the canneries made barrels of money." Stubby shrugged his +shoulders. "They thought the salmon would always run in millions, no +matter how many they destroyed. Some of 'em think so yet."</p> + +<p>"We're a nation of wasters, compared to Europe," MacRae said +thoughtfully. "The only thing they are prodigal with over there is human +flesh and blood. That is cheap and plentiful. But they take care of +their natural resources. We destroy as much as we use, fish, +timber—everything. Everybody for himself and the devil take the +hindmost."</p> + +<p>"Well, I don't know what <i>we</i> can do about it," Stubby drawled.</p> + +<p>"Keep from being the hindmost," MacRae answered. "But I sometimes feel +sorry for those who are."</p><p><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224"></a></p> + +<p>"Man," Stubby observed, "is a predatory animal. You can't make anything +else of him. Nobody develops philanthropy and the public spirit until he +gets rich and respectable. Social service is nothing but a theory yet. +God only helps those who help themselves."</p> + +<p>"How does he arrange it for those who <i>can't</i> help themselves?" MacRae +inquired.</p> + +<p>Stubby shrugged his shoulders.</p> + +<p>"Search me," he said.</p> + +<p>"Do you even believe in this anthropomorphic God of the preachers?" +MacRae asked curiously.</p> + +<p>"Well, there must be something, don't you think?" Stubby hedged.</p> + +<p>"There may be," MacRae pursued the thought. "I read a book by Wells not +long ago in which he speaks of God as the Great Experimenter. If there +is an all-powerful Deity, it strikes me that in his attitude toward +humanity he is a good deal like a referee at a football game who would +say to the teams, 'Here is the ball and the field and the two goals. Go +to it,' and then goes off to the side lines to smoke his pipe while the +players foul and gouge and trip and generally run amuck in a frenzied +effort to win the game."</p> + +<p>"You're a pessimist," Stubby declared.</p> + +<p>"What is a p<a name="Page_225" id="Page_225"></a>essimist?" MacRae demanded.</p> + +<p>But Stubby changed the subject. He was not concerned with abstractions. +And he was vitally concerned with the material factors of his everyday +life, believing that he was able to dominate those material factors and +bend them to his will if only he were clever enough and energetic +enough.</p> + +<p>Stubby wanted to get in on the blueback salmon run again. He had put a +big pack through Crow Harbor and got a big price for the pack. In a +period of mounting prices canned salmon was still ascending. Food in any +imperishable, easily transported form was sure of a market in Europe. +There was a promise of even bigger returns for Pacific salmon packers in +the approaching season. But Stubby was not sure enough yet of where he +stood to make any definite arrangement with MacRae. He wanted to talk +things over, to feel his way.</p> + +<p>There were changes in the air. For months the industrial pot had been +spasmodically boiling over in strikes, lockouts, boycotts, charges of +profiteering, loud and persistent complaints from consumers, organized +labor and rapidly organizing returned soldiers. Among other things the +salmon packers' monopoly and the large profits derived therefrom had not +escaped attention.</p> + +<p>From her eight millions of population during those years of war effort +Canada had withdrawn over six hundred thousand able-bodied men. Yet the +wheels of industry turned apace. She had supplied munitions, food for +armies, ships, yet her people had been fed and clothed a<a name="Page_226" id="Page_226"></a>nd housed,—all +their needs had been liberally supplied.</p> + +<p>And in a year these men had come back. Not all. There were close on to +two hundred thousand to be checked off the lists. There was the lesser +army of the slightly and totally disabled, the partially digested food +of the war machine. But there were still a quarter of a million men to +be reabsorbed into a civil and industrial life which had managed to +function tolerably well without them.</p> + +<p>These men, for the most part, had somehow conceived the idea that they +were coming back to a better world, a world purged of dross by the +bloody sweat of the war. And they found it pretty much the same old +world. They had been uprooted. They found it a little difficult to take +root again. They found living costly, good jobs not so plentiful, +masters as exacting as they had been before. The Golden Rule was no more +a common practice than it had ever been. Yet the country was rich, +bursting with money. Big business throve, even while it howled to high +heaven about ruinous, confiscatory taxation.</p> + +<p>The common man himself lifted up his voice in protest and backed his +protest with such action as he could take. Besides the parent body of +the Great War Veterans' Association other kindred groups of men who had +fought on both sea and land sprang into being. The labor organizations +were strengthened in their campaign for shorter hours and longer pay by +thousands of their own members returned, all semi-articulate, all more +or less belligerent. The war had made fighters of them. War does not +teach men sweet reasonableness. They said to themselves and to each +other that they had fought the greatest war in the world's history and +were worse off than they were before. From coast to coast society was +infiltrated with men who wore a small bron<a name="Page_227" id="Page_227"></a>ze button in the left lapel of +their coats, men who had acquired a new sense of their relation to +society, men who asked embarrassing questions in public meetings, in +clubs, in legislative assemblies, in Parliament, and who demanded +answers to the questions.</p> + +<p>British Columbia was no exception. The British Columbia coast fishermen +did not escape the influence of this general unrest, this critical +inquiry. Wealthy, respectable, middle-aged citizens viewed with alarm +and denounced pernicious agitation. The common man retorted with the +epithet of "damned profiteer" and worse. Army scandals were aired. +Ancient political graft was exhumed. Strident voices arose in the +wilderness of contention crying for a fresh deal, a clean-up, a new +dispensation.</p> + +<p>When MacRae first began to run bluebacks there were a few returned +soldiers fishing salmon, men like the Ferrara boys who had been +fishermen before they were soldiers, who returned to their old calling +when they put off the uniform. Later, through the season, he came across +other men, frankly neophytes, trying their hand at a vocation which at +least held the lure of freedom from a weekly pay check and a boss. These +men were not slow to comprehend the cannery grip on the salmon grounds +and the salmon fishermen. They chafed against the restrictions which, +they said, put them at the canneries' mercy. They growled about the +swarms of Japanese who could get privileges denied a white man because +the Japs catered to the packers. They swelled with their voices the +feeble chorus that white fishermen had raised long before the war.</p> + +<p>All of this, like wavering gusts, before the storm, was informing the +sentient ears of politicians who gover<a name="Page_228" id="Page_228"></a>ned by grace of electoral votes. +Soldiers, who had been citizens before they became soldiers, who were +frankly critical of both business and government, won in by-elections. +In the British Columbia legislature there was a major from an Island +district and a lieutenant from North Vancouver. They were exponents of a +new deal, enemies of the profiteer and the professional politician, and +they were thorns in the side of a provincial government which yearned +over vested rights as a mother over her ailing babe. In the Dominion +capital it was much the same as elsewhere,—a government which had +grasped office on a win-the-war platform found its grasp wavering over +the knotty problems of peace.</p> + +<p>The British Columbia salmon fisheries were controlled by the Dominion, +through a department political in its scope. Whether the Macedonian cry +penetrated through bureaucratic swaddlings, whether the fact that +fishermen had votes and might use them with scant respect for personages +to whom votes were a prerequisite to political power, may remain a +riddle. But about the time Jack MacRae's new carrier was ready to take +the water, there came a shuffle in the fishery regulations which fell +like a bomb in the packers' camp.</p> + +<p>The ancient cannery monopoly of purse-seining rights on given territory +was broken into fine large fragments. The rules which permitted none but +a cannery owner to hold a purse-seine license and denied all other men +that privilege were changed. The new regulations provided that any male +citizen of British birth or naturalization could fish if he paid the +license fee. The cannery men shouted black ruin,—but they girded up +their loins to get fish.</p> + +<p>MacRae was still in V<a name="Page_229" id="Page_229"></a>ancouver when this change of policy was announced. +He heard the roaring of the cannery lions. Their spokesmen filled the +correspondence columns of the daily papers with their views. MacRae had +not believed such changes imminent or even possible. But taking them as +an accomplished fact, he foresaw strange developments in the salmon +industry. Until now the packers could always be depended upon to stand +shoulder to shoulder against the fishermen and the consumer, to dragoon +one another into the line of a general policy. The American buyers, +questing adventurously from over the line, had alone saved the +individual fisherman from eating humbly out of the British Columbia +canner's hand.</p> + +<p>The fishermen had made a living, such as it was. The cannery men had +dwelt in peace and amity with one another. They had their own loosely +knit organization, held together by the ties of financial interest. They +sat behind mahogany desks and set the price of salmon to the fishermen +and very largely the price of canned fish to the consumer, and their +most arduous labor had been to tot up the comfortable balance after each +season's operations. All this pleasantness was to be done away with, +they mourned. Every Tom, Dick, and Harry was to be turned loose on the +salmon with deadly gear and greedy intent to exterminate a valuable +species of fish and wipe out a thriving industry. The salmon would all +be killed off, so did the packers cry. What few small voices arose, +suggesting that the deadly purse seine had never been considered deadly +when only canneries had been permitted to use such gear and that <i>they</i> +had not worried about the extermination of the salmon so long as they +did the exterminating themselves and found it highly profitable,—these +few voices, alas, arose only in minor strains and were for the most part +drowned by the anvil chorus of the cannery men.</p> + +<p>MacRae observed, listened, read the papers, and prophesied to himself a +scramble. But he did not see where it touched him,—not until +Robbin-Steele Senior asked him to come to his office in the Bond +Building one afternoon.</p> +<p><a name="Page_230" id="Page_230"></a></p> +<p>MacRae faced the man over a broad table in an office more like the +library of a well-appointed home than a place of calculated +profit-mongering. Robbin-Steele, Senior, was tall, thin, sixty years of +age, sandy-haired, with a high, arched nose. His eyes, MacRae thought, +were disagreeably like the eyes of a dead fish, lusterless and sunken; a +cold man with a suave manner seeking his own advantage. Robbin-Steele +was a Scotchman of tolerably good family who had come to British +Columbia with an inherited fortune and made that fortune grow to vast +proportions in the salmon trade. He had two pretty and clever daughters, +and three of his sons had been notable fighters overseas. MacRae knew +them all, liked them well enough. But he had never come much in contact +with the head of the family. What he had seen of Robbin-Steele, Senior, +gave him the impression of cold, calculating power.</p> + +<p>"I wonder," MacRae heard him saying after a brief exchange of +courtesies, "if we could make an arrangement with you to deliver all the +salmon you can get this season to our Fraser River plant."</p> + +<p>"Possibly," MacRae replied. "But there is no certainty that I will get +any great number of salmon."</p> + +<p>"If you were as uncertain as that," Robbin-Steele said dryly, "you would +scarcely be putting several thousand dollars into an elaborately +equipped carrier. We may presume that you intend to get the salmon—as +you did last year."</p> + +<p>"You seem to know a great deal about my business," MacRae observed.</p> + +<p>"It is our policy to know, in a general way, what goes on in the salmon +industry," Robbin-Steele assented.</p> + +<p>MacRae waited for him to continue.</p> + +<p>"You have a good deal of both energy <a name="Page_231" id="Page_231"></a>and ability," Robbin-Steele went +on. "It is obvious that you have pretty well got control of the blueback +situation around Squitty Island. You must, however, have an outlet for +your fish. We can use these salmon to advantage. On what basis will you +deliver them to us on the Fraser if we give you a contract guaranteeing +to accept all you can deliver?"</p> + +<p>"Twenty per cent, over Folly Bay prices," MacRae answered promptly.</p> + +<p>The cannery man shook his head.</p> + +<p>"No. We can't afford to boost the cost of salmon like that. It'll ruin +the business, which is in a bad enough way as it is. The more you pay a +fisherman, the more he wants. We must keep prices down. That is to your +interest, too."</p> + +<p>"No," MacRae disagreed. "I think it is to my interest to pay the +fishermen top prices, so long as I make a profit on the deal. I don't +want the earth—only a moderate share of it."</p> + +<p>"Twenty per cent. on Folly Bay prices is too uncertain a basis." +Robbin-Steele changed his tactics. "We can send our own carriers there +to buy at far less cost."</p> + +<p>MacRae smiled.</p> + +<p>"You can send your carriers," he drawled, "but I doubt if you would get +many fish. I don't think you quite grasp the Squitty situation."</p> + +<p>"Yes, I think I do," Robbin-Steele returned. "Gower had things pretty +much his own way until you cut in on his grounds. You have undoubtedly +secured quite an advantage in a peculiar mann<a name="Page_232" id="Page_232"></a>er, and possibly you feel +secure against competition. But your hold is not so strong as Gower's +once was. Let me tell you, your hold on that business can be broken, my +young friend."</p> + +<p>"Undoubtedly," MacRae readily admitted. "But there is a world-wide +demand for canned salmon, and I have not suffered for a market—even +when influence was used last season to close the home market against me, +on Folly Bay's behalf. And I am quite sure, from what I have seen and +heard, that many of the big British Columbia packers like yourself are +so afraid the labor situation will get out of hand that they would shut +down their plants rather than pay fishermen what they could afford to +pay if they would be content with a reasonable profit. So I am not at +all afraid of you seducing the Squitty trollers with high prices."</p> + +<p>"You are laboring under the common error about cannery profits," +Robbin-Steele declared pointedly. "Considering the capital invested, the +total of the pack, the risk and uncertainty of the business, our returns +are not excessive."</p> + +<p>MacRae smiled amusedly.</p> + +<p>"That all depends on what you regard as excessive. But there is nothing +to be gained by an argument on that subject. Canning salmon is a highly +profitable business, but it would not be the gold mine it has been if +canneries hadn't been fostered at the expense of the men who actually +catch the fish, if the government hadn't bestowed upon cannery men the +gift of a strangle hold on the salmon grounds, and license privileges +that gave them absolute control. I haven't any quarrel with cannery men +for making money. You only amuse me when you speak of doubtful returns. +I wish I could have your cinch for a season or two."</p> + +<p>"You shouldn't have any quarrel<a name="Page_233" id="Page_233"></a> with us. You started with nothing and +made twenty thousand dollars in a single season," Robbin-Steele +reminded.</p> + +<p>"I worked like a dog. I took chances. And I was very lucky," MacRae +agreed. "I did make a lot of money. But I paid the fishermen more than +they ever got for salmon—a great deal more than they would have got if +I hadn't broken into the game. Abbott made money on the salmon I +delivered him. So everybody was satisfied, except Gower—who perhaps +feels that he is ordained by the Almighty to get cheap salmon."</p> + +<p>"You're spoiling those men," Robbin-Steele declared irritably. "My +observation of that class of labor is that the more money they get the +less they will do and the more they will want. You can't carry on any +industry on that basis. But that's beside the point. We're getting away +from the question. We want you to deliver those fish to us, if you can +do so at a reasonable price. We should like to have some sort of +agreement, so that we may know what to expect."</p> + +<p>"I can deliver the fish," MacRae asserted confidently. "But I don't care +to bind myself to anything. Not this far in advance. Wait till the +salmon run."</p> + +<p>"You are a very shrewd young man, I should say." Robbin-Steele paid him +a reluctant compliment and let a gleam of appreciation flicker in his +dead-fish eyes. "I imagine you will get on. Come and see me when you +feel like considering this matter seriously."</p> + +<p><a name="Page_234" id="Page_234"></a>MacRae went down the elevator wondering if the gentleman's agreement +among the packers was off, if there was going to be something in the +nature of competition among them for the salmon. There would be a few +more gill-net licenses issued. More important, the gill-netters would be +free to fish where they chose, for whosoever paid the highest price, +and not for the cannery which controlled their license. There would be +scores of independent purse seiners. Would the packers bid against one +another for the catch? It rather seemed to MacRae as if they must. They +could no longer sit back secure in the knowledge that the salmon from a +given area must come straight to their waiting cans. And British +Columbia packers had always dreaded American competition.</p> + +<p>Following that, MacRae took train for Bellingham. The people he had +dealt with there at the close of the last season had dealt fairly. +American salmon packers had never suffered the blight of a monopoly. +They had established their industry in legitimate competition, without +governmental favors. They did not care how much money a fisherman made +so long as he caught fish for them which they could profitably can.</p> + +<p>MacRae had no contract with them. He did not want a contract. If he made +hard and fast agreements with any one it would be with Stubby Abbott. +But he did want to fortify himself with all the information he could +get. He did not know what line Folly Bay would take when the season +opened. He was not sure what shifts might occur among the British +Columbia canneries. If such a thing as free and unlimited competition +for salmon took place he might need more than one outlet for his +carriers. MacRae was not engaged in a hazardous business for pastime. He +had an objective, and this objective was contingent upon making money.</p> + +<p>From the American source he learned that a good season was anticipated +for the better grades of salmon. He found out what prices he could +expect. They were liberal enoug<a name="Page_235" id="Page_235"></a>h to increase his confidence. These men +were anxious to get the thousands of British Columbia salmon MacRae +could supply.</p> + +<p>MacRae returned to Vancouver. Before he had finished unpacking his bag +the telephone rang. Hurley, of the Northwest Cold Storage, spoke when he +took down the receiver. Could he drop into the Northwest office? MacRae +grinned to himself and went down to the grimy wharf where deep-sea +halibut schooners rubbed against the dock, their stubby top-hamper +swaying under the office windows as they rocked to the swell of passing +harbor craft.</p> + +<p>He talked with Hurley,—the same gentleman whom he had once approached +with no success in the matter of selling salmon. The situation was +reversed now. The Northwest was eager to buy. They would pay him, <i>sub +rosa</i>, two cents a pound over the market price for fresh salmon if he +would supply them with the largest possible quantity from the beginning +of the blueback run.</p> + +<p>As with Robbin-Steele, MacRae refused to commit himself. More clearly he +perceived that the scramble was beginning. The packers and the +cold-storage companies had lost control. They must have fish to +function, to make a profit. They would cut one another's throats for +salmon. So much the better, MacRae cynically reflected. He told Hurley, +at last, as he had told Robbin-Steele, to wait till the salmon began to +run.</p> + +<p>He left the Northwest offices with the firm convicti<a name="Page_236" id="Page_236"></a>on that it was not +going to be a question of markets, but a question of getting the salmon. +And he rather fancied he could do that.</p> + +<p>Last of all on the list of these men who approached him in this fashion +came Stubby Abbott. Stubby did not ask him to call. He came to the +Granada in search of Jack and haled him, nothing loth, out to the stone +house in the West End. It happened that Betty Gower, Etta Robbin-Steele, +and two gilded youths, whom MacRae did not know, were there. They had +been walking in the Park. Nelly and her mother were serving tea.</p> + +<p>It happened, too, that as they chatted over the teacups, a blue-bodied +limousine drew up under the Abbott pergola and deposited Mrs. Horace A. +Gower for a brief conversation with Mrs. Abbott. It was MacRae's first +really close contact with the slender, wonderfully preserved lady whose +life had touched his father's so closely in the misty long ago. He +regarded her with a reflective interest. She must have been very +beautiful then, he thought. She was almost beautiful still. Certainly +she was a very distinguished person, with her costly clothing, her rich +furs, her white hair, and that faded rose-leaf skin. The petulant, +querulous droop of her mouth escaped MacRae. He was not a physiognomist. +But the distance of her manner did not escape him. She acknowledged the +introduction and thereafter politely overlooked MacRae. He meant nothing +at all to Mrs. Horace A. Gower, he saw very clearly. Merely a young man +among other young men; a young man of no particular interest. Thirty +years is a long time, MacRae reflected. But his father had not +forgotten. He wondered if she had; if those far-off hot-blooded days had +grown dim and unreal to her?</p> + +<p>He turned his head once and caught Betty as intent upon him as he was +upon her mother, under cover of the general conversation. He gathered +that there was a shade of reproach, of resentment, in her eyes. But he +could not be sure. Certainly there was nothing like that in her manner. +But the manner of these people, he understood very well, was pretty much +a mask. Whatever went on<a name="Page_237" id="Page_237"></a> in their secret bosoms, they smiled and joked +and were unfailingly courteous.</p> + +<p>He made another discovery within a few minutes. Stubby maneuvered +himself close to Etta Robbin-Steele. Stubby was not quite so adept at +repression as most of his class. He was a little more naïve, more prone +to act upon his natural, instinctive impulses. MacRae was aware of that. +He saw now a swift by-play that escaped the rest. Nothing of any +consequence,—a look, the motion of a hand, a fleeting something on the +girl's face and Stubby's. Jack glanced at Nelly Abbott sitting beside +him, her small blonde head pertly inclined. Nelly saw it too. She smiled +knowingly.</p> + +<p>"Has the brunette siren hooked Stubby?" MacRae inquired in a discreet +undertone.</p> + +<p>"I think so. I'm not sure. Etta's such an outrageous flirt," Nelly said. +"I hope not, anyway. I'm afraid I can't quite appreciate Etta as a +prospective sister-in-law."</p> + +<p>"No?"</p> + +<p>"She's catty—and vain as a peacock. Stubby ought to marry a nice +sensible girl who'd mother him," Nelly observed with astonishing +conviction; "like Betty, for instance."</p> + +<p>"Oh, you seem to have very definite ideas on that subject," MacRae +smiled. He did not commit himself further. But he resented the +suggestion. There was also an amusing phase of Nelly's declaration which +did not escape him,—the pot calling the kettle black. Etta +Robbin-Steele did flirt. She h<a name="Page_238" id="Page_238"></a>ad dancing black eyes that flung a +challenge to men. But Nelly herself was no shrinking violet, for all her +baby face. She was like an elf. Her violet eyes were capable of +infinite shades of expression. She, herself, had a way of appropriating +men who pleased her, to the resentful dismay of other young women. It +pleased her to do that with Jack MacRae whenever he was available. And +until Betty had preëmpted a place in his heart without even trying, Jack +MacRae had been quite willing to let his fancy linger romantically on +Nelly Abbott.</p> + +<p>As it was,—he looked across the room at Betty chatting with young Lane. +What a damned fool he was,—he, MacRae! All his wires were crossed. If +some inescapable human need urged him to love, how much better to love +this piquant bit of femininity beside him? But he couldn't do it. It +wasn't possible. All the old rebellion stirred in him. The locked +chambers of his mind loosed pictures of Squitty, memories of things +which had happened there, as he let his eyes drift from Betty, whom he +loved, to her mother, whom his father had loved and lost. She had made +his father suffer through love. Her daughter was making Donald MacRae's +son suffer likewise. Again, through some fantastic quirk of his +imagination, the stodgy figure of Horace Gower loomed in the background, +shadowy and sinister. There were moments, like the present, when he felt +hatred of the man concretely, as he could feel thirst or hunger.</p> + +<p>"A penny for your thoughts," Nelly bantered.</p> + +<p>"They'd be dear at half the price," MacRae said, forcing a smile.</p> + +<p>He was glad when those people went their way. Nelly put on a coat and +went with them. Stubby drew Jack up to his den.</p> +<p><a name="Page_239" id="Page_239"></a></p> +<p>"I have bought up the controlling interest in the Terminal Fish Company +since I saw you last," Stubby began abruptly. "I'm going to put up a +cold-storage plant and do what my father started to do early in the +war—give people cheaper fish for food."</p> + +<p>"Can you make it stick," MacRae asked curiously, "with the other +wholesalers against you? Their system seems to be to get all the traffic +will bear, to boost the price to the consumer by any means they can use. +And there is the Packers' Association. They are not exactly—well, +favorable to cheap retailing of fish. Everybody seems to think the +proper caper is to tack on a cent or two a pound wherever he can."</p> + +<p>"I know I can," Stubby declared. "The pater would have succeeded only he +trusted too much to men who didn't see it his way. Look at Cunningham—" +Stubby mentioned a fish merchant who had made a resounding splash in +matters piscatorial for a year or two, and then faded, along with his +great cheap-fish markets, into oblivion—"he made it go like a house +afire until he saw a chance to make a quick and easy clean-up by +sticking people. It can be done, all right, if a man will be satisfied +with a small profit on a big turnover. I know it."</p> + +<p>MacRae made no comment on that. Stubby was full of his plan, eager to +talk about its possibilities.</p> + +<p>"I wanted to do it last year," he said, "but I couldn't. I had to play +the old game—make a bunch of money and make it quick. Between you and +Gower's pig-headedness, and the rest of the cannery crowd letting me go +till it was too late to stop me, and a climbing market, I made more +money in one season than I thought was possibl<a name="Page_240" id="Page_240"></a>e. I'm going to use that +money to make more money and to squash some of these damned fish +pirates. I tell you it's jolly awful. We had baked cod for lunch to-day. +That fish cost twenty cents a pound. Think of it! When the fisherman +sells it for six cents within fifty miles of us. No wonder everybody is +howling. I don't know anything about other lines of food supply, but I +can sure put my finger on a bunch of fish profiteers. And I feel like +putting my foot on them. Anyway, I've got the Terminal for a starter; +also I have a twenty-five-year lease on the water frontage there. I have +the capital to go ahead and build a cold-storage plant. The wholesale +crowd can't possibly bother me. And the canneries are going to have +their hands full this season without mixing into a scrap over local +prices of fresh fish. You've heard about the new regulations?"</p> + +<p>MacRae nodded assent.</p> + +<p>"There's going to be a free-for-all," Stubby chuckled. "There'll be a +lot of independent purse seiners. If the canneries don't pay good prices +these independent fishermen, with their fast, powerful rigs, will seine +the salmon under the packers' noses and run their catch down to the +Puget Sound plants. This is no time for the British Columbia packers to +get uppish. Good-by, four hundred per cent."</p> + +<p>"They'll wiggle through legislation to prevent export of raw salmon," +MacRae suggested; "same as they have on the sockeye."</p> + +<p>"No chance. They've tried, and it can't be done," Stubby grinned. "There +aren't going to be any special privileges for British Columbia salmon +packers any more. I know, because I'm on the inside. The fishermen have +made a noise that disturbs the politicians, I guess. Another thing, +there's a slack in the demand for all but the best grades of salmon. But +the number one grades, sockeye and bl<a name="Page_241" id="Page_241"></a>ueback and coho, are short. So that +a cannery man with an efficient plant can pay big for those fish. If +you can hold that Squitty fleet of trollers like you did last year, +you'll make some money."</p> + +<p>"Do you want those salmon?" MacRae asked.</p> + +<p>"Sure I want them. I want them as soon as they begin to run big enough +to be legally taken for sale," Stubby declared. "I'm going to rush that +cold-storage construction. By the time you begin collecting bluebacks +I'll have a place for them, all you can buy. I'll have storage for three +hundred thousand fish. I'm going to buy everything and start half a +dozen retail stores at the same time. Just imagine the situation in this +burg of a hundred and fifty thousand people with waters that swarm with +fish right at our doors—salmon selling for thirty cents a pound, hardly +ever below twenty, other fish in about the same proportion. It's a +damned scandal, and I don't much blame a man who works for four dollars +a day thinking he might as well turn Bolshevik. I know that I can pay +twelve cents for salmon and make a good profit selling for sixteen. Can +you make money supplying me with bluebacks at twelve cents a pound?"</p> + +<p>"Yes, more money than I made last year," MacRae replied—"unless Folly +Bay boosts prices to the sky in an effort to drive me out of business."</p> + +<p>"I don't think there's much danger of that," Stubby said. "I doubt if +Folly Bay opens this season. It's reported that Gower is broke."</p> + +<p>"Eh?" MacRae looked his doubt.</p> + +<p>"That's what they say," Stubby went on. "It's common talk. He sold his +<a name="Page_242" id="Page_242"></a>place in town a short while ago. He has the cannery on the market. And +there are no takers. Folly Bay used to be a little gold mine. But Gower +rode the fishermen too hard. And you balled things up last season. He +lost his grip. I suppose he was involved other ways, too. Lots of these +old-timers are, you know. Anyway, he seems to be trying to get out from +under. But nobody wants to take over a plant that has a black eye among +the men who catch the fish, in a territory where you appear to have a +pretty strong hold."</p> + +<p>"At the same time, if I can pay so much for salmon, haul them up the +coast and make a profit on that, and if you can pay this advanced price +and pack them at a still bigger profit, why in blazes can't a plant +right there on the grounds pay top price and still make money?" MacRae +asked impatiently.</p> + +<p>"Could," Stubby declared. "Certainly. But most men in the salmon canning +business aren't like you and me, Jack. They are used to big returns on a +three months' season. They simply can't stand the idea of paying out big +gobs of money to a sulky, un-shaven bohunk whose whole equipment isn't +worth a thousand dollars. They think any man in sea boots ought to be +damn well satisfied if he makes a living. They say high wages, or +returns, spoil fishermen. On top of these new regulations nobody hankers +to buy a plant where they might have to indulge in a price war with a +couple of crazy young fools like you and me—that's what they call us, +you know. That is why no experienced cannery man will touch Folly Bay +the way things stand now. It's a fairly good plant, too. I don't know +how Gower has managed to get in a hole. I don't believe one poor season +could do that to him. But he sure wants to get rid of Folly Bay. It is a +forty-thousand-dollar plant, including the gas boats. He has been +nibbling at an offer of twenty-five tho<a name="Page_243" id="Page_243"></a>usand. I know, because I made it +myself."</p> + +<p>"What'll you do with it if you get it?" MacRae asked curiously. "It's +no good unless you get the fish. You'd have to put me out of business."</p> + +<p>"Well, I wasn't exactly figuring on that," Stubby grinned. "In the first +place, the machinery and equipment is worth that much in the open +market. And if I get it, we'll either make a deal for collecting the +fish, or you can take a half-interest in the plant at the ground-floor +price. Either way, we can make it a profitable investment for both of +us."</p> + +<p>"You really think Gower is in a bad way?" Jack asked reflectively.</p> + +<p>"I know it," Stubby replied emphatically. "Oh, I don't mean to say that +abject poverty is staring him in the face, or anything like that. But it +looks to me as if he had lost a barrel of money somehow and was anxious +to get Folly Bay off his hands before it sets him further in the hole. +You could make Folly Bay pay big dividends. So could I. But so long as +you cover his ground with carriers, every day he operates is a dead +loss. I haven't much sympathy for him. He has made a fortune out of that +place and those fishermen and spent it making a big splurge in town. +Anyway, his wife has all kinds of kale, so we should worry about old +Horace A."</p> + +<p>MacRae lit a cigarette and listened to the flow of Stubby's talk, with +part<a name="Page_244" id="Page_244"></a> of his mind mulling over this information about Horace Gower. He +wondered if that was why Robbin-Steele was so keen on getting a contract +for those Squitty bluebacks, why Hurley of the Northwest wanted to make +a deal for salmon; if they reckoned that Gower had ceased to be a factor +and that Jack MacRae held the Squitty Island business in the hollow of +his hand. MacRae smiled to himself. If that were true it was an +advantage he meant to hold for his own good and the good of all those +hard-driven men who labored at the fishing. In a time that was +economically awry MacRae's sympathy turned more to those whose struggle +was to make a living, or a little more if they could, than to men who +already had more than they needed, men who had no use for more money +except to pile it up, to keep piling it up. MacRae was neither an +idealist nor a philanthropic dreamer. But he knew the under dog of the +great industrial scramble. In his own business he would go out of his +way to add another hundred dollars a year to a fisherman's earnings. He +did not know quite clearly why he felt like that. It was more or less +instinctive. He expected to make money out of his business, he was eager +to make money, but he saw very clearly that it was only in and through +the tireless labor of the fishermen that he could reap a profit. And he +was young enough to be generous in his impulses. He was not afraid, like +the older men, that if those who worked with their hands got a little +more than sufficient to live on from season to season they would grow +fat and lazy and arrogant, and refuse to produce.</p> + +<p>Money was a necessity. Without it, without at least a reasonable amount +of money, a man could not secure any of the things essential to +well-being of either body or mind. The moneyless man was a slave so long +as he was money<a name="Page_245" id="Page_245"></a>less. MacRae smiled at those who spoke slightingly of the +power of money. He knew they were mistaken. Money was king. No amount of +it, cash in hand, would purchase happiness, perhaps, but lack of it made +a man fall an easy victim to dire misfortunes. Without money a man was +less than the dirt beneath the feet of such as Robbin-Steele and Hurley +and Gower, because their criterion of another man's worth was his +ability to get money, to beat the game they all played.</p> + +<p>MacRae put himself and Stubby Abbott in a different category. They +wanted to get on. They were determined to get on. But their programme of +getting on, MacRae felt, was a better one for themselves and for other +men than the mere instinct to grab everything in sight. MacRae was not +exactly a student of economics or sociology, but he had an idea that the +world, and particularly his group-world, was suffering from the +grab-instinct functioning without control. He had a theory that society +would have to modify that grab-instinct by legislation and custom before +the world was rid of a lot of its present ills. And both his reason and +his instinct was to modify it himself, in his dealings with his fellows, +more particularly when those he dealt with were simple, uneducated men +who worked as hard and complained as little as salmon fishermen.</p> + +<p>He talked with Stubby in the den until late in the afternoon, and then +walked downtown. When he reached the Granada he loafed uneasily in the +billiard room until dinner. His mind persistently turned from material +considerations of boats and gear and the season's prospects to dwell +upon Betty Gower. This wayward questing of his mind irritated him. But +he could not help it. Whenever he met her, even if it were only a brief, +<a name="Page_246" id="Page_246"></a>casual contact, for hours afterward he could not drive her out of his +mind. And he was making a conscious effort to do that. It was a matter +of sheer self-defense. Only when he shut Betty resolutely out of the +chambers of his brain could he be free of that hungry longing for her. +While he suffered from that vain longing there was neither peace nor +content in his life; he could get no satisfaction out of working or +planning or anything that he undertook.</p> + +<p>That would wear off, he assured himself. But he did not always have +complete confidence in this assurance. He was aware of a tenacity of +impressions and emotions and ideas, once they took hold of him. Old +Donald MacRae had been afflicted with just such characteristics, he +remembered. It must be in the blood, that stubborn constancy to either +an affection or a purpose. And in him these two things were at war, +pulling him powerfully in opposite directions, making him unhappy.</p> + +<p>Sitting deep in a leather chair, watching the white and red balls roll +and click on the green cloth, MacRae recalled one of the maxims of +Hafiz:</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 8em;">"'Two things greater than all things are</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 8em;">And one is Love and the other is War.'"</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>MacRae doubted this. He had had experience of both. At the moment he +could see nothing in either but vast accumulations of futile anguish +both of the body and the soul.</p><p><a name="Page_247" id="Page_247"></a></p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVIII" id="CHAPTER_XVIII"></a>CHAPTER XVIII</h2> + +<p><span class="smcap">A Renewal of Hostilities</span></p> + + +<p>The pussy willows had put out their fuzzy catkins and shed them for +delicate foliage when MacRae came back to Squitty Cove. The alder, the +maple and the wild cherry, all the spring-budding trees and shrubs, were +making thicket and foreshore dainty green and full of pleasant smells. +Jack wakened the first morning at daybreak to the muted orchestration of +mating birds, the song of a thousand sweet-voiced, unseen warblers. The +days were growing warm, full of sunshine. Distant mountain ranges stood +white-capped and purple against sapphire skies. The air was full of the +ancient magic of spring.</p> + +<p>Yet MacRae himself, in spite of these pleasant sights and sounds and +smells, in spite of his books and his own rooftree, found the Cove +haunted 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 one +in the Cove save an old, unkempt Swede, Doug Sproul, who slept eighteen +hours a day in his cabin while he waited for the salmon to run again, a +withered Portuguese who sat in the sun and muttered while he mended +gear. They<a name="Page_248" id="Page_248"></a> were old men, human driftwood, beached in their declining +years, crabbed and sour, looking always backward with unconscious +regret.</p> + +<p>Vin Ferrara was away with the <i>Bluebird</i>, still plying his fish venture. +Dolly and Norman Gower were married, and Dolly was back on the Knob in +the middle of Squitty Island, keeping house for her husband and Uncle +Peter and Long Tom Spence while they burrowed in the earth to uncover a +copper-bearing lead that promised a modest fortune for all three. Peter +Ferrara's house at the Cove stood empty and deserted in the spring sun.</p> + +<p>People had to shift, to grasp opportunities as they were presented, +MacRae knew. They could not take root and stand still in one spot like +the great Douglas firs. But he missed the familiar voices, the sight of +friendly 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 outlet +of purposeful work in which to release pent-up energy, MacRae brooded +over shadows, suffered periods of unaccountable depression. Nature had +not designed him for either a hermit or a celibate. Something in him +cried out for affection, for companionship, for a woman's tenderness +bestowed unequivocally. The mating instinct was driving him, as it drove +the birds. But its urge was not the general, unspecified longing which +turns a man's eyes upon any desirable woman. Very clearly, imperiously, +this dominant instinct in MacRae had centered upon Betty Gower.</p> + +<p>He was at war with his instincts. His mind stipulated that he could not +have her without a revolutionary overturning of his convictions, +inhibitions, soundly made and passionately cherished plans of reprisal +for old injustices. That peculiar tenacity of idea and purpose which was +<a name="Page_249" id="Page_249"></a>inherent with him made him resent, refuse soberly to consider any +deviation from the purpose which had taken form with such bitter +intensity when he kindled to his father's account of those drab years +which Horace Gower had laid upon him.</p> + +<p>Jack MacRae was no angel. Under his outward seeming his impulses were +primitive, like the impulses of all strong men. He nursed a vision of +beating Gower at Gower's own game. He hugged to himself the ultimate +satisfaction of that. Even when he was dreaming of Betty, he was +mentally setting her aside until he had beaten her father to his knees +under the only sort of blows he could deal. Until he had made Gower know +grief and disappointment and helplessness, and driven him off the south +end 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 of +defiant recklessness that there were plenty of other women for whom +ultimately he could care as much. But he knew also that he would not say +that, nor even think it, whenever Betty Gower was within reach of his +hand or sound of his voice.</p> + +<p>He walked sometimes over to Point Old and stared at the cottage, snowy +white against the tender green, its lawn growing rank with uncut grass, +its chimney dead. There were times when he wished he could see smoke +lifting from that chimney and know that he could find Betty somewhere +along the beach. But these were only times when his spirits were very +low.</p> + +<p>Also he occasionally wondered if it were true, as Stubby Abbott +declared, that Gower had fallen into a financial hole. MacRae doubted +that. Men like Gower always got out of a hole. They were fierce and +remorseless pursuers of the main chance. When they <a name="Page_250" id="Page_250"></a>were cast down they +climbed up straightway over the backs of lesser men. He thought of +Robbin-Steele. A man like that would die with the harness of the +money-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 and +schooled to grasp it in a bewildering variety of ways.</p> + +<p>No, he rather doubted that Gower was broke, or even in any danger of +going broke. He hoped this might be true, in spite of his doubts, for it +meant that Gower would be compelled to sacrifice this six hundred acres +of MacRae land. The sooner the better. It was a pain to MacRae to see it +going wild. The soil Donald MacRae had cleared and turned to meadow, to +small fields of grain, was growing up to ferns and scrub. It had been a +source of pride to old Donald. He had visualized for his son more than +once great fields covered with growing crops, a rich and fruitful area, +with a big stone house looking out over the cliffs where ultimate +generations of MacRaes should live. If luck had not gone against old +Donald he would have made this dream come true. But life and Gower had +beaten him.</p> + +<p>Jack MacRae knew this. It maddened him to think that this foundation of +a dream had become the plaything of his father's enemy, a neglected +background for a summer cottage which he only used now and then.</p> + +<p>There might, however, be something in the statements Stubby had made. +MacRae recalled that Gower had not replaced the <i>Arrow</i>. The +underwriters had raised and repaired the mahogany cruiser, and she had +passed into other hands. When Betty and her father came to Cradle Bay +they came on a cannery tender or a hired launch. MacRae hoped it might +be true that Gower was slipping, that he had helped to start him on this +decline.</p> + +<p>Presently the loneliness of the Cove was broken by the return of +Vincent Ferrara. They skidded the <i>Bluebir<a name="Page_251" id="Page_251"></a>d</i> out on the beach at the +Cove's head and overhauled her inside and out, hull and machinery. That +brought them well into April. The new carrier was complete from truck to +keelson. She had been awaiting only MacRae's pleasure for her maiden +sea-dip. So now, with the <i>Bluebird</i> sleeked with new paint, he went +down for the launching.</p> + +<p>There was a little ceremony over that.</p> + +<p>"It's bad luck, the very worst sort of luck, to launch a boat without +christening her in the approved manner," Nelly Abbott declared. "I +insist on being sponsor. Do let me, Jack."</p> + +<p>So the new sixty-footer had a bottle of wine from the Abbott cellar +broken over her brass-bound stemhead as her bows sliced into the salt +water, and Nelly's clear treble chanted:</p> + +<p>"I christen thee <i>Agua Blanco</i>."</p> + +<p>Vin Ferrara's dark eyes gleamed, for <i>agua blanco</i> means "white water" +in the Spanish tongue.</p> + +<p>The Terminal Fish Company's new coolers were yawning for fish when the +first blueback run of commercial size showed off Gray Rock and the +Ballenas. All the Squitty boats went out as soon as the salmon came. +MacRae skippered the new and shining <i>Blanco</i>, brave in white paint and +polished brass on her virgin trip. He followed the main fleet, while the +<i>Bluebird</i> scuttled about to pick up stray trollers' catches and to tend +the rowboat men. She would dump a day's gathering on the <i>Blanco's</i> +deck, and the two crews would dress salmon till their hands were sore. +<a name="Page_252" id="Page_252"></a>But it saved both time and fuel to have that great carrying capacity, +and the freezing plant which automatically chilled the fish. MacRae +could stay on the grounds till he was fully loaded. He could slash +through to Vancouver at nine knots instead of seven. A sea that would +toss the old wrecked <i>Blackbird</i> like a dory and keep her low decks +continually awash let the <i>Blanco</i> pass with only a moderate pitch and +roll.</p> + +<p>MacRae worked hard. He found ease in work. When the last salmon was +dressed and stowed below, many times under the glow of electric bulbs +strung along the cargo boom, he would fall into his bunk and sleep +dreamlessly. Decks streaming with blood and offal, plastered with slime +and clinging scales—until such time as they were washed down—ceased to +annoy him. No man can make omelettes without breaking eggs. Only the +fortunate few can make money without soiling their hands. There is no +room in the primary stages of taking salmon for those who shrink from +sweat and strain, from elemental stress. The white-collared and the +lily-fingered cannot function there. The pink meat my lady toys with on +Limoges china comes to her table by ways that would appal her. Only the +men who toil aboard the fishing boats, with line and gear and gutting +knife know in what travail this harvest of the sea is reaped.</p> + +<p>MacRae played fair, according to his conception of fair play. He based +his payments on a decent profit, without which he could not carry on. +Running heavier cargoes at less cost he raised the price to the +fishermen as succeeding runs of blueback salmon were made up of larger, +heavier fish. Other buyers came, lingered awhile, cursed him and went +away. They could not run to Vancouver with small quantities of salmon +and meet his price. But MacRae in the <i>Blanco</i> could take six, eight, +ten thousand salmon profitably on a margin which the other buyers said +was folly.</p><p><a name="Page_253" id="Page_253"></a></p> + +<p>The trolling fleet swelled in numbers. The fish were there. The +old-timers had prophesied a big blueback year, and for once their +prophecy was by way of being fulfilled. The fish schooled in great +shoals off Nanaimo, around Gray Rock, the Ballenas, passed on to +Sangster and Squitty. And the fleet followed a hundred strong, each day +increasing,—Indians, Greeks, Japanese, white men, raking the salmon +grounds with glittering spoon hooks, gathering in the fish.</p> + +<p>In early June MacRae was delivering eighteen thousand salmon a week to +the Terminal Fish Company. He was paying forty cents a fish, more than +any troller in the Gulf of Georgia had ever got for June bluebacks, more +than any buyer had ever paid before the opening of the canneries +heightened the demand. He was clearing nearly a thousand dollars a week +for himself, and he was putting unheard-of sums in the pockets of the +fishermen. MacRae believed these men understood how this was possible, +that they had a feeling of coöperating with him for their common good. +They had sold their catches on a take-it-or-leave-it basis for years. He +had put a club in their hands as well as money in their pockets. They +would stand with him against less scrupulous, more remorseless +exploiters of their labor. They would see that he got fish. They told +him that.</p> + +<p>"If somebody else offered sixty cents you'd sell to him, wouldn't you?" +MacRae asked a dozen of them sitting on the <i>Blanco's</i> deck one +afternoon. They had been talking about canneries and competition.</p> + +<p>"Not if he was boosting the price up just to make you quit, and then cut +<a name="Page_254" id="Page_254"></a>it in two when he had everything to himself," one man said. "That's been +done too often."</p> + +<p>"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 this +fall. But there is going to be a scramble for the good canning fish. I +can pay as much as salmon are worth, but I can't go any further. If I +should have to pull my boats off in mid-season you can guess what +they'll pay around Squitty."</p> + +<p>MacRae was not crying "wolf." There were signs and tokens of uneasiness +and irritation among those who still believed it was their right and +privilege to hold the salmon industry in the hollows of their grasping +hands. Stubby Abbott was a packer. He had the ears of the other packers. +They were already complaining to Stubby, grouching about MacRae, unable +to understand that Stubby listened to them with his tongue in his cheek, +that one of their own class should have a new vision of industrial +processes, a vision that was not like their own.</p> + +<p>"They're cultivating quite a grievance about the price you're paying," +Stubby told Jack in confidence. "They say you are a damned fool. You +could get those fish for thirty cents and you are paying forty. The +fishermen will want the earth when the canneries open. They hint around +that something will drop with a loud bang one of these days. I think +it's just hot air. They can't hurt either of us. I'll get a fair pack at +Crow Harbor, and I'll have this plant loaded. I've got enough money to +carry on. It makes me snicker to myself to imagine how they'll squirm +and squeal next winter when I put frozen salmon on <a name="Page_255" id="Page_255"></a>the market ten cents +a pound below what they figure on getting. Oh, yes, our friends in the +fish business are going to have a lot of grievances. But just now they +are chiefly grouching at you."</p> + +<p>MacRae seldom set foot ashore those crowded days. But he passed within +sight of Squitty Cove and Poor Man's Rock once at least in each +forty-eight hours. For weeks he had seen smoke drifting blue from the +cottage chimney in Cradle Bay. He saw now and then the flutter of +something white or blue on the lawn that he knew must be Betty. Part of +the time a small power boat swung to the mooring in the bay where the +shining <i>Arrow</i> nosed to wind and tide in other days. He heard current +talk among the fishermen concerning the Gowers. Gower himself was +spending his time between the cottage and Folly Bay.</p> + +<p>The cannery opened five days in advance of the sockeye season on the +Fraser. When the Gower collecting boats made their first round MacRae +knew that he had a fight on his hands. Gower, it seemed to him, had +bared his teeth at last.</p> + +<p>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 Georgia +neither fishermen, canners, nor the government ichthyologists were +greatly wiser concerning their nature or habits or life history. Grounds +where they swarmed one season might prove barren the next. Where they +came from, out of what depths of the far Pacific those silvery hordes +marshaled themselves, no man knew. Nor, when they vanished in late +August, could any man say whithe<a name="Page_256" id="Page_256"></a>r they went. They did not ascend the +streams. No blueback was ever taken with red spawn in his belly. They +were a mystery which no man had unraveled, no matter that he took them +by thousands in order that he himself might subsist upon their flesh. +One thing the trollers did know,—where the small feed swarmed, in shoal +water or deep, those myriads of tiny fish, herring and nameless smaller +ones, there the blueback would appear, and when he did so appear he +could be taken by a spoon hook.</p> + +<p>Away beyond the Sisters—three gaunt gray rocks rising out of the sea +miles offshore in a fairway down which passed all the Alaska-bound +steamers, with a lone lighthouse on the middle rock—away north of Folly +Bay there opened wide trolling grounds about certain islands which lay +off the Vancouver Island shore,—Hornby, Lambert Channel, Yellow Rock, +Cape Lazo. In other seasons the blueback runs lingered about Squitty for +a while and then passed on to those kelp-grown and reef-strewed grounds. +This season these salmon appeared first far south of Squitty. The +trolling scouts, the restless wanderers of the fleet, who could not +abide sitting still and waiting in patience for the fish to come, first +picked them up by the Gulf Islands, very near that great highway to the +open sea known as the Strait of San Juan. The blueback pushed on the +Gray Rock to the Ballenas, as if the blackfish and seal and shark that +hung always about the schools to prey were herding them to some given +point. Very shortly after they could be taken in the shadow of the +Ballenas light the schools swarmed about the Cove end of Squitty Island, +between the Elephant on Sangster and Poor Man's Rock. For days on end +the sea was alive with them. In the gray of dawn and the reddened dusk +they played upon the surface of the sea as far as the eye reached. And +always at such times they struck savagely at a glittering spoon hook. +Beyond Squitty they vanished. Fifty and sixty salmon daily to a boat off +the Squitty headlands dwindled to fifteen and twenty at the Folly Bay +end. Those restless trollers who crossed the Gulf to Hornby and Yellow +Rock Light got little for their pains. Between Folly Bay and the +swirling tide races off the desolate head of Cape Mudge the blueback +disappeared. But at Squitty the runs held constant. There were off days, +<a name="Page_257" id="Page_257"></a>but the fish were always there. The trollers hung at the south end, +sheltering at night in the Cove, huddled rubstrake to rubstrake and bow +to stern, so many were they in that little space, on days when the +southeaster made the cliffs shudder under the shock of breaking seas. If +fishing slackened for a day or two they did not scatter as in other +days. There would be another run hard on the heels of the last. And +there was.</p> + +<p>MacRae ran the <i>Blanco</i> into Squitty Cove one afternoon and made fast +alongside the <i>Bluebird</i> which lay to fore and aft moorings in the +narrow gut of the Cove. The Gulf outside was speckled with trollers, but +there were many at anchor, resting, or cooking food.</p> + +<p>One of the mustard pots was there, a squat fifty-foot carrier painted a +gaudy yellow—the Folly Bay house color—flying a yellow flag with a +black C in the center. She was loading fish from two trollers, one lying +on each side. One or two more were waiting, edging up.</p> + +<p>"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's +paying fifty and hinting more if he has to."</p> + +<p>MacRae laughed.</p> + +<p>"We'll match Gower's price till he boosts us out of the bidding," he +said. "And he won't make much on his pack if he does that."</p> + +<p>"Say, Folly Bay," Jack called across to the mustard-pot carrier, "what +are you paying for bluebacks?"</p> + +<p>The skipper took his eye off the tallyman counting in fish.</p> + +<p>"Fifty cents,<a name="Page_258" id="Page_258"></a>" he answered in a voice that echoed up and down the Cove.</p> + +<p>"That must sound good to the fishermen," MacRae called back pleasantly. +"Folly Bay's getting generous in its declining years."</p> + +<p>It was the off period between tides. There were forty boats at rest in +the Cove and more coming in. The ripple of laughter that ran over the +fleet was plainly audible. They could appreciate that. MacRae sat down +on the <i>Blanco's</i> after cabin and lit a cigarette.</p> + +<p>"Looks like they mean to get the fish," Vin hazarded. "Can you tilt that +and make anything?"</p> + +<p>"Let them do the tilting," MacRae answered. "If the fish run heavy I can +make a little, even if prices go higher. If he boosts them to +seventy-five, I'd have to quit. At that price only the men who catch the +fish will make anything. I really don't know how much we will be able to +pay when Crow Harbor opens up."</p> + +<p>"We'll have some fun anyway." Vin's black eyes sparkled.</p> + +<p>It took MacRae three days to get a load. Human nature functions pretty +much the same among all men. The trollers distrusted Folly Bay. They +said to one another that if Gower could kill off competition he would +cut the price to the bone. He had done that before. But when a fisherman +rises wearily from his bunk at three in the morning and spends the bulk +of the next eighteen hours hauling four one hundred and fifty foot +lines, each weighted with from six to fifteen pounds of lead, he feels +that he is entitled to every cent he can secure for his day's labor.</p> + +<p>The Gower bo<a name="Page_259" id="Page_259"></a>ats got fish. The mustard pot came back next day, paying +fifty-five cents. A good many trollers sold him their fish before they +learned that MacRae was paying the same. And the mustard pot evidently +had his orders, for he tilted the price to sixty, which forced MacRae to +do the same.</p> + +<p>When the <i>Blanco</i> unloaded her cargo of eight-thousand-odd salmon into +the Terminal and MacRae checked his receipts and expenditures for that +trip, he discovered that he had neither a profit nor a loss.</p> + +<p>He went to see Stubby, explained briefly the situation.</p> + +<p>"You can't get any more cheap salmon for cold storage until the seiners +begin to take coho, that's certain," he declared. "How far can you go in +this price fight when you open the cannery?"</p> + +<p>"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 a +bit heavier as we go along. Well, I can certainly pack as cheaply as he +can. 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 cents +a fish commission. I don't believe he'll dare pay more than that before +late in July. If he does, why, we'll see what we can do."</p> + +<p>MacRae went back to Squitty. He could make money with the <i>Blanco</i> on a +five-cent commission,—if he could get the salmon within the price +limit. So for the next trip or two he contented himself with meeting +Gower's price and taking what fish came to him. The Folly Bay mustard +pots—three of them great and small—scurried here and there among the +trollers, dividing the catch with the <i>Bluebird</i> and the <i>Blanco</i>. There +<a name="Page_260" id="Page_260"></a>was always a mustard-pot collector in sight. The weather was getting +hot. Salmon would not keep in a troller's hold. Part of the old guard +stuck tight to MacRae. But there were new men fishing; there were +Japanese and illiterate Greeks. It was not to be expected that these men +should indulge in far-sighted calculations. But it was a trifle +disappointing to see how readily any troller would unload his catch into +a mustard pot if neither of MacRae's carriers happened to be at hand.</p> + +<p>"Why don't you tie up your boats, Jack?" Vin asked angrily. "You know +what would happen. Gower would drop the price with a bang. You'd think +these damned idiots would know that. Yet they're feeding him fish by the +thousand. They don't appear to care a hoot whether you get any or not. I +used to think fishermen had some sense. These fellows can't see an inch +past their cursed noses. Pull off your boats for a couple of weeks and +let them get their bumps."</p> + +<p>"What do you expect?" MacRae said lightly. "It's a scramble, and they +are acting precisely as they might be expected to act. I don't blame +them. They're under the same necessity as the rest of us—to get it +while they can. Did you think they'd sell me fish for sixty if somebody +else offered sixty-five? You know how big a nickel looks to a man who +earns it as hard as these fellows do."</p> + +<p>"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 soon +Gower got 'em as you. You paid more than Folly Bay all last season. You +put all kinds of money in their pockets that you didn't have to."</p> +<p><a name="Page_261" id="Page_261"></a></p> +<p>"And when the pinch comes, they'll remember that," MacRae said. "You +watch, Vin. The season is young yet. Gower may beat me at this game, but +he won't make any money at it."</p> + +<p>MacRae kept abreast of Folly Bay for ten days and emerged from that +period with a slight loss, because at the close he was paying more than +the salmon were worth at the Terminal warehouse. But when he ran his +first load into Crow Harbor Stubby looked over the pile of salmon his +men were forking across the floor and drew Jack into his office.</p> + +<p>"I've made a contract for delivery of my entire sockeye and blueback +pack," he said. "I know precisely where I stand. I can pay up to ninety +cents for all July fish. I want all the Squitty bluebacks you can get. +Go after them, Jack."</p> + +<p>And MacRae went after them. Wherever a Folly Bay collector went either +the <i>Blanco</i> or the <i>Bluebird</i> was on his heels. MacRae could cover more +ground and carry more cargo, and keep it fresh, than any mustard pot. +The <i>Bluebird</i> covered little outlying nooks, the stragglers, the +rowboat men in their beach camps. The <i>Blanco</i> kept mostly in touch with +the main fleet patrolling the southeastern end of Squitty like a naval +flotilla, wheeling and counterwheeling over the grounds where the +blueback played. MacRae forced the issue. He raised the price to +sixty-five, to seventy, to seventy-five, to eighty, and the boats under +the yellow house flag had to pay that to get a fish. MacRae crowded them +remorselessly to the limit. So long as he got five cents a fish he could +make money. He suspected that it cost Gower a great deal more than five +cents 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 north +the Japs abandoned trolling for the gill net. The white trollers +returned to their first love because he courted them assiduously. There +was always a MacRae carrier in the offing. It cost MacRae his sleep and +rest, but he drove himself tirelessly. He could leave Squitty at dusk, +<a name="Page_262" id="Page_262"></a>unload his salmon at Crow Harbor, and be back at sunrise. He did it many +a time, after tallying fish all day. Three hours' sleep was like a gift +from the gods. But he kept it up. He had a sense of some approaching +crisis.</p> + +<p>By the third week in July MacRae was taking three fourths of the +bluebacks caught between the Ballenas and Folly Bay. He would lie +sometimes within a stone's throw of Gower's cannery, loading salmon.</p> + +<p>He was swinging at anchor there one day when a rowboat from the cannery +put out to the <i>Blanco</i>. The man in it told MacRae that Gower would like +to 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. Some +time or other he would have to meet his father's enemy, face him, talk +to him, listen to what he might say, tell him things. Curiosity was +roused in him a little now. He desired to know what Gower had to say. He +wondered if Gower was weakening; what he could want.</p> + +<p>He found Gower in a cubby-hole of an office behind the cannery store.</p> + +<p>"You wanted to see me," MacRae said curtly.</p> + +<p>He was in sea boots, bareheaded. His shirt sleeves were rolled above +sun-browned forearms. He stood before Gower with his hands thrust in the +pockets of duck overalls speckled with fish scales, smelling of salmon. +Gower stared at him silently, critically, it seemed to MacRae, for a +matter of seconds.</p> + +<p>"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 a +while. Let's get together. I—"</p> + +<p>MacRae's temper flared.</p> + +<p>"If that's what you want," he said, "I'll see you in hell first."</p> + +<p>He turned on his heel and walked out of the office. When he stepped into +his dingh<a name="Page_263" id="Page_263"></a>y he glanced up at the wharf towering twenty feet above his +head. Betty Gower was sitting on a pile head. She was looking down at +him. But she was not smiling. And she did not speak. MacRae rowed back +to the <i>Blanco</i> in an ugly mood.</p> + +<p>In the next forty-eight hours Folly Bay jumped the price of bluebacks to +ninety cents, to ninety-five, to a dollar. The <i>Blanco</i> wallowed down to +Crow Harbor with a load which represented to MacRae a dead loss of four +hundred dollars cash.</p> + +<p>"He must be crazy," Stubby fumed. "There's no use canning salmon at a +loss."</p> + +<p>"Has he reached the loss point yet?" MacRae inquired.</p> + +<p>"He's shaving close. No cannery can make anything worth reckoning at a +dollar or so a case profit."</p> + +<p>"Is ninety cents and five cents' commission your limit?" MacRae +demanded.</p> + +<p>"Just about," Stubby grunted. "Well"—reluctantly—"I can stand a +dollar. That's the utmost limit, though. I can't go any further."</p> + +<p>"And if he gets them all at a dollar or more, he'll be canning at a dead +loss, eh?"</p> + +<p>"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."</p> + +<p>MacRae went bac<a name="Page_264" id="Page_264"></a>k to Squitty with a definite idea in his mind. Gower had +determined to have the salmon. Very well, then, he should have them. But +he would have to take them at a loss, in so far as MacRae could inflict +loss upon him. He knew of no other way to hurt effectively such a man as +Gower. Money was life blood to him, and it was not of great value to +MacRae as yet. With deliberate calculation he decided to lose the +greater part of what he had made, if for every dollar he lost himself he +could inflict equal or greater loss on Gower.</p> + +<p>The trailers who combed the Squitty waters were taking now close to five +thousand salmon a day. Approximately half of these went to Folly Bay. +MacRae took the rest. In this battle of giants the fishermen had lost +sight of the outcome. They ceased to care who got fish. They only +watched eagerly for him who paid the biggest price. They were making +thirty, forty, fifty dollars a day. They no longer held salmon—only a +few of the old-timers—for MacRae's carriers. It was nothing to them who +made a profit or suffered a loss. Only a few of the older men wondered +privately how long MacRae could stand it and what would happen when he +gave up.</p> + +<p>MacRae met every raise Folly Bay made. He saw bluebacks go to a dollar +ten, then to a dollar fifteen. He ran cargo after cargo to Crow Harbor +and dropped from three to seven hundred dollars on each load, until even +Stubby lost patience with him.</p> + +<p>"What's the sense in bucking him till you go broke? I'm in too deep to +stand any loss myself. Quit. Tie up your boats, Jack. Let him have the +salmon. Let those blockheads of fishermen see what he'll do to 'em once +you stop."</p> + +<p>But MacRae held on till the first hot days of August were at hand and +his money was dwindling to the vanishing point. T<a name="Page_265" id="Page_265"></a>hen he ran the <i>Blanco</i> +and the <i>Bluebird</i> into Squitty Cove and tied them to permanent +moorings in shoal water near the head. For a day or two the salmon had +shifted mysteriously to the top end, around Folly Bay and the Siwash +Islands and Jenkins Pass. The bulk of the fleet had followed them. Only +a few stuck to the Cove and Poor Man's Rock. To these and the rowboat +trollers MacRae said:</p> + +<p>"Sell your fish to Folly Bay. I'm through."</p> + +<p>Then he lay down in his bunk in the airy pilot house of the <i>Blanco</i> and +slept the clock around, the first decent rest he had taken in two +months. He had not realized till then how tired he was.</p> + +<p>When he wakened he washed, ate, changed his clothes and went for a walk +along the cliffs to stretch his legs. Vin had gone up to the Knob to see +Dolly and Uncle Peter. His helper on the <i>Bluebird</i> was tinkering about +his engine. MacRae's two men loafed on the clean-slushed deck. They were +none of them company for MacRae in his present mood. He sought the +cliffs to be alone.</p> + +<p>Gower had beaten him, it would seem. And MacRae did not take kindly to +being beaten. But he did not think this was the end yet. Gower would do +as he had done before. When he felt himself secure in his monopoly he +would squeeze the fishermen, squeeze them hard. And as soon as he did +that MacRae would buy again. He could not make any money himself, +perhaps. But he could make Gower operate at a loss. That would be +something accomplished.</p> +<p><a name="Page_266" id="Page_266"></a></p> +<p>MacRae walked along the cliffs until he saw the white cottage, and saw +also that some one sat on the steps in the sun. Whereupon he turned +back. He didn't want to see Betty. He conceived that to be an ended +chapter in his experiences. He had hurt her, and she had put on her +armor against another such hurt. There was a studied indifference about +her now, when he met her, which hurt him terribly. He supposed that in +addition to his own incomprehensible attitude which she resented, she +took sides with her father in this obvious commercial warfare which was +bleeding them both financially. Very likely she saw in this only the +open workings of his malice toward Gower. In which MacRae admitted she +would be quite correct. He had not been able to discover in that +flaring-up of passion for Betty any reason for a burial of his feud with +Gower. There was in him some curious insistence upon carrying this to +the 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. The +fighting instinct in MacRae lurked always very near the surface.</p> + +<p>He spent a good many hours during the next three or four days lying in +the shade of a gnarly arbutus which gave on the cliffs. He took a book +up there with him, but most of the time he lay staring up at the blue +sky through the leaves, or at the sea, or distant shore lines, thinking +always 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 its +business. There was not a great deal to be got in the Cove. The last gas +boat had scuttled away to the top end, where the blueback were schooling +in vast numbers. There were still salmon to be taken about Poor Man's +Rock. The rowboat men took a few fish each day and hoped for another big +run.</p> + +<p>There came a day when the mustard pot failed to show in the Cove. The +<a name="Page_267" id="Page_267"></a>rowboat men had three hundred salmon, and they cursed Folly Bay with a +fine flow of epithet as they took their rotting fish outside the Cove +and dumped them in the sea. Nor did a Gower collector come, although +there was nothing in the wind or weather to stop them. The rowboat +trollers fumed and stewed and took their troubles to Jack MacRae. But he +could neither inform nor help them.</p> + +<p>Then upon an evening when the sun rested on the serrated backbone of +Vancouver Island, a fiery ball against a sky of burnished copper, +flinging a red haze down on a slow swell that furrowed the Gulf, Jack +MacRae, perched on a mossy boulder midway between the Cove and Point +Old, saw first one boat and then another come slipping and lurching +around Poor Man's Rock. Converted Columbia River sailboats, Cape +Flattery trollers, double-enders, all the variegated craft that +fishermen use and traffic with, each rounded the Rock and struck his +course for the Cove, broadside on to the rising swell, their twenty-foot +trolling poles lashed aloft against a stumpy mast and swinging in a +great arc as they rolled. One, ten, a dozen, an endless procession, +sometimes three abreast, again a string in single file. MacRae was +reminded of the march of the oysters—</p> + +<p> +<span style="margin-left: 8em;">"So thick and fast they came at last,</span><br /> +<span style="margin-left: 8em;">And more and more and more."</span><br /> +</p> + +<p>He sat watching them pass, wondering why the great trek. The trolling +fleet normally shifted by pairs and dozens. This was a squadron +movement, the Grand Fleet steaming to some appointed rendezvous. MacRae +watched till the sun dipped behind the hills, and the reddish tint left +the sea to linger briefly on the summit of the Coast Range flanking the +mainland 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 solitar<a name="Page_268" id="Page_268"></a>y fisherman +humped over his steering gear. From each cleaving stem the bow-wave +curled in white foam.</p> + +<p>There was something in the wind. MacRae felt it like a premonition. He +left his boulder and hurried back toward the Cove.</p> + +<p>The trolling boats were packed about the <i>Blanco</i> so close that MacRae +left his dinghy on the outer fringe and walked across their decks to the +deck of his own vessel. The <i>Blanco</i> loomed in the midst of these lesser +craft like a hen over her brood of chicks. The fishermen had gathered on +the nearest boats. A dozen had clambered up and taken seats on the +<i>Blanco's</i> low bulwarks. MacRae gained his own deck and looked at them.</p> + +<p>"What's coming off?" he asked quietly. "You fellows holding a convention +of some sort?"</p> + +<p>One of the men sitting on the big carrier's rail spoke.</p> + +<p>"Folly Bay's quit—shut down," he said sheepishly. "We come to see if +you'd start buying again."</p> + +<p>MacRae sat down on one sheave of his deck winch. He took out a cigarette +and lighted it, swung one foot back and forth. He did not make haste to +reply. An expectant hush fell on the crowd. In the slow-gathering dusk +there was no sound but the creak of rubbing gunwales, the low snore of +the sea breaking against the cliffs, and the chug-chug of the last +stragglers beating into the shelter of the Cove.</p> + +<p>"He shut down the cannery," the fishermen's spokesman said at last. "We +ain't seen a buyer or collector for three days. The water's full of +salmon, an' we been suckin' our thumbs an' watching 'em play. If you +won't buy here again we got to go where there is buyers. And we'd +rather not do that. There's no place on the Gulf as good fishin' as +there is here now."</p> + +<p>"What was the trouble?" MacRae asked absently. "Couldn't <a name="Page_269" id="Page_269"></a>you supply him +with fish?"</p> + +<p>"Nobody knows. There was plenty of salmon. He cut the price the day +after you tied up. He cut it to six bits. Then he shut down. Anyway, we +don't care why he shut down. It don't make no difference. What we want +is for you to start buyin' again. Hell, we're losin' money from daylight +to dark! The water's alive with salmon. An' the season's short. Be a +sport, MacRae."</p> + +<p>MacRae laughed.</p> + +<p>"Be a sport, eh?" he echoed with a trace of amusement in his tone. "I +wonder how many of you would have listened to me if I'd gone around to +you a week ago and asked you to give me a sporting chance?"</p> + +<p>No one answered. MacRae threw away his half-smoked cigarette. He stood +up.</p> + +<p>"All right, I'll buy salmon again," he said quietly. "And I won't ask +you to give me first call on your catch or a chance to make up some of +the money I lost bucking Folly Bay, or anything like that. But I want to +tell you something. You know it as well as I do, but I want to jog your +memory with it."</p> + +<p>He raised his voice a trifle.</p> + +<p>"You fellows know that I've always given you a square deal. You aren't +fishing for sport. You're at this to make a living, to make money if you +can. So am I. You are entitled to all you can get. You earn it. You work +for it. So am I entitled to what I can make. I work, I take certain +chances. Neither of us is getting something for nothing. But there is a +limit to what either of us c<a name="Page_270" id="Page_270"></a>an get. We can't dodge that. You fellows +have been dodging it. Now you have to come back to earth.</p> + +<p>"No fisherman can get the prices you have had lately. No cannery can +pack salmon at those prices. Sockeye, the finest canning salmon that +swims in the sea, is bringing eighty cents on the Fraser. Bluebacks are +sixty-five cents at Nanaimo, sixty at Cape Mudge, sixty at the +Euclataws.</p> + +<p>"I can do a little better than that," MacRae hesitated a second. "I can +pay a little more, because the cannery I'm supplying is satisfied with a +little less profit than most. Stubby Abbott is not a hog, and neither am +I. I can pay seventy-five cents and make money. I have told you before +that it is to your interest as well as mine to keep me running. I will +always pay as much as salmon are worth. But I cannot pay more. If your +appreciation of Folly Bay's past kindness to you is so keen that you +<a name="Page_271" id="Page_271"></a>would rather sell him your fish, why, that's your privilege."</p> + +<p>"Aw, that's bunk," a man called. "You know blamed well we wouldn't. Not +after him blowin' up like this."</p> + +<p>"How do I know?" MacRae laughed. "If Gower opened up to-morrow again and +offered eighty or ninety cents, he'd get the salmon—even if you knew he +would make you take thirty once he got you where he wanted you."</p> + +<p>"Would he?" another voice uprose. "The next time a mustard pot gets any +salmon from me, it'll be because there's no other buyer and no other +grounds to fish."</p> + +<p>A growled chorus backed this reckless statement.</p> + +<p>"That's all right," MacRae said good-naturedly. "I don't blame you for +picking up easy money. Only easy money isn't always so good as it +looks. Fly at it in the morning, and I'll take the fish at the price +I've said. If Folly Bay gets into the game again, it's up to you."</p> + +<p>When the lights were doused and every fisherman was stretched in his +bunk, falling asleep to the slow beat of a dead swell breaking in the +Cove's mouth, Vin Ferrara stood up to seek his own bed.</p> + +<p>"I wonder," he said to Jack, "I wonder why Gower shut down at this stage +of the game?"</p> + +<p>MacRae shook his head. He was wondering that himself.</p> +<p><a name="Page_272" id="Page_272"></a></p> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIX" id="CHAPTER_XIX"></a>CHAPTER XIX</h2> + +<p><span class="smcap">Top Dog</span></p> + + +<p>Some ten days later the <i>Bluebird</i> swung at anchor in the kelp just +clear of Poor Man's Rock. From a speck on the horizon the <i>Blanco</i> grew +to full shape, flaring bow and pilot house, walking up the Gulf with a +bone in her teeth. She bore down upon her consort, sidled alongside and +made fast with lines to the bitts fore and aft. Vin Ferrara threw back +his hatch covers. His helper forked up salmon with a picaroon. Vin +tossed them across into the <i>Blanco's</i> hold. At the same time the larger +carrier's short, stout boom swung back and forth, dumping into the +<i>Bluebird's</i> fish pens at each trip a hundred pounds of cracked ice. +Presently this work was done, the <i>Bluebird's</i> salmon transferred to the +<i>Blanco</i>, the <i>Bluebird's</i> pens replenished with four tons of ice.</p> + +<p>Vin checked his tabs with the count of fish. The other men slushed decks +clean with buckets of sea water.</p> + +<p>"Twenty-seven hundred," MacRae said. "Big morning. Every troller in the +Gulf must be here."</p> + +<p>"No, I have to go to Folly Bay and Siwash Islands to-night," Vin told +him. "There's about twenty boats working there and at Jenkins Pass. +Salmon everywhere."</p> + +<p>They sat in the shade of the <i>Blanco's</i> pilot house. The sun beat +mercilessly, a dog-day sun blazing upon glassy waters, reflected upward +in eye-straining shafts. The heat seared. Within a radius of a mile +outside the Rock the trollers chug-chugged here and there, driving +straight ahead, doubling short, wheeling in slow circles, working the +eddies. They stood in the small coc<a name="Page_273" id="Page_273"></a>kpit aft, the short tiller between +their legs, leaving their hands free to work the gear. They stood out in +the hot sun without shade or cover, stripped to undershirt and duck +trousers, many of them barefooted, brown arms bare, wet lines gleaming. +Wherever a man looked some fisherman hauled a line. And everywhere the +mirror of the sea was broken by leaping salmon, silver crescents +flashing in the sun.</p> + +<p>"Say, what do you know about it?" Vin smiled at MacRae. "Old Gower is +trolling."</p> + +<p>"Trolling!"</p> + +<p>"Rowboat. Plugging around the Rock. He was at it when daylight came. He +sold me fifteen fish. Think of it. Old H.A. rowboat trolling. Selling +his fish to you."</p> + +<p>Vincent chuckled. His eyes rested curiously on Jack's face.</p> + +<p>"Haughty spirit that goes before destruction, as Dolly used to say," he +rambled on. "Some come-down for him. He must be broke flat as a +flounder."</p> + +<p>"He sold you his salmon?"</p> + +<p>"Sure. Nobody else to sell 'em to, is there? Said he was trying his +hand. Seemed good-natured about it. Kinda pleased, in fact, because he +had one more than Doug Sproul. He started joshin' Doug. You know what a +crab old Doug is. He got crusty as blazes. Old Gower just grinned at him +and rowed off."</p> + +<p>MacRae made no comment, and their talk turned into other channels until +Vin hauled his hook and bore away. MacRae saw to dropping the +<i>Blanco's</i> anchor. He would lie there till dusk. Then he sat in the +shade again, looking up at the Gower cottage.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_274" id="Page_274"></a>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 the +current talk reached MacRae through Stubby. That price-war had been +Gower's last kick, an incomprehensible, ill-judged effort to reëstablish +his hold on the Squitty grounds, so it was said.</p> + +<p>"He never was such a terribly big toad in the cannery puddle," Stubby +recited, "and I guess he has made his last splash. They always cut a +wide swath in town, and that sort of thing can sure eat up coin. I'm +kind of sorry for Betty. Still, she'll probably marry somebody with +money. I know two or three fellows who would be tickled to death to get +her."</p> + +<p>"Why don't <i>you</i> go to the rescue?" MacRae had suggested, with an irony +that went wide of the mark.</p> + +<p>Stubby looked reflectively at his crippled arm.</p> + +<p>"Last summer I would have," he said. "But she couldn't see me with a +microscope. And I've found a girl who seems to think a winged duck is +worth while."</p> + +<p>"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 he +can and try to make a fresh start. It seems there has been friction in +the family, and his wife refused to come through with any of her +available cash. Seems kind of a complicated hole he got into. He's +cleaned, anyway. Robbin-Steele got all his cannery tenders and took over +several thousand cases of salmon. I hear he still has a few debts to be +settled when the cannery is sold. Why don't you figure a way of getting +hold of that cannery, Jack?"</p> +<p><a name="Page_275" id="Page_275"></a></p> +<p>"I'm no cannery man," MacRae replied. "Why don't you? I thought you +made him an offer."</p> + +<p>"I withdrew it," Stubby said. "I have my hands full without that. You've +knocked about a hundred per cent off its value anyway."</p> + +<p>"If I can get my father's land back I'll be satisfied," MacRae had said.</p> + +<p>He was thinking about that now. He had taken the first steps toward that +end, 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. And +MacRae was ready to pay any price in reason to get it back. That seemed +a debt he owed old Donald MacRae, apart from his own craving to sometime +carry out plans they had made together long before he went away to +France. The lives of some men are rooted in the soil where they were +born, where they grow to manhood. Jack MacRae was of that type. He loved +the 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. All +seamen are. They come ashore when they are old and feeble, to give their +bodies at last to the earth. MacRae loved the sea, but he loved better +to stand on the slopes running back from Squitty's cliffs, to look at +those green meadows and bits of virgin forest and think that it would +all be his again, to have and to hold.</p> + +<p>So he had set a firm in Vancouver the task of approaching Gower, to +sound him, to see if he would sell, while he kept in the background. He +believed that it wa<a name="Page_276" id="Page_276"></a>s necessary for him to remain in the background. He +believed that Gower would never willingly relinquish that land into his +hands.</p> + +<p>MacRae sat on the <i>Blanco's</i> deck, nursing his chin in his palms, +staring at Poor Man's Rock with a grim satisfaction. About that lonely +headland strange things had come to pass. Donald MacRae had felt his +first abiding grief there and cried his hurt to a windy sky. He had +lived his last years snatching a precarious living from the seas that +swirled about the Rock. The man who had been the club with which fate +bludgeoned 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 between +tides, the salmon would still play along the kelp beds, in the eddies +about 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 sea +endured and men were passing shadows.</p> + +<p>Afternoon waned. Faint, cool airs wavered off the land, easing the heat +and the sun-glare. MacRae saw Betty and her father come down to the +beach. She helped him slide his rowboat afloat. Then Gower joined the +rowers who were putting out to the Rock for the evening run. He passed +close by the <i>Blanco</i> but MacRae gave him scant heed. His eyes were all +for the girl ashore. Betty sat on a log, bareheaded in the sun. MacRae +had a feeling that she looked at him. And she would be thinking,—God +only knew what.</p> + +<p>In MacRae's mind arose the inevitable question,—one that he had choked +back dozens of times: Was it worth while to hurt her so, and himself, +because their fathers had fought, because there had been wrongs and +injustices? MacRae shook himself impatiently. He was backsliding. +<a name="Page_277" id="Page_277"></a>Besides that unappeasable craving for her, vivid images of her with +tantalizing mouth, wayward shining hair, eyes that answered the passion +in his own, besides these luring pictures of her which troubled him +sometimes both in waking hours and sleeping, there was a strange, +deep-seated distrust of Betty because she was the daughter of her +father. That was irrational, and Jack MacRae knew it was irrational. But +he could not help it. It colored his thought of her. It had governed his +reactions.</p> + +<p>MacRae himself could comprehend all too clearly the tragedy of his +father's life. But he doubted if any one else could. He shrank from +unfolding it even to Betty,—even to make clear to her why his hand must +be against her father. MacRae knew, or thought he knew—he had reasoned +the thing out many times in the last few months—that Betty would not +turn to him against her own flesh and blood without a valid reason. He +could not, even, in the name of love, cut her off from all that she had +been, from all that had made her what she was, and make her happy. And +MacRae knew that if they married and Betty were not happy and contented, +they would both be tigerishly miserable. There was only one possible +avenue, one he could not take. He could not seek peace with Gower, even +for Betty's sake.</p> + +<p>MacRae considered moodily, viewing the matter from every possible angle. +He could not see where he could do other than as he was doing: keep +Betty out of his mind as much as possible and go on determinedly making +his fight to be top dog in a world where the weak get little mercy and +even the strong do not always come off unscarred.</p> + +<p>Jack MacRae was no philosopher, nor an intellectual superman, but he +knew that love did not make the world go round. I<a name="Page_278" id="Page_278"></a>t was work. Work and +fighting. Men spent most of their energies in those two channels.</p> + +<p>This they could not escape. Love only shot a rosy glow across life. It +did not absolve a man from weariness or scars. By it, indeed, he might +suffer greater stress and deeper scars. To MacRae, love, such as had +troubled his father's life and his own, seemed to be an emotion pregnant +with sorrow. But he could not deny the strange power of this thing +called love, when it stirred men and women.</p> + +<p>His deck hand, who was also cook, broke into MacRae's reflections with a +call to supper. Jack went down the companion steps into a forepeak +stuffy with the heat of the sun and a galley stove, a cramped place +where they ate heartily despite faint odors of distillate and burned +lubricating oil from the engine room and bilge water that smelled of +fish.</p> + +<p>A troller's boat was rubbing against the <i>Blanco's</i> fenders when they +came on deck again. Others were hoisting the trolling poles, coming in +to deliver. The sun was gone. The long northern twilight cast a pearly +haze along far shores. MacRae threw open his hatches and counted the +salmon as they came flipping off the point of a picaroon. For over an +hour he stood at one hatch and his engineer at the other, counting fish, +making out sale slips, paying out money. It was still light—light +enough to read. But the bluebacks had stopped biting. The rowboat men +quit last of all. They sidled up to the <i>Blanco</i>, one after the other, +unloaded, got their money, and tied their rowboats on behind for a tow +around to the Cove.</p> + +<p>Gower had rowed back and forth for three hours. MacRae had seen him +swing around the Rock, up under the cliffs and back again, pulling slow +and steady. He was last to haul in his gear. He came up to the carrier +and lay alongside Doug Sproul while that crabbed ancient chucked his +salmon on deck. Then he moved into the place Sp<a name="Page_279" id="Page_279"></a>roul vacated. The bottom +of his boat was bright with salmon. He rested one hand on the <i>Blanco's</i> +guard rail and took the pipe out of his mouth with the other.</p> + +<p>"Hello, MacRae," he said, as casually as a man would address another +with whom he had slight acquaintance. "I've got some fish. D'you want +'em?"</p> + +<p>MacRae looked down at him. He did not want Gower's fish or anything that +was Gower's. He did not want to see him or talk to him. He desired, in +so far as he was conscious of any desire in the matter, that Gower +should keep his distance. But he had a horror of meanness, of petty +spite. He could knock a man down with a good heart, if occasion arose. +It was not in him to kick a fallen enemy.</p> + +<p>"Chuck them up," he said.</p> + +<p>He counted them silently as they flipped over the bulwark and fell into +the chilly hold, marked a slip, handed Gower the money for them. The +hand 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 sun +on the Gulf. MacRae knew its bite and sting. So had his father known. He +wondered if Gower ever thought about that now.</p> + +<p>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 took +his oars in hand, albeit a trifle gingerly. And he said to old Doug +Sproul, almost jovially:</p> + +<p>"Well, Doug, I got as many as you did, this trip."</p> +<p><a name="Page_280" id="Page_280"></a></p> +<p>"Didja?" Sproul snarled. "Kain't buy 'em cheap enough, no more, huh? +Gotta ketch 'em yourself, huh?"</p> + +<p>"Hard-boiled old crab, aren't you, Doug?" Gower rumbled in his deep +voice. But he laughed. And he rowed away to the beach before his house. +MacRae watched. Betty came down to meet him. Together they hauled the +heavy rowboat out on skids, above the tide mark.</p> + +<p>Nearly every day after that he saw Gower trolling around the Rock, +sometimes alone, sometimes with Betty sitting forward, occasionally +relieving him at the oars. No matter what the weather, if a rowboat +could work a line Gower was one of them. Rains came, and he faced them +in yellow oilskins. He sweltered under that fiery sun. If his life had +been soft and easy, softness and ease did not seem to be wholly +necessary to his existence, not even to his peace of mind. For he had +that. MacRae often wondered at it, knowing the man's history. Gower +joked his way to acceptance among the rowboat men, all but old Doug +Sproul, who had forgotten what it was to speak pleasantly to any one.</p> + +<p>He caught salmon for salmon with these old men who had fished all their +lives. He sold his fish to the <i>Blanco</i> or the <i>Bluebird</i>, whichever was +on the spot. The run held steady at the Cove end of Squitty, a +phenomenal abundance of salmon at that particular spot, and the <i>Blanco</i> +was there day after day.</p> + +<p>And MacRae could not help pondering over Gower and his ways. He was +puzzled, not alone about Gower, but about himself. He had dreamed of a +fierce satisfaction in beating this man down, in making him know poverty +and work and privation,—rubbing his nose in the dirt, he had said to +himself.</p><p><a name="Page_281" id="Page_281"></a></p> + +<p>He had managed it. Gower had joined the ranks of broken men. He was +finished as a figure in industry, a financial power. MacRae knew that, +beyond a doubt. Gower had debts and no assets save his land on the +Squitty cliffs and the closed cannery at Folly Bay. The cannery was a +white elephant, without takers in the market. No cannery man would touch +it unless he could first make a contract with MacRae for the bluebacks. +They had approached him with such propositions. Like wolves, MacRae +thought, seeking to pick the bones of one of their own pack who had +fallen.</p> + +<p>And if MacRae needed other evidence concerning Gower, he had it daily +before his eyes. To labor at the oars, to troll early and late in +drizzling rain or scorching sunshine, a man only does that because he +must. MacRae's father had done it. As a matter of course, without +complaint, with unprotesting patience.</p> + +<p>So did Gower. That did not fit Jack MacRae's conception of the man. If +he 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.</p> + +<p>He never attempted to talk to MacRae. He spoke now and then. But there +was no hint of rancor in his silences. It was simply as if he understood +that MacRae did not wish to talk to him, and that he conceded this to be +a proper attitude. He talked with the fishermen. He joked with them. If +one slammed out at him now and then with a touch of the old resentment +against Folly Bay he laughed as if he understood and bore no malice. He +baffled MacRae. How could this man who had walked on fishermen's faces +for twenty years<a name="Page_282" id="Page_282"></a>, seeking and exacting always his own advantage, playing +the game under harsh rules of his own devising which had enabled him to +win—until this last time—how could he see the last bit of prestige +wrested from him and still be cheerful? How could he earn his daily +bread in the literal sweat of his brow, endure blistered hands and sore +muscles and the sting of slime-poison in fingers cut by hooks and +traces, with less outward protest than men who had never known anything +else?</p> + +<p>MacRae could find no answer to that. He could only wonder. He only knew +that some shift of chance had helped him to put Gower where Gower had +put his father. And there was no satisfaction in the achievement, no +sense of victory. He looked at the man and felt sorry for him, and was +uncomfortably aware that Gower, taking salmon for his living with other +poor men around Poor Man's Rock, was in no need of pity. This podgy man +with the bright blue eyes and heavy jaw, who had been Donald MacRae's +jealous Nemesis, had lost everything that was supposed to make life +worth living to men of his type. And he did not seem to care. He seemed +quite content to smoke a pipe and troll for salmon. He seemed to be a +stranger to suffering. He did not even seem to be aware of discomfort, +or of loss.</p> + +<p>MacRae had wanted to make him suffer. He had imagined that poverty and +hard, dirty work would be the fittest requital he could bestow. If Jack +MacRae had been gifted with omnipotence when he read that penned history +of his father's life, he would have devised no fitter punishment, no +more fitting vengeance for Gower than that he should lose his fortune +and his prestige and spend his last years getting his bread upon the +waters by Poor Man's Rock in sun and wind and blowy weather.</p> + +<p>And MacRae was conscious that if t<a name="Page_283" id="Page_283"></a>here were any suffering involved in +this matter now, it rested upon him, not upon Gower. Most men past +middle age, who have drunk deeply the pleasant wine of material +success, shrink from the gaunt specter of poverty. They have shot their +bolt. They cannot stand up to hard work. They cannot endure privation. +They lose heart. They go about seeking sympathy, railing against the +fate. They lie down and the world walks unheeding over their prone +bodies.</p> + +<p>Gower was not doing that. If he had done so, MacRae would have sneered +at him with contempt. As it was, in spite of the rancor he had nursed, +the feeling which had driven him to reprisal, he found himself +sorry—sorry for himself, sorry for Betty. He had set out to bludgeon +Gower, to humiliate him, and the worst arrows he could sling had blunted +their points against the man's invulnerable spirit.</p> + +<p>Betty had been used to luxury. It had not spoiled her. MacRae granted +that. It had not made her set great store by false values. MacRae was +sure of that. She had loved him simply and naturally, with an almost +primitive directness. Spoiled daughters of the leisure class are not so +simple and direct. MacRae began to wonder if she could possibly escape +resenting his share in the overturning of her father's fortunes, whereby +she herself must suffer.</p> + +<p>By the time MacRae came slowly to these half-formed, disturbing +conclusions he was already upon the verge of other disturbing +discoveries in the realm of material facts.</p> + +<p>For obvious reasons he could not walk up to Gower's house and talk to +Betty. At least he did not see how he <a name="Page_284" id="Page_284"></a>could, although there were times +when he was tempted. When he did see her he was acutely sensitive to a +veiled reproach in her eyes, a courteous distance in her speech. She +came off the beach one day alone, a few minutes after MacRae dropped +anchor in the usual spot. She had a dozen salmon in the boat. When she +came alongside MacRae set foot over the bulwark with intent to load them +himself. She forestalled him by picking the salmon up and heaving them +on the <i>Blanco's</i> deck. She was dressed for the work, in heavy nailed +shoes, a flannel blouse, a rough tweed skirt.</p> + +<p>"Oh, say, take the picaroon, won't you?" He held it out to her, the +six-foot wooden shaft with a slightly curving point of steel on the end.</p> + +<p>She turned on him with a salmon dangling by the gills from her fingers.</p> + +<p>"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 and +jab that pointed thing through the bottom of the boat."</p> + +<p>She laughed lightly, with no particular mirth in her voice. And MacRae +was stricken dumb. She was angry. He knew it, felt it intuitively. Angry +at him, warning him to keep his distance. He watched her dabble her +hands in the salt chuck, dry them coolly on a piece of burlap. She took +the money for the fish with a cool "thanks" and rowed back to shore.</p> + +<p>Jack lay in his bunk that night blasted by a gloomy sense of futility in +everything. He had succeeded in his undertaking beyond all the +expectations which had spurred him so feverishly in the beginning. But +there was no <a name="Page_285" id="Page_285"></a>joy in it; not when Betty Gower looked at him with that +cold gleam in her gray eyes. Yet he told himself savagely that if he had +to take his choice he would not have done otherwise. And when he had +accomplished 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 existed +to fill a man's days with unhappiness. That, it seemed to him, must be +the final disposition of this problem which his father and Horace Gower +and Elizabeth Morton had set for him years before he was born.</p> + +<p>There came a burst of afternoon westerlies which blew small hurricanes +from noon to sundown. But there was always fishing under the broad lee +of the cliffs. The <i>Bluebird</i> continued to scuttle from one outlying +point to another, and the <i>Blanco</i> wallowed down to Crow Harbor every +other day with her hold crammed. When she was not under way and the sea +was fit the big carrier rode at anchor in the kelp close by Poor Man's +Rock, convenient for the trollers to come alongside and deliver when +they chose. There were squalls that blew up out of nowhere and drove +them all to cover. There were days when a dead swell rolled and the +trolling boats dipped and swung and pointed their bluff bows skyward as +they climbed the green mountains,—for the salmon strike when a sea is +on, and a troller runs from heavy weather only when he can no longer +handle his gear.</p> + +<p>MacRae was much too busy to brood long at a time. The phenomenal run of +blueback still held, with here and there the hook-nosed coho coming in +stray schools. He had a hundred and forty fishermen to care for in the +matter of taking their catch, keeping them supplied with fuel, bringing +them foodstuffs such as they desired. The <i>Blanco</i> came up from +Vancouver sometimes as heavily loaded as when she went down. But he +welcomed the work because it kept him from too intense thinking. He +shepherded his seafaring flock for his profit and theirs alike and +poured salmon by tens of thousands into the machines<a name="Page_286" id="Page_286"></a> at Crow +Harbor,—red meat to be preserved in tin cans which in months to come +should feed the hungry in the far places of the earth.</p> + +<p>MacRae sometimes had the strange fancy of being caught in a vast machine +for feeding the world, a machine which did not reckon such factors as +pain and sorrow in its remorseless functioning. Men could live without +love or ease or content. They could not survive without food.</p> + +<p>He came up to Squitty one bright afternoon when the sea was flat and +still, unharassed by the westerly. The Cove was empty. All the fleet was +scattered over a great area. The <i>Bluebird</i> was somewhere on her rounds. +MacRae dropped the <i>Blanco's</i> hook in the middle of Cradle Bay, a spot +he seldom chose for anchorage. But he had a purpose in this. When the +bulky carrier swung head to the faint land breeze MacRae was sitting on +his berth in the pilot house, glancing over a letter he held in his +hand. It was from a land-dealing firm in Vancouver. One paragraph is +<a name="Page_287" id="Page_287"></a>sufficiently illuminating:</p> + +<div class="blockquot"><p>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 <i>bona fide</i> purchaser.</p> + +<p>We therefore suggest that you take the matter up with Mr. Gower +personally.</p></div> + +<p>MacRae put the sheet back in its envelope. He stared thoughtfully +through an open window which gave on shore and cottage. He could see +Gower sitting on the porch, the thick bulk of the man clean-cut against +the 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 sight +among the stunted, wind-twisted firs.</p> + +<p>He walked to the after deck, laid hold of the dinghy, and slid it +overboard. Five minutes later he had beached it and was walking up the +gravel path to the house.</p> + +<p>He was conscious of a queer irritation against Gower. If he were willing +to sell the place, why did he sit like a spider in his web and demand +that victims come to him? MacRae was wary, distrustful, suspicious, as +he walked up the slope. Some of the old rancor revived in him. Gower +might have a shaft in his quiver yet, and the will to use it.</p> +<p><a name="Page_288" id="Page_288"></a></p> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XX" id="CHAPTER_XX"></a>CHAPTER XX</h2> + +<p><span class="smcap">The Dead and Dusty Past</span></p> + + +<p>Gower sat in a deep grass chair, a pipe sagging one corner of his mouth, +his slippered feet crossed on a low stool. His rubber sea boots lay on +the porch floor as if he had but discarded them. MacRae took in every +detail of his appearance in one photographic glance, as a man will when +his gaze rests upon another with whom he may be about to clash.</p> + +<p>Gower no longer resembled the well-fed plutocrat. He scarcely seemed the +same man who, nearly two years before, had absently bestowed upon MacRae +a dollar for an act of simple courtesy. He wore nondescript trousers +which betrayed a shrunken abdominal line, a blue flannel shirt that +bared his short, thick neck. And in that particular moment, at least, +the habitual sullenness of his heavy face was not in evidence. He looked +placid in spite of the fiery redness which sun and wind had burned into +his skin. He betrayed no surprise at MacRae's coming. The placidity of +his blue eyes did not alter in any degree.</p> + +<p>"Hello, MacRae," he said.</p> + +<p>"How d' do," MacRae answered. "I came to speak to you about a little +matter of business."</p> + +<p>"Yes?" Gower rumbled. "I've been sort of expecting you."</p> + +<p>"Oh?" MacRae failed to conceal altogether his surprise at this +statement. "I understand you are willing to sell this place. I want to +buy it."</p> + +<p>"It was yours once, wasn't it?"</p> + +<p>The words were more of a comment than a question, but MacRae answered:</p> + +<p>"You know that, I think."</p> +<p><a name="Page_289" id="Page_289"></a></p> +<p>"And you want it back?"</p> + +<p>"Naturally."</p> + +<p>"If that's what you want," Gower said slowly. "I'll see you in——"</p> + +<p>He cut off the sentence. His round stomach—less round by far than it +had been two months earlier—shook with silent laughter. His eyes +twinkled. His thick, stubby fingers drummed on the chair arm.</p> + +<p>MacRae's face grew hot. He recognized the unfinished sentence as one of +his own, words he had flung in Gower's face not so long since. If that +was the way of it he could save his breath. He turned silently.</p> + +<p>"Wait."</p> + +<p>He faced about at the changed quality of Gower's tone. The amused +expression had vanished. Gower leaned forward a little. There was +something very like appeal in his expression. MacRae was suddenly +conscious of facing a still different man,—an oldish, fat man with +thinning hair and tired, wistful eyes.</p> + +<p>"I just happened to think of what you said to me not long ago," Gower +explained. "It struck me as funny. But that isn't how I feel. If you +want this land you can have it. Take a chair. Sit down. I want to talk +to you."</p> + +<p>"There is nothing the matter with my legs," MacRae said shortly. "I do +want this land. I will pay you the price you paid for it, in cash, when +you execute a legal transfer. Is that satisfactory?"</p> + +<p>"What about this house?" Gower asked casually. "It's worth something, +isn't it?"</p><p><a name="Page_290" id="Page_290"></a></p> + +<p>"Not to me," MacRae replied. "I don't want the house. You can take it +away with you, if you like."</p> + +<p>Gower looked at him thoughtfully.</p> + +<p>"The Scotch," he said, "cherish a grudge like a family heirloom."</p> + +<p>"Perhaps they do," MacRae answered. "Why not? If you knock a man down +you don't expect him to jump up and shake hands with you. You had your +inning. It was a long one."</p> + +<p>"I wonder," Gower said slowly, "why old Donald MacRae kept his mouth +closed to you about trouble between us until he was ready to die?"</p> + +<p>"How do you know he did that?" MacRae demanded harshly.</p> + +<p>"The night you came to ask for the <i>Arrow</i> to take him to town you had +no such feeling against me as you have had since," Gower said. "I know +you didn't. You wouldn't have come if you had. I cut no figure in your +eyes, one way or the other, until after he was dead. So he must have +told you at the very last. What did he tell you? Why did he have to pass +that old poison on to another generation?"</p> + +<p>"Why shouldn't he?" MacRae demanded. "You made his life a failure. You +put a scar on his face—I can remember when I was a youngster wondering +how he got that mark—I remember how it stood like a ridge across his +cheek bone when he was dead. You put a scar upon his soul that no one +<a name="Page_291" id="Page_291"></a>but himself ever saw or felt—except as I have been able to feel it +since I knew. You weren't satisfied with that. You had to keep on +throwing your weight against him for thirty years. You didn't even stop +when the war made everything seem different. You might have let up +then. We were doing our bit. But you didn't. You kept on until you had +deprived him of everything but the power to row around the Rock day +after day and take a few salmon in order to live. You made a pauper of +him and sat here gloating over it. It preyed on his mind to think that I +should come back from France and find myself a beggar because he was +unable to cope with you. He lived his life without whimpering to me, +except to say he did not like you. He only wrote this down for me to +read—when he began to feel that he would never see me again—the +reasons why he had failed in everything, lost everything. When I pieced +out the story, from the day you used your pike pole to knock down a man +whose fighting hands were tied by a promise to a woman he loved, from +then till the last cold-blooded maneuver by which you got this land of +ours, I hated you, and I set out to pay you back in your own coin.</p> + +<p>"But," MacRae continued after a momentary hesitation, "that is not what +I came here to say. Talk—talk's cheap. I would rather not talk about +these things, or think of them, now. I want to buy this land from you if +you are willing to sell. That's all."</p> + +<p>Gower scarcely seemed to hear him. He was nursing his heavy chin with +one hand, looking at MacRae with a curious concentration, looking at him +and seeing something far beyond.</p> + +<p>"Hell; it is a true indictment, up to a certain point," he said at last. +"What a curse misunderstanding is—and pride! By God, I have envied your +father, MacRae, many a time. I struck him an ugly blow once. Yes. I was +<a name="Page_292" id="Page_292"></a>young and hot-headed, and I was burning with jealousy. But I did him a +good turn at that, I think. I—oh, well, maybe you wouldn't understand. +I suppose you wouldn't believe me if I say I didn't swoop down on him +every time I got a chance; that I didn't bushwhack—no matter if he +believed I did."</p> + +<p>"No?" MacRae said incredulously. "You didn't break up a logging venture +on the Claha when he had a chance to make a stake? You didn't show your +fine Italian hand in that marble quarry undertaking on Texada? Nor other +things that I could name as he named them. Why crawl now? It doesn't +matter. I'm not swinging a club over your head."</p> + +<p>Gower shook himself.</p> + +<p>"No," he declared slowly. "He interfered with the Morton interests in +that Claha logging camp, and they did whatever was done. The quarry +business I know nothing about, except that I had business dealings with +the people whom he ran foul of. I tell you, MacRae, after the first +short period of time when I was afire with the fury of jealousy, I did +not do these things. I didn't even want to do them. I wish you would get +that straight. I wanted Bessie Morton and I got her. That was an issue +between us, I grant. I gained my point there. I would have gone farther +to gain that point. But I paid for it. It was not so long before I knew +that I was going to pay dearly for it. I tell you I came to envy Donald +MacRae. I don't know if he nursed a disappointment—which I came to know +was an illusion. Perhaps he did. But he had nothing real to regret, +nothing to prick, prick him all the time. He married a woman who seemed +to care for him. At any rate, she respected him and was a mate, living +his life while she did live.</p> +<p><a name="Page_293" id="Page_293"></a></p> +<p>"Look, MacRae. I married Bessie Morton because I wanted her, wanted her +on any terms. She didn't want me. She wanted Donald MacRae. But she had +wanted other men. That was the way she was made. She was facile. And +she never loved any one half so much as she loved herself. She was only +a beautiful peacock preening her feathers and sighing for homage. She +was—she is—the essence of self from the top of her head to her shoes. +Her feelings, her wants, her wishes, her whims, her two-by-four outlook, +nothing else counted. She couldn't comprehend anything outside of +herself. She would have made Donald MacRae's life a misery to him when +the novelty of that infatuation wore off. The Mortons are like that. +They want everything. They give nothing.</p> + +<p>"She was cowardly too. Do you think two old men and myself would have +taken her, or anything else, from your father out in the middle of the +Gulf, if she had had any spirit? You knew your father. He wasn't a tame +man. He would have fought—fought like a tiger. We might have killed +him. It is more likely that he would have killed us. But we could not +have beaten him. But she had to knuckle down—take the easy way for her. +She cried; and he promised."</p> + +<p>Gower lay back in his chair. His chin sunk on his breast. He spoke +slowly, groping for his words. MacRae did not interrupt. Something +compelled him to listen. There was a pained ring in Gower's voice that +held him. The man was telling him these things with visible reluctance, +with a simple dignity that arrested him, even while he felt that he +should not listen.</p> + +<p>"She used to taunt me with that," he went on, "taunt me with striking +Donald MacRae. For years after we were married she used to do that. Long +after—and that wasn't so long—she had ceased to care if such a man as +your father existed. That w<a name="Page_294" id="Page_294"></a>as only an episode to her, of which she was +snobbishly ashamed in time. But she often reminded me that I had struck +him like a hardened butcher, because she knew she could hurt me with +that. So that I used to wish to God I had never followed her out into +the Gulf.</p> + +<p>"For thirty years I've lived and worked and never known any real +satisfaction in living—or happiness. I've played the game, played it +hard. I've been hard, they say. Probably I have. I didn't care. A man +had to walk on others or be walked on himself. I made money. Money—I +poured it into her hands, like pouring sand in a rat-hole. She lived for +herself, her whims, her codfish-aristocracy standards, spending my money +like water to make a showing, giving me nothing in return, nothing but +whining and recrimination if I crossed her ever so little. She made a +lap dog of her son the first twenty-five years of his life. She would +have made Betty a cheap imitation of herself. But she couldn't do that."</p> + +<p>He stopped a moment and shook his head gently.</p> + +<p>"No," he resumed, "she couldn't do that. There's iron in that girl. +She's all Gower. I think I should have thrown up my hands long ago only +for Betty's sake."</p> + +<p>MacRae shifted uneasily.</p> + +<p>"You see," Gower continued, "my life has been a failure, too. When +Donald MacRae and I clashed, I prevailed. I got what I wanted. But it +was only a shadow. There was no substance. It didn't do me any good. I +have made money, barrels of it, and that has not done me any good. I've +been succ<a name="Page_295" id="Page_295"></a>essful at everything I undertook—except lately—but succeeding +as the world reckons success hasn't made me happy. In my personal life +I've been a damned failure. I've always been aware of that. And if I +have held a feeling toward Donald MacRae these thirty-odd years, it was +a feeling of envy. I would have traded places with him and been the +gainer. I would have liked to tell him so. But I couldn't. He was a dour +Scotchman and I suppose he hated me, although he kept it to himself. I +suppose he loved Bessie. I know I did. Perhaps he cherished hatred of me +for wrecking his dream, and so saw my hand in things where it never was. +But he was wrong. Bessie would have wrecked it and him too. She would +have whined and sniffled about being a poor man's wife, once she learned +what it was to be poor. She could never understand anything but a +silk-lined existence. She loved herself and her own illusions. She would +have driven him mad with her petty whims, her petty emotions. She +doesn't know the meaning of loyalty, consideration, or even an open, +honest hatred. And I've stood it all these years—because I don't shirk +responsibilities, and I had brought it on myself."</p> + +<p>He stopped a second, staring out across the Gulf.</p> + +<p>"But apart from that one thing, I never consciously or deliberately +wronged Donald MacRae. He may honestly have believed I did. I have the +name of being hard. I dare say I am. The world is a hard place. When I +had to choose between walking on a man's face and having my own walked +on, I never hesitated. There was nothing much to make me soft. I moved +along the same lines as most of the men I know.</p> + +<p>"But, I repeat, I never put a straw in your father's way. I know that +things went against him. I could see that. I knew why, too. He was too +square for his time and place. He trusted men too much. You can't always +do that. He was too scrupulously hon<a name="Page_296" id="Page_296"></a>est. He always gave the other fellow +the best of it. That alone beat him. He didn't always consider his own +interest and follow up every advantage. I don't think he cared to +scramble for money, as a man must scramble for it these days. He could +have held this place if he had cast about for ways to do so. There were +plenty of loopholes. But he had that old-fashioned honor which doesn't +seek loopholes. He had borrowed money on it. He would have taken the +coat off his back, beggared himself any day to pay a debt. Isn't that +right?"</p> + +<p>MacRae nodded.</p> + +<p>"So this place came into my hands. It was deliberate on my part—but +only, mind you, when I knew that he was bound to lose it. Perhaps it was +bad judgment on my part. I didn't think that he would see it as an end +I'd been working for. As I grew older, I found myself wanting now and +then to wipe out that old score between us. I would have given a good +deal to sit down with him over a pipe. A woman, who wasn't much as women +go, had made us both suffer. So I built this cottage and came here to +stay now and then. I liked the place. I liked to think that now he and I +were getting to be old men, we could be friends. But he was too bitter. +And I'm human. I've got a bit of pride. I couldn't crawl. So I never got +nearer to him than to see him rowing around the Rock. And he died full +of that bitterness. I don't like to think of that. Still, it cannot be +helped. Do you grasp this, MacRae? Do you believe me?"</p> + +<p>Incredible as it seemed, MacRae had no choice but to accept that +explanation of strangely twisted motives, those misapprehensions, the +murky cloud of misunderstanding. The tone of Gower's voice, his +attitude, carried supreme conviction. And still—</p> + +<p><a name="Page_297" id="Page_297"></a>"Yes," he said at last. "It is all a contradiction of things I have been +passionately sure of for nearly two years. But I can see—yes, it must +be as you say. I'm sorry."</p> + +<p>"Sorry? For what?" Gower regarded him soberly.</p> + +<p>"Many things. Why did you tell me this?"</p> + +<p>"Why should the anger and bitterness of two old men be passed on to +their children?" Gower asked him gently.</p> + +<p>MacRae stared at him. Did he know? Had he guessed? Had Betty told him? +He wondered. It was not like Betty to have spoken of what had passed +between them. Yet he did not know how close a bond might exist between +this father and daughter, who were, MacRae was beginning to perceive, +most singularly alike. And this was a shrewd old man, sadly wise in +human weaknesses, and much more tolerant than MacRae had conceived +possible. He felt a little ashamed of the malice with which he had +fought this battle of the salmon around Squitty Island. Yet Gower by his +own admission was a hard man. He had lived with a commercial sword in +his hand. He knew what it was to fall by that weapon. He had been hard +on the fishermen. He had exploited them mercilessly. Therein lay his +weakness, whereby he had fallen, through which MacRae had beaten him. +But had he beaten him? MacRae was not now so sure about that. But it was +only a momentary doubt. He struggled a little against the reaction of +kindliness, this curious sympathy for Gower which moved him now. He +hated sentimentalism, facile yielding to shallow emotions. He wanted to +talk and he was dumb. Dumb for appropriate words, because his mind kept +turning with passionate eagerness upon Betty Gower.</p> + +<p>"Does Betty know what you have just told me?" he asked at last.</p> + +<p>Gower shook his head.</p> + +<p>"She knows there is something. I can't tell her. I don't like to. It +isn't a nice story. I don't shine <a name="Page_298" id="Page_298"></a>in it—nor her mother."</p> + +<p>"Nor do I," MacRae muttered to himself.</p> + +<p>He stood looking over the porch rail down on the sea where the <i>Blanco</i> +swung at her anchor chain. There seemed nothing more to say. Yet he was +aware of Gower's eyes upon him with something akin to expectancy. An +uncertain smile flitted across MacRae's face.</p> + +<p>"This has sort of put me on my beam ends," he said, using a sailor's +phrase. "Don't you feel as if I'd rather done you up these two seasons?"</p> + +<p>Gower's heavy features lightened with a grimace of amusement.</p> + +<p>"Well," he said, "you certainly cost me a lot of money, one way and +another. But you had the nerve to go at it—and you used better judgment +of men and conditions than anybody has manifested in the salmon business +lately, unless it's young Abbott. So I suppose you are entitled to win +on your merits. By the way, there is one condition tacked to selling you +this ranch. I hesitated about bringing it up at first. I would like to +keep this cottage and a strip of ground a hundred and fifty feet wide +<a name="Page_299" id="Page_299"></a>running down to the beach."</p> + +<p>"All right," MacRae agreed. "We can arrange that later. I'll come +again."</p> + +<p>He set foot on the porch steps. Then he turned back. A faint flush stole +up in his sun-browned face. He held out his hand.</p> + +<p>"Shall we cry quits?" he asked. "Shall we shake hands and forget it?"</p> + +<p>Gower rose to his feet. He did not say anything, but the grip in his +thick, stubby fingers almost made Jack MacRae wince,—and he was a +strong-handed man himself.</p> + +<p>"I'm glad you came to-day," Gower said huskily. "Come again—soon."</p> + +<p>He stood on the porch and watched MacRae stride down to the beach and +put off in his dinghy. Then he took out a handkerchief and blew his nose +with a tremendous amount of unnecessary noise and gesture. There was +something suspiciously like moisture brightening his eyes.</p> + +<p>But when he saw MacRae stand in the dinghy alongside the <i>Blanco</i> and +speak briefly to his men, then row in under Point Old behind Poor Man's +Rock which the tide was slowly baring, when he climbed up over the Point +and took the path along the cliff edge, that suspicious brightness in +Gower's keen old eyes was replaced by a twinkle. He sat down in his +grass chair and hummed a little tune, the while one slippered foot kept +time, rat-a-pat, on the floor of the porch.</p> +<p><a name="Page_300" id="Page_300"></a></p> + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXI" id="CHAPTER_XXI"></a>CHAPTER XXI</h2> + +<p><span class="smcap">As it Was in the Beginning</span></p> + + +<p>MacRae followed the path along the cliffs. He did not look for Betty. +His mind was on something else, engrossed in considerations which had +little to do with love. If it be true that a man keeps his loves and +hates and hobbies and ambitions and appetites in separate chambers, any +of which may be for a time so locked that what lies therein neither +troubles nor pleases him, then that chamber in which he kept Betty +Gower's image was hermetically sealed. Her figure was obscured by other +figures,—his father and Horace Gower and himself.</p> + +<p>Not until he had reached the Cove's head and come to his own house did +he recall that Betty had gone along the cliffs, and that he had not seen +her as he passed. But that could easily happen, he knew, in that mile +stretch of trees and thickets, those deep clefts and pockets in the +rocky wall that frowned upon the sea.</p> + +<p>He went into the house. Out of a box on a shelf in his room he took the +message his father had left him and sitting down in the shadowy coolness +of the outer room began to read it again, slowly, with infinite care for +the reality his father had meant to <a name="Page_301" id="Page_301"></a>convey.</p> + +<p>All his life, as Jack remembered him, Donald MacRae had been a silent +man, who never talked of how he felt, how things affected him, who never +was stricken with that irresistible impulse to explain and discuss, to +relieve his troubled soul with words, which afflicts so many men. It +seemed as if he had saved it all for that final summing-up which was to +be delivered by his pen instead of his lips. He had become articulate +only at the last. It must have taken him weeks upon weeks to write it +all down, this autobiography which had been the mainspring of his son's +actions for nearly two years. There was wind and sun in it, and blue sky +and the gray Gulf heaving; somber colors, passion and grief, an apology +and a justification.</p> + +<p>MacRae laid down the last page and went outside to sit on the steps. +Shadows were gathering on the Cove. Far out, the last gleam of the sun +was touching the Gulf. A slow swell was rising before some far, +unheralded wind. The <i>Blanco</i> came gliding in and dropped anchor. +Trollers began to follow. They clustered about the big carrier like +chickens under the mother wing. By these signs MacRae knew that the fish +had stopped biting, that it was lumpy by Poor Man's Rock. He knew there +was work aboard. But he sat there, absent-eyed, thinking.</p> + +<p>He was full of understanding pity for his father, and also for Horace +Gower. He was conscious of being a little sorry for himself. But then he +had only been troubled a short two years by this curious aftermath of +old passions, whereas they had suffered all their lives. He had got a +new angle from which to approach his father's story. He knew now that he +had reacted to something that was not there. He had been filled with a +thirst for vengeance, for reprisal, and he had declared war on Gower, +when that was not his father's intent. Old Donald Ma<a name="Page_302" id="Page_302"></a>cRae had hated Gower +profoundly in the beginning. He believed that Gower hated him and had +put the weight of his power against him, wherever and whenever he +could. But life itself had beaten him,—and not Gower. That was what he +had been trying to tell his son.</p> + +<p>And life itself had beaten Gower in a strangely similar fashion. He too +was old, a tired, disappointed man. He had reached for material success +with one hand and happiness with the other. One had always eluded him. +The other Jack MacRae had helped wrest from him. MacRae could see +Gower's life in detached pictures, life that consisted of making money +and spending it, life with a woman who whined and sniffled and +complained. These things had been a slow torture. MacRae could no longer +regard this man as a squat ogre, merciless, implacable, ready and able +to crush whatsoever opposed him. He was only a short, fat, oldish man +with tired eyes, who had been bruised by forces he could not understand +or cope with until he had achieved a wistful tolerance for both things +and men.</p> + +<p>Both these old men, MacRae perceived, had made a terrible hash of their +lives. Neither of them had succeeded in getting out of life much that a +man instinctively feels that he should get. Both had been capable of +happiness. Both had struggled for happiness as all men struggle. Neither +had ever securely grasped any measure of it, nor even much of content.</p> + +<p>MacRae felt a chilly uncertainty as he sat on his doorstep considering +this. He had been traveling the same road for many months,—denying his +natural promptings, stifling a natural passion, surrendering himself to +an obsession of vindictiveness, planning and striving to return evil for +what he conceived to be evil, and being himself corrupted by the +corrosive forces of hatred.</p> + +<p>He had been <a name="Page_303" id="Page_303"></a>diligently bestowing pain on Betty, who loved him quite +openly and frankly as he desired to be loved; Betty, who was innocent of +these old coils of bitterness, who was primitive enough in her emotions, +MacRae suspected, to let nothing stand between her and her chosen mate +when that mate beckoned.</p> + +<p>But she was proud. He knew that he had puzzled her to the point of +anger, hurt her in a woman's most vital spot.</p> + +<p>"I've been several kinds of a fool," MacRae said to himself. "I have +been fooling myself."</p> + +<p>He had said to himself once, in a somber mood, that life was nothing but +a damned dirty scramble in which a man could be sure of getting hurt. +But it struck him now that he had been sedulously inflicting those hurts +upon himself. Nature cannot be flouted. She exacts terrible penalties +for the stifling, the inhibition, the deflection of normal instincts, +fundamental impulses. He perceived the operation of this in his father's +life, in the thirty years of petty conflict between Horace Gower and his +wife. And he had unconsciously been putting himself and Betty in the way +of similar penalties by exalting revenge for old, partly imagined wrongs +above that strange magnetic something which drew them together.</p> + +<p>Twilight was at hand. Looking through the maple and alder fringe before +his house MacRae saw the fishing boats coming one after the other, +clustering about the <i>Blanco</i>. He went down and slid the old green +dugout afloat and so gained the deck of his vessel. For an hour +thereafter he worked steadily until all the salmon were delivered and +stowed in the <i>Blanco's</i> chilly hold.</p> +<p><a name="Page_304" id="Page_304"></a></p> +<p>He found it hard to keep his mind on the count of salmon, on money to be +paid each man, upon these common details of his business. His thought +reached out in wide circles, embracing many things, many persons: +Norman Gower and Dolly, who had had courage to put the past behind them +and reach for happiness together; Stubby Abbott and Etta Robbin-Steele, +who were being flung together by the same inscrutable forces within +them. Love might not truly make the world go round, but it was a +tremendous motive power in human actions. Like other dynamic forces it +had its dangerous phases. Love, as MacRae had experienced it, was a +curious mixture of affection and desire, of flaming passion and infinite +tenderness. Betty Gower warmed him like a living flame when he let her +take possession of his thought. She was all that his fancy could conjure +as desirable. She was his mate. He had felt that, at times, with a +conviction beyond reason or logic ever since the night he kissed her in +the Granada. If fate, or the circumstances he had let involve him, +should juggle them apart, he felt that the years would lead him down +long, drab corridors.</p> + +<p>And he was suddenly determined that should not happen. His imagination +flung before him kinetoscopic flashes of what his father's life had been +and Horace Gower's. That vision appalled MacRae. He would not let it +happen,—not to him and Betty.</p> + +<p>He washed, ate his supper, lay on his bunk in the pilot house and smoked +a cigarette. Then he went out on deck. The moon crept up in a cloudless +sky, dimming the stars. There was no wind about the island. But there +was wind loose somewhere on the Gulf. The glass was falling. The swells +broke more heavily along the cliffs. At the mouth of the Cove white +sheets of spray lifted as each comber reared and broke in that narrow +place.</p> + +<p><a name="Page_305" id="Page_305"></a>He recollected that he had left the <i>Blanco's</i> dinghy hauled up on the +beach on the tip of Point Old. He got ashore now in the green dugout and +walked across to the Point.</p> + +<p>A man is seldom wholly single-track in his ideas, his impulses. MacRae +thought of the dinghy. He had a care for its possible destruction by the +rising sea. But he thought also of Betty. There was a pleasure in simply +looking at the house in which she lived. Lights glowed in the windows. +The cottage glistened in the moonlight.</p> + +<p>When he came out on the tip of the Point the dinghy, he saw, lay safe +where he had dragged it up on the rocks. And when he had satisfied +himself of this he stood with hands thrust deep in his pockets, looking +down on Poor Man's Rock, watching the swirl and foam as each swell ran +over its sunken head.</p> + +<p>MacRae had a subconscious perception of beauty, beauty of form and +color. It moved him without his knowing why. He was in a mood to respond +to beauty this night. He had that buoyant, grateful feeling which comes +to a man when he has escaped some great disaster, when he is suddenly +freed from some grim apprehension of the soul.</p> + +<p>The night was one of wonderful beauty. The moon laid its silver path +across the sea. The oily swells came up that moon-path in undulating +folds to break in silver fragments along the shore. The great island +beyond the piercing shaft of the Ballenas light and the mainland far to +his left lifted rugged mountains sharp against the sky. From the +southeast little fluffs of cloud, little cottony flecks white as virgin +snow, sailed before the wind that mothered the swells. But there was no +wind on Squitty yet. There was breathless stillness except for the low, +spaced mutter of the surf.</p> + +<p>He stood a long time, drinking in the beauty of it all,—the sea and +the moon-path, and the hushed, dark woods behind.</p> + +<p>Then his gaze, turning slowly, fell on something white in the shadow of +<a name="Page_306" id="Page_306"></a>a bushy, wind-distorted fir a few feet away. He looked more closely. His +eyes gradually made out a figure in a white sweater sitting on a flat +rock, elbows on knees, chin resting in cupped palms.</p> + +<p>He walked over. Betty's eyes were fixed on him. He stared down at her, +suddenly tongue-tied, a queer constricted feeling in his throat. She did +not speak.</p> + +<p>"Were you sitting here when I came along?" he asked at last.</p> + +<p>"Yes," she said. "I often come up here. I have been sitting here for +half an hour."</p> + +<p>MacRae sat down beside her. His heart seemed to be trying to choke him. +He did not know where to begin, or how, and there was much he wanted to +say that he must say. Betty did not even take her chin out of her palms. +She stared out at the sea, rolling up to Squitty in silver windrows.</p> + +<p>MacRae put one arm around her and drew her up close to him, and Betty +settled against him with a little sigh. Her fingers stole into his free +hand. For a minute they sat like that. Then he tilted her head back, +looked down into the gray pools of her eyes, and kissed her.</p> + +<p>"You stood there looking down at the sea as if you were in a dream," she +whispered; "and all the time I was crying inside of me for you to come +to me. And presently, I suppose, you will go away."</p> + +<p>"No," he said. "This time I have come for good."</p> + +<p>"I knew you would, sometime," she murmured. "At least, I hoped you +would. I wanted you so badly."</p> + +<p>"But because one wants a thing badly it doesn't always follow that one +gets it."</p> + +<p>MacRae was thinking of his father when he spoke.</p> + +<p>"I know that," Betty said. "But I knew that you wanted me, you see. And +I had faith that you would brush away the cobwebs somehow. I've been +awfully angry at you sometimes. It's horrible to feel that there is an +<a name="Page_307" id="Page_307"></a>imaginary wall between you and some one you care for."</p> + +<p>"There is no wall now," MacRae said.</p> + +<p>"Was there ever one, really?"</p> + +<p>"There seemed to be."</p> + +<p>"And now there is none?"</p> + +<p>"None at all."</p> + +<p>"Sure?" she murmured.</p> + +<p>"Honest Injun," MacRae smiled. "I went to see your father to-day about a +simple matter of business. And I found—I learned—oh, well, it doesn't +matter. I buried the hatchet. We are going to be married and live +happily ever after."</p> + +<p>"Well," Betty said judiciously, "we shall have as good a chance as any +one, I think. Look at Norman and Dolly. I positively trembled for +them—after Norman getting into that mess over in England. He never +exactly shone as a real he-man, that brother of mine, you know. But they +are really happy, Jack. They make me envious."</p> + +<p>"I think you're a little hard on that brother of yours," MacRae said. He +was suddenly filled with a great charity toward all mankind. "He never +had much of a chance, from all I can gather."</p> +<p><a name="Page_308" id="Page_308"></a></p> +<p>He went on to tell her what Norman had told him that afternoon on the +hill above the Cove. But Betty interrupted.</p> + +<p>"Oh, I know that now," she declared. "Daddy told me just recently. +Daddy knew what Norman was doing over there. In fact, he showed me a +letter from some British military authority praising Norman for the work +he did. But Daddy kept mum when Norman came home and those nasty rumors +began to go around. He thought it better for Norman to take his +medicine. He was afraid mother would smother him with money and insist +on his being a proper lounge lizard again, and so he would gradually +drop back into his old uselessness. Daddy was simply tickled stiff when +Norman showed his teeth—when he cut loose from everything and married +Dolly, and all that. He's a very wise old man, that father of mine, +Jack. He hasn't ever got much real satisfaction in his life. He has been +more content this last month or so than I can ever remember him. We have +always had loads of money, and while it's nice to have plenty, I don't +think it did him any good. My whole life has been lived in an atmosphere +of domestic incompatibility. I think I should make a very capable +wife—I have had so many object lessons in how not to be. My mother +wasn't a success either as a wife or a mother. It is a horrible thing to +say, but it's really true, Jack. Mamma's a very well-bred, +distinguished-looking person with exquisite taste in dress and dinner +parties, and that's about the only kind thing I can say for her. Do you +really love me, Jack? Heaps and heaps?"</p> + +<p>She shot this question at him with a swift change of tone and an +earnestness which straightway drove out of MacRae's mind every +consideration save the proper and convincing answer to such intimate +questions.</p> + +<p>"Look," Betty said after a long interval. "Daddy has built a fire on the +beach. He does that sometimes, and we sit around it and roast clams in +the coals. Johnny, Johnny," she squeezed his arm with a quick pressure, +"we're going to have some good times on this island now."</p> + +<p>MacRae laughed indulgently. He was completely in accord with that +prophecy.</p> +<p><a name="Page_309" id="Page_309"></a></p> +<p>The blaze Gower had kindled flickered and wavered, a red spot on the +duskier shore, with a yellow nimbus in which they saw him move here and +there, and sit down at last with his back to a log and his feet +stretched to the fire.</p> + +<p>"Let's go down," MacRae suggested, "and break the news to him."</p> + +<p>"I wonder what he'll say?" Betty murmured thoughtfully.</p> + +<p>"Haven't you any idea?" MacRae asked curiously.</p> + +<p>"No. Honestly, I haven't," Betty replied. "Daddy's something like you, +Jack. That is, he does and says unexpected things, now and then. No, I +really don't know what he will say."</p> + +<p>"We'll soon find out."</p> + +<p>MacRae took her hand. They went down off the backbone of the Point, +through ferns and over the long uncut grass, down to the fire where the +wash from the heavy swell outside made watery murmurs along the gravelly +beach.</p> + +<p>Gower looked up at them, waited for them to speak.</p> + +<p>"Betty and I are going to be married soon," MacRae announced abruptly.</p> + +<p>"Oh?" Gower took the pipe out of his mouth and rapped the ash out of it +in the palm of his hand. "You don't do things half-heartedly, do you, +MacRae? You deprive me of a very profitable business. You want my +ranch—and now my housekeeper."</p> + +<p>"Daddy!" Betty remonstrated.</p> + +<p>"Oh, well, I suppose I can learn to cook for myself," Gower rumbled.</p> +<p><a name="Page_310" id="Page_310"></a></p> +<p>He was frowning. He looked at them staring at him, nonplussed. Suddenly +he burst into deep, chuckling laughter.</p> + +<p>"Sit down, sit down, and look at the fire," he said. "Bless your soul, +if you want to get married that's your own business.</p> + +<p>"Mind you," he chuckled after a minute, when Betty had snuggled down +beside him, and MacRae perched on the log by her, "I don't say I like +the idea. It don't seem fair for a man to raise a daughter and then have +some young fellow sail up and take her away just when she is beginning +to make herself useful."</p> + +<p>"Daddy, you certainly do talk awful nonsense," Betty reproved.</p> + +<p>"I expect you haven't talked much else the last little while," he +retorted.</p> + +<p>Betty subsided. MacRae smiled. There was a whimsicality about Gower's +way of taking this that pleased MacRae.</p> + +<p>They toasted their feet at the fire until the wavering flame burned down +to a bed of glowing coals. They talked of this and that, of everything +but themselves until the moon was swimming high and the patches of +cottony cloud sailing across the moon's face cast intense black patches +on the silvery radiance of the sea.</p> + +<p>"I've got some clams in a bucket," Gower said at last. "Let's roast +some. You get plates and forks and salt and pepper and butter, Bet, +while I put the clams on the fire."</p> + +<p>Betty went away to the house. Gower raked a flat rock, white-hot, out to +the edge of the coals and put fat quahaugs on it to roast. Then he sat +back and looked at MacRae.</p><p><a name="Page_311" id="Page_311"></a></p> + +<p>"I wonder if you realize how lucky you are?" he said.</p> + +<p>"I think I do," MacRae answered. "You don't seem much surprised."</p> + +<p>Gower smiled.</p> + +<p>"Well, no. I can't say I am. That first night you came to the cottage to +ask for the <i>Arrow</i> I got a good look at you, and you struck me as a +fine, clean sort of boy, and I said to myself, 'Old Donald has never +told him anything and he has no grudge against me, and wouldn't it be a +sort of compensation if those two should fall naturally and simply in +love with each other?' Yes, it may seem sentimental, but that idea +occurred to me. Of course, it was just an idea. Betty would marry +whoever she wanted to marry. I knew that. Nothing but her own judgment +would influence her in a matter of that sort. I know. I've watched her +grow up. Maybe it's a good quality or maybe it's a bad one, but she has +always had a bull-dog sort of persistence about anything that strikes +her as really important.</p> + +<p>"And of course I had no way of knowing whether she would take a fancy to +you or you to her. So I just watched. And maybe I boosted the game a +little, because I'm a pretty wise old fish in my own way. I took a few +whacks at you, now and then, and she flew the storm signals without +knowing it."</p> + +<p>Gower smiled reminiscently, stroking his chin with his hand.</p> +<p><a name="Page_312" id="Page_312"></a></p> +<p>"I had to fight you, after a fashion, to find out what sort of stuff you +were, for my own satisfaction," he continued. "I saw that you had your +Scotch up and were after my scalp, and I knew it couldn't be anything +but that old mess. That was natural. But I thought I could square that +if I could ever get close enough to you. Only I couldn't manage that +naturally. And this scramble for the salmon got me in deep before I +realized where I was. I used to feel sorry for you and Betty. I could +see it coming. You both talk with your eyes. I have seen you both when +you didn't know I was near.</p> + +<p>"So when I saw that you would fight me till you broke us both, and also +that if I kept on I would not only be broke but so deep in the hole that +I could never get out, I shut the damned cannery up and let everything +slide. I knew as soon as you were in shape you would try to get this +place back. That was natural. And you would have to come and talk to me +about it. I was sure I could convince you that I was partly human. So +you see this is no surprise to me. Lord, no! Why, I've been playing +chess for two years—old Donald MacRae's knight against my queen."</p> + +<p>He laughed and thumped MacRae on the flat of his sturdy back.</p> + +<p>"It might have been a stalemate, at that," MacRae said.</p> + +<p>"But it wasn't," Gower declared. "Well, I'll get something out of +living, after all. I've often thought I'd like to see a big, roomy house +somewhere along these cliffs, and kids playing around. You and Betty may +have your troubles, but you're starting right. You ought to get a lot +out of life. I didn't. I made money. That's all. Poured it into a rat +hole. Bessie is sitting over on Maple Point in a big drafty house with +two maids and a butler, <a name="Page_313" id="Page_313"></a>a two-thousand-acre estate, and her pockets full +of Victory Bonds. She isn't happy, and she never can be. She never cared +for anybody but herself, not even her children, and nobody cares for +her, I'm all but broke, and I'm better off than she is. I hate to think +I ever fought for her. She wasn't worth it, MacRae. That's a hell of a +thing for a man to say about a woman he lived with for over thirty +years. But it's true. It took me a good many miserable years to admit +that to myself.</p> + +<p>"I suppose she'll cling to her money and go on playing the <i>grande +dame</i>. And if she can get any satisfaction out of that I'm willing. I've +never known as much real peace and satisfaction as I've got now. All I +need is a place to sleep and a comfortable chair to sit in. I don't want +to chase dollars any more. All I want is to row around the Rock and +catch a few salmon now and then and sit here and look at the sea when +I'm tired. You're young, and you have all your life before you—you and +Betty. If you need money, you are pretty well able to get it for +yourself. But I'm old, and I don't want to bother."</p> + +<p>He rambled on until Betty came down with plates and other things. The +fat clams were opening their shells on the hot rock. They put butter and +seasoning on the tender meat and ate, talking of this and that. And when +the last clam had vanished, Gower stuffed his pipe and lit it with a +coal. He gathered up the plates and forks and rose to his feet.</p> + +<p>"Good night," he said benevolently. "I'm going to the house and to bed. +Don't sit out here dreaming all night, you two."</p> + +<p>He stumped away up the path. MacRae piled driftwood on the fire. Then he +sat down with his back against the log, and Betty snuggled beside him, +in the crook of his arm. Beyond the Point the booming of the surf rose +like far thunder. The tide was on the ebb. Poor Man's Rock bared its +kelp-thatched head. The racing swells covered it with spray that shone +in the moonlight.</p> + +<p>They did not talk. Speech had become nonessential. It was enough to be +<a name="Page_314" id="Page_314"></a>together.</p> + +<p>So they sat, side by side, their backs to the cedar log and their feet +to the fire, talking little, dreaming much, until the fluffy clouds +scudding across the face of the moon came thicker and faster and lost +their snowy whiteness, until the radiance of the night was dimmed.</p> + +<p>Across the low summit of Point Old a new sound was carried to them. +Where the moonlight touched the Gulf in patches, far out, whitecaps +showed.</p> + +<p>"Listen," MacRae murmured.</p> + +<p>The win<a name="Page_315" id="Page_315"></a><a name="Page_316" id="Page_316"></a>d struck them with a puff that sent sparks flying. It rose and +fell and rose again until it whistled across the Point in a steady +drone,—the chill breath of the storm-god.</p> + +<p>MacRae turned up Betty's wrist and looked at her watch.</p> + +<p>"Look at the time, Betty mine," he said. "And it's getting cold. +There'll be another day."</p> + +<p>He walked with her to the house. When she vanished within, blowing him a +kiss from her finger tips, MacRae cut across the Point. He laid hold of +the <i>Blanco's</i> dinghy and drew it high to absolute safety, then stood a +minute gazing seaward, looking down on the Rock. Clouds obscured the +moon now. A chill darkness hid distant shore lines and mountain ranges +which had stood plain in the moon-glow, a darkness full of rushing, +roaring wind and thundering seas. Poor Man's Rock was a vague bulk in +the gloom, forlorn and lonely, hidden under great bursts of spray as +each wave leaped and broke with a hiss and a roar.</p> + +<p>MacRae braced himself against the southeaster. It ruffled his hair, +clawed at him with strong, invisible fingers. It shrieked its fury among +the firs, stunted and leaning all awry from the buffeting of many +storms.</p> + +<p>He took a last look behind him. The lights in Gower's house were out and +the white-walled cottage stood dim against the darkened hillside. Then +MacRae, smiling to himself in the dark, set out along the path that led +to Squitty Cove.</p> + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="THE_END" id="THE_END"></a>THE END</h2> + + + + +<hr style="width: 65%;" /> +<h2><a name="By_the_author_of_Big_Timber" id="By_the_author_of_Big_Timber"></a>By the author of "Big Timber"</h2> + +<p>NORTH OF FIFTY-THREE</p> + +<p>By BERTRAND W. SINCLAIR</p> + +<p>Illustrated. 12mo. Cloth.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>He has created the atmosphere of the frozen North with wonderful +realism.—<i>Boston Globe</i>.</p> + +<p>Mr. Sinclair's two characters are exceptionally well-drawn and +sympathetic. His style is robust and vigorous. His pictures of Canadian +life stimulating.—<i>New York Nation</i>.</p> + +<p>Mr. Sinclair sketches with bold strokes as befits a subject set amid +limitless surroundings. The book is readable and shows consistent +progress in the art of novel writing.—<i>St. Louis Globe-Democrat</i>.</p> + +<p>An unusually good story of the conflict between a man and a woman. It is +a readable, well written book showing much observation and good sense. +The hero is a fine fellow and manages to have his fling at a good many +conventions without being tedious.—<i>New York Sun</i>.</p> + +<p>The story is well written. It is rich in strong situation, romance and +heart-stirring scenes, both of the emotional and courage-stirring order. +It ranks with the best of its type.—<i>Springfield Republican</i>.</p> + +<hr style='width: 45%;' /> + +<p>LITTLE, BROWN & CO., <span class="smcap">Publishers</span></p> + +<p>34 Beacon St., Boston.</p> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Poor Man's Rock, by Bertrand W. 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Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + https://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. + +*** END: FULL LICENSE *** + + + +</pre> + +</body> +</html> diff --git a/16541-h/images/frontispiece.gif b/16541-h/images/frontispiece.gif Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..203c24b --- /dev/null +++ b/16541-h/images/frontispiece.gif diff --git a/16541-h/images/publisher_symbol.png b/16541-h/images/publisher_symbol.png Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..f0b3316 --- /dev/null +++ b/16541-h/images/publisher_symbol.png diff --git a/16541.txt b/16541.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6ce9cfc --- /dev/null +++ b/16541.txt @@ -0,0 +1,9978 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Poor Man's Rock, by Bertrand W. Sinclair + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Poor Man's Rock + +Author: Bertrand W. Sinclair + +Illustrator: Frank Tenney Johnson + +Release Date: August 17, 2005 [EBook #16541] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK POOR MAN'S ROCK *** + + + + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Paul Ereaut and the Online +Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +Novels by: + +BERTRAND W. SINCLAIR + +North of Fifty-Three +Big Timber +Burned Bridges +Poor Man's Rock + + + + +POOR MAN'S ROCK + +BY + +BERTRAND W. SINCLAIR + +BOSTON + + +LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY + +Published September, 1920 + +THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, MASS., U.S.A. + + + +CONTENTS + +Prologue--Long, Long Ago + +CHAPTER + +I. The House in Cradle Bay + +II. His Own Country + +III. The Flutter of Sable Wings + +IV. Inheritance + +V. From the Bottom Up + +VI. The Springboard + +VII. Sea Boots and Salmon + +VIII. Vested Rights + +IX. The Complexity of Simple Matters + +X. Thrust and Counterthrust + +XI. Peril of the Sea + +XII. Between Sun and Sun + +XIII. An Interlude + +XIV. The Swing of the Pendulum + +XV. Hearts are not Always Trumps + +XVI. En Famille + +XVII. Business as Usual + +XVIII. A Renewal of Hostilities + +XIX. Top Dog + +XX. The Dead and Dusty Past + +XXI. As it was in the Beginning + + + + + +POOR MAN'S ROCK + +PROLOGUE + +Long, Long Ago + + +The Gulf of Georgia spread away endlessly, an immense, empty stretch of +water bared to the hot eye of an August sun, its broad face only saved +from oily smoothness by half-hearted flutterings of a westerly breeze. +Those faint airs blowing up along the Vancouver Island shore made +tentative efforts to fill and belly out strongly the mainsail and jib of +a small half-decked sloop working out from the weather side of Sangster +Island and laying her snub nose straight for the mouth of the Fraser +River, some sixty sea-miles east by south. + +In the stern sheets a young man stood, resting one hand on the tiller, +his navigating a sinecure, for the wind was barely enough to give him +steerageway. He was, one would say, about twenty-five or six, fairly +tall, healthily tanned, with clear blue eyes having a touch of steely +gray in their blue depths, and he was unmistakably of that fair type +which runs to sandy hair and freckles. He was dressed in a light-colored +shirt, blue serge trousers, canvas shoes; his shirt sleeves, rolled to +the elbows, bared flat, sinewy forearms. + +He turned his head to look back to where in the distance a white speck +showed far astern, and his eyes narrowed and clouded. But there was no +cloud in them when he turned again to his companion, a girl sitting on +a box just outside the radius of the tiller. She was an odd-looking +figure to be sitting in the cockpit of a fishing boat, amid recent +traces of business with salmon, codfish, and the like. The heat was +putting a point on the smell of defunct fish. The dried scales of them +still clung to the small vessel's timbers. In keeping, the girl should +have been buxom, red-handed, coarsely healthy. And she was anything but +that. No frail, delicate creature, mind you,--but she did not belong in +a fishing boat. She looked the lady, carried herself like +one,--patrician from the top of her russet-crowned head to the tips of +her white kid slippers. Yet her eyes, when she lifted them to the man at +the tiller, glowed with something warm. She stood up and slipped a +silk-draped arm through his. He smiled down at her, a tender smile +tempered with uneasiness, and then bent his head and kissed her. + +"Do you think they will overtake us, Donald?" she asked at length. + +"That depends on the wind," he answered. "If these light airs hold they +_may_ overhaul us, because they can spread so much more cloth. But if +the westerly freshens--and it nearly always does in the afternoon--I can +outsail the _Gull_. I can drive this old tub full sail in a blow that +will make the _Gull_ tie in her last reef." + +"I don't like it when it's rough," the girl said wistfully. "But I'll +pray for a blow this afternoon." + +If indeed she prayed--and her attitude was scarcely prayerful, for it +consisted of sitting with one hand clasped tight in her lover's--her +prayer fell dully on the ears of the wind god. The light airs fluttered +gently off the bluish haze of Vancouver Island, wavered across the +Gulf, kept the sloop moving, but no more. Sixty miles away the mouth of +the Fraser opened to them what security they desired. But behind them +power and authority crept up apace. In two hours they could distinguish +clearly the rig of the pursuing yacht. In another hour she was less than +a mile astern, creeping inexorably nearer. + +The man in the sloop could only stand on, hoping for the usual afternoon +westerly to show its teeth. + +In the end, when the afternoon was waxing late, the sternward vessel +stood up so that every detail of her loomed plain. She was full +cutter-rigged, spreading hundreds of feet of canvas. Every working sail +was set, and every light air cloth that could catch a puff of air. The +slanting sun rays glittered on her white paint and glossy varnish, +struck flashing on bits of polished brass. She looked her name, the +_Gull_, a thing of exceeding grace and beauty, gliding soundlessly +across a sun-shimmering sea. But she represented only a menace to the +man and woman in the fish-soiled sloop. + +The man's face darkened as he watched the distance lessen between the +two craft. He reached under a locker and drew out a rifle. The girl's +high pinkish color fled. She caught him by the arm. + +"Donald, Donald," she said breathlessly, "there's not to be any +fighting." + +"Am I to let them lay alongside, hand you aboard, and then sail back to +Maple Point, laughing at us for soft and simple fools?" he said quietly. +"They can't take you from me so easily as that. There are only three of +them aboard. I won't hurt them unless they force me to it, but I'm not +so chicken-hearted as to let them have things all their own way. +Sometimes a man _must_ fight, Bessie." + +"You don't know my father," the girl whimpered. "Nor grandpa. He's +there. I can see his white beard. They'll kill you, Donald, if you +oppose them. You mustn't do that. It is better that I should go back +quietly than that there should be blood spilled over me." + +"But I'm not intending to slaughter them," the man said soberly. "If I +warn them off and they board me like a bunch of pirates, then--then it +will be their lookout. Do you want to go back, Bessie? Are you doubtful +about your bargain already?" + +The tears started in her eyes. + +"For shame to say that," she whispered. "Lord knows I don't want to turn +back from anything that includes you, Don. But my father and grandpa +will be furious. They won't hesitate to vent their temper on you if you +oppose them. They are accustomed to respect. To have their authority +flouted rouses them to fury. And they're three to one. Put away your +gun, Donald. If we can't outsail the _Gull_ I shall have to go back +without a struggle. There will be another time. They can't change my +heart." + +"They can break your spirit though--and they will, for this," he +muttered. + +But he laid the rifle down on the locker. The girl snuggled her hand +into his. + +"You will not quarrel with them, Donald--please, no matter what they +say? Promise me that," she pleaded. "If we can't outrun them, if they +come alongside, you will not fight? I shall go back obediently. You can +send word to me by Andrew Murdock. Next time we shall not fail." + +"There will be no next time, Bessie," he said slowly. "You will never +get another chance. I know the Gowers and Mortons better than you do, +for all you're one of them. They'll make you wish you had never been +born, that you'd never seen me. I'd rather fight it out now. Isn't our +own happiness worth a blow or two?" + +"I can't bear to think what might happen if you defied them out here on +this lonely sea," she shuddered. "You must promise me, Donald." + +"I promise, then," he said with a sigh. "Only I know it's the end of our +dream, my dear. And I'm disappointed, too. I thought you had a stouter +heart, that wouldn't quail before two angry old men--and a jealous young +one. You can see, I suppose, that Horace is there, too. + +"Damn them!" he broke out passionately after a minute's silence. "It's a +free country, and you and I are not children. They chase us as if we +were pirates. For two pins I'd give them a pirate's welcome. I tell you, +Bessie, my promise to be meek and mild is not worth much if they take a +high hand with me. I can take their measure, all three of them." + +"But you must not," the girl insisted. "You've promised. We can't help +ourselves by violence. It would break my heart." + +"They'll do that fast enough, once they get you home," he answered +gloomily. + +The girl's lips quivered. She sat looking back at the cutter half a +cable astern. The westerly had failed them. The spreading canvas of the +yacht was already blanketing the little sloop, stealing what little wind +filled her sail. And as the sloop's way slackened the other slid down +upon her, a purl of water at her forefoot, her wide mainsail bellying +out in a snowy curve. + +There were three men in her. The helmsman was a patriarch, his head +showing white, a full white beard descending from his chin, a +fierce-visaged, vigorous old man. Near him stood a man of middle age, a +ruddy-faced man in whose dark blue eyes a flame burned as he eyed the +two in the sloop. The third was younger still,--a short, sturdy fellow +in flannels, tending the mainsheet with a frowning glance. + +The man in the sloop held his course. + +"Damn you, MacRae; lay to, or I'll run you down," the patriarch at the +cutter's wheel shouted, when a boat's length separated the two craft. + +MacRae's lips moved slightly, but no sound issued therefrom. Leaning on +the tiller, he let the sloop run. So for a minute the boats sailed, the +white yacht edging up on the sloop until it seemed as if her broaded-off +boom would rake and foul the other. But when at last she drew fully +abreast the two men sheeted mainsail and jib flat while the white-headed +helmsman threw her over so that the yacht drove in on the sloop and the +two younger men grappled MacRae's coaming with boat hooks, and side by +side they came slowly up into the wind. + +MacRae made no move, said nothing, only regarded the three with sober +intensity. They, for their part, wasted no breath on him. + +"Elizabeth, get in here," the girl's father commanded. + +It was only a matter of stepping over the rubbing gunwales. The girl +rose. She cast an appealing glance at MacRae. His face did not alter. +She stepped up on the guard, disdaining the hand young Gower extended to +help her, and sprang lightly into the cockpit of the _Gull_. + +"As for you, you calculating blackguard," her father addressed MacRae, +"if you ever set foot on Maple Point again, I'll have you horsewhipped +first and jailed for trespass after." + +For a second MacRae made no answer. His nostrils dilated; his blue-gray +eyes darkened till they seemed black. Then he said with a curious +hoarseness, and in a voice pitched so low it was scarcely audible: + +"Take your boat hooks out of me and be on your way." + +The older man withdrew his hook. Young Gower held on a second longer, +matching the undisguised hatred in Donald MacRae's eyes with a fury in +his own. His round, boyish face purpled. And when he withdrew the boat +hook he swung the inch-thick iron-shod pole with a swift twist of his +body and struck MacRae fairly across the face. + +MacRae went down in a heap as the _Gull_ swung away. The faint breeze +out of the west filled the cutter's sails. She stood away on a long tack +south by west, with a frightened girl cowering down in her cabin, +sobbing in grief and fear, and three men in the _Gull's_ cockpit casting +dubious glances at one another and back to the fishing sloop sailing +with no hand on her tiller. + +In an hour the _Gull_ was four miles to windward of the sloop. The +breeze had taken a sudden shift full half the compass. A southeast wind +came backing up against the westerly. There was in its breath a hint of +something stronger. + +Masterless, the sloop sailed, laid to, started off again erratically, +and after many shifts ran off before this stiffer wind. Unhelmed, she +laid her blunt bows straight for the opening between Sangster and +Squitty islands. On the cockpit floor Donald MacRae sprawled unheeding. +Blood from his broken face oozed over the boards. + +Above him the boom swung creaking and he did not hear. Out of the +southeast a bank of cloud crept up to obscure the sun. Far southward the +Gulf was darkened, and across that darkened area specks and splashes of +white began to show and disappear. The hot air grew strangely cool. The +swell that runs far before a Gulf southeaster began to roll the sloop, +abandoned to all the aimless movements of a vessel uncontrolled. She +came up into the wind and went off before it again, her sails bellying +strongly, racing as if to outrun the swells which now here and there +lifted and broke. She dropped into a hollow, a following sea slewed her +stern sharply, and she jibed,--that is, the wind caught the mainsail and +flung it violently from port to starboard. The boom swept an arc of a +hundred degrees and put her rail under when it brought up with a jerk on +the sheet. + +Ten minutes later she jibed again. This time the mainsheet parted. Only +stout, heavily ironed backstays kept mainsail and boom from being blown +straight ahead. The boom end swung outboard till it dragged in the seas +as she rolled. Only by a miracle and the stoutest of standing gear had +she escaped dismasting. Now, with the mainsail broaded off to starboard, +and the jib by some freak of wind and sea winged out to port, the sloop +drove straight before the wind, holding as true a course as if the limp +body on the cockpit floor laid an invisible, controlling hand on sheet +and tiller. + +And he, while that fair wind grew to a yachtsman's gale and lashed the +Gulf of Georgia into petty convulsions, lay where he had fallen, his +head rolling as his vessel rolled, heedless when she rose and raced on a +wave-crest or fell laboring in the trough when a wave slid out from +under her. + +The sloop had all but doubled on her course,--nearly but not +quite,--and the few points north of west that she shifted bore her +straight to destruction. + +MacRae opened his eyes at last. He was bewildered and sick. His head +swam. There was a series of stabbing pains in his lacerated face. But he +was of the sea, of that breed which survives by dint of fortitude, +endurance, stoutness of arm and quickness of wit. He clawed to his feet. +Almost before him lifted the bleak southern face of Squitty Island. +Point Old jutted out like a barrier. MacRae swung on the tiller. But the +wind had the mainsail in its teeth. Without control of that boom his +rudder could not serve him. + +And as he crawled forward to try to lower sail, or get a rope's end on +the boom, whichever would do, the sloop struck on a rock that stands +awash at half-tide, a brown hummock of granite lifting out of the sea +two hundred feet off the tip of Point Old. + +She struck with a shock that sent MacRae sprawling, arrested full in an +eight-knot stride. As she hung shuddering on the rock, impaled by a +jagged tooth, a sea lifted over her stern and swept her like a watery +broom that washed MacRae off the cabin top, off the rock itself into +deep water beyond. + +He came up gasping. The cool immersion had astonishingly revived him. He +felt a renewal of his strength, and he had been cast by luck into a +place from which it took no more than the moderate effort of an able +swimmer to reach shore. Point Old stood at an angle to the smashing +seas, making a sheltered bight behind it, and into this bight the +flooding tide set in a slow eddy. MacRae had only to keep himself +afloat. + +In five minutes his feet touched on a gravel beach. He walked dripping +out of the languid swell that ran from the turbulence outside and turned +to look back. The sloop had lodged on the rock, bilged by the ragged +granite. The mast was down, mast and sodden sails swinging at the end of +a stay as each sea swept over the rock with a hissing roar. + +MacRae climbed to higher ground. He sat down beside a stunted, leaning +fir and watched his boat go. It was soon done. A bigger sea than most +tore the battered hull loose, lifted it high, let it drop. The crack of +breaking timbers cut through the boom of the surf. The next sea swept +the rock clear, and the broken, twisted hull floated awash. Caught in +the tidal eddy it began its slow journey to join the vast accumulation +of driftwood on the beach. + +MacRae glanced along the island shore. He knew that shore slightly,--a +bald, cliffy stretch notched with rocky pockets in which the surf beat +itself into dirty foam. If he had grounded anywhere in that mile of +headland north of Point Old, his bones would have been broken like the +timbers of his sloop. + +But his eyes did not linger there nor his thoughts upon shipwreck and +sudden death. His gaze turned across the Gulf to a tongue of land +outthrusting from the long purple reach of Vancouver Island. Behind that +point lay the Morton estate, and beside the Morton boundaries, matching +them mile for mile in wealth of virgin timber and fertile meadow, spread +the Gower lands. + +His face, streaked and blotched with drying bloodstains, scarred with a +red gash that split his cheek from the hair above one ear to a corner of +his mouth, hardened into ugly lines. His eyes burned again. + +This happened many years ago, long before a harassed world had to +reckon with bourgeois and Bolshevik, when profiteer and pacifist had not +yet become words to fill the mouths of men, and not even the politicians +had thought of saving the world for democracy. Yet men and women were +strangely as they are now. A generation may change its manners, its +outward seeming; it does not change in its loving and hating, in its +fundamental passions, its inherent reactions. + +MacRae's face worked. His lips quivered as he stared across the troubled +sea. He lifted his hands in a swift gesture of appeal. + +"O God," he cried, "curse and blast them in all their ways and +enterprises if they deal with her as they have dealt with me." + + + + +CHAPTER I + +The House in Cradle Bay + + +On an afternoon in the first week of November, 1918, under a sky bank +full of murky cloud and an air freighted with a chill which threatened +untimely snow, a man came rowing up along the western side of Squitty +Island and turned into Cradle Bay, which lies under the lee of Point +Old. He was a young man, almost boyish-looking. He had on a pair of fine +tan shoes, brown overalls, a new gray mackinaw coat buttoned to his +chin. He was bareheaded. Also he wore a patch of pink celluloid over his +right eye. + +When he turned into the small half-moon bight, he let up on his oars and +drifted, staring with a touch of surprise at a white cottage-roofed +house with wide porches sitting amid an acre square of bright green lawn +on a gentle slope that ran up from a narrow beach backed by a low +sea-wall of stone where the gravel ended and the earth began. + +"Hm-m-m," he muttered. "It wasn't built yesterday, either. Funny he +never mentioned _that_." + +He pushed on the oars and the boat slid nearer shore, the man's eyes +still steadfast on the house. It stood out bold against the grass and +the deeper green of the forest behind. Back of it opened a hillside +brown with dead ferns, dotted with great solitary firs and gnarly +branched arbutus. + +No life appeared there. The chimneys were dead. Two moorings bobbed in +the bay, but there was no craft save a white rowboat hauled high above +tidewater and canted on its side. + +"I wonder, now." He spoke again. + +While he wondered and pushed his boat slowly in on the gravel, a low +_pr-r-r_ and a sibilant ripple of water caused him to look behind. A +high-bowed, shining mahogany cruiser, seventy feet or more over all, +rounded the point and headed into the bay. The smooth sea parted with a +whistling sound where her brass-shod stem split it like a knife. She +slowed down from this trainlike speed, stopped, picked up a mooring, +made fast. The swell from her rolled in, swashing heavily on the beach. + +The man in the rowboat turned his attention to the cruiser. There were +people aboard to the number of a dozen, men and women, clustered on her +flush afterdeck. He could hear the clatter of their tongues, low ripples +of laughter, through all of which ran the impatient note of a male voice +issuing peremptory orders. + +The cruiser blew her whistle repeatedly,--shrill, imperative blasts. The +man in the rowboat smiled. The air was very still. Sounds carry over +quiet water as if telephoned. He could not help hearing what was said. + +"Wise management," he observed ironically, under his breath. + +The power yacht, it seemed, had not so much as a dinghy aboard. + +A figure on the deck detached itself from the group and waved a +beckoning hand to the rowboat. + +The rower hesitated, frowning. Then he shrugged his shoulders and pulled +out and alongside. The deck crew lowered a set of steps. + +"Take a couple of us ashore, will you?" He was addressed by a short, +stout man. He was very round and pink of face, very well dressed, and by +the manner in which he spoke to the others, and the glances he cast +ashore, a person of some consequence in great impatience. + +The young man laid his rowboat against the steps. + +"Climb in," he said briefly. + +"You, Smith, come along," the round-faced one addressed a youth in tight +blue jersey and peaked cap. + +The deck boy climbed obediently down. A girl in white duck and heavy +blue sweater put her foot on the steps. + +"I think I shall go too, papa," she said. + +Her father nodded and followed her. + +The rowboat nosed in beside the end of a narrow float that ran from the +sea wall. The boy in the jersey sprang out, reached a steadying hand to +his employer. The girl stepped lightly to the planked logs. + +"Give the boy a lift on that boat to the _chuck_, will you?" the stout +person made further request, indicating the white boat bottom up on +shore. + +A queer expression gleamed momentarily in the eyes of the boatman. But +it passed. He did not speak, but made for the dinghy, followed by the +hand from the yacht. They turned the boat over, slid it down and afloat. +The sailor got in and began to ship his oars. + +The man and the girl stood by till this was done. Then the girl turned +away. The man extended his hand. + +"Thanks," he said curtly. + +The other's hand had involuntarily moved. The short, stout man dropped a +silver dollar in it, swung on his heel and followed his +daughter,--passed her, in fact, for she had only taken a step or two and +halted. + +The young fellow eyed the silver coin in his hand with an expression +that passed from astonishment to anger and broke at last into a smile of +sheer amusement. He jiggled the coin, staring at it thoughtfully. Then +he faced about on the jerseyed youth about to dip his blades. + +"Smith," he said, "I suppose if I heaved this silver dollar out into the +_chuck_ you'd think I was crazy." + +The youth only stared at him. + +"You don't object to tips, do you, Smith?" the man in the mackinaw +inquired. + +"Gee, no," the boy observed. "Ain't you got no use for money?" + +"Not this kind. You take it and buy smokes." + +He flipped the dollar into the dinghy. It fell clinking on the slatted +floor and the youth salvaged it, looked it over, put it in his pocket. + +"Gee," he said. "Any time a guy hands me money, I keep it, believe me." + +His gaze rested curiously on the man with the patch over his eye. His +familiar grin faded. He touched his cap. + +"Thank y', sir." + +He heaved on his oars. The boat slid out. The man stood watching, hands +deep in his pockets. A displeased look replaced the amused smile as his +glance rested a second on the rich man's toy of polished mahogany and +shining brass. Then he turned to look again at the house up the slope +and found the girl at his elbow. + +He did not know if she had overheard him, and he did not at the moment +care. He met her glance with one as impersonal as her own. + +"I'm afraid I must apologize for my father," she said simply. "I hope +you aren't offended. It was awfully good of you to bring us ashore." + +"That's quite all right," he answered casually. "Why should I be +offended? When a roughneck does something for you, it's proper to hand +him some of your loose change. Perfectly natural." + +"But you aren't anything of the sort," she said frankly. "I feel sure +you resent being tipped for an act of courtesy. It was very thoughtless +of papa." + +"Some people are so used to greasing their way with money that they'll +hand St. Peter a ten-dollar bill when they pass the heavenly gates," he +observed. "But it really doesn't matter. Tell me something. Whose house +is that, and how long has it been there?" + +"Ours," she answered. "Two years. We stay here a good deal in the +summer." + +"Ours, I daresay, means Horace A. Gower," he remarked. "Pardon my +curiosity, but you see I used to know this place rather well. I've been +away for some time. Things seem to have changed a bit." + +"You're just back from overseas?" she asked quickly. + +He nodded. She looked at him with livelier interest. + +"I'm no wounded hero," he forestalled the inevitable question. "I merely +happened to get a splinter of wood in one eye, so I have leave until it +gets well." + +"If you are merely on leave, why are you not in uniform?" she asked +quickly, in a puzzled tone. + +"I am," he replied shortly. "Only it is covered up with overalls and +mackinaw. Well, I must be off. Good-by, Miss Gower." + +He pushed his boat off the beach, rowed to the opposite side of the bay, +and hauled the small craft up over a log. Then he took his bag in hand +and climbed the rise that lifted to the backbone of Point Old. Halfway +up he turned to look briefly backward over beach and yacht and house, up +the veranda steps of which the girl in the blue sweater was now +climbing. + +"It's queer," he muttered. + +He went on. In another minute he was on the ridge. The Gulf opened out, +a dead dull gray. The skies were hidden behind drab clouds. The air was +clammy, cold, hushed, as if the god of storms were gathering his breath +for a great effort. + +And Jack MacRae himself, when he topped the height which gave clear +vision for many miles of shore and sea, drew a deep breath and halted +for a long look at many familiar things. + +He had been gone nearly four years. It seemed to him but yesterday that +he left. The picture was unchanged,--save for that white cottage in its +square of green. He stared at that with a doubtful expression, then his +uncovered eye came back to the long sweep of the Gulf, to the brown +cliffs spreading away in a ragged line along a kelp-strewn shore. He put +down the bag and seated himself on a mossy rock close by a stunted, +leaning fir and stared about him like a man who has come a great way to +see something and means to look his fill. + + + + +CHAPTER II + +His Own Country + + +Squitty Island lies in the Gulf of Georgia midway between a mainland +made of mountains like the Alps, the Andes, and the Himalayas all +jumbled together and all rising sheer from the sea, and the low +delta-like shore of Vancouver Island. Southward from Squitty the Gulf +runs in a thirty-mile width for nearly a hundred miles to the San Juan +islands in American waters, beyond which opens the sheltered beauty of +Puget Sound. Squitty is six miles wide and ten miles long, a blob of +granite covered with fir and cedar forest, with certain parklike patches +of open grassland on the southern end, and a hump of a mountain lifting +two thousand feet in its middle. + +The southeastern end of Squitty--barring the tide rips off Cape +Mudge--is the dirtiest place in the Gulf for small craft in blowy +weather. The surges that heave up off a hundred miles of sea tortured by +a southeast gale break thunderously against Squitty's low cliffs. These +walls face the marching breakers with a grim, unchanging front. There is +nothing hospitable in this aspect of Squitty. It is an ugly shore to +have on the lee in a blow. + +Yet it is not so forbidding as it seems. The prevailing summer winds on +the Gulf are westerly. Gales of uncommon fierceness roar out of the +northwest in fall and early winter. At such times the storms split on +Squitty Island, leaving a restful calm under those brown, kelp-fringed +cliffs. Many a small coaster has crept thankfully into that lee out of +the whitecapped turmoil on either side, to lie there through a night +that was wild outside, watching the Ballenas light twenty miles away on +a pile of bare rocks winking and blinking its warning to less fortunate +craft. Tugs, fishing boats, salmon trollers, beach-combing launches, all +that mosquito fleet which gets its bread upon the waters and learns bar, +shoal, reef, and anchorage thoroughly in the getting,--these knew that +besides the half-moon bight called Cradle Bay, upon which fronted Horace +Gower's summer home, there opened also a secure, bottle-necked cove less +than a mile northward from Point Old. + +By day a stranger could only mark the entrance by eagle watch from a +course close inshore. By night even those who knew the place as they +knew the palm of their hand had to feel their way in. But once inside, a +man could lie down in his bunk and sleep soundly, though a southeaster +whistled and moaned, and the seas roared smoking into the narrow mouth. +No ripple of that troubled the inside of Squitty Cove. It was a finger +of the sea thrust straight into the land, a finger three hundred yards +long, forty yards wide, with an entrance so narrow that a man could +heave a sounding lead across it, and that entrance so masked by a rock +about the bigness of a six-room house that one holding the channel could +touch the rock with a pike pole as he passed in. There was a mud bottom, +twenty-foot depth at low tide, and a little stream of cold fresh water +brawling in at the head. A cliff walled it on the south. A low, grassy +hill dotted with solitary firs, red-barked arbutus, and clumps of wild +cherry formed its northern boundary. And all around the mouth, in every +nook and crevice, driftwood of every size and shape lay in great heaps, +cast high above tidewater by the big storms. + +So Squitty had the three prime requisites for a harbor,--secure +anchorage, fresh water, and firewood. There was good fertile land, too, +behind the Cove,--low valleys that ran the length of the island. There +were settlers here and there, but these settlers were not the folk who +intermittently frequented Squitty Cove. The settlers stayed on their +land, battling with stumps, clearing away the ancient forest, tilling +the soil. Those to whom Squitty Cove gave soundest sleep and keenest joy +were tillers of the sea. Off Point Old a rock brown with seaweed, ringed +with a bed of kelp, lifted its ugly head now to the one good, blue-gray +eye of Jack MacRae, the same rock upon which Donald MacRae's sloop broke +her back before Jack MacRae was born. It was a sunken menace at any +stage of water, heartily cursed by the fishermen. In the years between, +the rock had acquired a name not written on the Admiralty charts. The +hydrographers would look puzzled and shake their heads if one asked +where in the Gulf waters lay Poor Man's Rock. + +But Poor Man's Rock it is. Greek and Japanese, Spaniard and Italian, +American and Canadian--and there are many of each--who follow the +silver-sided salmon when they run in the Gulf of Georgia, these know +that Poor Man's Rock lies half a cable south southwest of Point Old on +Squitty Island. Most of them know, too, why it is called Poor Man's +Rock. + +Under certain conditions of sea and sky the Rock is as lonely and +forbidding a spot as ever a ship's timbers were broken upon. Point Old +thrusts out like the stubby thumb on a clenched first. The Rock and the +outer nib of the Point are haunted by quarreling flocks of gulls and +coots and the black Siwash duck with his stumpy wings and brilliant +yellow bill. The southeaster sends endless battalions of waves rolling +up there when it blows. These rear white heads over the Rock and burst +on the Point with shuddering impact and showers of spray. When the sky +is dull and gray, and the wind whips the stunted trees on the +Point--trees that lean inland with branches all twisted to the landward +side from pressure of many gales in their growing years--and the surf is +booming out its basso harmonies, the Rock is no place for a fisherman. +Even the gulls desert it then. + +But in good weather, in the season, the blueback and spring salmon swim +in vast schools across the end of Squitty. They feed upon small fish, +baby herring, tiny darting atoms of finny life that swarm in countless +numbers. What these inch-long fishes feed upon no man knows, but they +begin to show in the Gulf early in spring. The water is alive with +them,--minute, darting streaks of silver. The salmon follow these +schools, pursuing, swallowing, eating to live. Seal and dogfish follow +the salmon. Shark and the giant blackfish follow dogfish and seal. And +man follows them all, pursuing and killing that he himself may live. + +Around Poor Man's Rock the tide sets strongly at certain stages of ebb +and flood. The cliffs north of Point Old and the area immediately +surrounding the Rock are thick strewn with kelp. In these brown patches +of seaweed the tiny fish, the schools of baby herring, take refuge from +their restless enemy, the swift and voracious salmon. + +For years Pacific Coast salmon have been taken by net and trap, to the +profit of the salmon packers and the satisfaction of those who cannot +get fish save out of tin cans. The salmon swarmed in millions on their +way to spawn in fresh-water streams. They were plentiful and cheap. But +even before the war came to send the price of linen-mesh net beyond most +fishermen's pocketbooks, men had discovered that salmon could be taken +commercially by trolling lines. The lordly spring, which attains to +seventy pounds, the small, swift blueback, and the fighting coho could +all be lured to a hook on a wobbling bit of silver or brass at the end +of a long line weighted with lead to keep it at a certain depth behind a +moving boat. From a single line over the stern it was but a logical step +to two, four, even six lines spaced on slender poles boomed out on each +side of a power launch,--once the fisherman learned that with this gear +he could take salmon in open water. So trolling was launched. Odd +trollers grew to trolling fleets. A new method became established in the +salmon industry. + +But there are places where the salmon run and a gasboat trolling her +battery of lines cannot go without loss of gear. The power boats cannot +troll in shallows. They cannot operate in kelp without fouling. So they +hold to deep open water and leave the kelp and shoals to the rowboats. + +And that is how Poor Man's Rock got its name. In the kelp that +surrounded it and the greater beds that fringed Point Old, the small +feed sought refuge from the salmon and the salmon pursued them there +among the weedy granite and the boulders, even into shallows where their +back fins cleft the surface as they dashed after the little herring. The +foul ground and the tidal currents that swept by the Rock held no danger +to the gear of a rowboat troller. He fished a single short line with a +pound or so of lead. He could stop dead in a boat length if his line +fouled. So he pursued the salmon as the salmon pursued the little fish +among the kelp and boulders. + +Only a poor man trolled in a rowboat, tugging at the oars hour after +hour without cabin shelter from wind and sun and rain, unable to face +even such weather as a thirty by eight-foot gasboat could easily fish +in, unable to follow the salmon run when it shifted from one point to +another on the Gulf. The rowboat trollers must pick a camp ashore by a +likely ground and stay there. If the salmon left they could only wait +till another run began. Whereas the power boat could hear of schooling +salmon forty miles away and be on the spot in seven hours' steaming. + +Poor Man's Rock had given many a man his chance. Nearly always salmon +could be taken there by a rowboat. And because for many years old men, +men with lean purses, men with a rowboat, a few dollars, and a hunger +for independence, had camped in Squitty Cove and fished the Squitty +headlands and seldom failed to take salmon around the Rock, the name had +clung to that brown hummock of granite lifting out of the sea at half +tide. From April to November, any day a rowboat could live outside the +Cove, there would be half a dozen, eight, ten, more or less, of these +solitary rowers bending to their oars, circling the Rock. + +Now and again one of these would hastily drop his oars, stand up, and +haul in his line hand over hand. There would be a splashing and +splattering on the surface, a bright silver fish leaping and threshing +the water, to land at last with a plop! in the boat. Whereupon the +fisherman would hurriedly strike this dynamic, glistening fish over the +head with a short, thick club, lest his struggles snarl the line, after +which he would put out his spoon and bend to the oars again. It was a +daylight and dusk job, a matter of infinite patience and hard work, cold +and wet at times, and in midsummer the blaze of a scorching sun and the +eye-dazzling glitter of reflected light. + +But a man must live. Some who came to the Cove trolled long and +skillfully, and were lucky enough to gain a power troller in the end, to +live on beans and fish, and keep a strangle hold on every dollar that +came in until with a cabin boat powered with gas they joined the +trolling fleet and became nomads. They fared well enough then. Their +taking at once grew beyond a rowboat's scope. They could see new +country, hearken to the lure of distant fishing grounds. There was the +sport of gambling on wind and weather, on the price of fish or the +number of the catch. If one locality displeased them they could shift to +another, while the rowboat men were chained perforce to the monotony of +the same camp, the same cliffs, the same old weary round. + +Sometimes Squitty Cove harbored thirty or forty of these power trollers. +They would make their night anchorage there while the trolling held +good, filling the Cove with talk and laughter and a fine sprinkle of +lights when dark closed in. With failing catches, or the first breath of +a southeaster that would lock them in the Cove while it blew, they would +be up and away,--to the top end of Squitty, to Yellow Rock, to Cape +Lazo, anywhere that salmon might be found. + +And the rowboat men would lie in their tents and split-cedar lean-tos, +cursing the weather, the salmon that would not bite, grumbling at their +lot. + +There were two or three rowboat men who had fished the Cove almost since +Jack MacRae could remember,--old men, fishermen who had shot their +bolt, who dwelt in small cabins by the Cove, living somehow from salmon +run to salmon run, content if the season's catch netted three hundred +dollars. All they could hope for was a living. They had become fixtures +there. + +Jack MacRae looked down from the bald tip of Point Old with an eager +gleam in his uncovered eye. There was the Rock with a slow swell lapping +over it. There was an old withered Portuguese he knew in a green dugout, +Long Tom Spence rowing behind the Portuguese, and they carrying on a +shouted conversation. He picked out Doug Sproul among three others he +did not know,--and there was not a man under fifty among them. + +Three hundred yards offshore half a dozen power trollers wheeled and +counterwheeled, working an eddy. He could see them haul the lines hand +over hand, casting the hooked fish up into the hold with an easy swing. +The salmon were biting. + +It was all familiar to Jack MacRae. He knew every nook and cranny on +Squitty Island, every phase and mood and color of the sea. It is a grim +birthplace that leaves a man without some sentiment for the place where +he was born. Point Old, Squitty Cove, Poor Man's Rock had been the +boundaries of his world for a long time. In so far as he had ever +played, he had played there. + +He looked for another familiar figure or two, without noting them. + +"The fish are biting fast for this time of year," he reflected. "It's a +wonder dad and Peter Ferrara aren't out. And I never knew Bill Munro to +miss anything like this." + +He looked a little longer, over across the tip of Sangster Island two +miles westward, with its Elephant's Head,--the extended trunk of which +was a treacherous reef bared only at low tide. He looked at the +Elephant's unwinking eye, which was a twenty-foot hole through a hump of +sandstone, and smiled. He had fished for salmon along the kelp beds +there and dug clams under the eye of the Elephant long, long ago. It did +seem a long time ago that he had been a youngster in overalls, +adventuring alone in a dugout about these bold headlands. + +He rose at last. The November wind chilled him through the heavy +mackinaw. He looked back at the Gower cottage, like a snowflake in a +setting of emerald; he looked at the Gower yacht; and the puzzled frown +returned to his face. + +Then he picked up his bag and walked rapidly along the brow of the +cliffs toward Squitty Cove. + + + + +CHAPTER III + +The Flutter of Sable Wings + + +A path took form on the mossy rock as Jack MacRae strode on. He followed +this over patches of grass, by lone firs and small thickets, until it +brought him out on the rim of the Cove. He stood a second on the cliffy +north wall to look down on the quiet harbor. It was bare of craft, save +that upon the beach two or three rowboats lay hauled out. On the farther +side a low, rambling house of logs showed behind a clump of firs. Smoke +lifted from its stone chimney. + +MacRae smiled reminiscently at this and moved on. His objective lay at +the Cove's head, on the little creek which came whispering down from the +high land behind. He gained this in another two hundred yards, coming to +a square house built, like its neighbor, of stout logs with a +high-pitched roof, a patch of ragged grass in front, and a picket-fenced +area at the back in which stood apple trees and cherry and plum, +gaunt-limbed trees all bare of leaf and fruit. Ivy wound up the corners +of the house. Sturdy rosebushes stood before it, and the dead vines of +sweet peas bleached on their trellises. + +It had the look of an old place--as age is reckoned in so new a +country--old and bearing the marks of many years' labor bestowed to make +it what it was. Even from a distance it bore a homelike air. MacRae's +face lightened at the sight. His step quickened. He had come a long way +to get home. + +Across the front of the house extended a wide porch which gave a look at +the Cove through a thin screen of maple and alder. From the +grass-bordered walk of beach gravel half a dozen steps lifted to the +floor level. As MacRae set foot on the lower step a girl came out on the +porch. + +MacRae stopped. The girl did not see him. Her eyes were fixed +questioningly on the sea that stretched away beyond the narrow mouth of +the Cove. As she looked she drew one hand wearily across her forehead, +tucking back a vagrant strand of dusky hair. MacRae watched her a +moment. The quick, pleased smile that leaped to his face faded to +soberness. + +"Hello, Dolly," he said softly. + +She started. Her dark eyes turned to him, and an inexpressible relief +glowed in them. She held up one hand in a gesture that warned +silence,--and by that time MacRae had come up the steps to her side and +seized both her hands in his. She looked at him speechlessly, a curious +passivity in her attitude. He saw that her eyes were wet. + +"What's wrong, Dolly?" he asked. "Aren't you glad to see Johnny come +marching home? Where's dad?" + +"Glad?" she echoed. "I never was so glad to see any one in my life. Oh, +Johnny MacRae, I wish you'd come sooner. Your father's a sick man. We've +done our best, but I'm afraid it's not good enough." + +"He's in bed, I suppose," said MacRae. "Well, I'll go in and see him. +Maybe it'll cheer the old boy up to see me back." + +"He won't know you," the girl murmured. "You mustn't disturb him just +now, anyway. He has fallen into a doze. When he comes out of that he'll +likely be delirious." + +"Good Lord," MacRae whispered, "as bad as that! What is it?" + +"The flu," Dolly said quietly. "Everybody has been having it. Old Bill +Munro died in his shack a week ago." + +"Has dad had a doctor?" + +The girl nodded. + +"Harper from Nanaimo came day before yesterday. He left medicine and +directions; he can't come again. He has more cases than he can handle +over there." + +They went through the front door into a big, rudely furnished room with +a very old and worn rug on the floor, a few pieces of heavy furniture, +and bare, uncurtained windows. A heap of wood blazed in an open +cobblestone fireplace. + +MacRae stopped short just within the threshold. Through a door slightly +ajar came the sound of stertorous breathing, intermittent in its volume, +now barely audible, again rising to a labored harshness. He listened, a +look of dismayed concern gathering on his face. He had heard men in the +last stages of exhaustion from wounds and disease breathe in that +horribly distressed fashion. + +He stood a while uncertainly. Then he laid off his mackinaw, walked +softly to the bedroom door, looked in. After a minute of silent watching +he drew back. The girl had seated herself in a chair. MacRae sat down +facing her. + +"I never saw dad so thin and old-looking," he muttered. "Why, his hair +is nearly white. He's a wreck. How long has he been sick?" + +"Four days," Dolly answered. "But he hasn't grown old and thin in four +days, Jack. He's been going downhill for months. Too much work. Too much +worry also, I think--out there around the Rock every morning at +daylight, every evening till dark. It hasn't been a good season for the +rowboats." + +MacRae stirred uneasily in his chair. He didn't understand why his +father should have to drudge in a trolling boat. They had always fished +salmon, so far back as he could recall, but never of stark necessity. He +nursed his chin in his hand and thought. Mostly he thought with a +constricted feeling in his throat of how frail and old his father had +grown, the slow-smiling, slow-speaking man who had been father and +mother and chum to him since he was an urchin in knee breeches. He +recalled him at their parting on a Vancouver railway platform,--tall and +rugged, a lean, muscular, middle-aged man, bidding his son a restrained +farewell with a longing look in his eyes. Now he was a wasted shadow. +Jack MacRae shivered. He seemed to hear the sable angel's wing-beats +over the house. + +He looked up at the girl at last. + +"You're worn out, aren't you, Dolly?" he said. "Have you been caring for +him alone?" + +"Uncle Peter helped," she answered. "But I've stayed up and worried, and +I am tired, of course. It isn't a very cheerful home-coming, is it, +Jack? And he was so pleased when he got your cable from London. Poor old +man!" + +MacRae got up suddenly. But the clatter of his shoes on the floor +recalled him to himself. He sat down again. + +"I've got to do something," he asserted. + +"There's nothing you can do," Dolly Ferrara said wistfully. "He can't +be moved. You can't get a doctor or a nurse. The country's full of +people down with the flu. There's only one chance and I've taken that. I +wrote a message to Doctor Laidlaw--you remember he used to come here +every summer to fish--and Uncle Peter went across to Sechelt to wire it. +I think he'll come if he can, or send some one, don't you? They were +such good friends." + +"That was a good idea," MacRae nodded. "Laidlaw will certainly come if +it's possible." + +"And I can keep cool cloths on his head and feed him broth and give him +the stuff Doctor Harper left. He said it depended mostly on his own +resisting power. If he could throw it off he would. If not--" + +She turned her palms out expressively. + +"How did you come?" she asked presently. + +"Across from Qualicum in a fish carrier to Folly Bay. I borrowed a boat +at the Bay and rowed up." + +"You must be hungry," she said. "I'll get you something to eat." + +"I don't feel much like eating,"--MacRae followed her into the +kitchen--"but I can drink a cup of tea." + +He sat on a corner of the kitchen table while she busied herself with +the kettle and teapot, marveling that in four years everything should +apparently remain the same and still suffer such grievous change. There +was an air of forlornness about the house which hurt him. The place had +run down, as the sands of his father's life were running down. Of the +things unchanged the girl he watched was one. Yet as he looked with +keener appraisal, he saw that Dolly Ferrara too had changed. + +Her dusky cloud of hair was as of old; her wide, dark eyes still +mirrored faithfully every shift of feeling, and her incomparable creamy +skin was more beautiful than ever. Moving, she had lost none of her +lithe grace. And though she had met him as if it had been only yesterday +they parted, still there was a difference which somehow eluded him. He +could feel it, but it was not to be defined. It struck him for the first +time that many who had never seen a battlefield, never heard a screaming +shell, nor shuddered at the agony of a dressing station, might still +have suffered by and of and through the reactions of war. + +They drank their tea and ate a slice of toast in silence. MacRae's +comrades in France had called him "Silent" John, because of his lapses +into concentrated thought, his habit of a close mouth when he was hurt +or troubled or uncertain. One of the things for which he had liked Dolly +Ferrara had been her possession of the same trait, uncommon in a girl. +She could sit on the cliffs or lie with him in a rowboat lifting and +falling in the Gulf swell, staring at the sea and the sky and the +wheeling gulls, dreaming and keeping her dreams shyly to herself,--as he +did. They did not always need words for understanding. And so they did +not talk now for the sake of talking, pour out words lest silence bring +embarrassment. Dolly sat resting her chin in one hand, looking at him +impersonally, yet critically, he felt. He smoked a cigarette and held +his peace until the labored breathing of the sick man changed to +disjointed, muttering, incoherent fragments of speech. + +Dolly went to him at once. MacRae lingered to divest himself of the +brown overalls so that he stood forth in his uniform, the R.A.F. uniform +with the two black wings joined to a circle on his left breast and below +that the multicolored ribbon of a decoration. Then he went in to his +father. + +Donald MacRae was far gone. His son needed no M.D. to tell him that. He +burned with a high fever which had consumed his flesh and strength in +its furnace. His eyes gleamed unnaturally, with no light of recognition +for either his son or Dolly Ferrara. And there was a peculiar tinge to +the old man's lips that chilled young MacRae, the mark of the Spanish +flu in its deadliest manifestation. It made him ache to see that gray +head shift from side to side, to listen to the incoherent babble, to +mark the feeble shiftings of the nervous hands. + +For a terrible half hour he endured the sight of his father struggling +for breath, being racked by spasms of coughing. Then the reaction came +and the sick man slept,--not a healthy, restful sleep; it was more like +the dying stupor of exhaustion. Young MacRae knew that. + +He knew with disturbing certainty that without skilled +treatment--perhaps even in spite of that--his father's life was a matter +of hours. Again he and Dolly Ferrara tiptoed out to the room where the +fire glowed on the hearth. MacRae sat thinking. Dusk was coming on, the +long twilight shortened by the overcast sky. MacRae glowered at the +fire. The girl watched him expectantly. + +"I have an idea," he said at last. "It's worth trying." + +He opened his bag and, taking out the wedge-shaped cap of the birdmen, +set it on his head and went out. He took the same path he had followed +home. On top of the cliff he stopped to look down on Squitty Cove. In a +camp or two ashore the supper fires of the rowboat trollers were +burning. Through the narrow entrance the gasboats were chugging in to +anchorage, one close upon the heels of another. + +MacRae considered the power trollers. He shook his head. + +"Too slow," he muttered. "Too small. No place to lay him only a doghouse +cabin and a fish hold." + +He strode away along the cliffs. It was dark now. But he had ranged all +that end of Squitty in daylight and dark, in sun and storm, for years, +and the old instinctive sense of direction, of location, had not +deserted him. In a little while he came out abreast of Cradle Bay. The +Gower house, all brightly gleaming windows, loomed near. He struck down +through the dead fern, over the unfenced lawn. + +Halfway across that he stopped. A piano broke out loudly. Figures +flittered by the windows, gliding, turning. MacRae hesitated. He had +come reluctantly, driven by his father's great need, uneasily conscious +that Donald MacRae, had he been cognizant, would have forbidden harshly +the request his son had come to make. Jack MacRae had the feeling that +his father would rather die than have him ask anything of Horace Gower. + +He did not know why. He had never been told why. All he knew was that +his father would have nothing to do with Gower, never mentioned the name +voluntarily, let his catch of salmon rot on the beach before he would +sell to a Gower cannery boat,--and had enjoined upon his son the same +aloofness from all things Gower. Once, in answer to young Jack's curious +question, his natural "why," Donald MacRae had said: + +"I knew the man long before you were born, Johnny. I don't like him. I +despise him. Neither I nor any of mine shall ever truck and traffic with +him and his. When you are a man and can understand, I shall tell you +more of this." + +But he had never told. It had never been a mooted point. Jack MacRae +knew Horace Gower only as a short, stout, elderly man of wealth and +consequence, a power in the salmon trade. He knew a little more of the +Gower clan now than he did before the war. MacRae had gone overseas with +the Seventh Battalion. His company commander had been Horace Gower's +son. Certain aspects of that young man had not heightened MacRae's +esteem for the Gower family. Moreover, he resented this elaborate summer +home of Gower's standing on land he had always known to be theirs, the +MacRaes'. That puzzled him, as well as affronted his sense of ownership. + +But these things, he told himself, were for the moment beside the point. +He felt his father's life trembling in the balance. He wanted to see +affectionate, prideful recognition light up those gray-blue eyes again, +even if briefly. He had come six thousand miles to cheer the old man +with a sight of his son, a son who had been a credit to him. And he was +willing to pocket pride, to call for help from the last source he would +have chosen, if that would avail. + +He crossed the lawn, waited a few seconds till the piano ceased its +syncopated frenzy and the dancers stopped. + +Betty Gower herself opened at his knock. + +"Is Mr. Gower here?" he asked. + +"Yes. Won't you come in?" she asked courteously. + +The door opened direct into a great living room, from the oak floor of +which the rugs had been rolled aside for dancing. As MacRae came in out +of the murk along the cliffs, his one good eye was dazzled at first. +Presently he made out a dozen or more persons in the room,--young people +nearly all. They were standing and sitting about. One or two were in +khaki--officers. There seemed to be an abrupt cessation of chatter and +laughing at his entrance. It did not occur to him at once that these +people might be avidly curious about a strange young man in the uniform +of the Flying Corps. He apprehended that curiosity, though, politely +veiled as it was. In the same glance he became aware of a middle-aged +woman sitting on a couch by the fire. Her hair was pure white, +elaborately arranged, her eyes were a pale blue, her skin very delicate +and clear. Her face somehow reminded Jack MacRae of a faded rose leaf. + +In a deep armchair near her sat Horace Gower. A young man, a very young +man, in evening clothes, holding a long cigarette daintily in his +fingers, stood by Gower. + +MacRae followed Betty Gower across the room to her father. She turned. +Her quick eyes had picked out the insignia of rank on MacRae's uniform. + +"Papa," she said. "Captain--" she hesitated. + +"MacRae," he supplied. + +"Captain MacRae wishes to see you." + +MacRae wished no conventionalities. He did not want to be introduced, to +be shaken by the hand, to have Gower play host. He forestalled all this, +if indeed it threatened. + +"I have just arrived home on leave," he said briefly. "I find my father +desperately ill in our house at the Cove. You have a very fast and able +cruiser. Would you care to put her at my disposal so that I may take my +father to Vancouver? I think that is his only chance." + +Gower had risen. He was not an imposing man. At his first glimpse of +MacRae's face, the pink-patched eye, the uniform, he flushed +slightly,--recalling that afternoon. + +"I'm sorry," he said. "You'd be welcome to the _Arrow_ if she were here. +But I sent her to Nanaimo an hour after she landed us. Are you Donald +MacRae's boy?" + +"Yes," MacRae said. "Thank you. That's all." + +He had said his say and got his answer. He turned to go. Betty Gower put +a detaining hand on his arm. + +"Listen," she put in eagerly. "Is there anything any of us could do to +help? Nursing or--or anything?" + +MacRae shook his head. + +"There is a girl with him," he answered. "Nothing but skilled medical +aid would help him at this stage. He has the flu, and the fever is +burning his life out." + +"The flu, did you say?" The young man with the long cigarette lost his +bored air. "Hang it, it isn't very sporting, is it, to expose us--these +ladies--to the infection? I'll say it isn't." + +Jack MacRae fixed the young man--and he was not, after all, much younger +than MacRae--with a steady stare in which a smoldering fire glowed. He +bestowed a scrutiny while one might count five, under which the other's +gaze began to shift uneasily. A constrained silence fell in the room. + +"I would suggest that you learn how to put on a gas mask," MacRae said +coldly, at last. + +Then he walked out. Betty Gower followed him to the door, but he had +asked his question and there was nothing to wait for. He did not even +look back until he reached the cliff. He did not care if they thought +him rude, ill-bred. Then, as he reached the cliff, the joyous jazz broke +out again and shadows of dancing couples flitted by the windows. MacRae +looked once and went on, moody because chance had decreed that he should +fail. + + * * * * * + +When a ruddy dawn broke through the gray cloud battalions Jack MacRae +sat on a chair before the fireplace in the front room, his elbows on his +knees, his chin in his cupped palms. He had been sitting like that for +two hours. The fir logs had wasted away to a pile of white ash spotted +with dying coals. MacRae sat heedless that the room was growing cold. + +He did not even lift his head at the sound of heavy footsteps on the +porch. He did not move until a voice at the door spoke his name in +accents of surprise. + +"Is that you, yourself, Johnny MacRae?" + +The voice was deep and husky and kind, and it was not native to Squitty +Cove. MacRae lifted his head to see his father's friend and his own, +Doctor Laidlaw, physician and fisherman, bulking large. And beyond the +doctor he saw a big white launch at anchor inside the Cove. + +"Yes," MacRae said. + +"How's your father?" Laidlaw asked. "That wire worried me. I made the +best time I could." + +"He's dead," MacRae answered evenly. "He died at midnight." + + + + +CHAPTER IV + +Inheritance + + +On a morning four days later Jack MacRae sat staring into the coals on +the hearth. It was all over and done with, the house empty and still, +Dolly Ferrara gone back to her uncle's home. Even the Cove was bare of +fishing craft. He was alone under his own rooftree, alone with an +oppressive silence and his own thoughts. + +These were not particularly pleasant thoughts. There was nothing mawkish +about Jack MacRae. He had never been taught to shrink from the +inescapable facts of existence. Even if he had, the war would have cured +him of that weakness. As it was, twelve months in the infantry, nearly +three years in the air, had taught him that death is a commonplace after +a man sees about so much of it, that it is many times a welcome relief +from suffering either of the body or the spirit. He chose to believe +that it had proved so to his father. So his feelings were not that +strange mixture of grief and protest which seizes upon those to whom +death is the ultimate tragedy, the irrevocable disaster, when it falls +upon some one near and dear. + +No, Jack MacRae, brooding by his fire, was lonely and saddened and +heavy-hearted. But beneath these neutral phases there was slowly +gathering a flood of feeling unrelated to his father's death, more +directly based indeed upon Donald MacRae's life, upon matters but now +revealed to him, which had their root in that misty period when his +father was a young man like himself. + +On the table beside him lay an inch-thick pile of note paper all closely +written upon in the clear, small pen-script of his father. + + My son: [MacRae had written] I have a feeling lately that I may + never see you again. Not that I fear you will be killed. I no + longer have that fear. I seem to have an unaccountable assurance + that having come through so much you will go on safely to the + end. But I'm not so sure about myself. I'm aging too fast. I've + been told my heart is bad. And I've lost heart lately. Things + have gone against me. There is nothing new in that. For thirty + years I've been losing out to a greater or less extent in most + of the things I undertook--that is, the important things. + + Perhaps I didn't bring the energy and feverish ambition I might + have to my undertakings. Until you began to grow up I accepted + things more or less passively as I found them. + + Until you have a son of your own, until you observe closely + other men and their sons, my boy, you will scarcely realize how + close we two have been to each other. We've been what they call + good chums. I've taken a secret pride in seeing you grow and + develop into a man. And while I tried to give you an + education--broken into, alas, by this unending war--such as + would enable you to hold your own in a world which deals harshly + with the ignorant, the incompetent, the untrained, it was also + my hope to pass on to you something of material value. + + This land which runs across Squitty Island from the Cove to + Cradle Bay and extending a mile back--in all a trifle over six + hundred acres--was to be your inheritance. You were born here. I + know that no other place means quite so much to you as this old + log house with the meadow behind it, and the woods, and the sea + grumbling always at our doorstep. Long ago this place came into + my hands at little more cost than the taking. It has proved a + refuge to me, a stronghold against all comers, against all + misfortune. I have spent much labor on it, and most of it has + been a labor of love. It has begun to grow valuable. In years to + come it will be of far greater value. I had hoped to pass it on + to you intact, unencumbered, an inheritance of some worth. Land, + you will eventually discover, Johnny, is the basis of + everything. A man may make a fortune in industry, in the market. + He turns to land for permanence, stability. All that is sterling + in our civilization has its foundation in the soil. + + Out of this land of ours, which I have partially and + half-heartedly reclaimed from the wilderness, you should derive + a comfortable livelihood, and your children after you. + + But I am afraid I must forego that dream and you, my son, your + inheritance. It has slipped away from me. How this has come + about I wish to make clear to you, so that you will not feel + unkindly toward me that you must face the world with no + resources beyond your own brain and a sound young body. If it + happens that the war ends soon and you come home while I am + still alive to welcome you, we can talk this over man to man. + But, as I said, my heart is bad. I may not be here. So I am + writing all this for you to read. There are many things which + you should know--or at least which I should like you to know. + + Thirty years ago-- + +Donald MacRae's real communication to his son began at that point in the +long ago when the _Gull_ outsailed his sloop and young Horace Gower, +smarting with jealousy, struck that savage blow with a pike pole at a +man whose fighting hands were tied by a promise. Bit by bit, incident +by incident, old Donald traced out of a full heart and bitter memories +all the passing years for his son to see and understand. He made +Elizabeth Morton, the Morton family, Horace Gower and the Gower kin +stand out in bold relief. He told how he, Donald MacRae, a nobody from +nowhere, for all they knew, adventuring upon the Pacific Coast, questing +carelessly after fortune, had fallen in love with this girl whose +family, with less consideration for her feelings and desires than for +mutual advantages of land and money and power, favored young Gower and +saw nothing but impudent presumption in MacRae. + +Young Jack sat staring into the coals, seeing much, understanding more. +It was all there in those written pages, a powerful spur to a vivid +imagination. + +No MacRae had ever lain down unwhipped. Nor had Donald MacRae, his +father. Before his bruised face had healed--and young Jack remembered +well the thin white scar that crossed his father's cheek bone--Donald +MacRae was again pursuing his heart's desire. But he was forestalled +there. He had truly said to Elizabeth Morton that she would never have +another chance. By force or persuasion or whatsoever means were +necessary they had married her out of hand to Horace Gower. + +"That must have been she sitting on the couch," Jack MacRae whispered to +himself, "that middle-aged woman with the faded rose-leaf face. Lord, +Lord, how things get twisted!" + +Though they so closed the avenue to a mesalliance, still their pride +must have smarted because of that clandestine affection, that boldly +attempted elopement. Most of all, young Gower must have hated +MacRae--with almost the same jealous intensity that Donald MacRae must +for a time have hated him--because Gower apparently never forgot and +never forgave. Long after Donald MacRae outgrew that passion Gower had +continued secretly to harass him. Certain things could not be otherwise +accounted for, Donald MacRae wrote to his son. Gower functioned in the +salmon trade, in timber, in politics. In whatever MacRae set on foot, he +ultimately discerned the hand of Gower, implacable, hidden, striking at +him from under cover. + +And so in a land and during a period when men created fortunes easily +out of nothing, or walked carelessly over golden opportunities, Donald +MacRae got him no great store of worldly goods, whereas Horace Gower, +after one venture in which he speedily dissipated an inherited fortune, +drove straight to successful outcome in everything he touched. By the +time young Jack MacRae outgrew the Island teachers and must go to +Vancouver for high school and then to the University of British +Columbia, old Donald had been compelled to borrow money on his land to +meet these expenses. + +Young Jack, sitting by the fire, winced when he thought of that. He had +taken things for granted. The war had come in his second year at the +university,--and he had gone to the front as a matter of course. + +Failing fish prices, poor seasons, other minor disasters had +followed,--and always in the background, as old Donald saw it, the Gower +influence, malign, vindictive, harboring that ancient grudge. + +Whereas in the beginning MacRae had confidently expected by one resource +and another to meet easily the obligation he had incurred, the end of it +was the loss, during the second year of the war, of all the MacRae +lands on Squitty,--all but a rocky corner of a few acres which included +the house and garden. Old Donald had segregated that from his holdings +when he pledged the land, as a matter of sentiment, not of value. All +the rest--acres of pasture, cleared and grassed, stretches of fertile +ground, blocks of noble timber still uncut--had passed through the hands +of mortgage holders, through bank transfers, by devious and tortuous +ways, until the title rested in Horace Gower,--who had promptly built +the showy summer house on Cradle Bay to flaunt in his face, so old +Donald believed and told his son. + +It was a curious document, and it made a profound impression on Jack +MacRae. He passed over the underlying motive, a man justifying himself +to his son for a failure which needed no justifying. He saw now why his +father tabooed all things Gower, why indeed he must have hated Gower as +a man who does things in the open hates an enemy who strikes only from +cover. + +Strangely enough, Jack managed to grasp the full measure of what his +father's love for Elizabeth Morton must have been without resenting the +secondary part his mother must have played. For old Donald was frank in +his story. He made it clear that he had loved Bessie Morton with an +all-consuming passion, and that when this burned itself out he had never +experienced so headlong an affection again. He spoke with kindly regard +for his wife, but she played little or no part in his account. And Jack +had only a faint memory of his mother, for she had died when he was +seven. His father filled his eyes. His father's enemies were his. Family +ties superimposed on clan clannishness, which is the blood heritage of +the Highland Scotch, made it impossible for him to feel otherwise. That +blow with a pike pole was a blow directed at his own face. He took up +his father's feud instinctively, not even stopping to consider whether +that was his father's wish or intent. + +He got up out of his chair at last and went outside, down to where the +Cove waters, on a rising tide, lapped at the front of a rude shed. Under +this shed, secure on a row of keel-blocks, rested a small +knockabout-rigged boat, stowed away from wind and weather, her single +mast, boom, and gaff unshipped and slung to rafters, her sail and +running gear folded and coiled and hung beyond the wood-rats' teeth. +Beside this sailing craft lay a long blue dugout, also on blocks, half +filled with water to keep it from checking. + +These things belonged to him. He had left them lying about when he went +away to France. And old Donald had put them here safely against his +return. Jack stared at them, blinking. He was full of a dumb protest. It +didn't seem right. Nothing seemed right. In young MacRae's mind there +was nothing terrible about death. He had become used to that. But he had +imagination. He could see his father going on day after day, month after +month, year after year, enduring, uncomplaining. Gauged by what his +father had written, by what Dolly Ferrara had supplied when he +questioned her, these last months must have been gray indeed. And he had +died without hope or comfort or a sight of his son. + +That was what made young MacRae blink and struggle with a lump in his +throat. It hurt. + +He walked away around the end of the Cove without definite objective. He +was suddenly restless, seeking relief in movement. Sitting still and +thinking had become unbearable. He found himself on the path that ran +along the cliffs and followed that, coming out at last on the neck of +Point Old where he could look down on the broken water that marked Poor +Man's Rock. + +The lowering cloud bank of his home-coming day had broken in heavy rain. +That had poured itself out and given place to a southeaster. The wind +was gone now, the clouds breaking up into white drifting patches with +bits of blue showing between, and the sun striking through in yellow +shafts which lay glittering areas here and there on the Gulf. The swell +that runs after a blow still thundered all along the southeast face of +Squitty, bursting _boom_--_boom_--_boom_ against the cliffs, shooting +spray in white cascades. Over the Rock the sea boiled. + +There were two rowboats trolling outside the heavy backwash from the +cliffs. MacRae knew them both. Peter Ferrara was in one, Long Tom Spence +in the other. They did not ride those gray-green ridges for pleasure, +nor drop sidling into those deep watery hollows for joy of motion. They +were out for fish, which meant to them food and clothing. That was their +work. + +They were the only fisher folk abroad that morning. The gasboat men had +flitted to more sheltered grounds. MacRae watched these two lift and +fall in the marching swells. It was cold. Winter sharpened his teeth +already. The rowers bent to their oars, tossing and lurching. MacRae +reflected upon their industry. In France he had eaten canned salmon +bearing the Folly Bay label, salmon that might have been taken here by +the Rock, perhaps by the hands of these very men, by his own father. +Still, that was unlikely. Donald MacRae had never sold a fish to a Gower +collector. Nor would he himself, young MacRae swore under his breath, +looking sullenly down upon the Rock. + +Day after day, month after month, his father had tugged at the oars, +hauled on the line, rowing around and around Poor Man's Rock, skirting +the kelp at the cliff's foot, keeping body and soul together with +unremitting labor in sun and wind and rain, trying to live and save that +little heritage of land for his son. + +Jack MacRae sat down on a rock beside a bush and thought about this +sadly. He could have saved his father much if he had known. He could +have assigned his pay. There was a government allowance. He could have +invoked the War Relief Act against foreclosure. Between them they could +have managed. But he understood quite clearly why his father made no +mention of his difficulties. He would have done the same under the same +circumstances himself, played the game to its bitter end without a cry. + +But Donald MacRae had made a long, hard fight only to lose in the end, +and his son, with full knowledge of the loneliness and discouragement +and final hopelessness that had been his father's lot, was passing +slowly from sadness to a cumulative anger. That cottage amid its green +grounds bright in a patch of sunshine did not help to soften him. It +stood on land reclaimed from the forest by his father's labor. It should +have belonged to him, and it had passed into hands that already grasped +too much. For thirty years Gower had made silent war on Donald MacRae +because of a woman. It seemed incredible that a grudge born of jealousy +should run so deep, endure so long. But there were the facts. Jack +MacRae accepted them; he could not do otherwise. He came of a breed +which has handed its feuds from generation to generation, interpreting +literally the code of an eye for an eye. + +So that as he sat there brooding, it was perhaps a little unfortunate +that the daughter of a man whom he was beginning to regard as a +forthright enemy should have chosen to come to him, tripping soundlessly +over the moss. + +He did not hear Betty Gower until she was beside him. Her foot clicked +on a stone and he looked up. Betty was all in white, a glow in her +cheeks and in her eyes, bareheaded, her reddish-brown hair shining in a +smooth roll above her ears. + +"I hear you have lost your father," she said simply. "I'm awfully +sorry." + +Some peculiar quality of sympathy in her tone touched MacRae deeply. His +eyes shifted for a moment to the uneasy sea. The lump in his throat +troubled him again. Then he faced her again. + +"Thanks," he said slowly. "I dare say you mean it, although I don't know +why you should. But I'd rather not talk about that. It's done." + +"I suppose that's the best way," she agreed, although she gave him a +doubtful sort of glance, as if she scarcely knew how to take part of +what he said. "Isn't it lovely after the storm? Pretty much all the +civilized world must feel a sort of brightness and sunshine to-day, I +imagine." + +"Why?" he asked. It seemed to him a most uncalled-for optimism. + +"Why, haven't you heard that the war is over?" she smiled. "Surely some +one has told you?" + +He shook his head. + +"It is a fact," she declared. "The armistice was signed yesterday at +eleven. Aren't you glad?" + +MacRae reflected a second. A week earlier he would have thrown up his +cap and whooped. Now the tremendously important happening left him +unmoved, unbelievably indifferent. He was not stirred at all by the +fact of acknowledged victory, of cessation from killing. + +"I should be, I suppose," he muttered. "I know a lot of fellows will +be--and their people. So far as I'm concerned--right now--" + +He made a quick gesture with his hands. He couldn't explain how he +felt--that the war had suddenly and imperiously been relegated to the +background for him. Temporarily or otherwise, as a spur to his emotions, +the war had ceased to function. He didn't want to talk. He wanted to be +let alone, to think. + +Yet he was conscious of a wish not to offend, to be courteous to this +clear-eyed young woman who looked at him with frank interest. He +wondered why he should be of any interest to her. MacRae had never been +shy. Shyness is nearly always born of acute self-consciousness. Being +free from that awkward inturning of the mind Jack MacRae was not +thoroughly aware of himself as a likable figure in any girl's sight. +Four years overseas had set a mark on many such as himself. A man cannot +live through manifold chances of death, face great perils, do his work +under desperate risks and survive, without some trace of his deeds being +manifest in his bearing. Those tried by fire are sure of themselves, and +it shows in their eyes. Besides, Jack MacRae was twenty-four, +clear-skinned, vigorous, straight as a young fir tree, a handsome boy in +uniform. But he was not quick to apprehend that these things stirred a +girl's fancy, nor did he know that the gloomy something which clouded +his eyes made Betty Gower want to comfort him. + +"I think I understand," she said evenly,--when in truth she did not +understand at all. "But after a while you'll be glad. I know I should be +if I were in the army, although of course no matter how horrible it all +was it had to be done. For a long time I wanted to go to France myself, +to do _something_. I was simply wild to go. But they wouldn't let me." + +"And I," MacRae said slowly, "didn't want to go at all--and I had to +go." + +"Oh," she remarked with a peculiar interrogative inflection. Her +eyebrows lifted. "Why did you have to? You went over long before the +draft was thought of." + +"Because I'd been taught that my flag and country really meant +something," he said. "That was all; and it was quite enough in the way +of compulsion for a good many like myself who didn't hanker to stick +bayonets through men we'd never seen, nor shoot them, nor blow them up +with hand grenades, nor kill them ten thousand feet in the air and watch +them fall, turning over and over like a winged duck. But these things +seemed necessary. They said a country worth living in was worth fighting +for." + +"And isn't it?" Betty Gower challenged promptly. + +MacRae looked at her and at the white cottage, at the great Gulf seas +smashing on the rocks below, at the far vista of sea and sky and the +shore line faintly purple in the distance. His gaze turned briefly to +the leafless tops of maple and alder rising out of the hollow in which +his father's body lay--in a corner of the little plot that was left of +all their broad acres--and came back at last to this fair daughter of +his father's enemy. + +"The country is, yes," he said. "Anything that's worth having is worth +fighting for. But that isn't what they meant, and that isn't the way it +has worked out." + +He was not conscious of the feeling in his voice. He was thinking with +exaggerated bitterness that the Germans in Belgium had dealt less hardly +with a conquered people than this girl's father had dealt with his. + +"I'm afraid I don't quite understand what you mean by that," she +remarked. Her tone was puzzled. She looked at him, frankly curious. + +But he could not tell her what he meant. He had a feeling that she was +in no way responsible. He had an instinctive aversion to rudeness. And +while he was absolving himself of any intention to make war on her he +was wondering if her mother, long ago, had been anything like Miss Betty +Gower. It seemed odd to think that this level-eyed girl's mother might +have been _his_ mother,--if she had been made of stiffer metal, or if +the west wind had blown that afternoon. + +He wondered if she knew. Not likely, he decided. It wasn't a story +either Horace Gower or his wife would care to tell their children. + +So he did not try to tell her what he meant. He withdrew into his shell. +And when Betty Gower seated herself on a rock and evinced an inclination +to quiz him about things he did not care to be quizzed about, he lifted +his cap, bade her a courteous good-by, and walked back toward the Cove. + + + + +CHAPTER V + +From the Bottom Up + + +MacRae did nothing but mark time until he found himself a plain +citizen once more. He could have remained in the service for months +without 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 a +uniform subject to military orders while the politicians wrangled. + +But even when he found himself a civilian again, master of his +individual fortunes, he was still a trifle at a loss. He had no definite +plan. He was rather at sea, because all the things he had planned on +doing when he came home had gone by the board. So many things which had +seemed good and desirable had been contingent upon his father. Every +plan he had ever made for the future had included old Donald MacRae and +those wide acres across the end of Squitty. He had been deprived of +both, left without a ready mark to shoot at. The flood of war had +carried him far. The ebb of it had set him back on his native +shores,--stranded him there, so to speak, to pick up the broken threads +of his old life as best he could. + +He had no quarrel with that. But he did have a feud with circumstance, a +profound 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 good +deal of this focused on Horace Gower and his works. + +"He might have let up on the old man," Jack MacRae would say to himself +resentfully. He would lie awake in the dark thinking about this. "We +were doing our bit. He might have stopped putting spokes in our wheel +while the war was on." + +The fact of the matter is that young MacRae was deeply touched in his +family pride as well as his personal sense of injustice. Gower had +deeply injured his father, therefore it was any MacRae's concern. It +made no difference that the first blow in this quarrel had been struck +before he was born. He smarted under it and all that followed. His only +difficulty was to discern a method of repaying in kind, which he was +thoroughly determined to do. + +He saw no way, if the truth be told. He did not even contemplate +inflicting physical injury on Horace Gower. That would have been absurd. +But he wanted to hurt him, to make him squirm, to heap trouble on the +man and watch him break down under the load. And he did not see how he +possibly could. Gower was too well fortified. Four years of war +experience, which likewise embraced a considerable social experience, +had amply shown Jack MacRae the subtle power of money, of political +influence, of family connections, of commercial prestige. + +All these things were on Gower's side. He was impregnable. MacRae was +not a fool. Neither was he inclined to pessimism. Yet so far as he could +see, the croakers were not lying when they said that here at home the +war had made the rich richer and the poor poorer. It was painfully true +in his own case. He had given four years of himself to his country, +gained an honorable record, and lost everything else that was worth +having. + +What he had lost in a material way he meant to get back. How, he had not +yet determined. His brain was busy with that problem. And the dying down +of his first keen resentment and grief over the death of his father, and +that dead father's message to him, merely hardened into a cold resolve +to pay off his father's debt to the Gowers and Mortons. MacRae ran true +to the traditions of his Highland blood when he lumped them all +together. + +In this he was directed altogether by the promptings of emotion, and he +never questioned the justice of his attitude. But in the practical +adjustment of his life to conditions as he found them he adopted a +purely rational method. + +He took stock of his resources. They were limited enough. A few hundred +dollars in back pay and demobilization gratuities; a sound body, now +that his injured eye was all but healed; an abounding confidence in +himself,--which he had earned the right to feel. That was all. Ambition +for place, power, wealth, he did not feel as an imperative urge. He +perceived the value and desirability of these things. Only he saw no +short straight road to any one of them. + +For four years he had been fed, clothed, directed, master of his own +acts only in supreme moments. There was an unconscious reaction from +that high pitch. Being his own man again and a trifle uncertain what to +do, he did nothing at all for a time. He made one trip to Vancouver, to +learn by just what legal processes the MacRae lands had passed into the +Gower possession. He found out what he wanted to know easily enough. +Gower had got his birthright for a song. Donald MacRae had borrowed six +thousand 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 the +mortgage in a pinch. A financial house had foreclosed and sold the place +to Gower,--who had been trying to buy it for years, through different +agencies. His father's papers told young MacRae plainly enough through +what channels the money had gone. Chance had functioned on the wrong +side for his father. + +So Jack went back to Squitty and stayed in the old house, talked with +the 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 him +scope for two things upon which his mind was set: to get the title to +that six hundred acres revested in the MacRae name, and, in Jack's own +words to Dolores Ferrara, to take a fall out of Horace Gower that would +jar the bones of his ancestors. + +With Christmas the Ferrara clan gathered at the Cove, all the stout and +able company of Dolly Ferrara's menfolk. It had seemed to MacRae a +curious thing that Dolly was the only woman of all the Ferraras. There +had been mothers in the Ferrara family, or there could not have been so +many capable uncles and cousins. But in MacRae's memory there had never +been 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, and +each brother had bred three sons. Four of these sons had left their +boats and gear to go overseas. Two of them would never come back. The +other two were home,--one after a whiff of gas at Ypres, the other with +a leg shorter by two inches than when he went away. These two made +nothing of their disabilities, however; they were home and they were +nearly as good as ever. That was enough for them. And with the younger +boys and their fathers they came to old Peter's house for a week at +Christmas, after an annual custom. These gatherings in the old days had +always embraced Donald MacRae and his son. And his son was glad that it +included him now. He felt a little less alone. + +They were of the sea, these Ferraras, Castilian Spanish, tempered and +diluted by three generations in North America. Their forebears might +have sailed in caravels. They knew the fishing grounds of the British +Columbia coast as a schoolboy knows his _a, b, c_'s. They would never +get rich, but they were independent fishermen, making a good living. And +they were as clannish as the Scotch. All of them had chipped in to send +Dolly 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 too +young to take thought of the commercial end of salmon fishing. He was +about sixty-five now, a lean, hardy old fellow, but he seldom went far +from Squitty Cove. There was Steve and Frank and Vincent and Manuel of +the younger generation, and Manuel and Peter and Joaquin of the elder. +Those three had been contemporary with Donald MacRae. They esteemed old +Donald. Jack heard many things about his father's early days on the Gulf +that were new to him, that made his blood tingle and made him wish he +had lived then too. Thirty years back the Gulf of Georgia was no place +for any but two-handed men. + +He heard also, in that week of casual talk among the Ferraras, certain +things said, statements made that suggested a possibility which never +seemed to have occurred to the Ferraras themselves. + +"The Folly Bay pack of blueback was a whopper last summer," Vincent +Ferrara 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. "We +should worry." + +"Just the same, he ought to be made to pay more for his fish. He ought +to pay what they're worth, for a change," Vincent drawled. "He makes +about a hundred trollers eat out of his hand the first six weeks of the +season. If somebody would put on a couple of good, fast carriers, and +start buying fish as soon as he opens his cannery, I'll bet he'd pay +more than twenty-five cents for a five-pound salmon." + +"Maybe. But that's been tried and didn't work. Every buyer that ever cut +in on Gower soon found himself up against the Packers' Association when +he went into the open market with his fish. And a wise man," old Manuel +grinned, "don't even figure on monkeying with a buzz saw, sonny." + +Not long afterward Jack MacRae got old Manuel in a corner and asked him +what he meant. + +"Well," he said, "it's like this. When the bluebacks first run here in +the spring, they're pretty small, too small for canning. But the fresh +fish markets in town take 'em and palm 'em off on the public for salmon +trout. So there's an odd fresh-fish buyer cruises around here and picks +up a few loads of salmon between the end of April and the middle of +June. The Folly Bay cannery opens about then, and the buyers quit. They +go farther up the coast. Partly because there's more fish, mostly +because nobody has ever made any money bucking Gower for salmon on his +own 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 coast +cut up into areas, and each area is controlled by some packer as a +concession. Well, Gower has the Folly Bay license, and a couple of +purse-seine licenses, and that just about gives him the say-so on all +the waters around Squitty, besides a couple of good bays on the +Vancouver Island side and the same on the mainland. He belongs to the +Packers' Association. They ain't supposed to control the local market. +But the way it works out they really do. At least, when an independent +fish buyer gets to cuttin' in strong on a packer's territory, he +generally finds himself in trouble to sell in Vancouver unless he's got +a 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. They +troll in the summer. They deal at the Folly Bay cannery store. Generally +they're in the hole by spring. Even if they ain't they have to depend on +Folly Bay to market their catch. The cannery's a steady buyer, once it +opens. They can't always depend on the fresh-fish buyer, even if he pays +a few cents more. So once the cannery opens, Gower has a bunch of +trollers 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 no +competition for a month or so. If there is a little there's ways of +killin' it. So he sets his own price. The trollers can take it or leave +it." + +Old Manuel stopped to light his pipe. + +"For three seasons," said he, "Gower has bought blueback salmon the +first month of the season for twenty-five cents or less--fish that run +three to four pounds. And there hasn't been a time when salmon could be +bought in a Vancouver fresh-fish market for less than twenty-five cents +a pound." + +"Huh!" MacRae grunted. + +It set him thinking. He had a sketchy knowledge of the salmon packer's +monopoly of cannery sites and pursing licenses and waters. He had heard +more or less talk among fishermen of agreements in restraint of +competition among the canneries. But he had never supposed it to be +quite so effective as Manuel Ferrara believed. + +Even if it were, a gentleman's agreement of that sort, being a matter of +profit rather than principle, was apt to be broken by any member of the +combination who saw a chance to get ahead of the rest. + +MacRae took passage for Vancouver the second week in January with a +certain plan weaving itself to form in his mind,--a plan which promised +action and money and other desirable results if he could carry it +through. + + + + +CHAPTER VI + +The Springboard + + +With a basic knowledge to start from, any reasonably clever man can +digest an enormous amount of information about any given industry in a +very brief time. Jack MacRae spent three weeks in Vancouver as a one-man +commission, self-appointed, to inquire into the fresh-salmon trade. He +talked to men who caught salmon and to men who sold them, both wholesale +and retail. He apprised himself of the ins and outs of salmon canning, +and of the independent fish collector who owned his own boat, financed +himself, and chanced the market much as a farmer plants his seed, trusts +to the weather, and makes or loses according to the yield and +market,--two matters over which he can have no control. + +MacRae learned before long that old Manuel Ferrara was right when he +said no man could profitably buy salmon unless he had a cast-iron +agreement either with a cannery or a big wholesaler. MacRae soon saw +that the wholesaler stood like a wall between the fishermen and those +who ate fish. They could make or break a buyer. MacRae was not long +running afoul of the rumor that the wholesale fish men controlled the +retail price of fresh fish by the simple method of controlling the +supply, which they managed by cooeperation instead of competition among +themselves. He heard this stated. And more,--that behind the big dealers +stood the shadowy figure of the canning colossus. This was told him +casually by fishermen. Fish buyers repeated it, sometimes with a touch +of indignation. That was one of their wails,--the fish combine. It was +air-tight, they said. The packers had a strangle hold on the fishing +waters, and the big local fish houses had the same unrelenting grip on +the market. + +Therefore the ultimate consumer--whose exploitation was the prize plum +of commercial success--paid thirty cents per pound for spring salmon +that a fisherman chivied about in the tumbling Gulf seas fifty miles +up-coast had to take fourteen cents for. As for the salmon packers, the +men who pack the good red fish in small round tins which go to all the +ends of the earth to feed hungry folk,--well, no one knew _their_ +profits. Their pack was all exported. The back yards of Europe are +strewn with empty salmon cans bearing a British Columbia label. But they +made money enough to be a standing grievance to those unable to get in +on this bonanza. + +MacRae, however, was chiefly concerned with the local trade in fresh +salmon. His plan didn't look quite so promising as when he mulled over +it at Squitty Cove. He put out feelers and got no hold. A fresh-fish +buyer operating without approved market connections might make about +such a living as the fishermen he bought from. To Jack MacRae, eager and +sanguine, making a living was an inconspicuous detail. Making a +living,--that was nothing to him. A more definite spur roweled his +flank. + +It looked like an air-tight proposition, he admitted, at last. But, he +said to himself, anything air-tight could be punctured. And undoubtedly +a fine flow of currency would result from such a puncture. So he kept +on looking about, asking casual questions, listening. In the language of +the street he was getting wise. + +Incidentally he enjoyed himself. The battle ground had been transferred +to Paris. The pen, the typewriter, and the press dispatch, with immense +reserves of oratory and printer's ink, had gone into action. And the +soldiers were coming home,--officers of the line and airmen first, since +to these leave and transportation came easily, now that the guns were +silent. MacRae met fellows he knew. A good many of them were well off, +had homes in Vancouver. They were mostly young and glad the big show was +over. And they had the social instinct. During intervals of fighting +they had rubbed elbows with French and British people of consequence. +They had a mind to enjoy themselves. + +MacRae had a record in two squadrons. He needed no press-agenting when +he met another R.A.F. man. So he found himself invited to homes, the +inside of which he would otherwise never have seen, and to pleasant +functions among people who would never have known of his existence save +for the circumstance of war. Pretty, well-bred girls smiled at him, +partly because airmen with notable records were still a novelty, and +partly because Jack MacRae was worth a second look from any girl who was +fancy-free. Matrons were kind to him because their sons said he was the +right sort, and some of these same matrons mothered him because he was +like boys they knew who had gone away to France and would never come +back. + +This was very pleasant. MacRae was normal in every respect. He liked to +dance. He liked glittering lights and soft music. He liked nice people. +He liked people who were nice to him. But he seldom lost sight of his +objective. These people could relax and give themselves up to enjoyment +because they were "heeled"--as a boy lieutenant slangily put it--to +MacRae. + +"It's a great game, Jack, if you don't weaken," he said. "But a fellow +can't play it through on a uniform and a war record. I'm having a +top-hole time, but it'll be different when I plant myself at a desk in +some broker's office at a hundred and fifty a month. It's mixed pickles, +for a fact. You can't buy your way into this sort of thing. And you +can't stay in it without a bank roll." + +Which was true enough. Only the desire to "see it through" socially was +not driving Jack MacRae. He had a different target, and his eye did not +wander far from the mark. And perhaps because of this, chance and his +social gadding about gave him the opening he sought when he least +expected to find one. + +To be explicit, he happened to be one of an after-theater party at an +informal supper dance in the Granada, which is to Vancouver what the +Biltmore is to New York or the Fairmont to San Francisco,--a place where +one can see everybody that is anybody if one lingers long enough. And +almost the first man he met was a stout, ruddy-faced youngster about his +own age. They had flown in the same squadron until "Stubby" Abbott came +a cropper and was invalided home. + +Stubby fell upon Jack MacRae, pounded him earnestly on the back, and +haled him straight to a table where two women were sitting. + +"Mother," he said to a plump, middle-aged woman, "here's Silent John +MacRae." + +Her eyes lit up pleasantly. + +"I've heard of you," she said, and her extended hand put the pressure +of the seal of sincerity on her words. "I've wanted to thank you. You +can scarcely know what you did for us. Stubby's the only man in the +family, you know." + +MacRae smiled. + +"Why," he said easily, "little things like that were part of the game. +Stubb used to pull off stuff like that himself now and then." + +"Anyway, we can thank God it's over," Mrs. Abbott said fervently. +"Pardon me,--my daughter, Mr. MacRae." + +Nelly Abbott was small, tending to plumpness like her mother. She was +very fair with eyes of true violet, a baby-doll sort of young woman, and +she took possession of Jack MacRae as easily and naturally as if she had +known him for years. They drifted away in a dance, sat the next one out +together with Stubby and a slim young thing in orange satin whose talk +ran undeviatingly upon dances and sports and motor trips, past and +anticipated. Listening to her, Jack MacRae fell dumb. Her father was +worth half a million. Jack wondered how much of it he would give to +endow his daughter with a capacity for thought. A label on her program +materialized to claim her presently. Stubby looked after her and +grinned. MacRae looked thoughtful. The girl was pretty, almost +beautiful. She looked like Dolores Ferrara, dark, creamy-skinned, +seductive. And MacRae was comparing the two to Dolores' advantage. + +Nelly Abbott was eying MacRae. + +"Tessie bores you, eh?" she said bluntly. + +MacRae smiled. "Her flow of profound utterance carries me out of my +depth, I'm afraid," said he. "I can't follow her." + +"She'd lead you a chase if you tried," Stubby grinned and sauntered +away to smoke. + +"Is that sarcasm?" Nelly drawled. "I wonder if you are called Silent +John because you stop talking now and then to think? Most of us don't, +you know. Tell me," she changed the subject abruptly, "did you know +Norman Gower overseas?" + +"He was an officer in the battalion I went over with," MacRae replied. +"I went over in the ranks, you see. So I couldn't very well know him. +And I never met him after I transferred to the air service." + +"I just wondered," Nelly went on. "I know Norman rather well. It has +been whispered about that he pulled every string to keep away from the +front,--that all he has done over there is to hold down cushy jobs in +England. Did you ever hear any such talk?" + +"We were too busy to gossip about the boys at home, except to envy +them." MacRae evaded direct reply, and Nelly did not follow it up. + +"I see his sister over there. Betty is a dear girl. That's she talking +to Stubby. Come over and meet her. They've been up on their island for a +long time, while the flu raged." + +MacRae couldn't very well avoid it without seeming rude or making an +explanation which he did not intend to make to any one. His grudge +against the Gower clan was focused on Horace Gower. His feeling had not +abated a jot. But it was a personal matter, something to remain locked +in his own breast. So he perforce went with Nelly Abbott and was duly +presented to Miss Elizabeth Gower. And he had the next dance with her, +also for convention's sake. + +While they stood chatting a moment, the four of them, Stubby said to +MacRae: + +"Who are you with, Jack?" + +"The Robbin-Steeles." + +"If I don't get a chance to talk to you again, come out to the house +to-morrow," Stubby said. "The mater said so, and I want to talk to you +about something." + +The music began and MacRae and Betty Gower slid away in the one-step, +that most conversational of dances. But Jack couldn't find himself +chatty with Betty Gower. She was graceful and clear-eyed, a vigorously +healthy girl with a touch of color in her cheeks that came out of +Nature's rouge pot. But MacRae was subtly conscious of a stiffness +between them. + +"After all," Betty said abruptly, when they had circled half the room, +"it was worth fighting for, don't you really think?" + +For a second MacRae looked down at her, puzzled. Then he remembered. + +"Good Heavens!" he said, "is that still bothering you? Do you take +everything a fellow says so seriously as that?" + +"No. It wasn't so much what you said as the way you said it," she +replied. "You were uncompromisingly hostile that day, for some reason. +Have you acquired a more equable outlook since?" + +"I'm trying," he answered. + +"You need coaching in the art of looking on the bright side of things," +she smiled. + +"Such as clusters of frosted lights, cut glass, diamonds, silk dresses +and ropes of pearls," he drawled. "Would you care to take on the +coaching job, Miss Gower?" + +"I might be persuaded." She looked him frankly in the eyes. + +But MacRae would not follow that lead, whatever it might mean. Betty +Gower was nice,--he had to admit it. To glide around on a polished floor +with his arm around her waist, her soft hand clasped in his, and her +face close to his own, her grayish-blue eyes, which were so very like +his own, now smiling and now soberly reflective, was not the way to +carry on an inherited feud. He couldn't subject himself to that +peculiarly feminine attraction which Betty Gower bore like an aura and +nurse a grudge. In fact, he had no grudge against Betty Gower except +that she was the daughter of her father. And he couldn't explain to her +that he hated her father because of injustice and injury done before +either of them was born. In the genial atmosphere of the Granada that +sort of thing did not seem nearly so real, so vivid, as when he stood on +the cliffs of Squitty listening to the pound of the surf. Then it welled +up in him like a flood,--the resentment for all that Gower had made his +father suffer, for those thirty years of reprisal which had culminated +in reducing his patrimony to an old log house and a garden patch out of +all that wide sweep of land along the southern face of Squitty. He +looked at Betty and wished silently that she were,--well, Stubby +Abbott's sister. He could be as nice as he wanted to then. Whereupon, +instinctively feeling himself upon dangerous ground, he diverged from +the personal, talked without saying much until the music stopped and +they found seats. And when another partner claimed Betty, Jack as a +matter of courtesy had to rejoin his own party. + +The affair broke up at length. MacRae slept late the next morning. By +the time he had dressed and breakfasted and taken a flying trip to Coal +Harbor to look over a forty-five-foot fish carrier which was advertised +for sale, he bethought himself of Stubby Abbott's request and, getting +on a car, rode out to the Abbott home. This was a roomy stone house +occupying a sightly corner in the West End,--that sharply defined +residential area of Vancouver which real estate agents unctuously speak +of as "select." There was half a block of ground in green lawn bordered +with rosebushes. The house itself was solid, homely, built for use, and +built to endure, all stone and heavy beams, wide windows and deep +porches, and a red tile roof lifting above the gray stone walls. + +Stubby permitted MacRae a few minutes' exchange of pleasantries with his +mother and sister. + +"I want to extract some useful information from this man," Stubby said +at length. "You can have at him later, Nell. He'll stay to dinner." + +"How do you know he will?" Nelly demanded. "He hasn't said so, yet." + +"Between you and me, he can't escape," Stubby said cheerfully and led +Jack away upstairs into a small cheerful room lined with bookshelves, +warmed by glowing coals in a grate, and with windows that gave a look +down on a sandy beach facing the Gulf. + +Stubby pushed two chairs up to the fire, waved Jack to one, and extended +his own feet to the blaze. + +"I've seen the inside of a good many homes in town lately," MacRae +observed. "This is the homiest one yet." + +"I'll say it is," Stubby agreed. "A place that has been lived in and +cared for a long time gets that way, though. Remember some of those old, +old places in England and France? This is new compared to that country. +Still, my father built this house when the West End was covered with +virgin timber." + +"How'd you like to be born and grow up in a house that your father +built with a vision of future generations of his blood growing up in," +Stubby murmured, "and come home crippled after three years in the red +mill and find you stood a fat chance of losing it?" + +"I wouldn't like it much," MacRae agreed. + +But he did not say that he had already undergone the distasteful +experience Stubby mentioned as a possibility. He waited for Stubby to go +on. + +"Well, it's a possibility," Stubby continued, quite cheerfully, however. +"I don't propose to allow it to happen. Hang it, I wouldn't blat this to +any one but you, Jack. The mater has only a hazy idea of how things +stand, and she's an incurable optimist anyway. Nelly and the Infant--you +haven't met the Infant yet--don't know anything about it. I tell you it +put the breeze up when I got able to go into our affairs and learned how +things stood. I thought I'd get mended and then be a giddy idler for a +year or so. But it's up to me. I have to get into the collar. Otherwise +I should have stayed south all winter. You know we've just got home. I +had to loaf in the sun for practically a year. Now I have to get busy. I +don't mean to say that the poorhouse stares us in the face, you know, +but unless a certain amount of revenue is forthcoming, we simply can't +afford to keep up this place. + +"And I'd damn well like to keep it going." Stubby paused to light a +cigarette. "I like it. It's our home. We'd be deucedly sore at seeing +anybody else hang up his hat and call it home. So behold in me an active +cannery operator when the season opens, a conscienceless profiteer for +sentiment's sake. You live up where the blueback salmon run, don't you, +Jack?" + +MacRae nodded. + +"How many trollers fish those waters?" + +"Anywhere from forty to a hundred, from ten to thirty rowboats." + +"The Folly Bay cannery gets practically all that catch?" + +MacRae nodded again. + +"I'm trying to figure a way of getting some of those blueback salmon," +Abbott said crisply. "How can it best be done?" + +MacRae thought a minute. A whole array of possibilities popped into his +mind. He knew that the Abbotts owned the Crow Harbor cannery, in the +mouth of Howe Sound just outside Vancouver Harbor. When he spoke he +asked a question instead of giving an answer. + +"Are you going to buck the Packers' Association?" + +"Yes and no," Stubby chuckled. "You do know something about the cannery +business, don't you?" + +"One or two things," MacRae admitted. "I grew up in the Gulf, remember, +among salmon fishermen." + +"Well, I'll be a little more explicit," Stubby volunteered. "Briefly, my +father, as you know, died while I was overseas. We own the Crow Harbor +cannery. I will say that while I was still going to school he started in +teaching me the business, and he taught me the way he learned it +himself--in the cannery and among fishermen. If I do say it, I know the +salmon business from gill net and purse seine to the Iron Chink and bank +advances on the season's pack. But Abbott, senior, it seems, wasn't a +profiteer. He took the war to heart. His patriotism didn't consist of +buying war bonds in fifty-thousand dollar lots and calling it square. He +got in wrong by trying to keep the price of fresh fish down locally, and +the last year he lived the Crow Harbor cannery only made a normal +profit. Last season the plant operated at a loss in the hands of hired +men. They simply didn't get the fish. The Fraser River run of sockeye +has been going downhill. The river canneries get the fish that do run. +Crow Harbor, with a manager who wasn't up on his toes, got very few. I +don't believe we will ever see another big sockeye run in the Fraser +anyway. So we shall have to go up-coast to supplement the Howe Sound +catch and the few sockeyes we can get from gill-netters. + +"The Packers' Association can't hurt me--much. For one thing, I'm a +member. For another, I can still swing enough capital so they would +hesitate about using pressure. You understand. I've got to make that +Crow Harbor plant pay. I must have salmon to do so. I have to go outside +my immediate territory to get them. If I could get enough blueback to +keep full steam from the opening of the sockeye season until the coho +run comes--there's nothing to it. I've been having this matter looked +into pretty thoroughly. I can pay twenty per cent. over anything Gower +has ever paid for blueback and coin money. The question is, how can I +get them positively and in quantity?" + +"Buy them," MacRae put in softly. + +"Of course," Stubby agreed. "But buying direct means collecting. I have +the carriers, true. But where am I going to find men to whom I can turn +over a six-thousand-dollar boat and a couple of thousand dollars in cash +and say to him, 'Go buy me salmon'? His only interest in the matter is +his wage." + +"Bonus the crew. Pay 'em percentage on what salmon they bring in." + +"I've thought of that," Stubby said between puffs. "But--" + +"Or," MacRae made the plunge he had been coming to while Stubby talked, +"I'll get them for you. I was going to buy bluebacks around Squitty +anyway for the fresh-fish market in town if I can make a sure-delivery +connection. I know those grounds. I know a lot of fishermen. If you'll +give me twenty per cent. over Gower prices for bluebacks delivered at +Crow Harbor I'll get them." + +"This grows interesting." Stubby straightened in his chair. "I thought +you were going to ranch it! Lord, I remember the night we sat watching +for the bombers to come back from a raid and you first told me about +that place of yours on Squitty Island. Seems ages ago--yet it isn't +long. As I remember, you were planning all sorts of things you and your +father would do." + +"I can't," MacRae said grimly. "You've been in California for months. +You wouldn't hear any mention of my affairs, anyway, if you'd been home. +I got back three days before the armistice. My father died of the flu +the night I got home. The ranch, or all of it but the old log house I +was born in and a patch of ground the size of a town lot, has gone the +way you mentioned your home might go if you don't buck up the business. +Things didn't go well with us lately. I have no land to turn to. So I'm +for the salmon business as a means to get on my feet." + +"Gower got your place?" Abbott hazarded. + +"Yes. How did you know?" + +"Made a guess. I heard he had built a summer home on the southeast end +of Squitty. In fact Nelly was up there last summer for a week or so. +Hurts, eh, Jack? That little trip to France cost us both something." + +MacRae sprang up and walked over to a window. He stood for half a minute +staring out to sea, looking in that direction by chance, because the +window happened to face that way, to where the Gulf haze lifted above a +faint purple patch that was Squitty Island, very far on the horizon. + +"I'm not kicking," he said at last. "Not out loud, anyway." + +"No," Stubby said affectionately, "I know you're not, old man. Nor am I. +But I'm going to get action, and I have a hunch you will too. Now about +this fish business. If you think you can get them, I'll certainly go you +on that twenty per cent. proposition--up to the point where Gower boosts +me out of the game, if that is possible. We shall have to readjust our +arrangement then." + +"Will you give me a contract to that effect?" MacRae asked. + +"Absolutely. We'll get together at the office to-morrow and draft an +agreement." + +They shook hands to bind the bargain, grinning at each other a trifle +self-consciously. + +"Have you a suitable boat?" Stubby asked after a little. + +"No," MacRae admitted. "But I have been looking around. I find that I +can charter one cheaper than I can build--until such time as I make +enough to build a fast, able carrier." + +"I'll charter you one," Stubby offered. "That's where part of our money +is uselessly tied up, in expensive boats that never carried their weight +in salmon. I'm going to sell two fifty-footers and a seine boat. There's +one called the _Blackbird_, fast, seaworthy rig, you can have at a +nominal rate." + +"All right," MacRae nodded. "By chartering I have enough cash in hand to +finance the buying. I'm going to start as soon as the bluebacks come +and run fresh fish, if I can make suitable connections." + +Stubby grinned. + +"I can fix that too," he said. "I happen to own some shares in the +Terminal Fish Company. The pater organized it to give Vancouver people +cheap fish, but somehow it didn't work as he intended. It's a fairly +strong concern. I'll introduce you. They'll buy your salmon, and they'll +treat you right." + +"And now," Stubby rose and stretched his one good arm and the other that +was visibly twisted and scarred between wrist and elbow, above his head, +"let's go downstairs and prattle. I see a car in front, and I hear +twittering voices." + +Halfway down the stairs Stubby halted and laid a hand on MacRae's arm. + +"Old Horace is a two-fisted old buccaneer," he said. "And I don't go +much on Norman. But I'll say Betty Gower is some girl. What do you +think, Silent John?" + +And Jack MacRae had to admit that Betty was. Oddly enough, Stubby Abbott +had merely put into words an impression to which MacRae himself was +slowly and reluctantly subscribing. + + + + +CHAPTER VII + +Sea Boots and Salmon + + +From November to April the British Columbian coast is a region of +weeping skies, of intermittent frosts and fog, and bursts of sleety +snow. The frosts, fogs, and snow squalls are the punctuation points, so +to speak, of the eternal rain. Murky vapors eddy and swirl along the +coast. The sun hides behind gray banks of cloud, the shining face of him +a rare miracle bestowed upon the sight of men as a promise that bright +days and blossoming flowers will come again. When they do come the coast +is a pleasant country. The mountains reveal themselves, duskily green +upon the lower slopes, their sky-piercing summits crowned with snow caps +which endure until the sun comes to his full strength in July. The Gulf +is a vista of purple-distant shore and island, of shimmering sea. And +the fishermen come out of winter quarters to overhaul boats and gear +against the first salmon run. + +The blueback, a lively and toothsome fish, about which rages an +ichthyological argument as to whether he is a distant species of the +salmon tribe or merely a half-grown coho, is the first to show in great +schools. The spring salmon is always in the Gulf, but the spring is a +finny mystery with no known rule for his comings and goings, nor his +numbers. All the others, the blueback, the sockeye, the hump, the coho, +and the dog salmon, run in the order named. They can be reckoned on as +a man reckons on changes of the moon. These are the mainstay of the +salmon canners. Upon their taking fortunes have been built--and +squandered--men have lived and died, loved and hated, gone hungry and +dressed their women in silks and furs. The can of pink meat some inland +chef dresses meticulously with parsley and sauces may have cost some +fisherman his life; a multiplicity of cases of salmon may have produced +a divorce in the packer's household. We eat this fine red fish and heave +its container into the garbage tin, with no care for the tragedy or +humors that have attended its getting for us. + +In the spring, when life takes on a new prompting, the blueback salmon +shows first in the Gulf. He cannot be taken by net or bait,--unless the +bait be a small live herring. He may only be taken in commercial +quantities by a spinner or a wobbling spoon hook of silver or brass or +copper drawn through the water at slow speed. The dainty gear of the +trout spinner gave birth to the trolling fleets of the Pacific Coast. + +At first the schools pass into the Straits of San Juan. Here the joint +fleets of British Columbia and of Puget Sound begin to harry them. A +week or ten days later the vanguard will be off Nanaimo. And in another +week they will be breaking water like trout in a still pool around the +rocky base of the Ballenas Light and the kelp beds and reefs of Squitty +Island. + +By the time they were there, in late April, there were twenty local +power boats to begin taking them, for Jack MacRae made the rounds of +Squitty to tell the fishermen that he was putting on a carrier to take +the first run of blueback to Vancouver markets. + +They were a trifle pessimistic. Other buyers had tried it, men gambling +on a shoestring for a stake in the fish trade, buyers unable to make +regular trips, whereby there was a tale of many salmon rotted in waiting +fish holds, through depending on a carrier that did not come. What was +the use of burning fuel, of tearing their fingers with the gear, of +catching fish to rot? Better to let them swim. + +But since the Folly Bay cannery never opened until the fish ran to +greater size and number, the fishermen, chafing against inaction after +an idle winter, took a chance and trolled for Jack MacRae. + +To the trailers' surprise they found themselves dealing with a new type +of independent buyer,--a man who could and did make his market trips +with clocklike precision. If MacRae left Squitty with a load on Monday, +saying that he would be at Squitty Cove or Jenkins Island or Scottish +Bay by Tuesday evening, he was there. + +He managed it by grace of an able sea boat, engined to drive through sea +and wind, and by the nerve and endurance to drive her in any weather. +There were times when the Gulf spread placid as a mill pond. There were +trips when he drove through with three thousand salmon under battened +hatches, his decks awash from boarding seas, ten and twelve and fourteen +hours of rough-and-tumble work that brought him into the Narrows and the +docks inside with smarting eyes and tired muscles, his head splitting +from the pound and clank of the engine and the fumes of gas and burned +oil. + +It was work, strain of mind and body, long hours filled with discomfort. +But MacRae had never shrunk from things like that. He was aware that few +things worth while come easy. The world, so far as he knew, seldom +handed a man a fortune done up in tissue paper merely because he +happened to crave its possession. He was young and eager to do. There +was a reasonable satisfaction in the doing, even of the disagreeable, +dirty tasks necessary, in beating the risks he sometimes had to run. +There was a secret triumph in overcoming difficulties as they arose. And +he had an object, which, if it did not always lie in the foreground of +his mind, he was nevertheless keen on attaining. + +The risks and work and strain, perhaps because he put so much of himself +into the thing, paid from the beginning more than he had dared hope. He +made a hundred dollars his first trip, paid the trollers five cents a +fish more on the second trip and cleared a hundred and fifty. In the +second week of his venture he struck a market almost bare of fresh +salmon with thirty-seven hundred shining bluebacks in his hold. He made +seven hundred dollars on that single cargo. + +A Greek buyer followed the _Blackbird_ out through the Narrows that +trip. MacRae beat him two hours to the trolling fleet at Squitty, a +fleet that was growing in numbers. + +"Bluebacks are thirty-five cents," he said to the first man who ranged +alongside to deliver. "And I want to tell you something that you can +talk over with the rest of the crowd. I have a market for every fish +this bunch can catch. If I can't handle them with the _Blackbird_, I'll +put on another boat. I'm not here to buy fish just till the Folly Bay +cannery opens. I'll be making regular trips to the end of the salmon +season. My price will be as good as anybody's, better than some. If +Gower gets your bluebacks this season for twenty-five cents, it will be +because you want to make him a present. Meantime, there's another buyer +an hour behind me. I don't know what he'll pay. But whatever he pays +there aren't enough salmon being caught here yet to keep two carriers +running. You can figure it out for yourself." + +MacRae thought he knew his men. Nor was his judgment in error. The Greek +hung around. In twenty-four hours he got three hundred salmon. MacRae +loaded nearly three thousand. + +Once or twice after that he had competitive buyers in Squitty Cove and +the various rendezvous of the trolling fleet. But the fishermen had a +loyalty born of shrewd reckoning. They knew from experience the way of +the itinerant buyer. They knew MacRae. Many of them had known his +father. If Jack MacRae had a market for all the salmon he could buy on +the Gower grounds all season, they saw where Folly Bay would buy no fish +in the old take-it-or-leave it fashion. They were keenly alive to the +fact that they were getting mid-July prices in June, that Jack MacRae +was the first buyer who had not tried to hold down prices by pulling a +poor mouth and telling fairy tales of poor markets in town. He had +jumped prices before there was any competitive spur. They admired young +MacRae. He had nerve; he kept his word. + +Wherefore it did not take them long to decide that he was a good man to +keep going. As a result of this decision other casual buyers got few +fish even when they met MacRae's price. + +When he had run a little over a month MacRae took stock. He paid the +Crow Harbor Canning Company, which was Stubby Abbott's trading name, two +hundred and fifty a month for charter of the _Blackbird_. He had +operating outlay for gas, oil, crushed ice, and wages for Vincent +Ferrara, whom he took on when he reached the limit of single-handed +endurance. Over and above these expenses he had cleared twenty-six +hundred dollars. + +That was only a beginning he knew,--only a beginning of profits and of +work. He purposely thrust the taking of salmon on young Ferrara, let him +handle the cash, tally in the fish, watched Vincent nonchalantly chuck +out overripe salmon that careless trollers would as nonchalantly heave +in for fresh ones if they could get away with it. For Jack MacRae had it +in his mind to go as far and as fast as he could while the going was +good. That meant a second carrier on the run as soon as the Folly Bay +cannery opened, and it meant that he must have in charge of the second +boat an able man whom he could trust. There was no question about +trusting Vincent Ferrara. It was only a matter of his ability to handle +the job, and that he demonstrated to MacRae's complete satisfaction. + +Early in June MacRae went to Stubby Abbott. + +"Have you sold the _Bluebird_ yet?" he asked. + +"I want to let three of those _Bird_ boats go," Stubby told him. "I +don't need 'em. They're dead capital. But I haven't made a sale yet." + +"Charter me the _Bluebird_ on the same terms," Jack proposed. + +"You're on. Things must be going good." + +"Not too bad," MacRae admitted. + +"Folly Bay opens the twentieth. We open July first," Stubby said +abruptly. "How many bluebacks are you going to get for us?" + +"Just about all that are caught around Squitty Island," MacRae said +quietly. "That's why I want another carrier." + +"Huh!" Stubby grunted. His tone was slightly incredulous. "You'll have +to go some. Wish you luck though. More you get the better for me." + +"I expect to deliver sixty thousand bluebacks to Crow Harbor in July," +MacRae said. + +Stubby stared at him. His eyes twinkled. + +"If you can do that in July, and in August too," he said, "I'll _give_ +you the _Bluebird_." + +"No," MacRae smiled. "I'll buy her." + +"Where will Folly Bay get off if you take that many fish away?" Stubby +reflected. + +"Don't know. And I don't care a hoot." MacRae shrugged his shoulders. +"I'm fairly sure I can do it. You don't care?" + +"Do I? I'll shout to the world I don't," Stubby replied. "It's +self-preservation with me. Let old Horace look out for himself. He had +his fingers in the pie while we were in France. I don't have to have +four hundred per cent profit to do business. Get the fish if you can, +Jack, old boy, even if it busts old Horace. Which it won't--and, as I +told you, lack of them may bust me." + +"By the way," Stubby said as MacRae rose to go, "don't you ever have an +hour to spare in town? You haven't been out at the house for six weeks." + +MacRae held out his hands. They were red and cut and scarred, roughened, +and sore from salt water and ice-handling and fish slime. + +"Wouldn't they look well clasping a wafer and a teacup," he laughed. +"I'm working, Stub. When I have an hour to spare I lie down and sleep. +If I stopped to play every time I came to town--do you think you'd get +your sixty thousand bluebacks in July?" + +Stubby looked at MacRae a second, at his work-torn hands and weary eyes. + +"I guess you're right," he said slowly. "But the old stone house will +still be up on the corner when the salmon run is over. Don't forget +that." + +MacRae went off to Coal Harbor to take over the second carrier. And he +wondered as he went if it would all be such clear sailing, if it were +possible that at the first thrust he had found an open crack in Gower's +armor through which he could prick the man and make him squirm. + +He looked at his hands. When they fingered death as a daily task they +had been soft, white, delicate,--dainty instruments equally fit for the +manipulation of aerial controls, machine guns or teacups. Why should +honest work prevent a man from meeting pleasant people amid pleasant +surroundings? Well, it was not the work itself, it was simply the +effects of that gross labor. On the American continent, at least, a man +did not lose caste by following any honest occupation,--only he could +not work with the workers and flutter with the butterflies. MacRae, +walking down the street, communing with himself, knew that he must pay a +penalty for working with his hands. If he were a drone in +uniform--necessarily a drone since the end of war--he could dance and +play, flirt with pretty girls, be a welcome guest in great houses, make +the heroic past pay social dividends. + +It took nearly as much courage and endurance to work as it had taken to +fight; indeed it took rather more, at times, to keep on working. +Theoretically he should not lose caste. Yet MacRae knew he +would,--unless he made a barrel of money. There had been stray straws in +the past month. There were, it seemed, very nice people who could not +quite understand why an officer and a gentleman should do work that +wasn't,--well, not even clean. Not clean in the purely objective, +physical sense, like banking or brokerage, or teaching, or any of those +semi-genteel occupations which permit people to make a living without +straining their backs or soiling their hands. He wasn't even sure that +Stubby Abbott--MacRae was ashamed of his cynicism when he got that far. +Stubby was a real man. Even if he needed a man or a man's activities in +his business Stubby wouldn't cultivate that man socially merely because +he needed his producing capacity. + +The solace for long hours and aching flesh and sleep-weary eyes was a +glimpse of concrete reward,--money which meant power, power to repay a +debt, opportunity to repay an ancient score. It seemed to Jack MacRae +that his personal honor was involved in getting back all that broad +sweep of land which his father had claimed from the wilderness, that he +must exact an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. That was the why +of his unceasing energy, his uncomplaining endurance of long hours in +sea boots, the impatient facing of storms that threatened to delay. Man +strives under the spur of a vision, a deep longing, an imperative +squaring of needs with desires. MacRae moved under the whip of all +three. + +He was quite sanguine that he would succeed in this undertaking. But he +had not looked much beyond the first line of trenches which he planned +to storm. They did not seem to him particularly formidable. The Scotch +had been credited with uncanny knowledge of the future. Jack MacRae, +however, though his Highland blood ran undiluted, had no such gift of +prescience. He did not know that the highway of modern industry is +strewn with the casualties of commercial warfare. + + + + +CHAPTER VIII + +Vested Rights + + +A small balcony over the porch of Gower's summer cottage commanded a +wide sweep of the Gulf south and east. That was one reason he had built +there. He liked to overlook the sea, the waters out of which he had +taken a fortune, the highway of his collecting boats. He had to keep in +touch with the Folly Bay cannery while the rush of the pack was on. But +he was getting more fastidious as he grew older, and he no longer +relished the odors of the cannery. There were other places nearer the +cannery than Cradle Bay, if none more sightly, where he could have built +a summer house. People wondered why he chose the point that frowned over +Poor Man's Rock. Even his own family had questioned his judgment. +Particularly his wife. She complained of the isolation. She insisted on +a houseful of people when she was there, and as Vancouver was full of +eligible week-enders of both sexes her wish was always gratified. And no +one except Betty Gower ever knew that merely to sit looking out on the +Gulf from that vantage point afforded her father some inscrutable +satisfaction. + +On a day in mid-July Horace Gower stepped out on this balcony. He +carried in his hand a pair of prism binoculars. He took a casual look +around. Then he put the glasses to his eyes and scanned the Gulf with a +slow, searching sweep. At first sight it seemed empty. Then far +eastward toward Vancouver his glass picked up two formless dots which +alternately showed and disappeared. + +Gower put down the glasses, seated himself in a grass chair, lighted a +cigar and leaned back, looking impersonally down on Point Old and the +Rock. A big, slow swell rolled up off the Gulf, breaking with a +precisely spaced _boom_ along the cliffs. For forty-eight hours a +southeaster had swept the sea, that rare phenomenon of a summer gale +which did not blow itself out between suns. This had been a wild +tantrum, driving everything of small tonnage to the nearest shelter, +even delaying the big coasters. + +One of these, trailing black smoke from two funnels, lifting white +superstructure of cabins high above her main deck, standing bold and +clear in the mellow sunshine, steamed out of the fairway between Squitty +and Vancouver Island. But she gained scant heed from Gower. His eyes +kept turning to where those distant specks showed briefly between +periods in the hollows of the sea. They drew nearer. Gower finished his +cigar in leisurely fashion. He focused the glass again. He grunted +something unintelligible. They were what he fully expected to behold as +soon as the southeaster ceased to whip the Gulf,--the _Bluebird_ and the +_Blackbird_, Jack MacRae's two salmon carriers. They were walking up to +Squitty in eight-knot boots. Through his glass Gower watched them lift +and fall, lurch and yaw, running with short bursts of speed on the crest +of a wave, laboring heavily in the trough, plowing steadily up through +uneasy waters to take the salmon that should go to feed the hungry +machines at Folly Bay. + +Gower laid aside the glasses. He smoked a second cigar down to a stub, +resting his plump hands on his plump stomach. He resembled a thoughtful +Billiken in white flannels, a round-faced, florid, middle-aged Billiken. +By that time the two _Bird_ boats had come up and parted on the head of +Squitty. The _Bluebird_, captained by Vin Ferrara, headed into the Cove. +The _Blackbird_, slashing along with a bone in her teeth, rounded Poor +Man's Rock, cut across the mouth of Cradle Bay, and stood on up the +western shore. + +"He knows every pot-hole where a troller can lie. He's not afraid of +wind or sea or work. No wonder he gets the fish. Those damned--" + +Gower cut his soliloquy off in the middle to watch the _Blackbird_ slide +out of sight behind a point. He knew all about Jack MacRae's operations, +the wide swath he was cutting in the matter of blueback salmon. The +Folly Bay showing to date was a pointed reminder. Gower's cannery +foreman and fish collectors gave him profane accounts of MacRae's +indefatigable raiding,--as it suited them to regard his operations. What +Gower did not know he made it his business to find out. He sat now in +his grass chair, a short, compact body of a man, with a heavy-jawed, +powerful face frowning in abstraction. Gower looked younger than his +fifty-six years. There was little gray in his light-brown hair. His blue +eyes were clear and piercing. The thick roundness of his body was not +altogether composed of useless tissue. Even considered superficially he +looked what he really was, what he had been for many years,--a man +accustomed to getting things done according to his desire. He did not +look like a man who would fight with crude weapons--such as a pike +pole--but nevertheless there was the undeniable impression of latent +force, of aggressive possibilities, of the will and the ability to +rudely dispose of things which might become obstacles in his way. And +the current history of him in the Gulf of Georgia did not belie such an +impression. + +He left the balcony at last. He appeared next moving, with the stumpy, +ungraceful stride peculiar to the short and thick-bodied, down the walk +to a float. From this he hailed the _Arrow_, and a boy came in, rowing a +dinghy. + +When Gower reached the cruiser's deck he cocked his ear at voices in the +after cabin. He put his head through the companion hatch. Betty Gower +and Nelly Abbott were curled up on a berth, chuckling to each other over +some exchange of confidences. + +"Thought you were ashore," Gower grunted. + +"Oh, the rest of the crowd went off on a hike into the woods, so we came +out here to look around. Nelly hasn't seen the _Arrow_ inside since it +was done over," Betty replied. + +"I'm going to Folly Bay," Gower said. "Will you go ashore?" + +"Far from such," Betty returned. "I'd as soon go to the cannery as +anywhere. Can't we, daddy?" + +"Oh, yes. Bit of a swell though. You may be sick." + +Betty laughed. That was a standing joke between them. She had never been +seasick. Nelly Abbott declared that if there was anything she loved it +was to ride the dead swell that ran after a storm. They came up out of +the cabin to watch the mooring line cast off, and to wave handkerchiefs +at the empty cottage porches as the _Arrow_ backed and straightened and +swept out of the bay. + +The _Arrow_ was engined to justify her name. But the swell was heavier +than it looked from shore. No craft, even a sixty-footer built for +speed, finds her speed lines a thing of comfort in heavy going. Until +the _Arrow_ passed into the lee of an island group halfway along +Squitty she made less time than a fishing boat, and she rolled and +twisted uncomfortably. If Horace Gower had a mind to reach Folly Bay +before the _Blackbird_ he could not have done so. However, he gave no +hint of such intention. He kept to the deck. The girls stayed below +until the big cruiser struck easier going and a faster gait. Then they +joined Gower. + +The three of them stood by the rail just abaft the pilot house when the +_Arrow_ turned into the half-mile breadth of Folly Bay. The cannery +loomed white on shore, with a couple of purse seiners and a tender or +two tied at the slips. And four hundred yards off the cannery wharf the +_Blackbird_ had dropped anchor and lay now, a dozen trolling boats +clustered about her to deliver fish. + +"Slow up and stop abreast of that buyer," Gower ordered. + +The _Arrow's_ skipper brought his vessel to a standstill within a +boat-length of the _Blackbird_. + +"Why, that's Jack MacRae," Nelly Abbott exclaimed. "Hoo-hoo, Johnny!" + +She waved both hands for good measure. MacRae, bareheaded, sleeves +rolled above his elbows, standing in hip boots of rubber on a deck wet +and slippery with water and fish slime, amid piles of gleaming salmon, +recognized her easily enough. He waved greeting, but his gaze only for +that one recognizing instant left the salmon that were landing _flop, +flop_ on the _Blackbird's_ deck out of a troller's fish well. He made +out a slip, handed the troller some currency. There was a brief exchange +of words between them. The man nodded, pushed off his boat. Instantly +another edged into the vacant place. Salmon began to fall on the deck, +heaved up on a picaroon. At the other end of the fish hold another of +the Ferrara boys was tallying in fish. + +"Old crab," Nelly Abbott murmured. "He doesn't even look at us." + +"He's counting salmon, silly," Betty explained. "How can he?" + +There was no particular inflection in her voice. Nevertheless Horace +Gower shot a sidelong glance at his daughter. She also waved a hand +pleasantly to Jack MacRae, who had faced about now. + +"Why don't you say you're glad to see us, old dear?" Nelly Abbott +suggested bluntly, and smiling so that all her white teeth gleamed and +her eyes twinkled mischievously. + +"Tickled to death," MacRae called back. He went through the pantomime of +shaking hands with himself. His lips parted in a smile. "But I'm the +busiest thing afloat right now. See you later." + +"Nerve," Horace Gower muttered under his breath. + +"Not if we see you first," Nelly Abbott retorted. + +"It's not likely you will," MacRae laughed. + +He turned back to his work. The fisherman alongside was tall and surly +looking, a leathery-faced individual with a marked scowl. He heaved half +a dozen salmon up on the _Blackbird_. Then he climbed up himself. He +towered over Jack MacRae, and MacRae was not exactly a small man. He +said something, his hands on his hips. MacRae looked at him. He seemed +to be making some reply. And he stepped back from the man. Every other +fisherman turned his face toward the _Blackbird's_ deck. Their +clattering talk stopped short. + +The man leaned forward. His hands left his hips, drew into doubled +fists, extended threateningly. He took a step toward MacRae. + +And MacRae suddenly lunged forward, as if propelled by some invisible +spring of tremendous force. With incredible swiftness his left hand and +then his right shot at the man's face. The two blows sounded like two +open-handed smacks. But the fisherman sagged, went lurching backward. +His heels caught on the _Blackbird's_ bulwark and he pitched backward +head-first into the hold of his own boat. + +MacRae picked up the salmon and flung them one by one after the man, +with no great haste, but with little care where they fell, for one or +two spattered against the fellow's face as he clawed up out of his own +hold. There was a smear of red on his lips. + +"Oh! My goodness gracious, sakes alive!" + +Nelly Abbott grasped Betty by the arm and murmured these expletives as +much in a spirit of deviltry as of shock. Her eyes danced. + +"Did you see that?" she whispered. "I never saw two men fight before. +I'd hate to have Jack MacRae hit _me_." + +But Betty was holding her breath, for MacRae had picked up a twelve-foot +pike pole, a thing with an ugly point and a hook of iron on its tip. He +only used it, however, to shove away the boat containing the man he had +so savagely smashed. And while he did that Gower curtly issued an order, +and the _Arrow_ slid on to the cannery wharf. + +Nelly went below for something. Betty stood by the rail, staring back +thoughtfully, unaware that her father was keenly watching the look on +her face, with an odd expression in his own eyes. + +"You saw quite a lot of young MacRae last spring, didn't you?" he asked +abruptly. "Do you like him?" + +A faint touch of color leaped into her cheeks. She met her father's +glance with an inquiring one of her own. + +"Well--yes. Rather," she said at last. "He's a nice boy." + +"Better not," Gower rumbled. His frown grew deeper. His teeth clamped a +cigar in one corner of his mouth at an aggressive angle. "Granted that +he is what you call a nice boy. I'll admit he's good-looking and that he +dances well. And he seems to pack a punch up his sleeve. I'd suggest +that you don't cultivate any romantic fancy for him. Because he's making +himself a nuisance in my business--and I'm going to smash him." + +Gower turned away. If he had lingered he might have observed +unmistakable signs of temper. Betty flew storm signals from cheek and +eye. She looked after her father with something akin to defiance, +likewise with an air of astonishment. + +"As if I--" she left the whispered sentence unfinished. + +She perched herself on the mahogany-capped rail, and while she waited +for Nelly Abbott she gave herself up to thinking of herself and her +father and her father's amazing warning which carried a veiled +threat,--an open threat so far as Jack MacRae was concerned. Why should +he cut loose like that on her? + +She stared thoughtfully at the _Blackbird_, marked the trollers slipping +in from the grounds and clustering around the chunky carrier. + +It might have interested Mr. Horace Gower could he have received a +verbatim report of his daughter's reflections for the next five minutes. +But whether it would have pleased him it is hard to say. + + + + +CHAPTER IX + +The Complexity of Simple Matters + + +The army, for a period extending over many months, had imposed a rigid +discipline on Jack MacRae. The Air Service had bestowed upon him a less +rigorous discipline, but a far more exacting self-control. He was not +precisely aware of it, but those four years had saved him from being a +firebrand of sorts in his present situation, because there resided in +him a fiery temper and a capacity for passionate extremes, and those +years in the King's uniform, whatever else they may have done for him, +had placed upon his headlong impulses manifold checks, taught him the +vital necessity of restraint, the value of restraint. + +If the war had made human life seem a cheap and perishable commodity, it +had also worked to give men like MacRae a high sense of honor, to +accentuate a natural distaste for lying and cheating, for anything that +was mean, petty, ignoble. Perhaps the Air Service was unique in that it +was at once the most dangerous and the most democratic and the most +individual of all the organizations that fought the Germans. It had high +standards. The airmen were all young, the pick of the nations, clean, +eager, vigorous boys whose ideals were still undimmed. They lived +and--as it happened--died in big moments. They trained with the gods in +airy spaces and became men, those who survived. + +And the gods may launch destroying thunderbolts, but they do not lie or +cheat or steal. An honest man may respect an honest enemy, and be roused +to murderous fury by a common rascal's trickery. + +When MacRae dropped his hook in Folly Bay he was two days overdue, for +the first time in his fish-running venture. The trollers had promised to +hold their fish. The first man alongside to deliver reminded him of +this. + +"Southeaster held you up, eh?" said he. "We fished in the lee off the +top end. But we might as well have laid in. Held 'em too long for you." + +"They spoiled before you could slough them on the cannery, eh?" MacRae +observed. + +"Most of mine did. They took some." + +"How many of your fish went bad?" Jack asked. + +"About twenty-five, I guess." + +MacRae finished checking the salmon the fisherman heaved up on the deck. +He made out two slips and handed the man his money. + +"I'm paying you for the lost fish," he said. "I told you to hold them +for me. I want you to hold them. If I can't get here on time, it's my +loss, not yours." + +The fisherman looked at the money in his hand and up at MacRae. + +"Well," he said, "you're the first buyer I ever seen do that. You're all +right, all right." + +There were variations of this. Some of the trollers, weatherwise old +sea-dogs, had foreseen that the _Blackbird_ could not face that blow, +and they had sold their fish. Others had held on. These, who were all +men MacRae knew, he paid according to their own estimate of loss. He did +not argue. He accepted their word. It was an astonishing experience for +the trolling fleet. They had never found a buyer willing to make good a +loss of that kind. + +But there were other folk afloat besides simple, honest fishermen who +would not lie for the price of one salmon or forty. When the _Arrow_ +drew abreast and stopped, a boat had pushed in beside the _Blackbird_. +The fisherman in it put half a dozen bluebacks on the deck and clambered +up himself. + +"You owe me for thirty besides them," he announced. + +"How's that?" MacRae asked coolly. + +But he was not cool inside. He knew the man, a preemptor of Folly Bay, a +truckler to the cannery because he was always in debt to the +cannery,--and a quarrelsome individual besides, who took advantage of +his size and strength to browbeat less able men. + +MacRae had got few salmon off Sam Kaye since the cannery opened. He had +never asked Kaye to hold fish for him. He knew instantly what was in +Kaye's mind; it had flitted from one boat to another that MacRae was +making good the loss of salmon held for him, and Kaye was going to get +in on this easy money if he could bluff it through. + +He stood on the _Blackbird's_ deck, snarlingly demanding payment for +thirty fish. MacRae looked at him silently. He hated brawling, +acrimonious dispute. He was loth to a common row at that moment, because +he was acutely conscious of the two girls watching. But he was even more +conscious of Gower's stare and the curious expectancy of the fishermen +clustered about his stern. + +Kaye was simply trying to do him out of fifteen dollars. MacRae knew it. +He knew that the fishermen knew it,--and he had a suspicion that Folly +Bay might not be unaware, or averse, to Sam Kaye taking a fall out of +him. Folly Bay had tried other unpleasant tricks. + +"That doesn't go for you, Kaye," he said quietly. "I know your game. Get +off my boat and take your fish with you." + +Sam Kaye glowered threateningly. He had cowed men before with the +fierceness of his look. He was long-armed and raw-boned, and he rather +fancied himself in a rough and tumble. He was quite blissfully ignorant +that Jack MacRae was stewing under his outward calmness. Kaye took a +step forward, with an intimidating thrust of his jaw. + +MacRae smashed him squarely in the mouth with a straight left, and +hooked him somewhere on the chin with a wicked right cross. Either blow +was sufficient to knock any ordinary man down. There was a deceptive +power in MacRae's slenderness, which was not so much slenderness as +perfect bodily symmetry. He weighed within ten pounds as much as Sam +Kaye, although he did not look it, and he was as quick as a playful +kitten. Kaye went down, as told before. He lifted a dazed countenance +above the cockpit as MacRae shoved his craft clear. + +The fishermen broke the silence with ribald laughter. They knew Kaye's +game too. + +MacRae left Folly Bay later in the afternoon, poorer by many dollars +paid for rotten salmon. He wasn't in a particularly genial mood. The Sam +Kaye affair had come at an inopportune moment. He didn't care to stand +out as a bruiser. Still, he asked himself irritably, why should he care +because Nelly Abbott and Betty Gower had seen him using his fists? He +was perfectly justified. Indeed, he knew very well he could have done +nothing else. The trailers had chortled over the outcome. These were +matters they could understand and appreciate. Even Steve Ferrara looked +at him enviously. + +"It makes me wish I'd dodged the gas," Steve said wistfully. "It's hell +to wheeze your breath in and out. By jiminy, you're wicked with your +hands, Jack. Did you box much in France?" + +"Quite a lot," MacRae replied. "Some of the fellows in our squadron were +pretty clever. We used the gloves quite a bit." + +"And you're naturally quick," Steve drawled. "Now, me, the gas has +cooked my goose. I'd have to bat Kaye over the head with an oar. Gee, he +sure got a surprise." + +They both laughed. Even upon his bloody face--as he rose out of his own +fish hold--bewildered astonishment had been Sam Kaye's chief expression. + +The _Blackbird_ went her rounds. At noon the next day she met Vincent +Ferrara with her sister ship, and the two boats made one load for the +_Blackbird_. She headed south. With high noon, too, came the summer +westerly, screeching and whistling and lashing the Gulf to a brief fury. + +It was the regular summer wind, a yachtsman's gale. Four days out of six +its cycle ran the same, a breeze rising at ten o'clock, stiffening to a +healthy blow, a mere sigh at sundown. Midnight would find the sea smooth +as a mirror, the heaving swell killed by changing tides. + +So the _Blackbird_ ran down Squitty, rolling and yawing through a +following sea, and turned into Squitty Cove to rest till night and calm +settled on the Gulf. + +When her mudhook was down in that peaceful nook, Steve Ferrara turned +into his bunk to get a few hours' sleep against the long night watch. +MacRae stirred wakeful on the sun-hot deck, slushing it down with +buckets of sea water to save his ice and fish. He coiled ropes, made his +vessel neat, and sat him down to think. Squitty Cove always stirred him +to introspection. His mind leaped always to the manifold suggestions of +any well-remembered place. He could shut his eyes and see the old log +house behind its leafy screen of alder and maple at the Cove's head. The +rosebushes before it were laden with bloom now. At his hand were the +gray cliffs backed by grassy patches, running away inland to virgin +forest. He felt dispossessed of those noble acres. He was always seeing +them through his father's eyes, feeling as Donald MacRae must have felt +in those last, lonely years of which he had written in simple language +that had wrung his son's heart. + +But it never occurred to Jack MacRae that his father, pouring out the +tale of those troubled years, had bestowed upon him an equivocal +heritage. + +He slid overboard the small skiff the _Blackbird_ carried and rowed +ashore. There were rowboat trollers on the beach asleep in their tents +and rude lean-tos. He walked over the low ridge behind which stood Peter +Ferrara's house. It was hot, the wooded heights of the island shutting +off the cool westerly. On such a day Peter Ferrara should be dozing on +his porch and Dolly perhaps mending stockings or sewing in a rocker +beside him. + +But the porch was bare. As MacRae drew near the house a man came out the +door and down the three low steps. He was short and thick-set, young, +quite fair, inclined already to floridness of skin. MacRae knew him at +once for Norman Gower. He was a typical Gower,--a second edition of his +father, save that his face was less suggestive of power, less heavily +marked with sullenness. + +He glanced with blank indifference at Jack MacRae, passed within six +feet and walked along the path which ran around the head of the Cove. +MacRae watched him. He would cross between the boathouse and the roses +in MacRae's dooryard. MacRae had an impulse to stride after him, to +forbid harshly any such trespass on MacRae ground. But he smiled at that +childishness. It was childish, MacRae knew. But he felt that way about +it, just as he often felt that he himself had a perfect right to range +the whole end of Squitty, to tramp across greensward and through forest +depths, despite Horace Gower's legal title to the land. MacRae was aware +of this anomaly in his attitude, without troubling to analyze it. + +He walked into old Peter's house without announcement beyond his +footsteps on the floor, as he had been accustomed to do as far back as +he could remember. Dolly was sitting beside a little table, her chin in +her palms. There was a droop to her body that disturbed MacRae. She had +sat for hours like that the night his father died. And there was now on +her face something of the same look of sad resignation and pity. Her +big, dark eyes were misty, troubled, when she lifted them to MacRae. + +"Hello, Jack," she said. + +He came up to her, put his hands on her shoulders. + +"What is it now?" he demanded. "I saw Norman Gower leaving as I came up. +And here you're looking--what's wrong?" + +His tone was imperative. + +"Nothing, Johnny." + +"You don't cry for nothing. You're not that kind," MacRae replied. +"That chunky lobster hasn't given you the glooms, surely?" + +Dolly's eyes flashed. + +"It isn't like you to call names," she declared. "It isn't nice. +And--and what business of yours is it whether I laugh or cry?" + +MacRae smiled. Dolly in a temper was not wholly strange to him. He was +struck with her remarkable beauty every time he saw her. She was +altogether too beautiful a flower to be blushing unseen on an island in +the Gulf. He shook her gently. + +"Because I'm big brother. Because you and I were kids together for years +before we ever knew there could be serpents in Eden. Because anything +that hurts you hurts me. I don't like anything to make you cry, _mia +Dolores_. I'd wring Norman Gower's chubby neck with great pleasure if I +thought he could do that. I didn't even know you knew him." + +Dolly dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief. + +"There are lots of things you don't know, Jack MacRae," she murmured. +"Besides, why shouldn't I know Norman?" + +MacRae threw out his hands helplessly. + +"No law against it, of course," he admitted. "Only--well--" + +He was conscious of floundering, with her grave, dark eyes searching his +face. There was no reason save his own hostility to anything Gower,--and +Dolly knew no basis for that save the fact that Horace Gower had +acquired his father's ranch. That could not possibly be a ground for +Dolores Ferrara to frown on any Gower, male or female, who happened to +come her way. + +"Why, I suppose it really is none of my business," he said slowly. +"Except that I can't help being concerned in anything that makes you +unhappy. That's all." + +He sat down on the arm of her chair and patted her cheek. To his utter +amazement Dolly broke into a storm of tears. Long ago he had seen Dolly +cry when she had hurt herself, because he had teased her, because she +was angry or disappointed. He had never seen any woman cry as she did +now. It was not just simple grieved weeping. It was a tempest that shook +her. Her body quivered, her breath came in gasping bursts between +racking sobs. + +MacRae gathered her into his arms, trying to dam that wild flood. She +put her face against him and clung there, trembling like some hunted +thing seeking refuge, mysteriously stirring MacRae with the passionate +abandon of her tears, filling him with vague apprehensions, with a +strange excitement. + +Like the tornado, swift in its striking and passing, so this storm +passed. Dolly's sobbing ceased. She rested passively in his arms for a +minute. Then she sighed, brushed the cloudy hair out of her eyes, and +looked up at him. + +"I wonder why I should go all to pieces like that so suddenly?" she +muttered. "And why I should somehow feel better for it?" + +"I don't know," MacRae said. "Maybe I could tell you if I knew _why_ you +went off like that. You poor little devil. Something has stung you deep, +I know." + +"Yes," she admitted. "I hope nothing like it ever comes to you, Jack. +I'm bleeding internally. Oh, it hurts, it hurts!" + +She laid her head against him and cried again softly. + +"Tell me," he whispered. + +"Why not?" She lifted her head after a little. "You could always keep +things to yourself. It wasn't much wonder they called you Silent John. +Do you know I never really grasped The Ancient Mariner until now? People +_must_ tell their troubles to some one--or they'd corrode inside." + +"Go ahead," MacRae encouraged. + +"When Norman Gower went overseas we were engaged," she said bluntly, and +stopped. She was not looking at MacRae now. She stared at the opposite +wall, her fingers locked together in her lap. + +"For four years," she went on, "I've been hoping, dreaming, waiting, +loving. To-day he came home to tell me that he married in England two +years ago. Married in the madness of a drunken hour--that is how he puts +it--a girl who didn't care for anything but the good time his rank and +pay could give her." + +"I think you're in luck," MacRae said soberly. + +"What queer creatures men are!" She seemed not to have heard him--to be +thinking her own thoughts out loud. "He says he loves me, that he has +loved me all the time, that he feels as if he had been walking in his +sleep and fallen into some muddy hole. And I believe him. It's terrible, +Johnny." + +"It's impossible," MacRae declared savagely. "If he's got in that kind +of a hole, let him stay there. You're well out of it. You ought to be +glad." + +"But I'm not," she said sadly. "I'm not made that way. I can't let a +thing become a vital part of my life and give it up without a pang." + +"I don't see what else you can do," MacRae observed. "Only brace up and +forget it." + +"It isn't quite so simple as that," she sighed. "Norman's w--this woman +presently got tired of him. Evidently she had no scruples about getting +what she wanted, nor how. She went away with another man. Norman is +getting a divorce--the decree absolute will be granted in March next. He +wants me to marry him." + +"Will you?" + +Dolly looked up to meet MacRae's wondering stare. She nodded. + +"You're a triple-plated fool," he said roughly. + +"I don't know," she replied thoughtfully. "Norman certainly has been. +Perhaps I am too. We should get on--a pair of fools together." + +The bitterness in her voice stung MacRae. + +"You really should have loved me," he said, "and I you." + +"But you don't, Jack. You have never thought of that before." + +"I could, quite easily." + +Dolly considered this a moment. + +"No," she said. "You like me. I know that, Johnny. I like you, too. You +are a man, and I'm a woman. But if you weren't bursting with sympathy +you wouldn't have thought of that. If Norman had some of your +backbone--but it wouldn't make any difference. If you know what it is +that draws a certain man and woman together in spite of themselves, in +spite of things they can see in each other that they don't quite like, I +dare say you'd understand. I don't think I do. Norman Gower has made me +dreadfully unhappy. But I loved him before he went away, and I love him +yet. I want him just the same. And he says--he says--that he never +stopped caring for me--that it was like a bad dream. I believe him. I'm +sure of it. He didn't lie to me. And I can't hate him. I can't punish +him without punishing myself. I don't want to punish him, any more than +I would want to punish a baby, if I had one, for a naughtiness it +couldn't help." + +"So you'll marry him eventually?" MacRae asked. + +Dolly nodded. + +"If he doesn't change his mind," she murmured. "Oh, I shouldn't say ugly +things like that. It sounds cheap and mean." + +"But it hurts, it hurts me so to think of it," she broke out +passionately. "I can forgive him, because I can see how it happened. +Still it hurts. I feel cheated--cheated!" + +She lay back in her chair, fingers locked together, red lips parted over +white teeth that were clenched together. Her eyes glowed somberly, +looking away through distant spaces. + +And MacRae, conscious that she had said her say, feeling that she wanted +to be alone, as he himself always wanted to fight a grief or a hurt +alone and in silence, walked out into the sunshine, where the westerly +droned high above in the swaying fir tops. + +He went up the path around the Cove's head to the porch of his own +house, sat down on the top step, and cursed the Gowers, root and branch. +He hated them, everything of the name and blood, at that moment, with a +profound and active hatred. + +They were like a blight, as their lives touched the lives of other +people. They sat in the seats of the mighty, and for their pleasure or +their whims others must sweat and suffer. So it seemed to Jack MacRae. + +Home, these crowded, hurrying days, was aboard the _Blackbird_. It was +pleasant now to sit on his own doorstep and smell the delicate perfume +of the roses and the balsamy odors from the woods behind. But the rooms +depressed him when he went in. They were dusty and silent, abandoned to +that forsaken air which rests upon uninhabited dwellings. MacRae went +out again, to stride aimlessly along the cliffs past the mouth of the +Cove. + +Beyond the lee of the island the westerly still lashed the Gulf. The +white horses galloped on a gray-green field. MacRae found a grassy place +in the shade of an arbutus, and lay down to rest and watch. Sunset would +bring calm, a dying wind, new colors to sea and sky and mountains. It +would send him away on the long run to Crow Harbor, driving through the +night under the cool stars. + +No matter what happened people must be fed. Food was vital. Men lost +their lives at the fishing, but it went on. Hearts might be torn, but +hands still plied the gear. Life had a bad taste in Jack MacRae's mouth +as he lay there under the red-barked tree. He was moody. It seemed a +struggle without mercy or justice, almost without reason, a blind +obedience to the will-to-live. A tooth-and-toenail contest. He surveyed +his own part in it with cynical detachment. So long as salmon ran in the +sea they would be taken for profit in the markets and the feeding of the +hungry. And the salmon would run and men would pursue them, and the game +would be played without slackening for such things as broken faith or +aching hearts or a woman's tears. + +MacRae grew drowsy puzzling over things like that. Life was a jumble +beyond his understanding, he concluded at last. Men strove to a godlike +mastery of circumstances,--and achieved three meals a day and a squalid +place to sleep. Sometimes, when they were pluming themselves on having +beaten the game, Destiny was laughing in her sleeve and spreading a +snare for their feet. A man never knew what was coming next. It was +just a damned scramble! A disorderly scramble in which a man could be +sure of getting hurt. + +He wondered if that were really true. + + + + +CHAPTER X + +Thrust and Counterthrust + + +By the time Jack MacRae was writing August on his sales slips he was +conscious of an important fact; namely, that nearly a hundred gas-boat +fishermen, trolling Squitty Island, the Ballenas, Gray Rock, even +farther afield to Yellow Rock Light and Lambert Channel, were compactly +behind him. They were still close to a period when they had been +remorselessly exploited. They were all for MacRae. Prices being equal, +they preferred that he should have their fish. It was still vivid in +their astonished minds that he had shared profits with them without +compulsion, that he had boosted prices without competition, had put a +great many dollars in their pockets. Only those who earn a living as +precariously, as riskily and with as much patient labor as a salmon +fisherman, can so well value a dollar. They had an abiding confidence, +by this time, in Jack MacRae. They knew he was square, and they said so. +In the territory his two carriers covered, MacRae was becoming the +uncrowned salmon king. Other buyers cut in from time to time. They did +not fare well. The trollers would hold their salmon, even when some +sporting independent offered to shade the current price. They would +shake their heads if they knew either of the _Bird_ boats would be there +to take the fish. For when MacRae said he would be there, he was always +there. In the old days they had been compelled to play one buyer +against another. They did not have to do that with MacRae. + +The Folly Bay collectors fared little better than outside buyers. In +July Gower met MacRae's price by two successive raises. He stopped at +that. MacRae did not. Each succeeding run of salmon averaged greater +poundage. They were worth more. MacRae paid fifty, fifty-five cents. +When Gower stood pat at fifty-five, MacRae gave up a fourth of his +contract percentage and paid sixty. It was like draw poker with the +advantage of the last raise on his side. + +The salmon were worth the price. They were worth double to a cannery +that lay mostly idle for lack of fish. The salmon, now, were running +close to six pounds each. The finished product was eighteen dollars a +case in the market. There are forty-eight one-pound cans in a case. To a +man familiar with packing costs it is a simple sum. MacRae often +wondered why Gower stubbornly refused to pay more, when his collecting +boats came back to the cannery so often with a few scattered salmon in +their holds. They were primitive folk, these salmon trollers. They +jeered the unlucky collectors. Gower was losing his fishermen as well as +his fish. For the time, at least, the back of his long-held monopoly was +broken. + +MacRae got a little further light on this attitude from Stubby Abbott. + +"He's figuring on making out a season's pack with cohoes, humps, and dog +salmon," Stubby told MacRae at the Crow Harbor cannery. "He expects to +work his purse seiners overtime, and to hell with the individual +fisherman. Norman was telling me. Old Horace has put Norman in charge at +Folly Bay, you know." + +MacRae nodded. He knew about that. + +"The old boy is sore as a boil at you and me," Stubby chuckled. "I +don't blame him much. He has had a cinch there so long he thinks it's +his private pond. You've certainly put a crimp in the Folly Bay blueback +pack--to my great benefit. I don't suppose any one but you could have +done it either." + +"Any one could," MacRae declared, "if he knew the waters, the men, and +was wise enough to play the game square. The trouble has been that each +buyer wanted to make a clean-up on each trip. He wanted easy money. The +salmon fisherman away up the coast practically has to take what is +offered him day by day, or throw his fish overboard. Canneries and +buyers alike have systematically given him the worst of the deal. You +don't cut your cannery hands' pay because on certain days your pack +falls off." + +"Hardly." + +"But canneries and collectors and every independent buyer have always +used any old pretext to cut the price to the fisherman out on the +grounds. And while a fisherman has to take what he is offered he doesn't +have to keep on taking it. He can quit, and try something else. Lots of +them have done that. That's why there are three Japanese to every white +salmon fisherman on the British Columbia coast. That is why we have an +Oriental problem. The Japs are making the canneries squeal, aren't +they?" + +"Rather." Stubby smiled. "They are getting to be a bit of a problem." + +"The packers got them in here as cheap labor in the salmon fishing," +MacRae went on. "The white fisherman was too independent. He wanted all +he could get out of his work. He was a kicker, as well as a good +fisherman. The packers thought they could keep wages down and profits +up by importing the Jap--cheap labor with a low standard of living. And +the Jap has turned the tables on the big fellows. They hang together, as +aliens always do in a strange country, and the war has helped them +freeze the white fisherman out on one hand and exact more and more from +the canneries on the other. And that would never have happened if this +had been kept a white man's country, and the white fisherman had got a +square deal." + +"To buy as cheaply as you can and sell for as much as you can," Stubby +reminded him, "is a fundamental of business. You can't get away from it. +My father abandoned that maxim the last two years of his life, and it +nearly broke us. He was a public-spirited man. He took war and war-time +conditions to heart. In a period of jumping food costs he tried to give +people cheaper food. As I said, he nearly went broke trying to do a +public service, because no one else in the same business departed from +the business rule of making all they could. In fact, men in the same +business, I have since learned, were the first to sharpen their knives +for him. He was establishing a bad precedent. I don't know but their +attitude is sound, after all. In sheer self-defense a man must make all +he can when he has a chance. You cannot indulge in philanthropy in a +business undertaking these days, Silent John." + +"Granted," MacRae made answer. "I don't propose to be a philanthropist +myself. But you will get farther with a salmon fisherman, or any other +man whose labor you must depend on, if you accept the principle that he +is entitled to make a dollar as well as yourself, if you don't stretch +every point to take advantage of his necessity. These fellows who fish +around Squitty have been gouged and cheated a lot. They aren't fools. +They know pretty well who makes the long profit, who pile up moderate +fortunes while they get only a living, and not a particularly good +living at that." + +"Are you turning Bolshevik?" Stubby inquired with mock solicitude. + +MacRae smiled. + +"Hardly. Nor are the fishermen. They know I'm making money. But they +know also that they are getting more out of it than they ever got +before, and that if I were not on the job they would get a lot less." + +"They certainly would," Abbott drawled. "You have been, and are now, +paying more for blueback salmon than any buyer on the Gulf." + +"Well, it has paid me. And it has been highly profitable to you, hasn't +it?" MacRae said. "You've had a hundred thousand salmon to pack which +you would not otherwise have had." + +"Certainly," Stubby agreed. "I'm not questioning your logic. In this +case it has paid us both, and the fisherman as well. But suppose +everybody did it?" + +"If you can pay sixty cents a fish, and fifteen per cent, on top of that +and pack profitably, why can't other canneries? Why can't Folly Bay meet +that competition? Rather, why won't they?" + +"Matter of policy, maybe," Stubby hazarded. "Matter of keeping costs +down. Apart from a few little fresh-fish buyers, you are the only +operator on the Gulf who is cutting any particular ice. Gower may figure +that he will eventually get these fish at his own price. If I were +eliminated, he would." + +"I'd still be on the job," MacRae ventured. + +"Would you, though?" Stubby asked doubtfully. + +"Yes." MacRae made his reply positive in tone. "You could buy all +right. That Squitty Island bunch of trollers seem convinced you are the +whole noise in the salmon line. But without Crow Harbor where could you +unload such quantities of fish?" + +It struck MacRae that there was something more than mere casual +speculation in Stubby's words. But he did not attempt to delve into +motives. + +"A good general," he said with a dry smile, "doesn't advertise his plan +of campaign in advance. Without Crow Harbor as a market I could not have +done what I have done this season. But Crow Harbor could shut down +to-morrow--and I'd go on just the same." + +Stubby poked thoughtfully with a pencil at the blotter on his desk. + +"Well, Jack, I may as well be quite frank with you," he said at last. "I +have had hints that may mean something. The big run will be over at +Squitty in another month. I don't believe I can be dictated to on short +notice. But I cannot positively say. If you can see your way to carry +on, it will be quite a relief to me. Another season it may be +different." + +"I think I can." + +But though MacRae said this confidently, he was privately not so sure. +From the very beginning he had expected pressure to come on Stubby, as +the active head of Crow Harbor. It was as Stubby said. Unless +he--MacRae--had a market for his fish, he could not buy. And within the +limits of British Columbia the salmon market was subject to control; by +just what means MacRae had got inklings here and there. He had not been +deceived by the smoothness of his operations so far. Below the clear +horizon there was a storm gathering. A man like Gower did not lie down +and submit passively to being beaten at his own game. + +But MacRae believed he had gone too far to be stopped now, even if his +tactics did not please the cannery interests. They could have squelched +him easily enough in the beginning, when he had no funds to speak of, +when his capital was mostly a capacity for hard, dirty work and a +willingness to take chances. Already he had run his original shoestring +to fifteen thousand dollars cash in hand. It scarcely seemed possible. +It gave him a startling vision of the profits in the salmon industry, +and it was not a tenable theory that men who had controlled such a +source of profits would sit idle while he undermined their monopoly. +Nevertheless he had made that much money in four months. He had at his +back a hundred fishermen who knew him, liked him, trusted him, who were +anxious that he should prosper, because they felt that they were sharing +in that prosperity. Ninety per cent. of these men had a grievance +against the canneries. And he had the good will of these men with +sun-browned faces and hook-scarred hands. The human equation in +industrial processes is a highly important one, as older, wiser men than +Jack MacRae had been a longer time discovering. + +He did not try to pin Stubby to a more definite statement. A hint was +enough for MacRae. Stubby Abbott could also be depended upon to see +things beyond the horizon. If a storm broke Stubby was the most +vulnerable, because in a sense he was involved with the cannery +interests in general, and they would consider him an apostate and knife +him without mercy,--if they could. If the Abbott estate had debts, +obligations which could be manipulated, if through the financial +convolutions of marketing the Crow Harbor pack Stubby could be reached, +the Abbott family had property, a standard of living that stood for +comfort, appearance, luxury almost. There are always plenty of roads +open to a flank attack on people like that; many levers, financial and +otherwise, can be pulled for or against them. + +So MacRae, knowing that Stubby must protect himself in a showdown, set +about fortifying his own approaches. + +For a first move he hired an engineer, put Steve Ferrara in charge of +the _Blackbird_, and started him back to Squitty. Then MacRae took the +next train to Bellingham, a cannery town which looks out on the southern +end of the Gulf of Georgia from the American side of the boundary. He +extended his journey to Seattle. Altogether, he was gone three days. + +When he came back he made a series of calls,--at the Vancouver offices +of three different canneries and one of the biggest cold-storage +concerns on the Pacific Coast. He got a courteous but unsatisfactory +reception from the cannery men. He fared a little better with the +manager of the cold-storage plant. This gentleman was tentatively +agreeable in the matter of purchasing salmon, but rather vague in the +way of terms. + +"Beginning with May next I can deliver any quantity up to two thousand a +day, perhaps more, for a period of about four months," MacRae stated. +"What I should like to know is the percentage over the up-coast price +you would pay." + +But he could not pin the man down to anything definite. He would only +speak pleasantly of the market and possible arrangements, utter vague +commonplaces in business terminology. MacRae rose. + +"I'm wasting your time and my own," he said. "You don't want my fish. +Why not say so?" + +"We always want fish," the man declared, bending a shrewdly appraising +eye on MacRae. "Bring in the salmon and we will do business." + +"On your own terms when my carriers are tied to your dock with a +capacity load which I must sell or throw overboard within forty-eight +hours," MacRae smiled. "No, I don't intend to go up against any +take-it-or-leave proposition like that. I don't have to." + +"Well, we might allow you five per cent. That's about the usual thing on +salmon. And we would rather have salmon now than a promise of them next +season." + +"Oh, rats!" MacRae snorted. "I'm in the business to make money--not +simply to create dividends for your Eastern stockholders while I eke out +a living and take all the risks. Come again." + +The cold storage man smiled. + +"Come and see me in the spring. Meantime, when you have a cargo of +salmon, you might run them in to us. We'll pay market prices. It's up to +you to protect yourself in the buying." + +MacRae went on about his business. He had not expected much +encouragement locally, so he did not suffer disappointment. He knew +quite well what he could expect in Vancouver if Crow Harbor canceled his +contract. He would bring in boatloads of salmon, and the dealers would +squeeze him, all but the Terminal Fish Company. And if the market could +be controlled, if the men behind could dictate the Crow Harbor policy, +they might also bring the Terminal into line. Even if they did not the +Terminal could only handle a minor portion of the salmon he could get +while the big run swirled around Squitty Island. + +But MacRae was not downcast. He was only sober and thoughtful, which had +become characteristic of him in the last four months. He was forgetting +how to laugh, to be buoyant, to see the world through the rose-colored +glasses of sanguine youth. He was becoming a living exampler of his +nickname. Even Stubby Abbott marked this when Jack came back from +Bellingham. + +"Come on out to the house," Stubby urged. "Your men can handle the job a +day or two longer. Forget the grind for once. It's getting you." + +"No, I don't think it is," MacRae denied. "But a man can't play and +produce at the same time. I have to keep going." + +He did go out to Abbott's one evening, however, and suffered a good deal +of teasing from Nelly over his manhandling of Sam Kaye. A lot of other +young people happened to foregather there. They sang and flirted and +presently moved the rugs off the living-room floor and danced to a +phonograph. MacRae found himself a little out of it, by inclination. He +was tired, without knowing quite what was the matter with him. A man, +even a young and sturdy man, cannot work like a horse for months on end, +eating his meals anyhow and sleeping when he can, without losing +temporarily the zest for careless fun. For another thing, he found +himself looking at these immaculate young people as any hard-driven +worker must perforce look upon drones. + +They were sons and daughters of the well-to-do, divorced from all +uncouthness, with pretty manners and good clothes. They seemed serene in +the assurance--MacRae got this impression for the first time in his +social contact with them--that wearing good clothes, behaving well, +giving themselves whole-heartedly to having a good time, was the most +important and satisfying thing in the world. They moved in an atmosphere +of considering these things their due, a birthright, their natural and +proper condition of well-being. + +And MacRae found himself wondering what they gave or ever expected to +give in return for this pleasant security of mind and body. Some one had +to pay for it, the silks and georgettes and white flannels, furs and +strings of pearls and gold trinkets, the good food, the motor cars, and +the fun. + +He knew a little about every one he met that evening, for in Vancouver +as in any other community which has developed a social life beyond the +purely primitive stages of association, people gravitate into sets and +cliques. They lived in good homes, they had servants, they week-ended +here and there. Of the dozen or more young men and women present, only +himself and Stubby Abbott made any pretense at work. + +Yet somebody paid for all they had and did. Men in offices, in shops, in +fishing boats and mines and logging camps worked and sweated to pay for +all this well-being in which they could have no part. MacRae even +suspected that a great many men had died across the sea that this sort +of thing should remain the inviolate privilege of just such people as +these. It was not an inspiring conclusion. + +He smiled to himself. How they would stare if he should voice these +stray thoughts in plain English. They would cry out that he was a +Bolshevik. Absolutely! He wondered why he should think such things. He +wasn't disgruntled. He wanted a great many things which these young +people of his own age had gotten from fairy godmothers,--in the shape of +pioneer parents who had skimmed the cream off the resources of a +developing frontier and handed it on to their children, and who +themselves so frequently kept in the background, a little in awe of +their gilded offspring. MacRae meant to beat the game as it was being +played. He felt that he was beating it. But nothing would be handed him +on a silver salver. Fortune would not be bestowed upon him in any easy, +soft-handed fashion. He would have to render an equivalent for what he +got. He wondered if the security of success so gained would have any +greater value for him than it would have for those who took their +blessings so lightly. + +This kink of analytical reasoning was new to MacRae, and it kept him +from entering whole-heartedly into the joyous frivolity which functioned +in the Abbott home that evening. He had never found himself in that +critical mood before. He did not want to prattle nonsense. He did not +want to think, and he could not help thinking. He had a curious sense of +detachment from what was going on, even while he was a part of it. So he +did not linger late. + +The _Blackbird_ had discharged at Crow Harbor late in the afternoon. She +lay now at a Vancouver slip. By eleven o'clock he was aboard in his +bunk, still thinking when he should have been asleep, staring wide-eyed +at dim deck beams, his mind flitting restlessly from one thing to +another. Steve Ferrara lay in the opposite bunk, wheezing his breath in +and out of lungs seared by poison gas in Flanders. Smells of seaweed and +tide-flat wafted in through open hatch and portholes. A full moon thrust +silver fingers through deck openings. Gradually the softened medley of +harbor noises lulled MacRae into a dreamless sleep. He only wakened at +the clank of the engine and the shudder of the _Blackbird's_ timbers as +Steve backed her out of her berth in the first faint gleam of dawn. + +The _Blackbird_ made her trip and a second and a third, which brought +the date late in August. On his delivery, when the salmon in her hold +had been picarooned to the cannery floor, MacRae went up to the office. +Stubby had sent for him. He looked uncomfortable when Jack came in. + +"What's on your mind now?" MacRae asked genially. + +"Something damned unpleasant," Stubby growled. + +"Shoot," MacRae said. He sat down and lit a cigarette. + +"I didn't think they could do it," Abbott said slowly. "But it seems +they can. I guess you'll have to lay off the Gower territory after all, +Jack." + +"You mean _you_ will," MacRae replied. "I've been rather expecting that. +Can Gower hurt you?" + +"Not personally. But the banks--export control--there are so many angles +to the cannery situation. There's nothing openly threatened. But it has +been made perfectly clear to me that I'll be hampered and harassed till +I won't know whether I'm afoot or on horseback, if I go on paying a few +cents more for salmon in order to keep my plant working efficiently. +Damn it, I hate it. But I'm in no position to clash with the rest of the +cannery crowd and the banks too. I hate to let you down. You've pulled +me out of a hole. I don't know a man who would have worked at your pitch +and carried things off the way you have. If I had this pack marketed, I +could snap my fingers at them. But I haven't. There's the rub. I hate to +ditch you in order to insure myself--get in line at somebody else's +dictation." + +"Don't worry about me," MacRae said gently. "I have no cannery and no +pack to market through the regular channels. Nor has the bank advanced +me any funds. You are not responsible for what I do. And neither Gower +nor the Packers' Association nor the banks can stop me from buying +salmon so long as I have the money to pay the fishermen and carriers to +haul them, can they?" + +"No, but the devil of it is they can stop you _selling_," Stubby +lamented bitterly. "I tell you there isn't a cannery on the Gulf will +pay you a cent more than they pay the fishermen. What's the use of +buying if you can't sell?" + +MacRae did not attempt to answer that. + +"Let's sum it up," he said. "You can't take any more bluebacks from +Gower's territory. That, I gather, is the chief object. I suppose they +know as much about your business as you know yourself. Am I to be +deprived of the two boat charters into the bargain?" + +"No, by the Lord," Stubby swore. "Not if you want them. My general +policy may be subject to dictation, but not the petty details of my +business. There's a limit. I won't stand for that." + +"Put a fair price on the _Birds_, and I'll buy 'em both," MacRae +suggested. "You had them up for sale, anyway. That will let you out, so +far as my equipment is concerned." + +"Five thousand each," Stubby said promptly. + +"They're good value at that. And I can use ten thousand dollars to +advantage, right now." + +"I'll give you a check. I want the registry transferred to me at once," +MacRae continued. "That done, you can cease worrying over me, Stub. +You've been square, and I've made money on the deal. You would be +foolish to fight unless you have a fighting chance. Oh, another thing. +Will the Terminal shut off on me, too?" + +"No," Stubby declared. "The Terminal is one of the weapons I intend +ultimately to use as a club on the heads of this group of gentlemen who +want to make a close corporation of the salmon industry on the British +Columbia coast. If I get by this season, I shall be in shape to show +them something. They will not bother about the Terminal, because the +Terminal is small. All the salmon they could take from you wouldn't hurt +Gower. What they want is to enable Gower to get up his usual fall pack. +It has taken him this long to get things shaped so he could call me off. +He can't reach a local concern like the Terminal. No, the Terminal will +continue to buy salmon from you, Jack. But you know they haven't the +facilities to handle a fourth of the salmon you have been running +lately." + +"I'll see they get whatever they can use," MacRae declared. "And if it +is any satisfaction to you personally, Stub, I can assure you that I +shall continue to do business as usual." + +Stubby looked curious. + +"You've got something up your sleeve?" + +"Yes," MacRae admitted. "No stuffed club, either. It's loaded. You wait +and keep your ears open." + +MacRae's face twisted into a mirthless smile. His eyes glowed with the +fire that always blazed up in them when he thought too intensely of +Horace Gower and the past, or of Gower's various shifts to defeat him in +what he undertook. He had anticipated this move. He was angrily +determined that Gower should not get one more salmon, or buy what he got +a cent cheaper, by this latest strategy. + +"You appear to like old Horace," Stubby said thoughtfully, "about as +much as our fellows used to like Fritz when he dropped high explosives +on supposedly bomb-proof shelters." + +"Just about as much," MacRae said shortly. "Well, you'll transfer that +registry--when? I want to get back to Squitty as soon as possible." + +"I'll go to town with you now, if you like," Stubby offered. + +They acted on that. Within two hours MacRae was the owner of two motor +launches under British registry. Payment in full left him roughly with +five thousand dollars working capital, enough by only a narrow margin. +At sunset Vancouver was a smoky smudge on a far horizon. At dusk he +passed in the narrow mouth of Squitty Cove. The _Bluebird_ was swinging +about to go when her sister ship ranged alongside. Vincent Ferrara +dropped his hook again. There were forty trollers in the Cove. MacRae +called to them. They came in skiffs and dinghys, and when they were all +about his stern and some perched in sea boots along the _Blackbird's_ +low bulwarks, MacRae said what he had to say. + +"Gower has come alive. My market for fish bought in Gower's territory is +closed, so far as Crow Harbor is concerned. If I can't sell salmon I +can't buy them from you. How much do you think Folly Bay will pay for +your fish?" + +He waited a minute. The fishermen looked at him in the yellow lantern +light, at each other. They shifted uneasily. No one answered his +question. + +MacRae went on. + +"You can guess what will happen. You will be losers. So will I. I don't +like the idea of being frozen out of the salmon-buying business, now +that I have got my hand in. I don't intend to be. As long as I can +handle a load of salmon I'll make the run. But I've got to run them +farther, and you fellows will have to wait a bit for me now and then, +perhaps. The cannery men hang together. They are making it bad for me +because I'm paying a few cents more for salmon. They have choked off +Crow Harbor. Gower is hungry for cheap salmon. He'll get them, too, if +you let him head off outside buyers. Since I'm the only buyer covering +these grounds, it's up to you, more than ever, to see that I keep +coming. That's all. Tell the rest of the fishermen what I say whenever +you happen to run across them." + +They became articulate. They plied MacRae with questions. He answered +tersely, as truthfully as he could. They cursed Folly Bay and the +canneries in general. But they were not downcast. They did not seem +apprehensive that Folly Bay would get salmon for forty cents. MacRae had +said he would still buy. For them that settled it. They would not have +to sell their catch to Folly Bay for whatever price Gower cared to set. +Presently they began to drift away to their boats, to bed, for their +work began in that gray hour between dawn and sunrise when the schooling +salmon best strike the trolling spoon. + +One lingered, a returned soldier named Mullen, who had got his discharge +in May and gone fishing. Mullen had seen two years in the trenches. He +sat in his skiff, scowling up at MacRae, talking about the salmon +packers, about fishing. + +"Aw, it's the same everywhere," he said cynically. "They all want a +cinch, easy money, big money. Looks like the more you have, the more you +can grab. Folly Bay made barrels of coin while the war was on. Why can't +they give us fellers a show to make a little now? But they don't give a +damn, so long as they get theirs. And then they wonder why some of us +guys that went to France holler about the way we find things when we +come home." + +He pushed his skiff away into the gloom that rested upon the Cove. + +The _Bluebird_ was packed with salmon to her hatch covers. There had +been a fresh run. The trollers were averaging fifty fish to a man daily. +MacRae put Vincent Ferrara aboard the _Blackbird_, himself took over the +loaded vessel, and within the hour was clear of Squitty's dusky +headlands, pointing a course straight down the middle of the Gulf. His +man turned in to sleep. MacRae stood watch alone, listening to the +ka-_choof_, ka-_choof_ of the exhaust, the murmuring swash of calm water +cleft by the _Bluebird's_ stem. Away to starboard the Ballenas light +winked and blinked its flaming eye to seafaring men as it had done in +his father's time. Miles to port the Sand Heads lightship swung to its +great hawsers off the Fraser River shoals. + +MacRae smiled contentedly. There was a long run ahead. But he felt that +he had beaten Gower in this first definite brush. Moving in devious +channels to a given end Gower had closed the natural markets to MacRae. + +But there was no law against the export of raw salmon to a foreign +country. MacRae could afford to smile. Over in Bellingham there were +salmon packers who, like Folly Bay, were hungry for fish to feed their +great machines. But--unlike Folly Bay--they were willing to pay the +price, any price in reason, for a supply of salmon. Their own carriers +later in the season would invade Canadian waters, so many thorns in the +ample sides of the British Columbia packers. "The damned Americans!" +they sometimes growled, and talked about legislation to keep American +fish buyers out. Because the American buyer and canner alike would spend +a dollar to make a dollar. And the British Columbia packers wanted a +cinch, a monopoly, which in a measure they had. They were an +anachronism, MacRae felt. They regarded the salmon and the salmon waters +of the British Columbia coast as the feudal barons of old jealously +regarded their special prerogatives. MacRae could see them growling and +grumbling, he could see most clearly the scowl that would spread over +the face of Mr. Horace A. Gower, when he learned that ten to twenty +thousand Squitty Island salmon were passing down the Gulf each week to +an American cannery; that a smooth-faced boy out of the Air Service was +putting a crimp in the ancient order of things so far as one particular +cannery was concerned. + +This notion amused MacRae, served to while away the hours of monotonous +plowing over an unruffled sea, until he drove down abreast the Fraser +River's mouth and passed in among the nets and lights of the sockeye +fleet drifting, a thousand strong, on the broad bosom of the Gulf. Then +he had to stand up to his steering wheel and keep a sharp lookout, lest +he foul his propellor in a net or cut down some careless fisherman who +did not show a riding light. + + + + +CHAPTER XI + +Peril of the Sea + + +The last of August set the Red Flower of the Jungle books blooming along +the British Columbia coast. The seeds of it were scattered on hot, dry, +still days by pipe and cigarette, by sparks from donkey engines, by +untended camp fires, wherever the careless white man went in the great +coastwise forests. The woods were like a tinder box. One unguarded +moment, and the ancient firs were wrapped in sheets of flame. Smoke lay +on the Gulf like a pall of pungent fog, through which vessels ran by +chart and compass, blind between ports, at imminent risk of collision. + +Through this, well on into September, MacRae and Vincent Ferrara +gathered cargoes of salmon and ran them down the Gulf to Bellingham, +making their trips with the regularity of the tides, despite the murk +that hid landmarks by day and obscured the guiding lighthouse flashes +when dark closed in. They took their chances in the path of coastwise +traffic, straining their eyes for vessels to leap suddenly out of the +thickness that shut them in, their ears for fog signals that blared +warning. There were close shaves, but they escaped disaster. They got +the salmon and they delivered them, and Folly Bay still ran a bad second +wherever the _Bird_ boats served the trolling fleet. Even when Gower at +last met MacRae's price, his collectors got few fish. The fishermen took +no chances. They were convinced that if MacRae abandoned buying for +lack of salmon Folly Bay would cut the price in two. It had been done +before. So they held their fish for the _Bird_ boats. MacRae got them +all. Even when American buyers trailed MacRae to the source of his +supply their competition hurt Gower instead of MacRae. The trollers +supplied MacRae with all the salmon he could carry. It was still fresh +in their minds that he had come into the field that season as their +special Providence. + +But the blueback run tapered off at Squitty. September ushered in the +annual coho run on its way to the spawning grounds. And the coho did not +school along island shores, feeding upon tiny herring. Stray squadrons +of coho might pass Squitty, but they did not linger in thousands as the +blueback did. The coho swept into the Gulf from mysterious haunts in +blue water far offshore, myriads of silver fish seeking the streams +where they were spawned, and to which as mature fish they now returned +to reproduce themselves. They came in great schools. They would loaf +awhile in some bay at a stream mouth, until some irresistible urge drove +them into fresh water, up rivers and creeks, over shoal and rapid, +through pool and canyon, until the stream ran out to a whimpering +trickle and the backs of the salmon stuck out of the water. Up there, in +the shadow of great mountains, in the hidden places of the Coast range, +those that escaped their natural enemies would spawn and die. + +While the coho and the humpback, which came about the same time, and the +dog salmon, which comes last of all--but each to function in the same +manner and sequence--laid in the salt-water bays, resting, it would +seem, before the last and most terrible struggle of their brief +existence, the gill-net fishermen and the cannery purse-seine boats took +toll of them. The trollers harried them from the moment they showed in +the Gulf, because the coho will strike at a glittering spoon anywhere in +salt water. But the net boats take them in hundreds at one drift, and +the purse seiners gather thousands at a time in a single sweep of the +great bag-like seine. + +When September days brought the cohoes in full force along with cooler +nights and a great burst of rain that drowned the forest fires and +cleared away the enshrouding smoke, leaving only the pleasant haze of +autumn, the Folly Bay purse-seine boats went out to work. The trolling +fleet scattered from Squitty Island. Some steamed north to the troubled +waters of Salmon River and Blackfish Sound, some to the Redondas where +spring salmon could be taken. Many put by their trolling gear and hung +their gill nets. A few gas boats and a few rowboat men held to the +Island, depending upon stray schools and the spring salmon that haunted +certain reefs and points and beds of kelp. But the main fleet scattered +over two hundred miles of sea. + +MacRae could have called it a season and quit with honor and much +profit. Or he might have gone north and bought salmon here and there, +free-lancing. He did neither. There were enough gill-netters operating +on Gower's territory to give him fair cargoes. Every salmon he could +divert from the cans at Folly Bay meant,--well, he did not often stop to +ask precisely what that did mean to him. But he never passed Poor Man's +Rock, bleak and brown at low tide, or with seas hissing over it when the +tide was at flood, without thinking of his father, of the days and +months and years old Donald MacRae had lived and worked in sight of the +Rock,--a life at the last lonely and cheerless and embittered by the +sight of his ancient enemy preening his feathers in Cradle Bay. Old +Donald had lived for thirty years unable to return a blow which had +scarred his face and his heart in the same instant. But his son felt +that he was making better headway. It is unlikely that Donald MacRae +ever looked at Gower's cottage nestling like a snowflake in the green +lee of Point Old, or cast his eyes over that lost estate of his, with +more unchristian feelings than did his son. In Jack MacRae's mind the +Golden Rule did not apply to Horace Gower, nor to aught in which Gower +was concerned. + +So he stayed on Folly Bay territory with a dual purpose: to make money +for himself, and to deprive Gower of profit where he could. He was wise +enough to know that was the only way he could hurt a man like Gower. And +he wanted to hurt Gower. The intensity of that desire grew. It was a +point of honor, the old inborn clan pride that never compromised an +injury or an insult or an injustice, which neither forgave nor forgot. + +For weeks MacRae in the _Blackbird_ and Vin Ferrara in her sister ship +flitted here and there. The purse seiners hunted the schooling salmon, +the cohoes and humps. The gill-netters hung on the seiner's heels, +because where the purse seine could get a haul so could they. And the +carriers and buyers sought the fishermen wherever they went, to buy and +carry away their catch. + +Folly Bay suffered bad luck from the beginning. Gower had four +purse-seine boats in commission. Within a week one broke a crankshaft in +half a gale off Sangster Island. The wind put her ashore under the nose +of the sandstone Elephant and the seas destroyed her. + +Fire gutted a second not long after, so that for weeks she was laid up +for repairs. That left him but two efficient craft. One operated on his +concessions along the mainland shore. The other worked three stream +mouths on Vancouver Island, straight across from Folly Bay. + +Still, Gower's cannery was getting salmon. In those three bays no other +purse seiner could shoot his gear. Folly Bay held them under exclusive +license. Gill nets could be drifted there, but the purse seiner was +king. + +A gill net goes out over a boat's stern. When it is strung it stands in +the sea like a tennis net across a court, a web nine hundred feet long, +twenty feet deep, its upper edge held afloat by corks, its lower sunk by +lead weights spaced close together. The outer end is buoyed to a float +which carries a flag and a lantern; the inner is fast to the bitts of +the launch. Thus set, and set in the evening, since salmon can only be +taken by the gills in the dark, fisherman, launch, and net drift with +the changing tides till dawn. Then he hauls. He may have ten salmon, or +a hundred, or treble that. He may have none, and the web be torn by +sharks and fouled heavy with worthless dogfish. + +The purse seiner works in daylight, off a powerfully engined sixty-foot, +thirty-ton craft. He pays the seine out over a roller on a revolving +platform aft. His vessel moves slowly in a sweeping circle as the net +goes out,--a circle perhaps a thousand feet in diameter. When the circle +is complete the two ends of the net meet at the seiner's stern. A power +winch hauls on ropes and the net closes. Nothing escapes. It draws +together until it is a bag, a "purse" drawn up under the vessel's +counter, full of glistening fish. + +The salmon is a surface fish, his average depth seldom below four +fathoms. He breaks water when he feeds, when he plays, when he runs in +schools. The purse seiner watches the signs. When the salmon rise in +numbers he makes a set. To shoot the gear and purse the seine is a +matter of minutes. A thousand salmon at a haul is nothing. Three +thousand is common. Five thousand is far below the record. Purse seines +have been burst by the dead weight of fish against the pull of the +winch. + +The purse seine is a deadly trap for schooling salmon. And because the +salmon schools in mass formation, crowding nose to tail and side to +side, in the entrance to a fresh-water stream, the Fisheries Department +having granted a monopoly of seining rights to a packer has also +benevolently decreed that no purse seine or other net shall operate +within a given distance of a stream mouth,--that the salmon, having won +to fresh water, shall go free and his kind be saved from utter +extinction. + +These regulations are not drawn for sentimental reasons, only to +preserve the salmon industry. The farmer saves wheat for his next year's +seeding, instead of selling the last bushel to the millers. No man +willfully kills the goose that lays him golden eggs. But the salmon +hunter, eagerly pursuing the nimble dollar, sometimes grows rapacious in +the chase and breaks laws of his own devising,--if a big haul promises +and no Fisheries Inspector is by to restrain him. The cannery purse +seiners are the most frequent offenders. They can make their haul +quickly in forbidden waters and get away. Folly Bay, shrewdly paying its +seine crews a bonus per fish on top of wages, had always been notorious +for crowding the law. + +Solomon River takes its rise in the mountainous backbone of Vancouver +Island. It is a wide, placid stream on its lower reaches, flowing +through low, timbered regions, emptying into the Gulf in a half-moon bay +called the Jew's Mouth, which is a perfect shelter from the Gulf storms +and the only such shelter in thirty miles of bouldery shore line. The +beach runs northwest and southeast, bleak and open, undented. In all +that stretch there is no point from behind which a Fisheries Patrol +launch could steal unexpectedly into the Jew's Mouth. + +Upon a certain afternoon the _Blackbird_ lay therein. At her stern, fast +by light lines to her after bitts, clung half a dozen fish boats, blue +wisps of smoke drifting from the galley stovepipes, the fishermen +variously occupied. The _Blackbird's_ hold was empty except for ice. She +was waiting for fish, and the _Bluebird_ was due on the same errand the +following day. + +Nearer shore another cluster of gill-netters was anchored, a Jap or two, +and a Siwash Indian with his hull painted a gaudy blue. And in the +middle of the Jew's Mouth, which was a scant six hundred yards across at +its widest, the _Folly Bay No. 5_ swung on her anchor chain. A tubby +cannery tender lay alongside. The crews were busy with picaroons forking +salmon out of the seiner into the tender's hold. The flip-flop of the +fish sounded distinctly in that quiet place. Their silver bodies flashed +in the sun as they were thrown across the decks. + +When the tender drew clear and passed out of the bay she rode deep with +the weight of salmon aboard. Without the Jew's Mouth, around the +_Blackbird_ and the fish boats and the _No. 5_ the salmon were threshing +water. _Klop._ A flash of silver. Bubbles. A series of concentric rings +that ran away in ripples, till they merged into other widening rings. +They were everywhere. The river was full of them. The bay was alive with +them. + +A boat put off from the seiner. The man rowed out of the Jew's Mouth and +stopped, resting on his oars. He remained there, in approximately the +same position. A sentry. + +The _No. 5_ heaved anchor, the chain clanking and chattering in a +hawsepipe. Her exhaust spat smoky, gaseous fumes. A bell clanged. She +moved slowly ahead, toward the river's mouth, a hundred yards to one +side of it. Then the brown web of the seine began to spin out over the +stern. She crossed the mouth of the Solomon, holding as close in as her +draft permitted, and kept on straight till her seine was paid out to the +end. Then she stopped, lying still in dead water with her engine idling. + +The tide was on the flood. Salmon run streams on a rising tide. And the +seine stood like a wall across the river's mouth. + +Every man watching knew what the seiner was about, in defiance of the +law. The salmon, nosing into the stream, driven by that imperative urge +which is the law of their being, struck the net, turned aside, swam in a +slow circle and tried again and again, seeking free passage, until +thousands of them were massed behind the barrier of the net. Then the +_No. 5_ would close the net, tauten the ropes which made it a purse, and +haul out into deep water. + +It was the equivalent of piracy on the high seas. To be taken in the act +meant fines, imprisonment, confiscation of boat and gear. But the _No. +5_ would not be caught. She had a guard posted. Cannery seiners were +never caught. When they were they got off with a warning and a +reprimand. Only gill-netters, the small fry of the salmon industry, ever +paid the utmost penalty for raids like that. So the fishermen said, with +a cynical twist of their lips. + +"Look at 'em," one said to MacRae. "They make laws and break 'em +themselves. They been doin' that every day for a week. If one of us set +a piece of net in the river and took three hundred salmon the canners +would holler their heads off. There'd be a patrol boat on our heels all +the time if they thought we'd take a chance." + +"Well, I'm about ready to take a chance," another man growled. "They +clear the bay in daylight and all we get is their leavings at night." + +The _No. 5_ pursed her seine and hauled out until she was abreast of the +_Blackbird_. She drew close up to her massive hull a great heap of +salmon, struggling, twisting, squirming within the net. The loading +began. Her men laughed and shouted as they worked. The gill-net +fishermen watched silently, scowling. It was like taking bread out of +their mouths. It was like an honest man restrained by a policeman's club +from taking food when he is hungry, and seeing a thief fill his pockets +and walk off unmolested. + +"Four thousand salmon that shot," Dave Mullen said, the same Mullen who +had talked to MacRae in Squitty one night. "Say, why should we stand for +that? We can get salmon that way too." + +He spoke directly to MacRae. + +"What's sauce for the goose ought to be sauce for the gander," MacRae +replied. "I'll take the fish if you get them." + +"You aren't afraid of getting in wrong yourself?" the man asked him. + +MacRae shook his head. He did not lean to lawlessness. But the cannery +men had framed this law. They cried loudly and continually for its +strict enforcement. And they violated it flagrantly themselves, or +winked at its violation when that meant an added number of cases to +their pack. Not alone in the Jew's Mouth; all along the British Columbia +coast the purse seiners forgot the law when the salmon swarmed in a +stream mouth and they could make a killing. Only canneries could hold a +purse-seine license. If the big men would not honor their own law, why +should the lesser? So MacRae felt and said. + +The men in the half-dozen boats about his stern had dealt all the season +with MacRae. They trusted him. They neither liked nor trusted Folly Bay. +Folly Bay was not only breaking the law in the Jew's Mouth, but in +breaking the law they were making it hard for these men to earn a dollar +legitimately. Superior equipment, special privilege, cold-blooded +violation of law because it was safe and profitable, gave the purse +seiner an unfair advantage. The men gathered in a little knot on the +deck of one boat. They put their heads together and lowered their +voices. MacRae knew they were angry, that they had reached the point of +fighting fire with fire. And he smiled to himself. He did not know what +they were planning, but he could guess. It would not be the first time +the individual fishermen had kicked over the traces and beaten the purse +seiners at their own game. They did not include him in their council. He +was a buyer. It was not his function to inquire how they took their +fish. If they could take salmon which otherwise the _No. 5_ would take, +so much the worse for Folly Bay,--and so much the better for the +fishermen, who earned their living precariously at best. + +It was dusk when the purse seiner finished loading her catch and stowed +the great net in a dripping heap on the turntable aft. At daylight or +before, a cannery tender would empty her, and she would sweep the Jew's +Mouth bare of salmon again. + +With dusk also the fishermen were busy over their nets, still riding to +the _Blackbird's_ stern. Then they moved off in the dark. MacRae could +hear nets paying out. He saw lanterns set to mark the outer end of each +net. Silence fell on the bay. A single riding light glowed at the _No. +5's_ masthead. Her cabin lights blinked out. Her crew sprawled in their +bunks, sound asleep. + +Under cover of the night the fishermen took pattern from the seiner's +example. A gill net is nine hundred feet long, approximately twenty feet +deep. They stripped the cork floats off one and hung it to the lead-line +of another. Thus with a web forty feet deep they went stealthily up to +the mouth of the Solomon. With a four-oared skiff manning each end of +the nine hundred-foot length they swept their net around the Jew's +Mouth, closed it like a purse seine, and hauled it out into the shallows +of a small beach. They stood in the shallow water with sea boots on and +forked the salmon into their rowboats and laid the rowboats alongside +the _Blackbird_ to deliver,--all in the dark without a lantern flicker, +with muffled oarlocks and hushed voices. Three times they swept the bay. + +At five in the morning, before it was lightening in the east, the +_Blackbird_ rode four inches below her load water line with a mixed +cargo of coho and dog salmon, the heaviest cargo ever stowed under her +hatches,--and eight fishermen divided two thousand dollars share and +share alike for their night's work. + +MacRae battened his hatch covers, started his engine, heaved up the +hook, and hauled out of the bay. + +In the Gulf the obscuring clouds parted to lay a shaft of silver on +smooth, windless sea. The _Blackbird_ wallowed down the moon-trail. +MacRae stood at the steering wheel. Beside him Steve Ferrara leaned on +the low cabin. + +"She's getting day," Steve said, after a long silence. He chuckled. +"Some raid. If they can keep that lick up those boys will all have new +boats for next season. You'll break old Gower if you keep on, Jack." + +The thought warmed MacRae. To break Gower, to pull him down to where he +must struggle for a living like other common men, to deprive him of the +power he had abused, to make him suffer as such a man would suffer under +that turn of fortune,--that would help to square accounts. It would be +only a measure of justice. To be dealt with as he had dealt with +others,--MacRae asked no more than that for himself. + +But it was not likely, he reflected. One bad season would not seriously +involve a wary old bird like Horace Gower. He was too secure behind +manifold bulwarks. Still in the end,--more spectacular things had come +to pass in the affairs of men on this kaleidoscopic coast. MacRae's face +was hard in the moonlight. His eyes were somber. It was an ugly feeling +to nurse. For thirty years that sort of impotent bitterness must have +rankled in his father's breast--with just cause, MacRae told himself +moodily. No wonder old Donald had been a grave and silent man; a just, +kindly, generous man, too. Other men had liked him, respected him. Gower +alone had been implacable. + +Well into the red and yellow dawn MacRae stood at the wheel, thinking of +this, an absent look in eyes which still kept keen watch ahead. He was +glad when it came time for Steve's watch on deck, and he could lie down +and let sleep drive it out of his mind. He did not live solely to +revenge himself upon Horace Gower. He had his own way to make and his +own plans--even if they were still a bit nebulous--to fulfill. It was +only now and then that the past saddened him and made him bitter. + +The week following brought great runs of salmon to the Jew's Mouth. Of +these the _Folly Bay No. 5_ somehow failed to get the lion's share. The +gill-net men laughed in their soiled sleeves and furtively swept the bay +clear each night and all night, and the daytime haul of the seine fell +far below the average. The _Blackbird_ and the _Bluebird_ waddled down a +placid Gulf with all they could carry. + +And although there was big money-making in this short stretch, and the +secret satisfaction of helping put another spoke in Gower's wheel, +MacRae did not neglect the rest of his territory nor the few trollers +that still worked Squitty Island. He ran long hours to get their few +fish. It was their living, and MacRae would not pass them up because +their catch meant no profit compared to the time he spent and the fuel +he burned making this round. He would drive straight up the Gulf from +Bellingham to Squitty, circle the Island and then across to the mouth of +the Solomon. The weather was growing cool now. Salmon would keep +unspoiled a long time in a trailer's hold. It did not matter to him +whether it was day or night around Squitty. He drove his carrier into +any nook or hole where a troller might lie waiting with a few salmon. + +The _Blackbird_ came pitching and diving into a heavy southeast swell up +along the western side of Squitty at ten o'clock in the black of an +early October night. There was a storm brewing, a wicked one, reckoned +by the headlong drop of the aneroid. MacRae had a hundred or so salmon +aboard for all his Squitty round, and he had yet to pick up those on the +boats in the Cove. He cocked his eye at a cloud-wrack streaking above, +driving before a wind which had not yet dropped to the level of the +Gulf, and he said to himself that it would be wise to stay in the Cove +that night. A southeast gale, a beam sea, and the tiny opening of the +Jew's Mouth was a bad combination to face in a black night. As he stood +up along Squitty he could hear the swells break along the shore. Now and +then a cold puff of air, the forerunner of the big wind, struck him. +Driving full speed the _Blackbird_ dipped her bow deep in each sea and +rose dripping to the next. He passed Cradle Bay at last, almost under +the steep cliffs, holding in to round Poor Man's Rock and lay a compass +course to the mouth of Squitty Cove. + +And as he put his wheel over and swept around the Rock and came clear of +Point Old a shadowy thing topped by three lights in a red and green and +white triangle seemed to leap at him out of the darkness. The lights +showed, and under the lights white water hissing. MacRae threw his +weight on the wheel. He shouted to Steve Ferrara, lying on his bunk in +the little cabin aft. + +He knew the boat instantly,--the _Arrow_ shooting through the night at +twenty miles an hour, scurrying to shelter under the full thrust of her +tremendous power. For an appreciable instant her high bow loomed over +him, while his hands twisted the wheel. But the _Blackbird_ was heavy, +sluggish on her helm. She swung a little, from square across the rushing +_Arrow_, to a slight angle. Two seconds would have cleared him. By the +rules of the road at sea the _Blackbird_ had the right of way. If MacRae +had held by the book this speeding mass of mahogany and brass and steel +would have cut him in two amidships. As it was, her high bow, the stem +shod with a cast bronze cutwater edged like a knife, struck him on the +port quarter, sheared through guard, planking, cabin. + +There was a crash of riven timbers, the crunching ring of metal, quick +oaths, a cry. The _Arrow_ scarcely hesitated. She had cut away nearly +the entire stern works of the _Blackbird_. But such was her momentum +that the shock barely slowed her up. Her hull bumped the _Blackbird_ +aside. She passed on. She did not even stand by to see what she had +done. There was a sound of shouting on her decks, but she kept on. + +MacRae could have stepped aboard her as she brushed by. Her rail was +within reach of his hand. But that did not occur to him. Steve Ferrara +was asleep in the cabin, in the path of that destroying stem. For a +stunned moment MacRae stood as the _Arrow_ drew clear. The _Blackbird_ +began to settle under his feet. + +MacRae dived down the after companion. He went into water to his waist. +His hands, groping blindly, laid hold of clothing, a limp body. He +struggled back, up, gained the deck, dragging Steve after him. The +_Blackbird_ was deep by the holed stern now, awash to her after fish +hatch. She rose slowly, like a log, on each swell. Only the buoyancy of +her tanks and timbers kept her from the last plunge. There was a light +skiff bottom up across her hatches by the steering wheel. MacRae moved +warily toward that, holding to the bulwark with one hand, dragging Steve +with the other lest a sea sweep them both away. + +He noticed, with his brain functioning unruffled, that the _Arrow_ +drove headlong into Cradle Bay. He could hear her exhaust roaring. He +could still hear shouting. And he could see also that the wind and the +tide and the roll of the swells carried the water-logged hulk of the +_Blackbird_ in the opposite direction. She was past the Rock, but she +was edging shoreward, in under the granite walls that ran between Point +Old and the Cove. He steadied himself, keeping his hold on Steve, and +reached for the skiff. As his fingers touched it a comber flung itself +up out of the black and shot two feet of foam and green water across the +swamped hull. It picked up the light cedar skiff like a chip and cast it +beyond his reach and beyond his sight. And as he clung to the cabin +pipe-rail, drenched with the cold sea, he heard that big roller burst +against the shore very near at hand. He saw the white spray lift ghostly +in the black. + +MacRae held his hand over Steve's heart, over his mouth to feel if he +breathed. Then he got Steve's body between his legs to hold him from +slipping away, and bracing himself against the sodden lurch of the +wreck, began to take off his clothes. + + + + +CHAPTER XII + +Between Sun and Sun + + +Walking when he could, crawling on hands and knees when his legs buckled +under him, MacRae left a blood-sprinkled trail over grass and moss and +fallen leaves. He lived over and over that few minutes which had seemed +so long, in which he had been battered against broken rocks, in which he +had clawed over weedy ledges armored with barnacles that cut like +knives, hauling Steve Ferrara's body with him so that it should not +become the plaything of the tides. MacRae was no stranger to death. He +had seen it in many terrible forms. He had heard the whistle of the +invisible scythe that cuts men down. He knew that Steve was dead when he +dragged him at last out of the surf, up where nothing but high-flung +drops of spray could reach him. He left him there on a mossy ledge, +knowing that he could do nothing more for Steve Ferrara and that he must +do something for himself. So he came at last to the end of that path +which led to his own house and crept and stumbled up the steps into the +deeper darkness of those hushed, lonely rooms. + +MacRae knew he had suffered no vital hurt, no broken bones. But he had +been fearfully buffeted among those sea-drenched rocks, bruised from +head to foot, shocked by successive blows. He had spent his strength to +keep the sea from claiming Steve. He had been unmercifully slashed by +the barnacles. He was weak from loss of blood, and he was bleeding yet, +in oozy streams,--face, hands, shoulders, knees, wherever those +lance-edged shells had raked his flesh. + +He was sick and dizzy. But he could still think and act. He felt his way +to matches on a kitchen shelf, staggered into his bedroom, lit a lamp. +Out of a dresser drawer he took clean white cloth, out of another +carbolic acid. He got himself a basin of water. + +He sat down on the edge of his bed. As he tore the first strip of linen +things began to swim before his eyes. He sagged back on a pillow. The +room and the lamp and all that was near him blended in a misty swirl. He +had the extraordinary sensation of floating lightly in space that was +quiet and profoundly dark--and still he was cloudily aware of footsteps +ringing hollow on the bare floor of the other room. + +He became aware--as if no interval had elapsed--of being moved, of hands +touching him, of a stinging sensation of pain which he understood to be +the smarting of the cuts in his flesh. But time must have gone winging +by, he knew, as his senses grew clearer. He was stripped of his sodden, +bloody undershirt and overalls, partly covered by his blanket. He could +feel bandages on his legs, on one badly slashed arm. He made out Betty +Gower's face with its unruly mass of reddish-brown hair and two rose +spots of color glowing on her smooth cheeks. There was also a tall young +man, coatless, showing a white expanse of flannel shirt with the sleeves +rolled above his elbows. MacRae could only see this out of one corner of +his eye, for he was being turned gently over on his face. Weak and +passive as he was, the firm pressure of Betty's soft hands on his skin +gave him a curiously pleasant sensation. + +He heard her draw her breath sharply and make some exclamation as his +bare back turned to the light. + +"This chap has been to the wars, eh, Miss Gower?" he heard the man say. +"Those are machine-gun marks, I should say--close range, too. I saw +plenty of that after the Argonne." + +"Such scars. How could a man live with holes like that through his +body?" Betty said. "He was in the air force." + +"Some Hun got in a burst of fire on him, sometime, then," the man +commented. "Didn't get him, either, or he wouldn't be here. Why, two or +three bullet holes like that would only put a fellow out for a few +weeks. Look at him," he tapped MacRae's back with a forefinger. +"Shoulders and chest and arms like a champion middle weight ready to go +twenty rounds. And you can bet all your pin money, Miss Gower, that this +man's heart and lungs and nerves are away above par or he would never +have got his wings. Takes a lot to down those fellows. Looks in bad +shape now, doesn't he? All cut and bruised and exhausted. But he'll be +walking about day after to-morrow. A little stiff and sore, but +otherwise well enough." + +"I wish he'd open his eyes and speak," Betty said. "How can you tell? He +may be injured internally." + +The man chuckled. He did not cease work as he talked. He was using a +damp cloth, with a pungent medicated smell. Dual odors familiar to every +man who has ever been in hospital assailed MacRae's nostrils. Wherever +that damp cloth touched a cut it burned. MacRae listened drowsily. He +had not the strength or the wish to do anything else. + +"Heart action's normal. Respiration and temperature, ditto," he heard +above him. "Unconsciousness is merely natural reaction from shock, +nerve strain, loss of blood. You can guess what sort of fight he must +have made in those breakers. If you were a sawbones, Miss Gower, you +wouldn't be uneasy. I'll stake my professional reputation on his +injuries being superficial. Quite enough to knock a man out, I grant. +But a physique of this sort can stand a tremendous amount of strain +without serious effect. Hand me that adhesive, will you, please?" + +There was an air of unreality about the whole proceeding in MacRae's +mind. He wondered if he would presently wake up in his bunk opposite +Steve and find that he had been dreaming. Yet those voices, and the +hands that shifted him tenderly, and the pyjama coat that was slipped on +him at last, were not the stuff of dreams. No, the lights of the +_Arrow_, the smash of the collision, the tumbling seas which had flung +him against the rocks, the dead weight of Steve's body in his bleeding +arms, were not illusions. + +He opened his eyes when they turned him on his back. + +"Well, old man, how do you feel?" Betty's companion asked genially. + +"All right," MacRae said briefly. He found that speech required effort. +His mind worked clearly enough, but his tongue was uncertain, his voice +low-pitched, husky. He turned his eyes on Betty. She tried to smile. But +her lips quivered in the attempt. MacRae looked at her curiously. But he +did not say anything. In the face of accomplished facts, words were +rather futile. + +He closed his eyes again, only to get a mental picture of the _Arrow_ +leaping at him out of the gloom, the thunder of the swells bursting +against the foot of the cliffs, of Steve lying on that ledge alone. But +nothing could harm Steve. Storm and cold and pain and loneliness were +nothing to him, now. + +He heard Betty speak. + +"Can we do anything more?" + +"Um--no," the man answered. "Not for some time, anyway." + +"Then I wish you would go back to the house and tell them," Betty said. +"They'll be worrying. I'll stay here." + +"I suppose it would be as well," he agreed. "I'll come back." + +"There's no need for either of you to stay here," MacRae said wearily. +"You've stopped the bleeding, and you can't do any more. Go home and go +to bed. I'm as well alone." + +There was a brief interval of silence. MacRae heard footsteps crossing +the floor, receding, going down the steps. He opened his eyes. Betty +Gower sat on a low box by his bed, her hands in her lap, looking at him +wistfully. She leaned a little toward him. + +"I'm awfully sorry," she whispered. + +"So was the little boy who cut off his sister's thumb with the hatchet," +MacRae muttered. "But that didn't help sister's thumb. If you'll run +down to old Peter Ferrara's house and tell him what has happened, and +then go home yourself, we'll call it square." + +"I have already done that," Betty said. "Dolly is away. The fishermen +are bringing Steve Ferrara's body to his uncle's house. They are going +to try to save what is left of your boat." + +"It is kind of you, I'm sure, to pick up the pieces," MacRae gibed. + +"I _am_ sorry," the girl breathed. + +"After the fact. Belting around a point in the dark at train speed, +regardless of the rules of the road. Destroying a valuable boat, killing +a man. Property is supposed to be sacred--if life has no market value. +Were you late for dinner?" + +In his anger he made a quick movement with his arms, flinging the +blanket off, sending intolerable pangs through his bruised and torn +body. + +Betty rose and bent over him, put the blanket back silently, tucked him +in like a mother settling the cover about a restless child. She did not +say anything for a minute. She stood over him, nervously plucking bits +of lint off the blanket. Her eyes grew wet. + +"I don't blame you for feeling that way," she said at last. "It was a +terrible thing. You had the right of way. I don't know why or how +Robertson let it happen. He has always been a careful navigator. The +nearness when he saw you under his bows must have paralyzed him, and +with our speed--oh, it isn't any use, I know, to tell you how sorry I +am. That won't bring that poor boy back to life again. It won't--" + +"You killed him--your kind of people--twice," MacRae said thickly. "Once +in France, where he risked his life--all he had to risk--so that you and +your kind should continue to have ease and security. He came home +wheezing and strangling, suffering all the pains of death without +death's relief. And when he was beginning to think he had another chance +you finish him off. But that's nothing. A mere incident. Why should you +care? The country is full of Ferraras. What do they matter? Men of no +social or financial standing, men who work with their hands and smell of +fish. If it's a shock to you to see one man dead and another cut and +bloody, think of the numbers that suffer as great pains and hardships +that you know nothing about--and wouldn't care if you did. You couldn't +be what you are and have what you have if they didn't. Sorry! Sympathy +is the cheapest thing in the market, cheaper than salmon. You can't help +Steve Ferrara with that--not now. Don't waste any on me. I don't need +it. I resent it. You may need it all for your own before I get through. +I--I am--" + +MacRae's voice trailed off into an incoherent murmur. He seemed to be +floating off into those dark shadowy spaces again. In reality he was +exhausted. A man with his veins half emptied of blood cannot get in a +passion without a speedy reaction. MacRae went off into an unconscious +state which gradually became transformed into natural, healthy sleep, +the deep slumber of utter exhaustion. + +At intervals thereafter he was hazily aware of some one beside him, of +soft hands that touched him. Once he wakened to find the room empty, the +lamp turned low. In the dim light and the hush the place seemed +unutterably desolate and forsaken, as if he were buried in a crypt. When +he listened he could hear the melancholy drone of the southeaster and +the rumble of the surf, two sounds that fitted well his mood. He felt a +strange relief when Betty came tiptoeing in from the kitchen. She bent +over him. MacRae closed his eyes and slept again. + +He awakened at last, alert, refreshed, free of that depression which had +rested so heavily on him. And he found that weariness had caught Betty +Gower in its overpowering grip. She had drawn her box seat up close +beside him. Her body had drooped until her arms rested on the side of +the bed, and her head rested on her arms. MacRae found one of his hands +caught tight in both hers. She was asleep, breathing lightly, regularly. +He twisted his stiffened neck to get a better look at her. He could +only see one side of her face, and that he studied a long time. Pretty +and piquant, still it was no doll's face. There was character in that +firm mouth and round chin. Betty had a beautiful skin. That had been +MacRae's first impression of her, the first time he saw her. And she had +a heavy mass of reddish-brown hair that shone in the sunlight with a +decided wave in it which always made it seem unruly, about to escape +from its conventional arrangement. + +MacRae made no attempt to free his hand. He was quite satisfied to let +it be. The touch of her warm flesh against his stirred him a little, +sent his mind straying off into strange channels. Queer that the first +woman to care for him when he crept wounded and shaken to the shelter of +his own roof should be the daughter of his enemy. For MacRae could not +otherwise regard Horace Gower. Anything short of that seemed treason to +the gray old man who had died in the next room, babbling of his son and +the west wind and some one he called Bessie. + +MacRae's eyes blurred unexpectedly. What a damned shame things had to be +the way they were. Behind this girl, who was in herself lovely and +desirable as a woman should be, loomed the pudgy figure of her father, +ruthless, vindictively unjust. Gower hadn't struck at him openly; but +that, MacRae believed, was merely for lack of suitable opening. + +But that did not keep Jack MacRae from thinking--what every normal man +begins to think, or rather to feel, soon or late--that he is incomplete, +insufficient, without some particular woman to love him, upon whom to +bestow love. It was like a revelation. He caught himself wishing that +Betty would wake up and smile at him, bend over him with a kiss. He +stared up at the shadowy roof beams, feeling the hot blood leap to his +face at the thought. There was an uncanny magic in the nearness of her, +a lure in the droop of her tired body. And MacRae struggled against that +seduction. Yet he could not deny that Betty Gower, innocently sleeping +with his hand fast in hers, filled him with visions and desires which +had never before focused with such intensity on any woman who had come +his way. Mysteriously she seemed absolved of all blame for being a +Gower, for any of the things the Gower clan had done to him and his, +even to the misfortune of that night which had cost a man his life. + +"It isn't _her_ fault," MacRae said to himself. "But, Lord, I wish she'd +kept away from here, if _this_ sort of thing is going to get me." + +What _this_ was he did not attempt to define. He did not admit that he +was hovering on the brink of loving Betty Gower--it seemed an incredible +thing for him to do--but was vividly aware that she had kindled an +incomprehensible fire in him, and he suspected, indeed he feared with a +fear that bordered on spiritual shrinking, that it would go on glowing +after she was gone. And she would go presently. This spontaneous rushing +to his aid was merely what a girl like that, with generous impulses and +quick sympathy, would do for any one in dire need. She would leave +behind her an inescapable longing, an emptiness, a memory of sweetly +disturbing visions. MacRae seemed to see with remarkable clarity and +sureness that he would be penalized for yielding to that bewitching +fancy. By what magic had she so suddenly made herself a shining figure +in a golden dream? Some necromancy of the spirit, invisible but +wonderfully potent? Or was it purely physical,--the soft reddish-brown +of her hair; her frank gray eyes, very like his own; the marvelous, +smooth clearness and coloring of her skin; her voice, that was given to +soft cadences? He did not know. No man ever quite knows what positive +qualities in a woman can make his heart leap. MacRae was no wiser than +most. But he was not prone to cherish illusions, to deceive himself. He +had imagination. That gave him a key to many things which escape a +sluggish mind. + +"Well," he said to himself at last, with a fatalistic humor, "if it +comes that way, it comes. If I am to be the goat, I shall be, and that's +all there is to it." + +Under his breath he cursed Horace Gower deeply and fervently, and he was +not conscious of anything incongruous in that. And then he lay very +thoughtful and a little sad, his eyes on the smooth curve of Betty's +cheek swept by long brown lashes, the corner of a red mouth made for +kissing. His fingers were warm in hers. He smiled sardonically at a +vagrant wish that they might remain there always. + +Whom the gods would destroy they first make mad. MacRae wondered if the +gods thus planned his destruction? + +A tremulous sigh warned him. He shut his eyes, feigned sleep. He felt +rather than saw Betty sit up with a start, release his hand. Then very +gently she moved that arm back under the blanket, reached across him and +patted the covers close about his body, stood looking down at him. + +And MacRae stirred, opened his eyes. + +"What time is it?" he asked. + +She looked at a wrist watch. "Four o'clock." She shivered. + +"You've been here all this time without a fire. You're chilled through. +Why didn't you go home? You should go now." + +"I have been sitting here dozing," she said. "I wasn't aware of the cold +until now. But there is wood and kindling in the kitchen, and I am going +to make a fire. Aren't you hungry?" + +"Starving," he said. "But there is nothing to eat in the house. It has +been empty for months." + +"There is tea," she said. "I saw some on a shelf. I'll make a cup of +that. It will be something warm, refreshing." + +MacRae listened to her at the kitchen stove. There was the clink of iron +lids, the smell of wood smoke, the pleasant crackle of the fire. +Presently she came in with two steaming cups. + +"I have a faint recollection of talking wild and large a while ago," +MacRae remarked. Indeed, it seemed hazy to him now. "Did I say anything +nasty?" + +"Yes," she replied frankly; "perhaps the sting of what you said lay in +its being partly true. A half truth is sometimes a deadly weapon. I +wonder if you do really hate us as much, as your manner implied--and +why?" + +"Us. Who?" MacRae asked. + +"My father and me," she put it bluntly. + +"What makes you think I do?" MacRae asked. "Because I have set up a +fierce competition in a business where your father has had a monopoly so +long that he thinks this part of the Gulf belongs to him? Because I +resent your running down one of my boats? Because I go about my affairs +in my own way, regardless of Gower interests?" + +"What do these things amount to?" Betty answered impatiently. "It's in +your manner, your attitude. Sometimes it even shows in your eyes. It +was there the morning I came across you sitting on Point Old, the day +after the armistice was signed. I've danced with you and seen you look +at me as if--as if," she laughed self-consciously, "you would like to +wring my neck. I have never done anything to create a dislike of that +sort. I have never been with you without being conscious that you were +repressing something, out of--well, courtesy, I suppose. There is a +peculiar tension about you whenever my father is mentioned. I'm not a +fool," she finished, "even if I happen to be one of what you might call +the idle rich. What is the cause of this bad blood?" + +"What does it matter?" MacRae parried. + +"There is something, then?" she persisted. + +MacRae turned his head away. He couldn't tell her. It was not wholly his +story to tell. How could he expect her to see it, to react to it as he +did? A matter involving her father and mother, and his father. It was +not a pretty tale. He might be influenced powerfully in a certain +direction by the account of it passed on by old Donald MacRae; he might +be stirred by the backwash of those old passions, but he could not lay +bare all that to any one--least of all to Betty Gower. And still MacRae, +for the moment, was torn between two desires. He retained the same +implacable resentment toward Gower, and he found himself wishing to set +Gower's daughter apart and outside the consequences of that ancient +feud. And that, he knew, was trying to reconcile the irreconcilable. It +couldn't be done. + +"Was the _Arrow_ holed in the crash?" + +Betty stood staring at him. She blinked. Her fingers began again that +nervous plucking at the blanket. But her face settled presently into +its normal composure and she answered evenly. + +"Rather badly up forward. She was settling fast when they beached her in +the Bay." + +"And then," she continued after a pause, "Doctor Wallis and I got ashore +as quickly as we could. We got a lantern and came along the cliffs. And +two of the men took our big lifeboat and rowed along near the shore. +They found the _Blackbird_ pounding on the rocks, and we found Steve +Ferrara where you left him. And we followed you here by the blood you +spattered along the way." + +A line from the Rhyme of the Three Sealers came into MacRae's mind as +befitting. But he was thinking of his father and not so much of himself +as he quoted: + + "'Sorrow is me, in a lonely sea, + And a sinful fight I fall.'" + +"I'm afraid I don't quite grasp that," Betty said. "Although I know +Kipling too, and could supply the rest of those verses. I'm afraid I +don't understand." + +"It isn't likely that you ever will," MacRae answered slowly. "It is not +necessary that you should." + +Their voices ceased. In the stillness the whistle of the wind and the +deep drone of the seas shattering themselves on the granite lifted a +dreary monotone. And presently a quick step sounded on the porch. Doctor +Wallis came hurriedly in. + +"Upon my soul," he said apologetically. "I ought to be shot, Miss +Grower. I got everybody calmed down over at the cottage and chased them +all to bed. Then I sat down in a soft chair before that cheerful fire in +your living room. And I didn't wake up for hours. You must be worn out." + +"That's quite all right," Betty assured him. "Don't be +conscience-stricken. Did mamma have hysterics?" + +Wallis grinned cheerfully. + +"Well, not quite," he drawled. "At any rate, all's quiet along the +Potomac now. How's the patient getting on?" + +"I'm O.K.," MacRae spoke for himself, "and much obliged to you both for +tinkering me up. Miss Gower ought to go home." + +"I think so myself," Wallis said. "I'll take her across the point. Then +I'll come back and have another look over you." + +"It isn't necessary," MacRae declared. "Barring a certain amount of +soreness I feel fit enough. I suppose I could get up and walk now if I +had to. Go home and go to bed, both of you." + +"Good night, or perhaps it would be better to say good morning." Betty +gave him her hand. "Pleasant dreams." + +It seemed to MacRae that there was a touch of reproach, a hint of the +sardonic in her tone and words. + +Then he was alone in the quiet house, with his thoughts for company, and +the distant noises of the storm muttering in the outer darkness. + +They were not particularly pleasant processes of thought. The sins of +the fathers shall be visited even unto the third and fourth generation. +Why, in the name of God, should they be, he asked himself? + +Betty Gower liked him. She had been trying to tell him so. MacRae felt +that. He did not question too closely the quality of the feeling for her +which had leaped up so unexpectedly. He was afraid to dig too deep. He +had got a glimpse of depths and eddies that night which if they did not +wholly frighten him, at least served to confuse him. They were like +flint and steel, himself and Betty Gower. They could not come together +without striking sparks. And a man may long to warm himself by fire, +MacRae reflected gloomily, but he shrinks from being burned. + + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +An Interlude + + +At daybreak Peter Ferrara came to the house. + +"How are you?" he asked. + +"Sore. Wobbly." MacRae had tried his legs and found them wanting. + +"It was a bad night all round, eh, lad?" Peter rumbled in his rough old +voice. "Some of the boys got a line on the _Blackbird_ and hauled what +was left of her around into the Cove. But she's a ruin. The engine went +to pieces while she was poundin' on the rocks. Steve lays in the house. +He looks peaceful--as if he was glad to be through." + +"I couldn't save him. It was done like that." MacRae snapped his +fingers. + +"I know," Old Peter said. "You're not to blame. Perhaps nobody is. Them +things happen. Manuel'll feel it. He's lost both sons now. But Steve's +better off. He'd 'a' died of consumption or something, slow an' painful. +His lungs was gone. I seen him set for weeks on the porch wheezin' after +he come home. He didn't get no pleasure livin'. He said once a bullet +would 'a' been mercy. No, don't worry about Steve. We all come to it +soon or late, John. It's never a pity for the old or the crippled to +die." + +"You old Spartan," MacRae muttered. + +"What's that?" Peter asked. But MacRae did not explain. He asked about +Dolly instead. + +"She was up to Potter's Landing. I sent for her and she's back," Peter +told him. "She'll be up to see you presently. There's no grub in the +house, is there? Can you eat? Well, take it easy, lad." + +An hour or so later Dolly Ferrara brought him a steaming breakfast on a +tray. She sat talking to him while he ate. + +"Gower will have to pay for the _Blackbird_, won't he?" she asked. "The +fishermen say so." + +"If he doesn't in one way he will another," MacRae answered +indifferently. "But that doesn't help Steve. The boat doesn't matter. +One can build boats. You can't bring a man back to life when he's dead." + +"If Steve could talk he'd say he didn't care," Dolly declared sadly. +"You know he wasn't getting much out of living, Jack. There was nothing +for him to look forward to but a few years of discomfort and +uncertainty. A man who has been strong and active rebels against dying +by inches. Steve told me--not so very long ago--that if something would +finish him off quickly he would be glad." + +If that had been Steve's wish, MacRae thought, then fate had hearkened +to him. He knew it was true. He had lived at elbows with Steve all +summer. Steve never complained. He was made of different stuff. It was +only a gloomy consolation, after all, to think of Steve as being better +off. MacRae knew how men cling to life, even when it has lost all its +savor. There is that imperative will-to-live which refuses to be denied. + +Dolly went away. After a time Wallis came over from the cottage at +Cradle Bay. He was a young and genial medico from Seattle, who had just +returned from service with the American forces overseas, and was +holidaying briefly before he took up private practice again. He had +very little more than a casual interest in MacRae, however, and he did +not stay long once he had satisfied himself that his patient had little +further need of professional services. And MacRae, who was weaker than +he expected to find himself, rested in his bed until late afternoon +brought bars of sunlight streaming through openings in the cloud bank +which still ran swift before the wind. + +Then he rose, dressed, made his way laboriously and painfully down to +the Cove's edge and took a brief look at the hull of the _Blackbird_ +sunk to her deck line, her rail and cabins broken and twisted. After +that he hailed a fisherman, engaged him to go across to Solomon River +and apprise the _Bluebird_. That accomplished he went back to the house. +Thereafter he spent days lying on his bed, resting in a big chair before +the fireplace while his wounds healed and his strength came back to him, +thinking, planning, chafing at inaction. + +There was a perfunctory inquest, after which Steve's body went away to +Hidalgo Island to rest beside the bodies of other Ferraras in a plot of +ground their grandfather had taken for his own when British Columbia was +a Crown colony. + +MacRae carried insurance on both his carriers. There was no need for him +to move against Gower in the matter. The insurance people would attend +efficiently to that. The adjusters came, took over the wreck, made +inquiries. MacRae made his formal claim, and it was duly paid. + +But long before the payment was made he was at work, he and Vin Ferrara +together, on the _Bluebird_, plowing the Gulf in stormy autumn weather. +The season was far gone, the salmon run slackening to its close. It was +too late to equip another carrier. The cohoes were gone. The dog +salmon, great-toothed, slimy fish which are canned for European +export--for cheap trade, which nevertheless returned much profit to the +canneries--were still running. + +MacRae had taken ninety per cent. of the Folly Bay bluebacks. He had +made tremendous inroads on Folly Bay's take of coho and humpback. He did +not care greatly if Gower filled his cans with "dogs." But the +Bellingham packers cried for salmon of whatsoever quality, and so MacRae +drove the _Bluebird_ hard in a trade which gave him no great profit, +chiefly to preserve his connection with the American canners, to harass +Folly Bay, and to let the fishermen know that he was still a factor and +could serve them well. + +He was sick of the smell of salmon, weary of the eternal heaving of the +sea under his feet, of long cold tricks at the wheel, of days in somber, +driving rain and nights without sleep. But he kept on until the salmon +ceased to run, until the purse seiners tied up for the season, and the +fishermen put by their gear. + +MacRae had done well,--far better than he expected. His knife had cut +both ways. He had eighteen thousand dollars in cash and the _Bluebird_. +The Folly Bay pack was twelve thousand cases short. How much that +shortage meant in lost profit MacRae could only guess, but it was a +pretty sum. Another season like that,--he smiled grimly. The next season +would be better,--for him. The trollers were all for him. They went out +of their way to tell him that. He had organized good will behind him. +The men who followed the salmon schools believed he did not want the +earth, only a decent share. He did not sit behind a mahogany desk in +town and set the price of fish. These men had labored a long time under +the weighty heel of a controlled industry, and they were thankful for a +new dispensation. It gave MacRae a pleasant feeling to know this. It +gave him also something of a contempt for Gower, who had sat tight with +a virtual monopoly for ten years and along with his profits had earned +the distrust and dislike of a body of men who might as easily have been +loyal laborers in his watery vineyards,--if he had not used his power to +hold them to the most meager return they could wring from the sea. + +He came home to the house at Squitty Cove with some odds and ends from +town shops to make it more comfortable, flooring to replace the old, +worn boards, a rug or two, pictures that caught his fancy, new cushions +for the big chairs old Donald MacRae had fashioned by hand years before, +a banjo to pick at, and a great box of books which he had promised to +read some day when he had time. And he knew he would have time through +long winter evenings when the land was drenched with rain, when the +storm winds howled in the swaying firs and the sea beat clamorously +along the cliffs. He would sit with his feet to a glowing fire and read +books. + +He did, for a time. When late November laid down a constant barrage of +rain and the cloud battalions marched and countermarched along the +coast, MacRae had settled down. He had no present care upon his +shoulders. Although he presumed himself to be resting, he was far from +idle. He found many ways of occupying himself about the old place. It +was his pleasure that the old log house should be neat within and +without, the yard clean, the garden restored to order. It had suffered a +season's neglect. He remedied that with a little labor and a little +money, wishing, as the place took on a sprightlier air, that old Donald +could be there to see. MacRae was frank in his affection for the spot. +No other place that he had ever seen meant quite the same to him. He was +always glad to come back to it; it seemed imperative that he should +always come back there. It was home, his refuge, his castle. Indeed he +had seen castles across the sea from whose towers less goodly sights +spread than he could command from his own front door, now that winter +had stripped the maple and alder of their leafy screen. There was the +sheltered Cove at his feet, the far sweep of the Gulf--colored according +to its mood and the weather--great mountain ranges lifting sheer from +blue water, their lower slopes green with forest and their crests white +with snow. Immensities of land and trees. All his environment pitched +upon a colossal scale. It was good to look at, to live among, and MacRae +knew that it was good. + +He sat on a log at the brink of the Cove one morning, in a burst of +sunshine as grateful as it was rare. He looked out at the mainland +shore, shading away from deep olive to a faint and misty blue. He cast +his gaze along Vancouver Island, a three-hundred-mile barrier against +the long roll of the Pacific. He thought of England, with its scant area +and its forty million souls. He smiled. An empire opened within range of +his vision. He had had to go to Europe to appreciate his own country. +Old, old peoples over there. Outworn, bewildered aristocracies and vast +populations troubled with the specter of want, swarming like rabbits, +pressing always close upon the means of subsistence. No room; no chance. +Born in social stratas solidified by centuries. No wonder Europe was +full of race and class hatred, of war and pestilence. Snap +judgment,--but Jack MacRae had seen the peasants of France and Belgium, +the driven workmen of industrial France and England. He had seen also +something of the forces which controlled them, caught glimpses of the +iron hand in the velvet glove, a hand that was not so sure and steady as +in days gone by. + +Here a man still had a chance. He could not pick golden apples off the +fir trees. He must use his brains as well as his hands. A reasonable +measure of security was within a man's grasp if he tried for it. To pile +up a fortune might be a heavy task. But getting a living was no +insoluble problem. A man could accomplish either without selling his +soul or cutting throats or making serfs of his fellow men. There was +room to move and breathe,--and some to spare. + +Perhaps Jack MacRae, in view of his feelings, his cherished projects, +was a trifle inconsistent in the judgments he passed, sitting there on +his log in the winter sunshine. But the wholly consistent must die +young. Their works do not appear in this day and hour. The normal man +adjusts himself to, and his actions are guided by, moods and +circumstances which are seldom orderly and logical in their sequence. + +MacRae cherished as profound an animosity toward Horace Gower as any +Russian ever felt for bureaucratic tyranny. He could smart under +injustice and plan reprisal. He could appreciate his environment, his +opportunities, be glad that his lines were cast amid rugged beauty. But +he did not on that account feel tolerant toward those whom he conceived +to be his enemies. He was not, however, thinking concretely of his +personal affairs or tendencies that bright morning. He was merely +sitting more or less quiescent on his log, nursing vagrant impressions, +letting the sun bathe him. + +He was not even conscious of trespassing on Horace Gower's land. When +he thought of it, of course he realized that this was legally so. But +the legal fact had no reality for MacRae. Between the Cove and Point +Old, for a mile back into the dusky woods, he felt free to come and go +as he chose. He had always believed and understood and felt that area to +be his, and he still held to that old impression. There was not a foot +of that six hundred acres that he had not explored alone, with his +father, with Dolly Ferrara, season after season. He had gone barefoot +over the rocks, dug clams on the beaches, fished trout in the little +streams, hunted deer and grouse in the thickets, as far back as he could +remember. He had loved the cliffs and the sea, the woods around the Cove +with an affection bred in use and occupancy, confirmed by the sense of +inviolate possession. Old things are dear, if a man has once loved them. +They remain so. The aura of beloved familiarity clings to them long +after they have passed into alien hands. When MacRae thought of this and +turned his eyes upon this noble sweep of land and forest which his +father had claimed for his own from the wilderness, it was as if some +one had deprived him of an eye or an arm by trickery and unfair +advantage. + +He was not glooming over such things this rare morning which had come +like a benediction after ten days of rain and wind. He was sitting on +his log bareheaded, filled with a passive content rare in his recent +experience. + +From this perch, in the idle wandering of his gaze, his eyes at length +rested upon Peter Ferrara's house. He saw a man and a woman come out of +the front door and stand for a minute or two on the steps. He could not +recognize the man at the distance, but he could guess. The man presently +walked away around the end of the Cove, MacRae perceived that his guess +was correct, for Norman Gower came out on the brow of the cliff that +bordered the south side of the Cove. He appeared a short distance away, +walking slowly, his eyes on the Cove and Peter Ferrara's house. He did +not see MacRae till he was quite close and glanced that way. + +"Hello, MacRae," he said. + +"How d' do," Jack answered. There was no cordiality in his tone. If he +had any desire at that moment it was not for speech with Norman Gower, +but rather a desire that Gower should walk on. + +But the other man sat down on MacRae's log. + +"Not much like over the pond, this," he remarked. + +"Not much," MacRae agreed indifferently. + +Young Gower took a cigarette case out of his pocket, extended it to +MacRae, who declined with a brief shake of his head. Norman lighted a +cigarette. He was short and stoutly built, a compact, muscular man +somewhat older than MacRae. He had very fair hair and blue eyes, and the +rose-leaf skin of his mother had in him taken on a masculine floridity. +But he had the Gower mouth and determined chin. So had Betty, MacRae was +reminded, looking at her brother. + +"You sank your harpoon pretty deep into Folly Bay this season," Norman +said abruptly. "Did you do pretty well yourself?" + +"Pretty well," MacRae drawled. "Did it worry you?" + +"Me? Hardly," young Gower smiled. "It did not cost _me_ anything to +operate Folly Bay at a loss while I was in charge. I had neither money +nor reputation to lose. You may have worried the governor. I dare say +you did. He never did take kindly to anything or any one that interfered +with his projects. But I haven't heard him commit himself. He doesn't +confide in me, anyway, nor esteem me very highly in any capacity. I +wonder if your father ever felt that way about you?" + +"No," MacRae said impulsively. "By God, no!" + +"Lucky. And you came home with a record behind you. Nothing to handicap +you. You jumped into the fray to do something for yourself and made good +right off the bat. There is such a thing as luck," Norman said soberly. +"A man can do his best--and fail. I have, so far. I was expected to come +home a credit to the family, a hero, dangling medals on my manly chest. +Instead, I've lost caste with my own crowd. Girls and fellows I used to +know sneer at me behind my back. They put their tongues in their cheek +and say I was a crafty slacker. I suppose you've heard the talk?" + +"No," MacRae answered shortly; he had forgotten Nelly Abbott's +questioning almost the first time he met her. "I don't run much with +your crowd, anyway." + +"Well, they can think what they damn please," young Gower grumbled. +"It's quite true that I was never any closer to the front than the Dover +cliffs. Perhaps at home here in the beginning they handed me a captain's +commission on the family pull. But I tried to deliver the goods. These +people think I dodged the trenches. They don't know my eyesight spoiled +my chances of going into action. I couldn't get to France. So I did my +bit where headquarters told me I could do it or go home. And all I have +got out of it is the veiled contempt of nearly everybody I know, my +father included, for not killing Germans with my own hands." + +MacRae kept still. It was a curious statement. Young Gower twisted and +ground his boot heel into the soft earth. + +"Being a rich man's son has proved a considerable handicap in my case," +he continued at last. "I was petted and coddled all my life. Then the +war came along. Everybody expected a lot of me. And I am as good as +excommunicated for not coming up to expectations. Beautiful irony. If my +eyes had been normal, I should be another of Vancouver's heroes,--alive +or dead. The spirit doesn't seem to count. The only thing that matters, +evidently, is that I stayed on the safe side of the Channel. They take +it for granted that I did so because I valued my own skin above +everything. Idiots." + +"You can easily explain," MacRae suggested. + +"I won't. I'd see them all in Hades first," Norman growled. "I'll admit +it stings me to have people think so and rub it in, in their polite way. +But I'm getting more or less indifferent. There are plenty of real +people in England who know I did the only work I could do and did it +well. Do you imagine I fancied sitting on the side lines when all the +fellows I knew were playing a tough game? But I can't go about telling +that to people at home. I'll be damned if I will. A man has to learn to +stand the gaff sometime, and the last year or so seems to be my period +of schooling." + +"Why tell all this to me?" MacRae asked quietly. + +Norman rose from the log. He chucked the butt of his cigarette away. He +looked directly, rather searchingly, at MacRae. + +"Really, I don't know," he said in a flat, expressionless. Then he +walked on. + +MacRae watched him pass out of sight among the thickets. Young Gower had +succeeded in dispelling the passive contentment of basking in the sun. +He had managed to start buzzing trains of not too agreeable reflection. +MacRae got to his feet before long and tramped back around the Cove's +head. He had known, of course, that the Gowers still made more or less +use of their summer cottage. But he had not come in personal contact +with any of them since the night Betty had given him that new, +disturbing angle from which to view her. He had avoided her purposely. +Now he was afflicted with a sudden restlessness, a desire for other +voices and faces besides his own, and so, as he was in the habit of +doing when such a mood seized him, he went on to Peter Ferrara's house. + +He walked in through a wide-open door, unannounced by aught save his +footsteps, as he was accustomed to do, and he found Dolly Ferrara and +Betty Gower laughing and chatting familiarly in the kitchen over teacups +and little cakes. + +"Oh, I beg pardon," said he. "I didn't know you were entertaining." + +"I don't entertain, and you know it," Dolly laughed. "Come down from +that lofty altitude and I'll give you a cup of tea." + +"Mr. MacRae, being an aviator of some note," Betty put in, "probably +finds himself at home in the high altitudes." + +"Do I seem to be up in the air?" MacRae inquired dryly. "I shall try to +come down behind my own lines, and not in enemy territory." + +"You might have to make a forced landing," Dolly remarked. + +Her great dusky eyes rested upon him with a singular quality of +speculation. MacRae wondered if those two had been talking about him, +and why. + +There was an astonishing contrast between these two girls, MacRae +thought, his mind and his eyes busy upon them while his tongue uttered +idle words and his hands coped with a teacup and cakes. They were the +product of totally dissimilar environments. They were the physical +antithesis of each other,--in all but the peculiar feline grace of young +females who are healthily, exuberantly alive. Yet MacRae had a feeling +that they were sisters under their skins, wonderfully alike in their +primary emotions. Why, then, he wondered, should one be capable of +moving him to violent emotional reactions (he had got that far in his +self-admissions concerning Betty Gower), and the other move him only to +a friendly concern and latterly a certain pity? + +Certainly either one would quite justify a man in seeking her for his +mate, if he found his natural instincts urging him along ways which +MacRae was beginning to perceive no normal man could escape traveling. +And if he had to tread that road, why should it not have been his desire +to tread it with Dolly Ferrara? That would have been so much simpler. +With unconscious egotism he put aside Norman Gower as a factor. If he +had to develop an unaccountable craving for some particular woman, why +couldn't it have centered upon a woman he knew as well as he knew Dolly, +whose likes and dislikes, little tricks of speech and manner, habits of +thought, all the inconsiderable traits that go to make up what we call +personality, were pleasantly familiar? + +Strange thoughts over a teacup, MacRae decided. It seemed even more +strange that he should be considering such intimately personal things in +the very act of carrying on an impersonal triangular conversation; as if +there were two of him present, one being occupied in the approved teacup +manner while the other sat by speculating with a touch of moroseness +upon distressingly important potentialities. This duality persisted in +functioning even when Betty looked at her watch and said, "I must go." + +He walked with her around to the head of the Cove. He had not wanted to +do that,--and still he did. He found himself filled with an intense and +resentful curiosity about this calm, self-possessed young woman. He +wondered if she really had any power to hurt him, if there resided in +her any more potent charm than other women possessed, or if it were a +mere sentimental befogging of his mind due to the physical propinquity +of her at a time when he was weak and bruised and helpless. He could +feel the soft warmth of her hands yet, and without even closing his eyes +he could see her reddish-brown hair against the white of his bed covers +and the tired droop of her body as she slept that night. + +Curiously enough, before they were well clear of the Ferrara house they +had crossed swords. Courteously, to be sure. MacRae could not afterward +recall clearly how it began,--something about the war and the +after-effect of the war. British Columbia nowise escaped the muddle into +which the close of the war and the wrangle of the peacemakers had +plunged both industry and politics. There had been a recent labor +disturbance in Vancouver in which demobilized soldiers had played a +part. + +"You can't blame these men much. They're bewildered at some of the +things they get up against, and exasperated by others. A lot of them +have found the going harder at home than it was in France. A lot of +promises and preachments don't fit in with performance since the guns +have stopped talking. I suppose that doesn't seem reasonable to people +like you," MacRae found himself saying. "You don't have to gouge and +claw a living out of the world. Or at least, if there is any gouging +and clawing to be done, you are not personally involved in it. You get +it done by proxy." + +Betty flushed slightly. + +"Do you always go about with a chip on your shoulder?" she asked. "I +should think you did enough fighting in France." + +"I learned to fight there," he said. "I was a happy-go-lucky kid before +that. Rich and poor looked alike to me. I didn't covet anything that +anybody had, and I didn't dream that any one could possibly wish to take +away from me anything that I happened to have. I thought the world was a +kind and pleasant place for everybody. But things look a little +different to me now. They sent us fellows to France to fight Huns. But +there are a few at home, I find. Why shouldn't I fight them whenever I +see a chance?" + +"But _I'm_ not a Hun," Betty said with a smile. + +"I'm not so sure about that." + +The words leaped out before he was quite aware of what they might imply. +They had come to a point on the path directly in front of his house. +Betty stopped. Her gray eyes flashed angrily. Storm signals blazed in +her cheeks, bright above the delicate white of her neck. + +"Jack MacRae," she burst out hotly, "you are a--a--a first-class idiot!" + +Then she turned her back on him and went off up the path with a quick, +springy step that somehow suggested extreme haste. + +MacRae stood looking after her fully a minute. Then he climbed the +steps, went into the front room and sat himself down in a deep, +cushioned chair. He glowered into the fireplace with a look as black as +the charred remains of his morning fire. He uttered one brief word after +a long period of fixed staring. + +"Damn!" he said. + +It seemed a very inadequate manner of expressing his feelings, but it +was the best he could do at the moment. + +He sat there until the chill discomfort of the room stirred him out of +his abstraction. Then he built a fire and took up a book to read. But +the book presently lay unheeded on his knees. He passed the rest of the +short forenoon sprawled in that big chair before the fireplace, +struggling with chaotic mental processes. + +It made him unhappy, but he could not help it. A tremendous assortment +of mental images presented themselves for inspection, flickering up +unbidden out of his brain-stuff,--old visions and new, familiar things +and vague, troublesome possibilities, all strangely jumbled together. +His mind hopped from Squitty Cove to Salisbury Plain, to the valley of +the Rhone, to Paris, London, Vancouver, turned up all sorts of +recollections, cameralike flashes of things that had happened to him, +things he had seen in curious places, bits of his life in that somehow +distant period when he was a youngster chumming about with his father. +And always he came back to the Gowers,--father, son and daughter, and +the delicate elderly woman with the faded rose-leaf face whom he had +seen only once. Whole passages of Donald MacRae's written life story +took form in living words. He could not disentangle himself from these +Gowers. + +And he hated them! + +Dark came down at last. MacRae went out on the porch. The few scattered +clouds had vanished completely. A starry sky glittered above horizons +edged by mountain ranges, serrated outlines astonishingly distinct. The +sea spread duskily mysterious from duskier shores. It was very still, to +MacRae suddenly very lonely, empty, depressing. + +The knowledge that just across a narrow neck of land the Gowers, +father, daughter and son, went carelessly, securely about their own +affairs, made him infinitely more lonely, irritated him, stirred up a +burning resentment against the lot of them. He lumped them all together, +despite a curious tendency on the part of Betty's image to separate +itself from the others. He hated them, the whole damned, profiteering, +arrogant, butterfly lot. He nursed an unholy satisfaction in having made +some inroad upon their comfortable security, in having "sunk his +harpoon" into their only vulnerable spot. + +But that satisfaction did not give him relief or content as he stood +looking out into the clear frost-tinged night. Squitty had all at once +become a ghostly place, haunted with sadness. Old Donald MacRae was +living over again in him, he had a feeling, reliving those last few +cheerless, hopeless years which, MacRae told himself savagely, Horace +Gower had deliberately made more cheerless and hopeless. + +And he was in a fair way to love that man's flesh and blood? MacRae +sneered at himself in the dark. Never to the point of staying his hand, +of foregoing his purpose, of failing to strike a blow as chance offered. +Not so long as he was his father's son. + +"Hang it, I'm getting morbid," MacRae muttered at last. "I've been +sticking around here too close. I'll pack a bag to-morrow and go to town +for a while." + +He closed the door on the crisp, empty night, and set about getting +himself something to eat. + + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +The Swing of the Pendulum + + +MacRae did himself rather well, as the English say, when he reached +Vancouver. This was a holiday, and he was disposed to make the most of +it. He put up at the Granada. He made a few calls and presently found +himself automatically relaunched upon Vancouver's social waters. There +were a few maids and more than one matron who recalled pleasantly this +straight up-standing youngster with the cool gray eyes who had come +briefly into their ken the winter before. There were a few fellows he +had known in squadron quarters overseas, home for good now that +demobilization was fairly complete. MacRae danced well. He had the +faculty of making himself agreeable without effort. He found it pleasant +to fall into the way of these careless, well-dressed folk whose greatest +labor seemed to be in amusing themselves, to keep life from seeming +"slow." Buttressed by revenues derived from substantial sources, mines, +timber, coastal fisheries, land, established industries, these sons and +daughters of the pioneers, many but one degree removed from pioneering +uncouthness, were patterning their lives upon the plan of equivalent +classes in older regions. If it takes six generations in Europe to make +a gentleman, western America quite casually dispenses with five, and the +resulting product seldom suffers by comparison. + +As the well-to-do in Europe flung themselves into revelry with the +signing of the armistice, so did they here. Four years of war had corked +the bottle of gayety. The young men were all overseas. Life was a little +too cloudy during that period to be gay. Shadows hung over too many +homes. But that was past. They had pulled the cork and thrown it away, +one would think. Pleasure was king, to be served with light abandon. + +It was a fairly vigorous place, MacRae discovered. He liked it, gave +himself up to it gladly,--for a while. It involved no mental effort. +These people seldom spoke of money, or of work, or politics, the high +cost of living, international affairs. If they did it was jocularly, +sketchily, as matters of no importance. Their talk ran upon dances, +clothes, motoring, sports indoors and afield, on food,--and sometimes +genially on drink, since the dry wave had not yet drained their cellars. + +MacRae floated with this tide. But he was not wholly carried away with +it. He began to view it impersonally, to wonder if it were the real +thing, if this was what inspired men to plot and scheme and struggle +laboriously for money, or if it were just the froth on the surface of +realities which he could not quite grasp. He couldn't say. There was a +dash and glitter about it that charmed him. He could warm and thrill to +the beauty of a Granada ballroom, music that seduced a man's feet, +beauty of silk and satin, of face and figure, of bright eyes and +gleaming jewels, a blending of all the primary colors and every shade +between, flashing over a polished floor under high, carved ceilings. + +He had surrendered Nelly Abbott to a claimant and stood watching the +swirl and glide of the dancers in the Granada one night. His eyes were +on the brilliance a little below the raised area at one end of the +floor, and so was his mind, inquiringly, with the curious concentration +of which his mind was capable. Presently he became aware of some one +speaking to him, tugging at his elbow. + +"Oh, come out of it," a voice said derisively. + +He looked around at Stubby Abbott. + +"Regular trance. I spoke to you twice. In love?" + +"Uh-uh. Just thinking," MacRae laughed. + +"Deep thinking, I'll say. Want to go down to the billiard room and +smoke?" + +They descended to a subterranean chamber where, in a pit lighted by +low-hung shaded globes, men in shirt sleeves clicked the red and white +balls on a score of tables. Rows of leather-upholstered chairs gave +comfort to spectators. They commandeered seats and lighted cigarettes. +"Look," Stubby said. "There's Norman Gower." + +Young Gower sat across a corner from them. He was in evening clothes. He +slumped in his chair. His hands were limp along the chair arms. He was +not watching the billiard players. He was staring straight across the +room with the sightless look of one whose mind is far away. + +"Another deep thinker," Stubby drawled. "Rather rough going for Norman +these days." + +"How?" MacRae asked. + +"Funked it over across," Stubby replied. "So they say. Careful to stay +on the right side of the Channel. Paying the penalty now. Girls rather +rub it in. Fellows not too--well, cordial. Pretty rotten for Norman." + +"Think he slacked deliberately?" MacRae inquired. + +"That's the story. Lord, I don't know," Stubby answered. "He stuck in +England four years. Everybody else that was fit went up the line. +That's all I know. By their deeds ye shall judge them--eh?" + +"Perhaps. What does he say about that himself?" + +"Nothing, so far as I know. Keeps strictly mum on the war subject," +Stubby said. + +Young Gower did not alter his position during the few minutes they sat +there. He sat staring straight ahead of him, unseeingly. MacRae suddenly +felt sorry for him. If he had told the truth he was suffering a +peculiarly distressing form of injustice, of misconception. MacRae +recalled the passionate undertone in Gower's voice when he said, "I did +the only thing I could do in the way I was told to do it." Yes, he was +sorry for Norman. The poor devil was not getting a square deal. + +But MacRae's pity was swiftly blotted out. He had a sudden uncomfortable +vision of old Donald MacRae rowing around Poor Man's Rock, back and +forth in sun and rain, in frosty dawns and stormy twilights, coming home +to a lonely house, dying at last a lonely death, the sordid culmination +of an embittered life. + +Let him sweat,--the whole Gower tribe. MacRae was the ancient Roman, for +the moment, wishing all his enemies had but a single head that he might +draw his sword and strike it off. Something in him hardened against that +first generous impulse to repeat to Stubby Abbott what Norman had told +him on the cliff at Squitty. Let the beggar make his own defense. Yet +that stubborn silence, the proud refusal to make words take the place of +valiant deeds expected, wrung a gleam of reluctant admiration from +MacRae. He would have done just that himself. + +"Let's get back," Stubby suggested. "I've got the next dance with Betty +Gower. I don't want to miss it." + +"Is she here to-night? I haven't noticed her." + +"Eyesight affected?" Stubby bantered. "Sure she's here. Looking like a +dream." + +MacRae felt a pang of envy. There was nothing to hold Stubby back,--no +old scores, no deep, abiding resentment. MacRae had the conviction that +Stubby would never take anything like that so seriously as he, Jack +MacRae, did. He was aware that Stubby had the curious dual code common +in the business world,--one set of inhibitions and principles for +business and another for personal and social uses. A man might be +Stubby's opponent in the market and his friend when they met on a common +social ground. MacRae could never be quite like that. Stubby could fight +Horace Gower, for instance, tooth and toenail, for an advantage in the +salmon trade, and stretch his legs under Gower's dining table with no +sense of incongruity, no matter what shifts the competitive struggle had +taken or what weapons either had used. That was business; and a man left +his business at the office. A curious thing, MacRae thought. A +phenomenon in ethics which he found hard to understand, harder still to +endorse. + +He stood watching Stubby, knowing that Stubby would go straight to Betty +Gower. Presently he saw her, marked the cut and color of her gown, +watched them swing into the gyrating wave of couples that took the floor +when the orchestra began. Indeed, MacRae stood watching them until he +recalled with a start that he had this dance with Etta Robbin-Steele, +who would, in her own much-used phrase, be "simply furious" at anything +that might be construed as neglect; only Etta's fury would consist of +showing her white, even teeth in a pert smile with a challenging twinkle +in her very black eyes. + +He went to Betty as soon as he found opportunity. He did not quite know +why. He did not stop to ask himself why. It was a purely instinctive +propulsion. He followed his impulse as the needle swings to the pole; as +an object released from the hand at a great height obeys the force of +gravity; as water flows downhill. + +He took her programme. + +"I don't see any vacancies," he said. "Shall I create one?" + +He drew his pencil through Stubby Abbott's name. Stubby's signature was +rather liberally inscribed there, he thought. Betty looked at him a +trifle uncertainly. + +"Aren't you a trifle--sweeping?" she inquired. + +"Perhaps. Stubby won't mind. Do you?" he asked. + +"I seem to be defenseless." Betty shrugged her shoulders. "What shall we +quarrel about this time?" + +"Anything you like," he made reckless answer. + +"Very well, then," she said as they got up to dance. "Suppose we begin +by finding out what there is to quarrel over. Are you aware that +practically every time we meet we nearly come to blows? What is there +about me that irritates you so easily?" + +"Your inaccessibility." + +MacRae spoke without weighing his words. Yet that was the truth, +although he knew that such a frank truth was neither good form nor +policy. He was sorry before the words were out of his mouth. Betty could +not possibly understand what he meant. He was not sure he wanted her to +understand. MacRae felt himself riding to a fall. As had happened +briefly the night of the _Blackbird's_ wrecking, he experienced that +feeling of dumb protest against the shaping of events in which he moved +helpless. This bit of flesh and blood swaying in his arms in effortless +rhythm to sensuous music was something he had to reckon with powerfully, +whether he liked or not. MacRae was beginning dimly to see that. When he +was with her-- + +"But I'm not inaccessible." + +She dropped her voice to a cooing whisper. Her eyes glowed as they met +his with steadfast concern. There was a smile and a question in them. + +"What ever gave you that idea?" + +"It isn't an idea; it's a fact." + +The resentment against circumstances that troubled MacRae crept into his +tone. + +"Oh, silly!" + +There was a railing note of tenderness in Betty's voice. MacRae felt his +moorings slip. A heady recklessness of consequences seized him. He drew +her a little closer to him. Irresistible prompting from some wellspring +of his being urged him on to what his reason would have called sheer +folly, if that reason had not for the time suffered eclipse, which is a +weakness of rational processes when they come into conflict with a +genuine emotion. + +"Do you like me, Betty?" + +Her eyes danced. They answered as well as her lips: + +"Of course I do. Haven't I been telling you so plainly enough? I've been +ashamed of myself for being so transparent--on such slight provocation." + +"How much?" he demanded. + +"Oh--well--" + +The ballroom was suddenly shrouded in darkness, saved only from a +cavelike black by diffused street light through the upper windows. A +blown fuse. A mis-pulled switch. One of those minor accidents common to +electric lighting systems. The orchestra hesitated, went on. From a +momentary silence the dancers broke into chuckles, amused laughter, a +buzz of exclamatory conversation. But no one moved, lest they collide +with other unseen couples. + +Jack and Betty stood still. They could not see. But MacRae could feel +the quick beat, of Betty's heart, the rise and fall of her breast, a +trembling in her fingers. There was a strange madness stirring in him. +His arm tightened about her. He felt that she yielded easily, as if +gladly. Their mouths sought and clung in the first real kiss Jack MacRae +had ever known. And then, as they relaxed that impulse-born embrace, the +lights flashed on again, blazed in a thousand globes in great frosted +clusters high against the gold-leaf decorations of the ceiling. The +dancers caught step again. MacRae and Betty circled the polished floor +silently. She floated in his arms like thistledown, her eyes like twin +stars, a deeper color in her cheeks. + +Then the music ceased, and they were swept into a chattering group, out +of which presently materialized another partner to claim Betty. So they +parted with a smile and a nod. + +But MacRae had no mind for dancing. He went out through the lobby and +straight to his room. He flung off his coat and sat down in a chair by +the window and blinked out into the night. He had looked, it seemed to +him, into the very gates of paradise,--and he could not go in. + +It wasn't possible. He sat peering out over the dusky roofs of the city, +damning with silent oaths the coil in which he found himself +inextricably involved. History was repeating itself. Like father, like +son. + +There was a difference though. MacRae, as he grew calmer, marked that. +Old Donald had lost his sweetheart by force and trickery. His son must +forego love--if it were indeed love--of his own volition. He had no +choice. He saw no way of winning Betty Gower unless he stayed his hand +against her father. And he would not do that. He could not. It would be +like going over to the enemy in the heat of battle. Gower had wronged +and persecuted his father. He had beaten old Donald without mercy in +every phase of that thirty-year period. He had taken Donald MacRae's +woman from him in the beginning and his property in the end. Jack MacRae +had every reason to believe Gower merely sat back awaiting a favorable +opportunity to crush him. + +So there could be no compromising there; no inter-marrying and +sentimental burying of the old feud. Betty would tie his hands. He was +afraid of her power to do that. He did not want to be a Samson shorn. +His ego revolted against love interfering with the grim business of +everyday life. He bit his lip and wished he could wipe out that kiss. He +cursed himself for a slavish weakness of the flesh. The night was old +when MacRae lay down on his bed. But he could find no ease for the +throbbing ferment within him. He suffered with a pain as keen as if he +had been physically wounded, and the very fact that he could so suffer +filled him with dismay. He had faced death many times with less emotion +than he now was facing life. + +He had no experience of love. Nothing remotely connected with women had +ever suggested such possibilities of torment. He had known first-hand +the pangs of hunger and thirst, of cold and weariness, of anger and +hate, of burning wounds in his flesh. He had always been able to grit +his teeth and endure; none of it had been able to wring his soul. This +did. He had come to manhood, to a full understanding of sex, at a time +when he played the greatest game of all, when all his energies were +fiercely centered upon preservation for himself and certain destruction +for other men. Perhaps because he had come back clean, having never +wasted himself in complaisant liaisons overseas, the inevitable focusing +of passion stirred him more profoundly. He was neither a varietist nor a +male prude. He was aware of sex. He knew desire. But the flame Betty +Gower had kindled in him made him look at women out of different eyes. +Desire had been revealed to him not as something casual, but as an +imperative. As if nature had pulled the blinkers off his eyes and shown +him his mate and the aim and object and law and fiery urge of the mating +instinct all in one blinding flash. + +He lay hot and fretful, cursing himself for a fool, yet unable to find +ease, wondering dully if Betty Gower must also suffer as he should, or +if it were only an innocent, piquant game that Betty played. Always in +the background of his mind lurked a vision of her father, sitting back +complacently, fat, smug, plump hands on a well-rounded stomach, +chuckling a brutal satisfaction over another MacRae beaten. + +MacRae wakened from an uneasy sleep at ten o'clock. He rose and dressed, +got his breakfast, went out on the streets. But Vancouver had all at +once grown insufferable. The swarming streets irritated him. He +smoldered inside, and he laid it to the stir and bustle and noise. He +conceived himself to crave hushed places and solitude, where he could +sit and think. + +By mid-afternoon he was far out in the Gulf of Georgia, aboard a +coasting steamer sailing for island ports. If it occurred to him that he +was merely running away from temptation, he did not admit the fact. + + + + +CHAPTER XV + +Hearts are Not Always Trumps + + +If MacRae reckoned on tranquillity in his island seclusion he failed in +his reckoning. A man may fly from temptation, run from a threatening +danger, but he cannot run away from himself. He could not inhibit +thought, reflection, surges of emotion generated mysteriously within +himself. + +He did his best. He sought relief in action. There were a great many +things about his freehold upon which he bestowed feverish labor for a +time. He cleared away all the underbrush to the outer limits of his +shrunken heritage. He built a new enclosing fence of neatly split cedar, +installed a pressure system of water in the old house. + +"You goin' to get married?" old Peter inquired artlessly one day. "You +got all the symptoms--buzzin' around in your nest like a bumblebee." + +And Dolly smiled her slow, enigmatic smile. + +Whereupon MacRae abandoned his industry and went off to Blackfish Sound +with Vincent in the _Bluebird_. The salmon run was long over, but the +coastal waters still yielded a supply of edible fish. There were always +a few spring salmon to be taken here and there. Ling, red and rock cod +knew no seasons. Nor the ground fish, plaice, sole, flounders, halibut. +Already the advance guard of the great run of mature herring began to +show. For a buyer there was no such profit in running these fish to +market as the profit of the annual salmon run. Still it paid moderately. +So MacRae had turned the _Bluebird_ over to Vin to operate for a time on +a share basis. It gave Vin, who was ambitious and apparently tireless, a +chance to make a few hundred dollars in an off season. + +Wherefore MacRae, grown suddenly restless beyond all restraining upon +his island, made a trip or two north with Vin--a working guest on his +own vessel--up where the Gulf of Georgia is choked to narrow passages +through which the tidal currents race like mountain streams pent in a +gorge, up where the sea is a maze of waterways among wooded islands. +They anchored in strange bays. They fared once into Queen Charlotte +Sound and rode the great ground swell that heaves up from the far coast +of Japan to burst against the rocky outpost of Cape Caution. They +doubled on their tracks and gathered their toll of the sea from fishing +boats here and there until the _Bluebird_ rode deep with cargo, fresh +fish to be served on many tables far inland. MacRae often wondered if +the housewife who ordered her weekly ration of fish and those who picked +daintily at the savory morsels with silver forks ever thought how they +came by this food. Men till the sea with pain and risk and infinite +labor, as they till the land; only the fisherman with his nets and hooks +and gear does not sow, he only reaps. Nature has attended diligently to +the sowing, from the Cape of Good Hope to Martha's Vineyard, from Bering +Strait to Botany Bay. + +But MacRae soon had enough of that and came back to Squitty, to his +fireplace and his books. He had been accustomed to enjoy the winters, +the clear crisp mornings that varied weeks of drenching rain which +washed the land clean; to prowl about in the woods with a gun when he +needed meat; to bask before a bed of coals in the fireplace through long +evenings when the wind howled and the rain droned on the roof and the +sea snored along the rocky beaches. That had been in days before he +learned the weight of loneliness, when his father had been there to sit +quietly beside the fire smoking a pipe, when Dolly Ferrara ran wild in +the woods with him or they rode for pure sport the tumbling seas in a +dugout canoe. + +Now winter was a dull inaction, a period of discontent, in which thought +gnawed at him like an ingrowing toenail. Everything seemed out of joint. +He found himself feverishly anxious for spring, for the stress and +strain of another tilt with Folly Bay. Sometimes he asked himself where +he would come out, even if he won all along the line, if he made money, +gained power, beat Gower ultimately to his knees, got back his land. He +did not try to peer too earnestly into the future. It seemed a little +misty. He was too much concerned with the immediate present, looming big +with possibilities of good or evil for himself. Things did not seem +quite so simple as at first. A great many complications, wholly +unforeseen, had arisen since he came back from France. But he was +committed to certain undertakings from which he neither wished nor +intended to turn aside,--not so long as he had the will to choose. + +Christmas came again, and with it the gathering of the Ferraras for +their annual reunion,--Old Manuel and Joaquin, young Manuel and Ambrose +and Vincent. Steve they could speak of now quite casually. He had died +in his sea boots like many another Ferrara. It was a pity, of course, +but it was the chance of his calling. And the gathering was stronger in +numbers, even with Steve gone. Ambrose had taken himself a wife, a +merry round-cheeked girl whose people were coaxing Ambrose to quit the +sea for a more profitable undertaking in timber. And also Norman Gower +was there. + +MacRae did not quite know how to take that young man. He had had stray +contacts with Norman during the last few weeks. For a rich man's son he +was not running true to form. He and Long Tom Spence had struck up a +partnership in a group of mineral claims on the Knob, that conical +mountain which lifted like one of the pyramids out of the middle of +Squitty Island. There had been much talk of those claims. Years ago Bill +Munro--he who died of the flu in his cabin beside the Cove--had staked +those claims. Munro was a young man then, a prospector. He had inveigled +other men to share his hopes and labors, to grubstake him while he drove +the tunnel that was to cut the vein. MacRae's father had taken a hand in +this. So had Peter Ferrara. But these informal partnerships had always +lapsed. Old Bill Munro's prospects had never got beyond the purely +prospective stage. The copper was there, ample traces of gold and +silver. But he never developed a showing big enough to lure capital. +When Munro died the claims had been long abandoned. + +Long Tom Spence had suddenly relocated them. Some working agreement had +included Uncle Peter and young Gower. Long Tom went about hinting +mysteriously of fortunes. Peter Ferrara even admitted that there was a +good showing. Norman had been there for weeks, living with Spence in a +shack, sweating day after day in the tunnel. They were all beginning to +speak of it as "the mine." + +Norman had rid himself of that grouchy frown. He was always singing or +whistling or laughing. His fair, rather florid face glowed with a +perpetual good nature. He treated MacRae to the same cheerful, careless +air that he had for everything and everybody. And when he was about +Uncle Peter's house at the Cove he monopolized Dolly, an attitude which +Dolly herself as well as her uncle seemed to find agreeable and proper. + +MacRae finally found himself compelled to accept Norman Gower as part of +the group. He was a little surprised to find that he harbored no decided +feeling about young Gower, one way or the other. If he felt at all, it +was a mild impatience that another man had established a relation with +Dolly Ferrara which put aside old friendships. He found himself +constrained more and more to treat Dolly like any other pleasant young +woman of his acquaintance. He did not quite like that. He and Dolly +Ferrara had been such good chums. Besides, he privately considered that +Dolly was throwing herself away on a man weak enough to make the tragic +blunder young Gower had made in London. But that was their own affair. +Altogether, MacRae found it quite impossible to muster up any abiding +grudge against young Gower on his own account. + +So he let matters stand and celebrated Christmas with them. Afterward +they got aboard the _Bluebird_ and went to a dance at Potter's Landing, +where for all that Jack MacRae was the local hero, both of the great war +and the salmon war of the past season, both Dolly and Norman, he +privately conceded, enjoyed themselves a great deal more than he did. +Their complete absorption in each other rather irritated him. + +They came back to the Cove early in the morning. The various Ferraras +disposed themselves about Peter's house to sleep, and MacRae went on to +his own place. About an hour after daybreak he saw Norman Gower pass up +the bush trail to the mine with a heavy pack of provisions on his back. +And MacRae wondered idly if Norman was bucking the game in earnest, +strictly on his own, and why? + +Late in January the flash of a white skirt and a sky-blue sweater past +his dooryard apprised MacRae that Betty was back. And he did not want to +see Betty or talk with her. He hoped her stay would be brief. He even +asked himself testily why people like that wanted to come to a summer +dwelling in the middle of winter. But her sojourn was not so brief as he +hoped. At divers times thereafter he saw her in the distance, faring to +and fro from Peter Ferrara's house, out on the trail that ran to the +Knob, several times when the sea was calm paddling a canoe or rowing +alongshore. Also he had glimpses of the thickset figure of Horace Gower +walking along the cliffs. MacRae avoided both. That was easy enough, +since he knew every nook and bush and gully on that end of the island. +But the mere sight of Gower was an irritation. He resented the man's +presence. It affected him like a challenge. It set him always pondering +ways and means to secure ownership of those acres again and forever bar +Gower from walking along those cliffs with that masterful air of +possession. Only a profound distaste for running away from anything kept +him from quitting the island while they were there, those two, one of +whom he was growing to hate far beyond the original provocation, the +other whom he loved,--for MacRae admitted reluctantly, resentfully, that +he did love Betty, and he was afraid of where that emotion might lead +him. He recognized the astonishing power of passion. It troubled him, +stirred up an amazing conflict at times between his reason and his +impulses. He fell back always upon the conclusion that love was an +irrational thing anyway, that it should not be permitted to upset a +man's logical plan of existence. But he was never very sure that this +conclusion would stand a practical test. + +The southern end of Squitty was not of such vast scope that two people +could roam here and there without sometime coming face to face, +particularly when these two were a man and a woman, driven by a spirit +of restlessness to lonely wanderings. MacRae went into the woods with +his rifle one day in search of venison. He wounded a buck, followed him +down a long canyon, and killed his game within sight of the sea. He took +the carcass by a leg and dragged it through the bright green salal +brush. As he stepped out of a screening thicket on to driftwood piled by +storm and tide, he saw a rowboat hauled up on the shingle above reach of +short, steep breakers, and a second glance showed him Betty sitting on a +log close by, looking at him. + +"Stormbound?" he asked her. + +"Yes. I was rowing and the wind came up." + +She rose and came over to look at the dead deer. + +"What beautiful animals they are!" she said. "Isn't it a pity to kill +them?" + +"It's a pity, too, to kill cattle and sheep and pigs, to haul fish by +the gills out of the sea," MacRae replied; "to trap marten and mink and +fox and beaver and bear for their skins. But men must eat and women must +wear furs." + +"How horribly logical you are," Betty murmured. "You make a natural +sympathy appear wishy-washy sentimentalism." + +She reseated herself on the log. MacRae sat down beside her. He looked +at her searchingly. He could not keep his eyes away. A curious +inconsistency was revealed to him. He sat beside Betty, responding to +the potent stimuli of her nearness and wishing pettishly that she were a +thousand miles away, so that he would not be troubled by the magic of +her lips and eyes and unruly hair, the musical cadences of her voice. +There was a subtle quality of expectancy about her, as if she sat there +waiting for him to say something, do something, as if her mere presence +were powerful to compel him to speak and act as she desired. MacRae +realized the fantasy of those impressions. Betty sat looking at him +calmly, her hands idle in her lap. If there were in her soul any of the +turmoil that was fast rising in his, it was not outwardly manifested by +any sign whatever. For that matter, MacRae knew that he himself was +placid enough on the surface. Nor did he feel the urge of +inconsequential speech. There was no embarrassment in that mutual +silence, only the tug of a compelling desire to take her in his arms, +which he must resist. + +"There are times," Betty said at last, "when you live up to your +nickname with a vengeance." + +"There are times," MacRae replied slowly, "when that is the only wise +thing for a man to do." + +"And you, I suppose, rather pride yourself on being wise in your day and +generation." + +There was gentle raillery in her tone. + +"I don't like you to be sarcastic," he said. + +"I don't think you like me sarcastic or otherwise," Betty observed, +after a moment's silence. + +"But I do," he protested. "That's the devil of it. I do--and you know I +do. It would be a great deal better if I didn't." + +Betty's fingers began to twist in her lap. The color rose faintly in her +smooth cheeks. Her eyes turned to the sea. + +"I don't know why," she said gently. "I'd hate to think it would." + +MacRae did not find any apt reply to that. His mind was in an agonized +muddle, in which he could only perceive one or two things with any +degree of clearness. Betty loved him. He was sure of that. He could tell +her that he loved her. And then? Therein arose the conflict. Marriage +was the natural sequence of love. And when he contemplated marriage with +Betty he found himself unable to detach her from her background, in +which lurked something which to MacRae's imagination loomed sinister, +hateful. To make peace with Horace Gower--granting that Gower was +willing for such a consummation--for love of his daughter struck MacRae +as something very near to dishonor. And if, contrariwise, he repeated to +Betty the ugly story which involved her father and his father, she would +be harassed by irreconcilable forces even if she cared enough to side +with him against her own people. MacRae was gifted with acute +perception, in some things. He said to himself despairingly--nor was it +the first time that he had said it--that you cannot mix oil and water. + +He could do nothing at all. That was the sum of his ultimate +conclusions. His hands were tied. He could not go back and he could not +go on. He sat beside Betty, longing to take her in his arms and still +fighting stoutly against that impulse. He was afraid of his impulses. + +A faint moisture broke out on his face with that acute nervous strain. A +lump rose chokingly in his throat. He stared out at the white-crested +seas that came marching up the Gulf before a rising wind until his eyes +grew misty. Then he slid down off the log and laid his head on Betty's +knee. A weight of dumb grief oppressed him. He wanted to cry, and he was +ashamed of his weakness. + +Betty's fingers stole caressingly over his bare head, rumpled his hair, +stroked his hot cheek. + +"Johnny-boy," she said at last, "what is it that comes like a fog +between you and me?" + +MacRae did not answer. + +"I make love to you quite openly," Betty went on. "And I don't seem to +be the least bit ashamed of doing so. I'm not a silly kid. I'm nearly as +old as you are, and I know quite well what I want--which happens to be +you. I love you, Silent John. The man is supposed to be the pursuer. But +I seem to have that instinct myself. Besides," she laughed tremulously, +"this is leap year. And, remember, you kissed me. Or did I kiss you? +Which was it, Jack?" + +MacRae seated himself on the log beside her. He put his arm around her +and drew her close to him. That disturbing wave of emotion which had +briefly mastered him was gone. He felt only a passionate tenderness for +Betty and a pity for them both. But he had determined what to do. + +"I do love you, Betty," he said--"your hair and your eyes and your lips +and the sound of your voice and the way you walk and everything that is +you. Is that quite plain enough? It's a sort of emotional madness." + +"Well, I am afflicted with the same sort of madness," she admitted. "And +I like it. It is natural." + +"But you wouldn't like it if you knew it meant a series of mental and +spiritual conflicts that would be almost like physical torture," he said +slowly. "You'd be afraid of it." + +"And you?" she demanded. + +"Yes," he said simply. "I am." + +"Then you're a poor sort of lover," she flung at him, and freed herself +from his arms with a quick twist of her body. Her breast heaved. She +moved away from him. + +"I'll admit being a poor lover, perhaps," MacRae said. "I didn't want to +love you. I shouldn't love you. I really ought to hate you. I don't, but +if I was consistent, I should. I ought to take every opportunity to hurt +you just because you are a Gower. I have good reason to do so. I can't +tell you why--or at least I am not going to tell you why. I don't think +it would mend matters if I did. I dare say I'm a better fighter than a +lover. I fight in the open, on the square. And because I happen to care +enough to shrink from making you risk things I can't dodge, I'm a poor +lover. Well, perhaps I am." + +"I didn't really mean that, Jack," Betty muttered. + +"I know you didn't," he returned gently. "But I mean what I have just +said." + +"You mean that for some reason which I do not know and which you will +not tell me, there is such bad blood between you and my father that you +can't--you won't--won't even take a chance on me?" + +"Something like that," MacRae admitted. "Only you put it badly. You'd +either tie my hands, which I couldn't submit to, or you'd find yourself +torn between two factions, and life would be a pretty sad affair." + +"I asked you once before, and you told me it was something that happened +before either of us was born," Betty said thoughtfully. "I am going to +get at the bottom of this somehow. I wonder if you do really care, or +if this is all camouflage,--if you're just playing with me to see how +big a fool I _will_ make of myself." + +That queer mistrust of him which suddenly clouded Betty's face and made +her pretty mouth harden roused Jack MacRae to an intolerable fury. It +was like a knife in a tender spot. He had been stifling the impulse to +forget and bury all these ancient wrongs and injustices for which +neither of them was responsible but for which, so far as he could see, +they must both suffer. Something cracked in him at Betty's words. She +jumped, warned by the sudden blaze in his eyes. But he caught her with a +movement quicker than her own. He held her by the arms with fingers that +gripped like iron clamps. He shook her. + +"You wonder if I really care," he cried. "My God, can't you see? Can't +you feel? Must a man grovel and weep and rave?" + +Betty whitened a little at this storm which she had evoked. But she did +not flinch. Her eyes looked straight into his, fearlessly. + +"You are raving now," she said. "And you are hurting my arms terribly." + +MacRae released his hold on her. His hands dropped to his sides. + +"I suppose I was," he said in a flat, lifeless tone. "But don't say that +to me again, ever. You can say anything you like, Betty, except that I'm +not in earnest. I don't deserve that." + +Betty retreated a little. MacRae was not even looking at her now. His +eyes were turned to the sea, to hide the blur that crept into them in +spite of his will. + +"You don't deserve anything," Betty said distinctly. She moved warily +away as she spoke. "You have the physical courage to face death; but you +haven't the moral courage to face a problem in living, even though you +love me. You take it for granted that I'm as weak as you are. You won't +even give me a chance to prove whether love is strong or weak in the +face of trouble. And I will never give you another chance--never." + +She sprang from the beach to the low pile of driftwood and from that +plunged into the thicket. MacRae did not try to follow. He did not even +move. He looked after her a minute. Then he sat down on the log again +and stared at the steady march of the swells. There was a sense of +finality in this thing which made him flounder desperately. Still, he +assured himself, it had to be. And if it had to be that way it was +better to have it so understood. Betty would never look at him again +with that disturbing message in her eyes. He would not be troubled by a +futile longing. But it hurt. He had never imagined how so abstract a +thing as emotion could breed such an ache in a man's heart. + +After a little he got up. There was a trail behind that thicket, an old +game trail widened by men's feet, that ran along the seaward slope to +Cradle Bay. He went up now to this path. His eye, used to the practice +of woodcraft, easily picked up tiny heel marks, toe prints, read their +message mechanically. Betty had been running. She had gone home. + +He went back to the beach. The rowboat and the rising tide caught his +attention. He hauled the boat up on the driftwood so that it should not +float away. Then he busied himself on the deer's legs with a knife for a +minute and shouldered the carcass. + +It was a mile and a half across country to the head of Squitty Cove. He +had intended to hang his deer in a tree by the beach and come for it +later with a boat. Now he took up this hundred-pound burden for the +long carry over steep hills and through brushy hollows in the spirit of +the medieval flagellantes, mortifying his flesh for the ease of his +soul. + +An hour or so later he came out on a knoll over-looking all the +southeastern face of Squitty. Below, the wind-harassed Gulf spread its +ruffled surface. He looked down on the cliffs and the Cove and Cradle +Bay. He could see Gower's cottage white among the green, one chimney +spitting blue smoke that the wind carried away in a wispy banner. He +could see a green patch behind his own house with the white headboard +that marked his father's grave. He could see Poor Man's Rock bare its +kelp-grown head between seas, and on the point above the Rock a solitary +figure, squat and brown, that he knew must be Horace Gower. + +MacRae laid down his pack to rest his aching shoulders. But there was no +resting the ache in his heart. Nor was it restful to gaze upon any of +these things within the span of his eye. He was reminded of too much +which it was not good to remember. As he sat staring down on the distant +Rock and a troubled sea with an intolerable heaviness in his breast, he +recalled that so must his father have looked down on Poor Man's Rock in +much the same anguished spirit long ago. And Jack MacRae's mind reacted +morbidly to the suggestion, the parallel. His eyes turned with +smoldering fire to the stumpy figure on the tip of Point Old. + +"I'll pay it all back yet," he gritted. "Betty or no Betty, I'll make +him wish he'd kept his hands off the MacRaes." + + * * * * * + +About the time Jack MacRae with his burden of venison drew near his own +dooryard, Betty Gower came out upon the winter-sodden lawn before their +cottage and having crossed it ran lightly up the steps to the wide +porch. From there she saw her father standing on the Point. She called +to him. At her hail he came trudging to the house. Betty was piling wood +in the living-room fireplace when he came in. + +"I was beginning to worry about you," he said. + +"The wind got too much for me," she answered, "so I put the boat on the +beach a mile or so along and walked home." + +Gower drew a chair up to the fire. + +"Blaze feels good," he remarked. "There's a chill in this winter air." + +Betty made no comment. + +"Getting lonesome?" he inquired after a minute. "It seems to me you've +been restless the last day or two. Want to go back to town, Betty?" + +"I wonder why we come here and stay and stay, out of reach of everything +and everybody?" she said at last. + +"Blest if I know," Gower answered casually. "Except that we like to. +It's a restful place, isn't it? You work harder at having a good time in +town than I ever did making money. Well, we don't have to be hermits +unless we like. We'll go back to mother and the giddy whirl to-morrow, +if you like." + +"We might as well, I think," she said absently. + +For a minute neither spoke. The fire blazed up in a roaring flame. +Raindrops slashed suddenly against the windows out of a storm-cloud +driven up by the wind. Betty turned her eyes on her father. + +"Did you ever do anything to Jack MacRae that would give him reason to +hate you?" she asked bluntly. + +Gower shook his head without troubling to look at her. He kept his face +steadfastly to the fire. + +"No," he said. "The other way about, if anything. He put a crimp in me +last season." + +"I remember you said you were going to smash him," she said +thoughtfully. + +"Did I?" he made answer in an indifferent tone. "Well, I might. And then +again I might not. He may do the smashing. He's a harder proposition +than I figured he would be, in several ways." + +"That isn't it," Betty said, as if to herself. "Then you must have had +some trouble with his father--long ago. Something that hurt him enough +for him to pass a grudge on to Jack. What was it, daddy? Anything real?" + +"Jack, eh?" Gower passed over the direct question. "You must be getting +on. Have you been seeing much of that young man lately?" + +"What does that matter?" Betty returned impatiently. "Of course I see +him. Is there any reason I shouldn't?" + +Gower picked up a brass poker. He leaned forward, digging aimlessly at +the fire, stirring up tiny cascades of sparks that were sucked glowing +into the black chimney throat. + +"Perhaps no reason that would strike you as valid," he said slowly. +"Still--I don't know. Do you like him?" + +"You won't answer my questions," Betty complained. "Why should I answer +yours?" + +"There are plenty of nice young fellows in your own crowd," Gower went +on, still poking mechanically at the fire. "Why pick on young MacRae?" + +"You're evading, daddy," Betty murmured. "Why _shouldn't_ I pick on +Jack MacRae if I like him--if he likes me? That's what I'm trying to +find out." + +"Does he?" Gower asked pointblank. + +"Yes," Betty admitted in a reluctant whisper. "He does--but--why don't +you tell me, daddy, what I'm up against, as you would say? What did you +ever do to old Donald MacRae that his son should have a feeling that is +stronger than love?" + +"You think he loves you?" + +"I know it," Betty murmured. + +"And you?" Gower's deep voice seemed harsh. + +Betty threw out her hands in an impatient gesture. + +"Must I shout it out loud?" she cried. + +"You always were different from most girls, in some things," Gower +observed reflectively. "Iron under your softness. I never knew you to +stop trying to get anything you really wanted, not while there was a +chance to get it. Still--don't you think it would be as well for you to +stop wanting young MacRae--since he doesn't want you bad enough to try +to get you? Eh?" + +He still kept his face studiously averted. His tone was kind, full of a +peculiar tenderness that he kept for Betty alone. + +She rose and perched herself on the arm of his chair, caught and drew +his head against her, forced him to look up into eyes preternaturally +bright. + +"You don't seem to understand," she said. "It isn't that Jack doesn't +want me badly enough. He could have me, and I think he knows that too. +But there is something, something that drives him the other way. He +loves me. I know he does. And still he has spells of hating all us +Gowers--especially you. I know he wouldn't do that without reason." + +"Doesn't he tell you the reason?" + +Betty shook her head. + +"Would I be asking you, daddy?" + +"I can't tell you, either," Gower rumbled deep in his throat. + +"Is it something that can't be mended?" Betty put her face down against +his, and he felt the tears wet on her cheek. "Think, daddy. I'm +beginning to be terribly unhappy." + +"That seems to be a family failing," Gower muttered. "I can't mend it, +Betty. I don't know what young MacRae knows or what he feels, but I can +guess. I'd make it worse if I meddled. Should I go to this hot-headed +young fool and say, 'Come on, let's shake hands, and you marry my +daughter'?" + +"Don't be absurd," Betty flashed. "I'm not asking you to _do_ anything." + +"I couldn't do anything in this case if I wanted to," Gower declared. +"As a matter of fact, I think I'd put young MacRae out of my head, if I +were you. I wouldn't pick him for a husband, anyway." + +Betty rose to her feet. + +"You brought me into the world," she said passionately. "You have fed me +and clothed me and educated me and humored all my whims ever since I can +remember. But you can't pick a husband for me. I shall do that for +myself. It's silly to tell me to put Jack MacRae out of my head. He +isn't in my head. He's in my--my--heart. And I can keep him there, if I +can't have him in my arms. Put him out of my head! You talk as if loving +and marrying were like dealing in fish." + +"I wish it were," Gower rumbled. "I might have had some success at it +myself." + +Betty did not even vouchsafe reply. Probably she did not even hear what +he said. She turned and went to the window, stood looking out at the +rising turmoil of the sea, at the lowering scud of the clouds, dabbing +surreptitiously at her eyes with a handkerchief. After a little she +walked out of the room. Her feet sounded lightly on the stairs. + +Gower bent to the fire again. He resumed his aimless stirring of the +coals. A grim, twisted smile played about his lips. But his eyes were as +somber as the storm-blackened winter sky. + + + + +CHAPTER XVI + +En Famille + + +Horace Gower's town house straddled the low crest of a narrow peninsula +which juts westward into the Gulf from the heart of the business section +of Vancouver. The tip of this peninsula ends in the green forest of +Stanley Park, which is like no other park in all North America, either +in its nature or its situation. It is a sizable stretch of ancient +forest, standing within gunshot of skyscrapers, modern hotels, great +docks where China freighters unload tea and silk. Hard on the flank of a +modern seaport this area of primitive woodland broods in the summer sun +and the winter rains not greatly different from what it must have been +in those days when only the Siwash Indians penetrated its shadowy +depths. + +The rear of Gower's house abutted against the park, neighbor to great +tall firs and massive, branchy cedars and a jungle of fern and thicket +bisected by a few paths and drives, with the sea lapping all about three +sides of its seven-mile boundary. From Gower's northward windows the +Capilano canyon opened between two mountains across the Inlet. Southward +other windows gave on English Bay and beach sands where one could count +a thousand swimmers on a summer afternoon. + +The place was only three blocks from Abbott's. The house itself was not +unlike Abbott's, built substantially of gray stone and set in ample +grounds. But it was a good deal larger, and both within and without it +was much more elaborate, as befitted the dwelling of a successful man +whose wife was socially a leader instead of a climber,--like so many of +Vancouver's newly rich. There was order and system and a smooth, +unobtrusive service in that home. Mrs. Horace A. Gower rather prided +herself on the noiseless, super-efficient operation of her domestic +machinery. Any little affair was sure to go off without a hitch, to be +quite charming, you know. Mrs. Gower had a firmly established prestige +along certain lines. Her business in life was living up to that +prestige, not only that it might be retained but judiciously expanded. + +Upon a certain March morning, however, Mrs. Gower seemed to be a trifle +shaken out of her usual complacency. She sat at a rather late breakfast, +facing her husband, flanked on either hand by her son and daughter. +There was an injured droop to Mrs. Gower's mouth, a slightly indignant +air about her. The conversation had reached a point where Mrs. Gower +felt impelled to remove her pince-nez and polish them carefully with a +bit of cloth. This was an infallible sign of distress. + +"I cannot see the least necessity for it, Norman," she resumed in a +slightly agitated, not to say petulant tone. "It's simply ridiculous for +a young man of your position to be working at common labor with such +terribly common people. It's degrading." + +Norman was employing himself upon a strip of bacon. + +"That's a mere matter of opinion," he replied at length. "Somebody has +to work. I have to do something for myself sometime, and it suits me to +begin now, in this particular manner which annoys you so much. I don't +mind work. And those copper claims are a rattling good prospect. +Everybody says so. We'll make a barrel of money out of them yet. Why +shouldn't I peel off my coat and go at it?" + +"By the way," Gower asked bluntly, "what occasioned this flying trip to +England?" + +Norman pushed back his chair a trifle, thrust his hands in his trousers +pockets and looked straight at his father. + +"My own private business," he answered as bluntly. + +"You people," he continued after a brief interval, "seem to think I'm +still in knee breeches." + +But this did not serve to turn his mother from her theme. + +"It is quite unnecessary for you to attempt making money in such a +primitive manner," she observed. "We have plenty of money. There is +plenty of opportunity for you in your father's business, if you must be +in business." + +"Huh!" Norman grunted. "I'm no good in my father's business, nor +anywhere else, in his private opinion. It's no good, mamma. I'm on my +own for keeps. I'm going through with it. I've been a jolly fizzle so +far. I'm not even a blooming war hero. You just stop bothering about +me." + +"I really can't think what's got into you," Mrs. Gower complained in a +tone which implied volumes of reproach. "It's bad enough for your father +and Betty to be running off and spending so much time at that miserable +cottage when so much is going on here. I'm simply exhausted keeping +things up without any help from them. But this vagary of yours--I really +can't consider it anything else--is most distressing. To live in a dirty +little cabin and cook your own food, to associate with such men--it's +simply dreadful! Haven't you any regard for our position?" + +"I'm fed up with our position," Norman retorted. A sullen look was +gathering about his mouth. "What does it amount to? A lot of people +running around in circles, making a splash with their money. You, and +the sort of thing you call our position, made a sissy of me right up +till the war came along. There was nothing I was good for but parlor +tricks. And you and everybody else expected me to react from that and +set things afire overseas. I didn't. I didn't begin to come up to your +expectations at all. But if I didn't split Germans with a sword or do +any heroics I did get some horse sense knocked into me--unbelievable as +that may appear to you. I learned that there was a sort of satisfaction +in doing things. I'm having a try at that now. And you needn't imagine +I'm going to be wet-nursed along by your money. + +"As for my associates, and the degrading influences that fill you with +such dismay," Norman's voice flared into real anger, "they may not have +much polish--but they're human. I like them, so far as they go. I've +been frostbitten enough by the crowd I grew up with, since I came home, +to appreciate being taken for what I am, not what I may or may not have +done. Since I have discovered myself to have a funny sort of feeling +about living on your money, it behooves me to get out and make what +money I need for myself--in view of the fact that I'm going to be +married quite soon. I am going to marry"--Norman rose and looked down at +his mother with something like a flicker of amusement in his eyes as he +exploded his final bombshell--"a fisherman's daughter. A poor but worthy +maiden," he finished with unexpected irony. + +"Norman!" His mother's voice was a wail. "A common fisherman's +daughter? Oh, my son, my son." + +She shed a few beautifully restrained tears. + +"A common fisherman's daughter. Exactly," Norman drawled. "Terrible +thing, of course. Funny the fish scales on the family income never +trouble you." + +Mrs. Gower glared at him through her glasses. + +"Who is this--this woman?" she demanded. + +"Dolly," Betty whispered under her breath. + +"Miss Dolores Ferrara of Squitty Cove," Norman answered imperturbably. + +"A foreigner besides. Great Heavens! Horace," Mrs. Gower appealed to her +husband, "have you no influence whatever with your son?" + +"Mamma," Betty put in, "I assure you you are making a tremendous fuss +about nothing. I can tell you that Dolly Ferrara is really quite a nice +girl. _I_ think Norman is rather lucky." + +"Thanks, Bet," Norman said promptly. "That's the first decent thing I've +heard in this discussion." + +Mrs. Gower turned the battery of her indignant eyes on her daughter. + +"You, I presume," she said spitefully, "will be thinking of marrying +some fisherman next?" + +"If she did, Bessie," Gower observed harshly, "it would only be history +repeating itself." + +Mrs. Gower flushed, paled a little, and reddened again. She glared--no +other word describes her expression--at her husband for an instant. Then +she took refuge behind her dignity. + +"There is a downright streak of vulgarity in you, Horace," she said, +"which I am sorry to see crop out in my children." + +"Thank you, mamma," Betty remarked evenly. + +Mrs. Gower whirled on Norman. + +"I wash my hands of you completely," she said imperiously. "I am ashamed +of you." + +"I'd rather you'd be ashamed of me," Norman retorted, "than that I +should be ashamed of myself." + +"And you, sir,"--he faced his father, speaking in a tone of formal +respect which did not conceal a palpable undercurrent of defiance--"you +also, I suppose, wash your hands of me?" + +Gower looked at him for a second. His face was a mask, devoid of +expression. + +"You're a man grown," he said. "Your mother has expressed herself as she +might be expected to. I say nothing." + +Norman walked to the door. + +"I don't care a deuce of a lot what you say or what you don't say, nor +even what you think," he flung at them angrily, with his hand on the +knob. "I have my own row to hoe. I'm going to hoe it my own style. And +that's all there is to it. If you can't even wish me luck, why, you can +go to the devil!" + +"Norman!" His mother lifted her voice in protesting horror. Gower +himself only smiled, a bit cynically. And Betty looked at the door which +closed upon her brother with a wistful sort of astonishment. + +Gower first found occasion for speech. + +"While we are on the subject of intimate family affairs, Bessie," he +addressed his wife casually, "I may as well say that I shall have to +call on you for some funds--about thirty thousand dollars. Forty +thousand would be better." + +Mrs. Gower stiffened to attention. She regarded her husband with an air +of complete disapproval, slightly tinctured with surprise. + +"Oh," she said, "really?" + +"I shall need that much properly to undertake this season's operations," +he stated calmly, almost indifferently. + +"Really?" she repeated. "Are you in difficulties again?" + +"Again?" he echoed. "It is fifteen years since I was in a corner where I +needed any of your money." + +"It seems quite recent to me," Mrs. Gower observed stiffly. + +"Am I to understand from that that you don't care to advance me whatever +sum I require?" he asked gently. + +"I don't see why I should," Mrs. Gower replied after a second's +reflection, "even if I were quite able to do so. This place costs +something to keep up. I can't very well manage on less than two thousand +a month. And Betty and I must be clothed. You haven't contributed much +recently, Horace." + +"No? I had the impression that I had been contributing pretty freely for +thirty years," Gower returned dryly. "I paid the bills up to December. +Last season wasn't a particularly good one--for me." + +"That was chiefly due to your own mismanagement, I should say," Mrs. +Gower commented tartly. "Putting the whole cannery burden on Norman when +the poor boy had absolutely no experience. Really, you must have +mismanaged dreadfully. I heard only the other day that the Robbin-Steele +plants did better last season than they ever did. I'm sure the Abbotts +made money last year. If the banks have lost faith in your business +ability, I--well, I should consider you a bad risk, Horace. I can't +afford to gamble." + +"You never do. You only play cinches," Gower grunted. "However, your +money will be safe enough. I didn't say the banks refuse me credit. I +have excellent reasons for borrowing of you." + +"I really do not see how I can possibly let you have such a sum," she +said. "You already have twenty thousand dollars of my money tied up in +your business, you know." + +"You have an income of twelve thousand a year from the Maple Point +place," Gower recited in that unchanging, even tone. "You have over +twenty thousand cash on deposit. And you have eighty thousand dollars in +Victory Bonds. You mean you don't want to, Bessie." + +"You may accept that as my meaning," she returned. + +"There are times in every man's career," Gower remarked dispassionately, +"when the lack of a little money might break him." + +"That is all the more reason why I should safeguard my funds," Mrs. +Gower replied. "You are not as young as you were, Horace. If you should +fail now, you would likely never get on your feet again. But we could +manage, I dare say, on what I have. That is why I do not care to risk +any of it." + +"You refuse then, absolutely, to let me have this money?" he asked. + +"I do," Mrs. Gower replied, with an air of pained but conscious +rectitude. "I should consider myself most unwise to do so." + +"All right," Gower returned indifferently. "You force me to a showdown. +I have poured money into your hands for years for you to squander in +keeping up your position--as you call it. I'm about through doing that. +I'm sick of aping millionaires. All I need is a comfortable place where +I can smoke a pipe in peace. This house is mine. I shall sell it and +repay you your twenty thousand. You--" + +"Horace! Sell this house. Our home! _Horace._" + +"Our home?" Gower continued inflexibly. "The place where we eat and +sleep and entertain, you mean. We never had a home, Bessie. You will +have your ancestral hall at Maple Point. You will be quite able to +afford a Vancouver house if you choose. But this is mine, and it's going +into the discard. I shall owe you nothing. I shall still have the +cottage at Cradle Bay, if I go smash, and that is quite good enough for +me. Do I make myself clear?" + +Mrs. Gower was sniffing. She had taken refuge with the pince-nez and the +polishing cloth. But her fingers were tremulous, and her expression was +that of a woman who feels herself sadly abused and who is about to +indulge in luxurious weeping. + +"But, Horace, to sell this house over my head--what will p-people say?" + +"I don't care two whoops what people say," Mr. Gower replied +unfeelingly. + +"This is simp-ply outrageous! How is Betty going to m-meet p-people?" + +"You mean," her husband retorted, "how are you going to contrive the +proper background against which Betty shall display her charms to the +different varieties of saphead which you hit upon as being eligible to +marry her? Don't worry. With the carefully conserved means at your +disposal you will still be able to maintain yourself in the station in +which it has pleased God to place you. You will be able to see that +Betty has the proper advantages." + +This straw broke the camel's back, if it is proper so to speak of a +middle-aged, delicate-featured lady, delightfully gowned and coiffed +and manicured. Mrs. Gower's grief waxed crescendo. Whereupon her +husband, with no manifest change of expression beyond an unpleasant +narrowing of his eyes, heaved his short, flesh-burdened body out of the +chair and left the room. + +Betty had sat silent through this conversation, a look of profound +distaste slowly gathering on her fresh young face. She gazed after her +father. When the door closed upon him Betty's gray eyes came to rest on +her mother's bowed head and shaking shoulders. There was nothing in +Betty Gower's expression which remotely suggested sympathy. She said +nothing. She leaned her elbows on the table and rested her pretty chin +in her cupped palms. + +Mrs. Gower presently became aware of this detached, observing, almost +critical attitude. + +"Your f-father is p-positively b-brutal," she found voice to declare. + +"There are various sorts of brutality," Betty observed enigmatically. "I +don't think daddy has a corner on the visible supply. Are you going to +let him have that money?" + +"No. Never," Mrs. Gower snapped. + +"You may lose a great deal more than the house by that," Betty murmured. + +But if Mrs. Gower heard the words they conveyed no meaning to her +agitated mind. She was rapidly approaching that incomprehensible state +in which a woman laughs and cries in the same breath, and Betty got up +with a faintly contemptuous curl to her red lips. She went out into the +hall and pressed a button. A maid materialized. + +"Go into the dining room and attend to mamma, if you please, Mary," +Betty said. + +Then she skipped nimbly upstairs, two steps at a time, and went into a +room on the second floor, a room furnished something after the fashion +of a library in which her father sat in a big leather chair chewing on +an unlighted cigar. + +Betty perched on the arm of his chair and ran her fingers through a +patch on top of his head where the hair was growing a bit thin. + +"Daddy," she asked, "did you mean that about going smash?" + +"Possibility," he grunted. + +"Are you really going to sell this house and live at Cradle Bay?" + +"Sure. You sorry?" + +"About the house? Oh, no. It's only a place for mamma to make a splash, +as Norman said. If you hibernate at the cottage I'll come and keep house +for you." + +Gower considered this. + +"You ought to stay with your mother," he said finally. "She'll be able +to give you a lot I wouldn't make an effort to provide. You don't know +what it means really to work. You'd find it pretty slow at Squitty." + +"Maybe," Betty said. "But we managed very well last winter, just you and +me. If there is going to be a break-up of the family I shall stay with +you. I'm a daddy's girl." + +Gower drew her face down and kissed it. + +"You are that," he said huskily. "You're all Gower. There's real stuff +in you. You're free of that damned wishy-washy Morton blood. She made a +poodle dog of Norman, but she couldn't spoil you. We'll manage, eh, +Betty?" + +"Of course," Betty returned. "But I don't know that Norman is such a +hopeless case. Didn't he rather take your breath away with his +declaration of independence?" + +"It takes more than a declaration to win independence," Gower answered +grimly. "Wait till the going gets hard. However, I'll say there's a +chance for Norman. Now, you run along, Betty. I've got some figuring to +do." + + + + +CHAPTER XVII + +Business as Usual + + +Late in March Jack MacRae came down to Vancouver and quartered himself +at the Granada again. He liked the quiet luxury of that great hostelry. +It was a trifle expensive, but he was not inclined to worry about +expense. At home, or aboard his carriers in the season, living was a +negligible item. He found a good deal of pleasure in swinging from one +extreme to the other. Besides, a man stalking big game does not arm +himself with a broomstick. + +He had not come to town solely for his pleasure, although he was not +disposed to shy from any diversion that offered. He had business in +hand, business of prime importance since it involved spending a little +matter of twelve thousand dollars. In brief, he had to replace the +_Blackbird_, and he was replacing her with a carrier of double the +capacity, of greater speed, equipped with special features of his own +choosing. The new boat was designed to carry ten thousand salmon. There +was installed in her holds an ammonia refrigerating plant which would +free him from the labor and expense and uncertainty of crushed ice. +Science bent to the service of money-making. MacRae grinned to himself +when he surveyed the coiled pipes, the pumping engine. His new boat was +a floating, self-contained cold-storage plant. He could maintain a +freezing temperature so long as he wished by chemico-mechanical means. +That meant a full load every trip, since he could follow the trollers +till he got a load, if it took a week, and his salmon would still be +fresh. + +He wondered why this had not been done before. Stubby enlightened him. + +"Partly because it's a costly rig to install. But mostly because salmon +and ice have always been both cheap and plentiful, and people have got +into a habit of doing things in the same old way. You know. Until the +last season or two salmon have been so cheap that neither canneries nor +buyers bothered about anything so up-to-date. If they lost their ice in +hot weather and the fish rotted--why, there were plenty more fish. There +have been times when the Fraser River stunk with rotten salmon. They +used to pay the fishermen ten cents apiece for six-pound sockeyes and +limit them to two hundred fish to the boat if there was a big run. The +gill-netter would take five hundred in one drift, come in to the cannery +loaded to the guards, find himself up against a limit. He would sell the +two hundred and dump more than that overboard. And the Fraser River +canneries wonder why sockeye is getting scarce. My father used to rave +about the waste. Criminal, he used to say." + +"When the fishermen were getting only ten cents apiece for sockeyes, +salmon was selling at fifteen cents a pound tin," MacRae observed. + +"Oh, the canneries made barrels of money." Stubby shrugged his +shoulders. "They thought the salmon would always run in millions, no +matter how many they destroyed. Some of 'em think so yet." + +"We're a nation of wasters, compared to Europe," MacRae said +thoughtfully. "The only thing they are prodigal with over there is human +flesh and blood. That is cheap and plentiful. But they take care of +their natural resources. We destroy as much as we use, fish, +timber--everything. Everybody for himself and the devil take the +hindmost." + +"Well, I don't know what _we_ can do about it," Stubby drawled. + +"Keep from being the hindmost," MacRae answered. "But I sometimes feel +sorry for those who are." + +"Man," Stubby observed, "is a predatory animal. You can't make anything +else of him. Nobody develops philanthropy and the public spirit until he +gets rich and respectable. Social service is nothing but a theory yet. +God only helps those who help themselves." + +"How does he arrange it for those who _can't_ help themselves?" MacRae +inquired. + +Stubby shrugged his shoulders. + +"Search me," he said. + +"Do you even believe in this anthropomorphic God of the preachers?" +MacRae asked curiously. + +"Well, there must be something, don't you think?" Stubby hedged. + +"There may be," MacRae pursued the thought. "I read a book by Wells not +long ago in which he speaks of God as the Great Experimenter. If there +is an all-powerful Deity, it strikes me that in his attitude toward +humanity he is a good deal like a referee at a football game who would +say to the teams, 'Here is the ball and the field and the two goals. Go +to it,' and then goes off to the side lines to smoke his pipe while the +players foul and gouge and trip and generally run amuck in a frenzied +effort to win the game." + +"You're a pessimist," Stubby declared. + +"What is a pessimist?" MacRae demanded. + +But Stubby changed the subject. He was not concerned with abstractions. +And he was vitally concerned with the material factors of his everyday +life, believing that he was able to dominate those material factors and +bend them to his will if only he were clever enough and energetic +enough. + +Stubby wanted to get in on the blueback salmon run again. He had put a +big pack through Crow Harbor and got a big price for the pack. In a +period of mounting prices canned salmon was still ascending. Food in any +imperishable, easily transported form was sure of a market in Europe. +There was a promise of even bigger returns for Pacific salmon packers in +the approaching season. But Stubby was not sure enough yet of where he +stood to make any definite arrangement with MacRae. He wanted to talk +things over, to feel his way. + +There were changes in the air. For months the industrial pot had been +spasmodically boiling over in strikes, lockouts, boycotts, charges of +profiteering, loud and persistent complaints from consumers, organized +labor and rapidly organizing returned soldiers. Among other things the +salmon packers' monopoly and the large profits derived therefrom had not +escaped attention. + +From her eight millions of population during those years of war effort +Canada had withdrawn over six hundred thousand able-bodied men. Yet the +wheels of industry turned apace. She had supplied munitions, food for +armies, ships, yet her people had been fed and clothed and housed,--all +their needs had been liberally supplied. + +And in a year these men had come back. Not all. There were close on to +two hundred thousand to be checked off the lists. There was the lesser +army of the slightly and totally disabled, the partially digested food +of the war machine. But there were still a quarter of a million men to +be reabsorbed into a civil and industrial life which had managed to +function tolerably well without them. + +These men, for the most part, had somehow conceived the idea that they +were coming back to a better world, a world purged of dross by the +bloody sweat of the war. And they found it pretty much the same old +world. They had been uprooted. They found it a little difficult to take +root again. They found living costly, good jobs not so plentiful, +masters as exacting as they had been before. The Golden Rule was no more +a common practice than it had ever been. Yet the country was rich, +bursting with money. Big business throve, even while it howled to high +heaven about ruinous, confiscatory taxation. + +The common man himself lifted up his voice in protest and backed his +protest with such action as he could take. Besides the parent body of +the Great War Veterans' Association other kindred groups of men who had +fought on both sea and land sprang into being. The labor organizations +were strengthened in their campaign for shorter hours and longer pay by +thousands of their own members returned, all semi-articulate, all more +or less belligerent. The war had made fighters of them. War does not +teach men sweet reasonableness. They said to themselves and to each +other that they had fought the greatest war in the world's history and +were worse off than they were before. From coast to coast society was +infiltrated with men who wore a small bronze button in the left lapel of +their coats, men who had acquired a new sense of their relation to +society, men who asked embarrassing questions in public meetings, in +clubs, in legislative assemblies, in Parliament, and who demanded +answers to the questions. + +British Columbia was no exception. The British Columbia coast fishermen +did not escape the influence of this general unrest, this critical +inquiry. Wealthy, respectable, middle-aged citizens viewed with alarm +and denounced pernicious agitation. The common man retorted with the +epithet of "damned profiteer" and worse. Army scandals were aired. +Ancient political graft was exhumed. Strident voices arose in the +wilderness of contention crying for a fresh deal, a clean-up, a new +dispensation. + +When MacRae first began to run bluebacks there were a few returned +soldiers fishing salmon, men like the Ferrara boys who had been +fishermen before they were soldiers, who returned to their old calling +when they put off the uniform. Later, through the season, he came across +other men, frankly neophytes, trying their hand at a vocation which at +least held the lure of freedom from a weekly pay check and a boss. These +men were not slow to comprehend the cannery grip on the salmon grounds +and the salmon fishermen. They chafed against the restrictions which, +they said, put them at the canneries' mercy. They growled about the +swarms of Japanese who could get privileges denied a white man because +the Japs catered to the packers. They swelled with their voices the +feeble chorus that white fishermen had raised long before the war. + +All of this, like wavering gusts, before the storm, was informing the +sentient ears of politicians who governed by grace of electoral votes. +Soldiers, who had been citizens before they became soldiers, who were +frankly critical of both business and government, won in by-elections. +In the British Columbia legislature there was a major from an Island +district and a lieutenant from North Vancouver. They were exponents of a +new deal, enemies of the profiteer and the professional politician, and +they were thorns in the side of a provincial government which yearned +over vested rights as a mother over her ailing babe. In the Dominion +capital it was much the same as elsewhere,--a government which had +grasped office on a win-the-war platform found its grasp wavering over +the knotty problems of peace. + +The British Columbia salmon fisheries were controlled by the Dominion, +through a department political in its scope. Whether the Macedonian cry +penetrated through bureaucratic swaddlings, whether the fact that +fishermen had votes and might use them with scant respect for personages +to whom votes were a prerequisite to political power, may remain a +riddle. But about the time Jack MacRae's new carrier was ready to take +the water, there came a shuffle in the fishery regulations which fell +like a bomb in the packers' camp. + +The ancient cannery monopoly of purse-seining rights on given territory +was broken into fine large fragments. The rules which permitted none but +a cannery owner to hold a purse-seine license and denied all other men +that privilege were changed. The new regulations provided that any male +citizen of British birth or naturalization could fish if he paid the +license fee. The cannery men shouted black ruin,--but they girded up +their loins to get fish. + +MacRae was still in Vancouver when this change of policy was announced. +He heard the roaring of the cannery lions. Their spokesmen filled the +correspondence columns of the daily papers with their views. MacRae had +not believed such changes imminent or even possible. But taking them as +an accomplished fact, he foresaw strange developments in the salmon +industry. Until now the packers could always be depended upon to stand +shoulder to shoulder against the fishermen and the consumer, to dragoon +one another into the line of a general policy. The American buyers, +questing adventurously from over the line, had alone saved the +individual fisherman from eating humbly out of the British Columbia +canner's hand. + +The fishermen had made a living, such as it was. The cannery men had +dwelt in peace and amity with one another. They had their own loosely +knit organization, held together by the ties of financial interest. They +sat behind mahogany desks and set the price of salmon to the fishermen +and very largely the price of canned fish to the consumer, and their +most arduous labor had been to tot up the comfortable balance after each +season's operations. All this pleasantness was to be done away with, +they mourned. Every Tom, Dick, and Harry was to be turned loose on the +salmon with deadly gear and greedy intent to exterminate a valuable +species of fish and wipe out a thriving industry. The salmon would all +be killed off, so did the packers cry. What few small voices arose, +suggesting that the deadly purse seine had never been considered deadly +when only canneries had been permitted to use such gear and that _they_ +had not worried about the extermination of the salmon so long as they +did the exterminating themselves and found it highly profitable,--these +few voices, alas, arose only in minor strains and were for the most part +drowned by the anvil chorus of the cannery men. + +MacRae observed, listened, read the papers, and prophesied to himself a +scramble. But he did not see where it touched him,--not until +Robbin-Steele Senior asked him to come to his office in the Bond +Building one afternoon. + +MacRae faced the man over a broad table in an office more like the +library of a well-appointed home than a place of calculated +profit-mongering. Robbin-Steele, Senior, was tall, thin, sixty years of +age, sandy-haired, with a high, arched nose. His eyes, MacRae thought, +were disagreeably like the eyes of a dead fish, lusterless and sunken; a +cold man with a suave manner seeking his own advantage. Robbin-Steele +was a Scotchman of tolerably good family who had come to British +Columbia with an inherited fortune and made that fortune grow to vast +proportions in the salmon trade. He had two pretty and clever daughters, +and three of his sons had been notable fighters overseas. MacRae knew +them all, liked them well enough. But he had never come much in contact +with the head of the family. What he had seen of Robbin-Steele, Senior, +gave him the impression of cold, calculating power. + +"I wonder," MacRae heard him saying after a brief exchange of +courtesies, "if we could make an arrangement with you to deliver all the +salmon you can get this season to our Fraser River plant." + +"Possibly," MacRae replied. "But there is no certainty that I will get +any great number of salmon." + +"If you were as uncertain as that," Robbin-Steele said dryly, "you would +scarcely be putting several thousand dollars into an elaborately +equipped carrier. We may presume that you intend to get the salmon--as +you did last year." + +"You seem to know a great deal about my business," MacRae observed. + +"It is our policy to know, in a general way, what goes on in the salmon +industry," Robbin-Steele assented. + +MacRae waited for him to continue. + +"You have a good deal of both energy and ability," Robbin-Steele went +on. "It is obvious that you have pretty well got control of the blueback +situation around Squitty Island. You must, however, have an outlet for +your fish. We can use these salmon to advantage. On what basis will you +deliver them to us on the Fraser if we give you a contract guaranteeing +to accept all you can deliver?" + +"Twenty per cent, over Folly Bay prices," MacRae answered promptly. + +The cannery man shook his head. + +"No. We can't afford to boost the cost of salmon like that. It'll ruin +the business, which is in a bad enough way as it is. The more you pay a +fisherman, the more he wants. We must keep prices down. That is to your +interest, too." + +"No," MacRae disagreed. "I think it is to my interest to pay the +fishermen top prices, so long as I make a profit on the deal. I don't +want the earth--only a moderate share of it." + +"Twenty per cent. on Folly Bay prices is too uncertain a basis." +Robbin-Steele changed his tactics. "We can send our own carriers there +to buy at far less cost." + +MacRae smiled. + +"You can send your carriers," he drawled, "but I doubt if you would get +many fish. I don't think you quite grasp the Squitty situation." + +"Yes, I think I do," Robbin-Steele returned. "Gower had things pretty +much his own way until you cut in on his grounds. You have undoubtedly +secured quite an advantage in a peculiar manner, and possibly you feel +secure against competition. But your hold is not so strong as Gower's +once was. Let me tell you, your hold on that business can be broken, my +young friend." + +"Undoubtedly," MacRae readily admitted. "But there is a world-wide +demand for canned salmon, and I have not suffered for a market--even +when influence was used last season to close the home market against me, +on Folly Bay's behalf. And I am quite sure, from what I have seen and +heard, that many of the big British Columbia packers like yourself are +so afraid the labor situation will get out of hand that they would shut +down their plants rather than pay fishermen what they could afford to +pay if they would be content with a reasonable profit. So I am not at +all afraid of you seducing the Squitty trollers with high prices." + +"You are laboring under the common error about cannery profits," +Robbin-Steele declared pointedly. "Considering the capital invested, the +total of the pack, the risk and uncertainty of the business, our returns +are not excessive." + +MacRae smiled amusedly. + +"That all depends on what you regard as excessive. But there is nothing +to be gained by an argument on that subject. Canning salmon is a highly +profitable business, but it would not be the gold mine it has been if +canneries hadn't been fostered at the expense of the men who actually +catch the fish, if the government hadn't bestowed upon cannery men the +gift of a strangle hold on the salmon grounds, and license privileges +that gave them absolute control. I haven't any quarrel with cannery men +for making money. You only amuse me when you speak of doubtful returns. +I wish I could have your cinch for a season or two." + +"You shouldn't have any quarrel with us. You started with nothing and +made twenty thousand dollars in a single season," Robbin-Steele +reminded. + +"I worked like a dog. I took chances. And I was very lucky," MacRae +agreed. "I did make a lot of money. But I paid the fishermen more than +they ever got for salmon--a great deal more than they would have got if +I hadn't broken into the game. Abbott made money on the salmon I +delivered him. So everybody was satisfied, except Gower--who perhaps +feels that he is ordained by the Almighty to get cheap salmon." + +"You're spoiling those men," Robbin-Steele declared irritably. "My +observation of that class of labor is that the more money they get the +less they will do and the more they will want. You can't carry on any +industry on that basis. But that's beside the point. We're getting away +from the question. We want you to deliver those fish to us, if you can +do so at a reasonable price. We should like to have some sort of +agreement, so that we may know what to expect." + +"I can deliver the fish," MacRae asserted confidently. "But I don't care +to bind myself to anything. Not this far in advance. Wait till the +salmon run." + +"You are a very shrewd young man, I should say." Robbin-Steele paid him +a reluctant compliment and let a gleam of appreciation flicker in his +dead-fish eyes. "I imagine you will get on. Come and see me when you +feel like considering this matter seriously." + +MacRae went down the elevator wondering if the gentleman's agreement +among the packers was off, if there was going to be something in the +nature of competition among them for the salmon. There would be a few +more gill-net licenses issued. More important, the gill-netters would be +free to fish where they chose, for whosoever paid the highest price, +and not for the cannery which controlled their license. There would be +scores of independent purse seiners. Would the packers bid against one +another for the catch? It rather seemed to MacRae as if they must. They +could no longer sit back secure in the knowledge that the salmon from a +given area must come straight to their waiting cans. And British +Columbia packers had always dreaded American competition. + +Following that, MacRae took train for Bellingham. The people he had +dealt with there at the close of the last season had dealt fairly. +American salmon packers had never suffered the blight of a monopoly. +They had established their industry in legitimate competition, without +governmental favors. They did not care how much money a fisherman made +so long as he caught fish for them which they could profitably can. + +MacRae had no contract with them. He did not want a contract. If he made +hard and fast agreements with any one it would be with Stubby Abbott. +But he did want to fortify himself with all the information he could +get. He did not know what line Folly Bay would take when the season +opened. He was not sure what shifts might occur among the British +Columbia canneries. If such a thing as free and unlimited competition +for salmon took place he might need more than one outlet for his +carriers. MacRae was not engaged in a hazardous business for pastime. He +had an objective, and this objective was contingent upon making money. + +From the American source he learned that a good season was anticipated +for the better grades of salmon. He found out what prices he could +expect. They were liberal enough to increase his confidence. These men +were anxious to get the thousands of British Columbia salmon MacRae +could supply. + +MacRae returned to Vancouver. Before he had finished unpacking his bag +the telephone rang. Hurley, of the Northwest Cold Storage, spoke when he +took down the receiver. Could he drop into the Northwest office? MacRae +grinned to himself and went down to the grimy wharf where deep-sea +halibut schooners rubbed against the dock, their stubby top-hamper +swaying under the office windows as they rocked to the swell of passing +harbor craft. + +He talked with Hurley,--the same gentleman whom he had once approached +with no success in the matter of selling salmon. The situation was +reversed now. The Northwest was eager to buy. They would pay him, _sub +rosa_, two cents a pound over the market price for fresh salmon if he +would supply them with the largest possible quantity from the beginning +of the blueback run. + +As with Robbin-Steele, MacRae refused to commit himself. More clearly he +perceived that the scramble was beginning. The packers and the +cold-storage companies had lost control. They must have fish to +function, to make a profit. They would cut one another's throats for +salmon. So much the better, MacRae cynically reflected. He told Hurley, +at last, as he had told Robbin-Steele, to wait till the salmon began to +run. + +He left the Northwest offices with the firm conviction that it was not +going to be a question of markets, but a question of getting the salmon. +And he rather fancied he could do that. + +Last of all on the list of these men who approached him in this fashion +came Stubby Abbott. Stubby did not ask him to call. He came to the +Granada in search of Jack and haled him, nothing loth, out to the stone +house in the West End. It happened that Betty Gower, Etta Robbin-Steele, +and two gilded youths, whom MacRae did not know, were there. They had +been walking in the Park. Nelly and her mother were serving tea. + +It happened, too, that as they chatted over the teacups, a blue-bodied +limousine drew up under the Abbott pergola and deposited Mrs. Horace A. +Gower for a brief conversation with Mrs. Abbott. It was MacRae's first +really close contact with the slender, wonderfully preserved lady whose +life had touched his father's so closely in the misty long ago. He +regarded her with a reflective interest. She must have been very +beautiful then, he thought. She was almost beautiful still. Certainly +she was a very distinguished person, with her costly clothing, her rich +furs, her white hair, and that faded rose-leaf skin. The petulant, +querulous droop of her mouth escaped MacRae. He was not a physiognomist. +But the distance of her manner did not escape him. She acknowledged the +introduction and thereafter politely overlooked MacRae. He meant nothing +at all to Mrs. Horace A. Gower, he saw very clearly. Merely a young man +among other young men; a young man of no particular interest. Thirty +years is a long time, MacRae reflected. But his father had not +forgotten. He wondered if she had; if those far-off hot-blooded days had +grown dim and unreal to her? + +He turned his head once and caught Betty as intent upon him as he was +upon her mother, under cover of the general conversation. He gathered +that there was a shade of reproach, of resentment, in her eyes. But he +could not be sure. Certainly there was nothing like that in her manner. +But the manner of these people, he understood very well, was pretty much +a mask. Whatever went on in their secret bosoms, they smiled and joked +and were unfailingly courteous. + +He made another discovery within a few minutes. Stubby maneuvered +himself close to Etta Robbin-Steele. Stubby was not quite so adept at +repression as most of his class. He was a little more naive, more prone +to act upon his natural, instinctive impulses. MacRae was aware of that. +He saw now a swift by-play that escaped the rest. Nothing of any +consequence,--a look, the motion of a hand, a fleeting something on the +girl's face and Stubby's. Jack glanced at Nelly Abbott sitting beside +him, her small blonde head pertly inclined. Nelly saw it too. She smiled +knowingly. + +"Has the brunette siren hooked Stubby?" MacRae inquired in a discreet +undertone. + +"I think so. I'm not sure. Etta's such an outrageous flirt," Nelly said. +"I hope not, anyway. I'm afraid I can't quite appreciate Etta as a +prospective sister-in-law." + +"No?" + +"She's catty--and vain as a peacock. Stubby ought to marry a nice +sensible girl who'd mother him," Nelly observed with astonishing +conviction; "like Betty, for instance." + +"Oh, you seem to have very definite ideas on that subject," MacRae +smiled. He did not commit himself further. But he resented the +suggestion. There was also an amusing phase of Nelly's declaration which +did not escape him,--the pot calling the kettle black. Etta +Robbin-Steele did flirt. She had dancing black eyes that flung a +challenge to men. But Nelly herself was no shrinking violet, for all her +baby face. She was like an elf. Her violet eyes were capable of +infinite shades of expression. She, herself, had a way of appropriating +men who pleased her, to the resentful dismay of other young women. It +pleased her to do that with Jack MacRae whenever he was available. And +until Betty had preempted a place in his heart without even trying, Jack +MacRae had been quite willing to let his fancy linger romantically on +Nelly Abbott. + +As it was,--he looked across the room at Betty chatting with young Lane. +What a damned fool he was,--he, MacRae! All his wires were crossed. If +some inescapable human need urged him to love, how much better to love +this piquant bit of femininity beside him? But he couldn't do it. It +wasn't possible. All the old rebellion stirred in him. The locked +chambers of his mind loosed pictures of Squitty, memories of things +which had happened there, as he let his eyes drift from Betty, whom he +loved, to her mother, whom his father had loved and lost. She had made +his father suffer through love. Her daughter was making Donald MacRae's +son suffer likewise. Again, through some fantastic quirk of his +imagination, the stodgy figure of Horace Gower loomed in the background, +shadowy and sinister. There were moments, like the present, when he felt +hatred of the man concretely, as he could feel thirst or hunger. + +"A penny for your thoughts," Nelly bantered. + +"They'd be dear at half the price," MacRae said, forcing a smile. + +He was glad when those people went their way. Nelly put on a coat and +went with them. Stubby drew Jack up to his den. + +"I have bought up the controlling interest in the Terminal Fish Company +since I saw you last," Stubby began abruptly. "I'm going to put up a +cold-storage plant and do what my father started to do early in the +war--give people cheaper fish for food." + +"Can you make it stick," MacRae asked curiously, "with the other +wholesalers against you? Their system seems to be to get all the traffic +will bear, to boost the price to the consumer by any means they can use. +And there is the Packers' Association. They are not exactly--well, +favorable to cheap retailing of fish. Everybody seems to think the +proper caper is to tack on a cent or two a pound wherever he can." + +"I know I can," Stubby declared. "The pater would have succeeded only he +trusted too much to men who didn't see it his way. Look at Cunningham--" +Stubby mentioned a fish merchant who had made a resounding splash in +matters piscatorial for a year or two, and then faded, along with his +great cheap-fish markets, into oblivion--"he made it go like a house +afire until he saw a chance to make a quick and easy clean-up by +sticking people. It can be done, all right, if a man will be satisfied +with a small profit on a big turnover. I know it." + +MacRae made no comment on that. Stubby was full of his plan, eager to +talk about its possibilities. + +"I wanted to do it last year," he said, "but I couldn't. I had to play +the old game--make a bunch of money and make it quick. Between you and +Gower's pig-headedness, and the rest of the cannery crowd letting me go +till it was too late to stop me, and a climbing market, I made more +money in one season than I thought was possible. I'm going to use that +money to make more money and to squash some of these damned fish +pirates. I tell you it's jolly awful. We had baked cod for lunch to-day. +That fish cost twenty cents a pound. Think of it! When the fisherman +sells it for six cents within fifty miles of us. No wonder everybody is +howling. I don't know anything about other lines of food supply, but I +can sure put my finger on a bunch of fish profiteers. And I feel like +putting my foot on them. Anyway, I've got the Terminal for a starter; +also I have a twenty-five-year lease on the water frontage there. I have +the capital to go ahead and build a cold-storage plant. The wholesale +crowd can't possibly bother me. And the canneries are going to have +their hands full this season without mixing into a scrap over local +prices of fresh fish. You've heard about the new regulations?" + +MacRae nodded assent. + +"There's going to be a free-for-all," Stubby chuckled. "There'll be a +lot of independent purse seiners. If the canneries don't pay good prices +these independent fishermen, with their fast, powerful rigs, will seine +the salmon under the packers' noses and run their catch down to the +Puget Sound plants. This is no time for the British Columbia packers to +get uppish. Good-by, four hundred per cent." + +"They'll wiggle through legislation to prevent export of raw salmon," +MacRae suggested; "same as they have on the sockeye." + +"No chance. They've tried, and it can't be done," Stubby grinned. "There +aren't going to be any special privileges for British Columbia salmon +packers any more. I know, because I'm on the inside. The fishermen have +made a noise that disturbs the politicians, I guess. Another thing, +there's a slack in the demand for all but the best grades of salmon. But +the number one grades, sockeye and blueback and coho, are short. So that +a cannery man with an efficient plant can pay big for those fish. If +you can hold that Squitty fleet of trollers like you did last year, +you'll make some money." + +"Do you want those salmon?" MacRae asked. + +"Sure I want them. I want them as soon as they begin to run big enough +to be legally taken for sale," Stubby declared. "I'm going to rush that +cold-storage construction. By the time you begin collecting bluebacks +I'll have a place for them, all you can buy. I'll have storage for three +hundred thousand fish. I'm going to buy everything and start half a +dozen retail stores at the same time. Just imagine the situation in this +burg of a hundred and fifty thousand people with waters that swarm with +fish right at our doors--salmon selling for thirty cents a pound, hardly +ever below twenty, other fish in about the same proportion. It's a +damned scandal, and I don't much blame a man who works for four dollars +a day thinking he might as well turn Bolshevik. I know that I can pay +twelve cents for salmon and make a good profit selling for sixteen. Can +you make money supplying me with bluebacks at twelve cents a pound?" + +"Yes, more money than I made last year," MacRae replied--"unless Folly +Bay boosts prices to the sky in an effort to drive me out of business." + +"I don't think there's much danger of that," Stubby said. "I doubt if +Folly Bay opens this season. It's reported that Gower is broke." + +"Eh?" MacRae looked his doubt. + +"That's what they say," Stubby went on. "It's common talk. He sold his +place in town a short while ago. He has the cannery on the market. And +there are no takers. Folly Bay used to be a little gold mine. But Gower +rode the fishermen too hard. And you balled things up last season. He +lost his grip. I suppose he was involved other ways, too. Lots of these +old-timers are, you know. Anyway, he seems to be trying to get out from +under. But nobody wants to take over a plant that has a black eye among +the men who catch the fish, in a territory where you appear to have a +pretty strong hold." + +"At the same time, if I can pay so much for salmon, haul them up the +coast and make a profit on that, and if you can pay this advanced price +and pack them at a still bigger profit, why in blazes can't a plant +right there on the grounds pay top price and still make money?" MacRae +asked impatiently. + +"Could," Stubby declared. "Certainly. But most men in the salmon canning +business aren't like you and me, Jack. They are used to big returns on a +three months' season. They simply can't stand the idea of paying out big +gobs of money to a sulky, un-shaven bohunk whose whole equipment isn't +worth a thousand dollars. They think any man in sea boots ought to be +damn well satisfied if he makes a living. They say high wages, or +returns, spoil fishermen. On top of these new regulations nobody hankers +to buy a plant where they might have to indulge in a price war with a +couple of crazy young fools like you and me--that's what they call us, +you know. That is why no experienced cannery man will touch Folly Bay +the way things stand now. It's a fairly good plant, too. I don't know +how Gower has managed to get in a hole. I don't believe one poor season +could do that to him. But he sure wants to get rid of Folly Bay. It is a +forty-thousand-dollar plant, including the gas boats. He has been +nibbling at an offer of twenty-five thousand. I know, because I made it +myself." + +"What'll you do with it if you get it?" MacRae asked curiously. "It's +no good unless you get the fish. You'd have to put me out of business." + +"Well, I wasn't exactly figuring on that," Stubby grinned. "In the first +place, the machinery and equipment is worth that much in the open +market. And if I get it, we'll either make a deal for collecting the +fish, or you can take a half-interest in the plant at the ground-floor +price. Either way, we can make it a profitable investment for both of +us." + +"You really think Gower is in a bad way?" Jack asked reflectively. + +"I know it," Stubby replied emphatically. "Oh, I don't mean to say that +abject poverty is staring him in the face, or anything like that. But it +looks to me as if he had lost a barrel of money somehow and was anxious +to get Folly Bay off his hands before it sets him further in the hole. +You could make Folly Bay pay big dividends. So could I. But so long as +you cover his ground with carriers, every day he operates is a dead +loss. I haven't much sympathy for him. He has made a fortune out of that +place and those fishermen and spent it making a big splurge in town. +Anyway, his wife has all kinds of kale, so we should worry about old +Horace A." + +MacRae lit a cigarette and listened to the flow of Stubby's talk, with +part of his mind mulling over this information about Horace Gower. He +wondered if that was why Robbin-Steele was so keen on getting a contract +for those Squitty bluebacks, why Hurley of the Northwest wanted to make +a deal for salmon; if they reckoned that Gower had ceased to be a factor +and that Jack MacRae held the Squitty Island business in the hollow of +his hand. MacRae smiled to himself. If that were true it was an +advantage he meant to hold for his own good and the good of all those +hard-driven men who labored at the fishing. In a time that was +economically awry MacRae's sympathy turned more to those whose struggle +was to make a living, or a little more if they could, than to men who +already had more than they needed, men who had no use for more money +except to pile it up, to keep piling it up. MacRae was neither an +idealist nor a philanthropic dreamer. But he knew the under dog of the +great industrial scramble. In his own business he would go out of his +way to add another hundred dollars a year to a fisherman's earnings. He +did not know quite clearly why he felt like that. It was more or less +instinctive. He expected to make money out of his business, he was eager +to make money, but he saw very clearly that it was only in and through +the tireless labor of the fishermen that he could reap a profit. And he +was young enough to be generous in his impulses. He was not afraid, like +the older men, that if those who worked with their hands got a little +more than sufficient to live on from season to season they would grow +fat and lazy and arrogant, and refuse to produce. + +Money was a necessity. Without it, without at least a reasonable amount +of money, a man could not secure any of the things essential to +well-being of either body or mind. The moneyless man was a slave so long +as he was moneyless. MacRae smiled at those who spoke slightingly of the +power of money. He knew they were mistaken. Money was king. No amount of +it, cash in hand, would purchase happiness, perhaps, but lack of it made +a man fall an easy victim to dire misfortunes. Without money a man was +less than the dirt beneath the feet of such as Robbin-Steele and Hurley +and Gower, because their criterion of another man's worth was his +ability to get money, to beat the game they all played. + +MacRae put himself and Stubby Abbott in a different category. They +wanted to get on. They were determined to get on. But their programme of +getting on, MacRae felt, was a better one for themselves and for other +men than the mere instinct to grab everything in sight. MacRae was not +exactly a student of economics or sociology, but he had an idea that the +world, and particularly his group-world, was suffering from the +grab-instinct functioning without control. He had a theory that society +would have to modify that grab-instinct by legislation and custom before +the world was rid of a lot of its present ills. And both his reason and +his instinct was to modify it himself, in his dealings with his fellows, +more particularly when those he dealt with were simple, uneducated men +who worked as hard and complained as little as salmon fishermen. + +He talked with Stubby in the den until late in the afternoon, and then +walked downtown. When he reached the Granada he loafed uneasily in the +billiard room until dinner. His mind persistently turned from material +considerations of boats and gear and the season's prospects to dwell +upon Betty Gower. This wayward questing of his mind irritated him. But +he could not help it. Whenever he met her, even if it were only a brief, +casual contact, for hours afterward he could not drive her out of his +mind. And he was making a conscious effort to do that. It was a matter +of sheer self-defense. Only when he shut Betty resolutely out of the +chambers of his brain could he be free of that hungry longing for her. +While he suffered from that vain longing there was neither peace nor +content in his life; he could get no satisfaction out of working or +planning or anything that he undertook. + +That would wear off, he assured himself. But he did not always have +complete confidence in this assurance. He was aware of a tenacity of +impressions and emotions and ideas, once they took hold of him. Old +Donald MacRae had been afflicted with just such characteristics, he +remembered. It must be in the blood, that stubborn constancy to either +an affection or a purpose. And in him these two things were at war, +pulling him powerfully in opposite directions, making him unhappy. + +Sitting deep in a leather chair, watching the white and red balls roll +and click on the green cloth, MacRae recalled one of the maxims of +Hafiz: + + "'Two things greater than all things are + And one is Love and the other is War.'" + +MacRae doubted this. He had had experience of both. At the moment he +could see nothing in either but vast accumulations of futile anguish +both of the body and the soul. + + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + +A Renewal of Hostilities + + +The pussy willows had put out their fuzzy catkins and shed them for +delicate foliage when MacRae came back to Squitty Cove. The alder, the +maple and the wild cherry, all the spring-budding trees and shrubs, were +making thicket and foreshore dainty green and full of pleasant smells. +Jack wakened the first morning at daybreak to the muted orchestration of +mating birds, the song of a thousand sweet-voiced, unseen warblers. The +days were growing warm, full of sunshine. Distant mountain ranges stood +white-capped and purple against sapphire skies. The air was full of the +ancient magic of spring. + +Yet MacRae himself, in spite of these pleasant sights and sounds and +smells, in spite of his books and his own rooftree, found the Cove +haunted 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 one +in the Cove save an old, unkempt Swede, Doug Sproul, who slept eighteen +hours a day in his cabin while he waited for the salmon to run again, a +withered Portuguese who sat in the sun and muttered while he mended +gear. They were old men, human driftwood, beached in their declining +years, crabbed and sour, looking always backward with unconscious +regret. + +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 in +the middle of Squitty Island, keeping house for her husband and Uncle +Peter and Long Tom Spence while they burrowed in the earth to uncover a +copper-bearing lead that promised a modest fortune for all three. Peter +Ferrara'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 like +the great Douglas firs. But he missed the familiar voices, the sight of +friendly 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 outlet +of purposeful work in which to release pent-up energy, MacRae brooded +over shadows, suffered periods of unaccountable depression. Nature had +not designed him for either a hermit or a celibate. Something in him +cried out for affection, for companionship, for a woman's tenderness +bestowed unequivocally. The mating instinct was driving him, as it drove +the birds. But its urge was not the general, unspecified longing which +turns 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 not +have her without a revolutionary overturning of his convictions, +inhibitions, soundly made and passionately cherished plans of reprisal +for old injustices. That peculiar tenacity of idea and purpose which was +inherent with him made him resent, refuse soberly to consider any +deviation from the purpose which had taken form with such bitter +intensity when he kindled to his father's account of those drab years +which Horace Gower had laid upon him. + +Jack MacRae was no angel. Under his outward seeming his impulses were +primitive, like the impulses of all strong men. He nursed a vision of +beating Gower at Gower's own game. He hugged to himself the ultimate +satisfaction of that. Even when he was dreaming of Betty, he was +mentally setting her aside until he had beaten her father to his knees +under the only sort of blows he could deal. Until he had made Gower know +grief and disappointment and helplessness, and driven him off the south +end 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 of +defiant recklessness that there were plenty of other women for whom +ultimately he could care as much. But he knew also that he would not say +that, nor even think it, whenever Betty Gower was within reach of his +hand or sound of his voice. + +He walked sometimes over to Point Old and stared at the cottage, snowy +white against the tender green, its lawn growing rank with uncut grass, +its chimney dead. There were times when he wished he could see smoke +lifting from that chimney and know that he could find Betty somewhere +along the beach. But these were only times when his spirits were very +low. + +Also he occasionally wondered if it were true, as Stubby Abbott +declared, that Gower had fallen into a financial hole. MacRae doubted +that. Men like Gower always got out of a hole. They were fierce and +remorseless pursuers of the main chance. When they were cast down they +climbed up straightway over the backs of lesser men. He thought of +Robbin-Steele. A man like that would die with the harness of the +money-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 and +schooled to grasp it in a bewildering variety of ways. + +No, he rather doubted that Gower was broke, or even in any danger of +going broke. He hoped this might be true, in spite of his doubts, for it +meant that Gower would be compelled to sacrifice this six hundred acres +of MacRae land. The sooner the better. It was a pain to MacRae to see it +going wild. The soil Donald MacRae had cleared and turned to meadow, to +small fields of grain, was growing up to ferns and scrub. It had been a +source of pride to old Donald. He had visualized for his son more than +once great fields covered with growing crops, a rich and fruitful area, +with a big stone house looking out over the cliffs where ultimate +generations of MacRaes should live. If luck had not gone against old +Donald he would have made this dream come true. But life and Gower had +beaten him. + +Jack MacRae knew this. It maddened him to think that this foundation of +a dream had become the plaything of his father's enemy, a neglected +background 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_. The +underwriters had raised and repaired the mahogany cruiser, and she had +passed into other hands. When Betty and her father came to Cradle Bay +they came on a cannery tender or a hired launch. MacRae hoped it might +be true that Gower was slipping, that he had helped to start him on this +decline. + +Presently the loneliness of the Cove was broken by the return of +Vincent Ferrara. They skidded the _Bluebird_ out on the beach at the +Cove's head and overhauled her inside and out, hull and machinery. That +brought them well into April. The new carrier was complete from truck to +keelson. She had been awaiting only MacRae's pleasure for her maiden +sea-dip. So now, with the _Bluebird_ sleeked with new paint, he went +down for the launching. + +There was a little ceremony over that. + +"It's bad luck, the very worst sort of luck, to launch a boat without +christening her in the approved manner," Nelly Abbott declared. "I +insist on being sponsor. Do let me, Jack." + +So the new sixty-footer had a bottle of wine from the Abbott cellar +broken over her brass-bound stemhead as her bows sliced into the salt +water, 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 the +first blueback run of commercial size showed off Gray Rock and the +Ballenas. All the Squitty boats went out as soon as the salmon came. +MacRae skippered the new and shining _Blanco_, brave in white paint and +polished brass on her virgin trip. He followed the main fleet, while the +_Bluebird_ scuttled about to pick up stray trollers' catches and to tend +the 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. MacRae +could stay on the grounds till he was fully loaded. He could slash +through to Vancouver at nine knots instead of seven. A sea that would +toss the old wrecked _Blackbird_ like a dory and keep her low decks +continually awash let the _Blanco_ pass with only a moderate pitch and +roll. + +MacRae worked hard. He found ease in work. When the last salmon was +dressed and stowed below, many times under the glow of electric bulbs +strung along the cargo boom, he would fall into his bunk and sleep +dreamlessly. Decks streaming with blood and offal, plastered with slime +and clinging scales--until such time as they were washed down--ceased to +annoy him. No man can make omelettes without breaking eggs. Only the +fortunate few can make money without soiling their hands. There is no +room in the primary stages of taking salmon for those who shrink from +sweat and strain, from elemental stress. The white-collared and the +lily-fingered cannot function there. The pink meat my lady toys with on +Limoges china comes to her table by ways that would appal her. Only the +men who toil aboard the fishing boats, with line and gear and gutting +knife know in what travail this harvest of the sea is reaped. + +MacRae played fair, according to his conception of fair play. He based +his payments on a decent profit, without which he could not carry on. +Running heavier cargoes at less cost he raised the price to the +fishermen as succeeding runs of blueback salmon were made up of larger, +heavier fish. Other buyers came, lingered awhile, cursed him and went +away. They could not run to Vancouver with small quantities of salmon +and meet his price. But MacRae in the _Blanco_ could take six, eight, +ten thousand salmon profitably on a margin which the other buyers said +was folly. + +The trolling fleet swelled in numbers. The fish were there. The +old-timers had prophesied a big blueback year, and for once their +prophecy was by way of being fulfilled. The fish schooled in great +shoals off Nanaimo, around Gray Rock, the Ballenas, passed on to +Sangster and Squitty. And the fleet followed a hundred strong, each day +increasing,--Indians, Greeks, Japanese, white men, raking the salmon +grounds with glittering spoon hooks, gathering in the fish. + +In early June MacRae was delivering eighteen thousand salmon a week to +the Terminal Fish Company. He was paying forty cents a fish, more than +any troller in the Gulf of Georgia had ever got for June bluebacks, more +than any buyer had ever paid before the opening of the canneries +heightened the demand. He was clearing nearly a thousand dollars a week +for himself, and he was putting unheard-of sums in the pockets of the +fishermen. 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. He +had put a club in their hands as well as money in their pockets. They +would stand with him against less scrupulous, more remorseless +exploiters of their labor. They would see that he got fish. They told +him 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 one +afternoon. They had been talking about canneries and competition. + +"Not if he was boosting the price up just to make you quit, and then cut +it in two when he had everything to himself," one man said. "That's been +done 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 this +fall. But there is going to be a scramble for the good canning fish. I +can pay as much as salmon are worth, but I can't go any further. If I +should have to pull my boats off in mid-season you can guess what +they'll pay around Squitty." + +MacRae was not crying "wolf." There were signs and tokens of uneasiness +and irritation among those who still believed it was their right and +privilege to hold the salmon industry in the hollows of their grasping +hands. Stubby Abbott was a packer. He had the ears of the other packers. +They were already complaining to Stubby, grouching about MacRae, unable +to understand that Stubby listened to them with his tongue in his cheek, +that one of their own class should have a new vision of industrial +processes, 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. You +could get those fish for thirty cents and you are paying forty. The +fishermen will want the earth when the canneries open. They hint around +that something will drop with a loud bang one of these days. I think +it's just hot air. They can't hurt either of us. I'll get a fair pack at +Crow Harbor, and I'll have this plant loaded. I've got enough money to +carry on. It makes me snicker to myself to imagine how they'll squirm +and squeal next winter when I put frozen salmon on the market ten cents +a pound below what they figure on getting. Oh, yes, our friends in the +fish business are going to have a lot of grievances. But just now they +are chiefly grouching at you." + +MacRae seldom set foot ashore those crowded days. But he passed within +sight of Squitty Cove and Poor Man's Rock once at least in each +forty-eight hours. For weeks he had seen smoke drifting blue from the +cottage chimney in Cradle Bay. He saw now and then the flutter of +something white or blue on the lawn that he knew must be Betty. Part of +the time a small power boat swung to the mooring in the bay where the +shining _Arrow_ nosed to wind and tide in other days. He heard current +talk among the fishermen concerning the Gowers. Gower himself was +spending his time between the cottage and Folly Bay. + +The cannery opened five days in advance of the sockeye season on the +Fraser. When the Gower collecting boats made their first round MacRae +knew that he had a fight on his hands. Gower, it seemed to him, had +bared 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 Georgia +neither fishermen, canners, nor the government ichthyologists were +greatly wiser concerning their nature or habits or life history. Grounds +where they swarmed one season might prove barren the next. Where they +came from, out of what depths of the far Pacific those silvery hordes +marshaled themselves, no man knew. Nor, when they vanished in late +August, could any man say whither they went. They did not ascend the +streams. No blueback was ever taken with red spawn in his belly. They +were a mystery which no man had unraveled, no matter that he took them +by thousands in order that he himself might subsist upon their flesh. +One thing the trollers did know,--where the small feed swarmed, in shoal +water or deep, those myriads of tiny fish, herring and nameless smaller +ones, there the blueback would appear, and when he did so appear he +could be taken by a spoon hook. + +Away beyond the Sisters--three gaunt gray rocks rising out of the sea +miles offshore in a fairway down which passed all the Alaska-bound +steamers, with a lone lighthouse on the middle rock--away north of Folly +Bay there opened wide trolling grounds about certain islands which lay +off the Vancouver Island shore,--Hornby, Lambert Channel, Yellow Rock, +Cape Lazo. In other seasons the blueback runs lingered about Squitty for +a while and then passed on to those kelp-grown and reef-strewed grounds. +This season these salmon appeared first far south of Squitty. The +trolling scouts, the restless wanderers of the fleet, who could not +abide sitting still and waiting in patience for the fish to come, first +picked them up by the Gulf Islands, very near that great highway to the +open sea known as the Strait of San Juan. The blueback pushed on the +Gray Rock to the Ballenas, as if the blackfish and seal and shark that +hung always about the schools to prey were herding them to some given +point. Very shortly after they could be taken in the shadow of the +Ballenas light the schools swarmed about the Cove end of Squitty Island, +between the Elephant on Sangster and Poor Man's Rock. For days on end +the sea was alive with them. In the gray of dawn and the reddened dusk +they played upon the surface of the sea as far as the eye reached. And +always at such times they struck savagely at a glittering spoon hook. +Beyond Squitty they vanished. Fifty and sixty salmon daily to a boat off +the Squitty headlands dwindled to fifteen and twenty at the Folly Bay +end. Those restless trollers who crossed the Gulf to Hornby and Yellow +Rock Light got little for their pains. Between Folly Bay and the +swirling tide races off the desolate head of Cape Mudge the blueback +disappeared. 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 bow +to stern, so many were they in that little space, on days when the +southeaster made the cliffs shudder under the shock of breaking seas. If +fishing slackened for a day or two they did not scatter as in other +days. There would be another run hard on the heels of the last. And +there was. + +MacRae ran the _Blanco_ into Squitty Cove one afternoon and made fast +alongside the _Bluebird_ which lay to fore and aft moorings in the +narrow gut of the Cove. The Gulf outside was speckled with trollers, but +there were many at anchor, resting, or cooking food. + +One of the mustard pots was there, a squat fifty-foot carrier painted a +gaudy yellow--the Folly Bay house color--flying a yellow flag with a +black C in the center. She was loading fish from two trollers, one lying +on 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's +paying fifty and hinting more if he has to." + +MacRae laughed. + +"We'll match Gower's price till he boosts us out of the bidding," he +said. "And he won't make much on his pack if he does that." + +"Say, Folly Bay," Jack called across to the mustard-pot carrier, "what +are 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 in +the Cove and more coming in. The ripple of laughter that ran over the +fleet was plainly audible. They could appreciate that. MacRae sat down +on the _Blanco's_ after cabin and lit a cigarette. + +"Looks like they mean to get the fish," Vin hazarded. "Can you tilt that +and make anything?" + +"Let them do the tilting," MacRae answered. "If the fish run heavy I can +make a little, even if prices go higher. If he boosts them to +seventy-five, I'd have to quit. At that price only the men who catch the +fish will make anything. I really don't know how much we will be able to +pay 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 pretty +much the same among all men. The trollers distrusted Folly Bay. They +said to one another that if Gower could kill off competition he would +cut the price to the bone. He had done that before. But when a fisherman +rises wearily from his bunk at three in the morning and spends the bulk +of the next eighteen hours hauling four one hundred and fifty foot +lines, each weighted with from six to fifteen pounds of lead, he feels +that 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, paying +fifty-five cents. A good many trollers sold him their fish before they +learned that MacRae was paying the same. And the mustard pot evidently +had his orders, for he tilted the price to sixty, which forced MacRae to +do the same. + +When the _Blanco_ unloaded her cargo of eight-thousand-odd salmon into +the Terminal and MacRae checked his receipts and expenditures for that +trip, 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 seiners +begin to take coho, that's certain," he declared. "How far can you go in +this 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 a +bit heavier as we go along. Well, I can certainly pack as cheaply as he +can. 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 cents +a fish commission. I don't believe he'll dare pay more than that before +late 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 a +five-cent commission,--if he could get the salmon within the price +limit. So for the next trip or two he contented himself with meeting +Gower's price and taking what fish came to him. The Folly Bay mustard +pots--three of them great and small--scurried here and there among the +trollers, dividing the catch with the _Bluebird_ and the _Blanco_. There +was always a mustard-pot collector in sight. The weather was getting +hot. Salmon would not keep in a troller's hold. Part of the old guard +stuck tight to MacRae. But there were new men fishing; there were +Japanese and illiterate Greeks. It was not to be expected that these men +should indulge in far-sighted calculations. But it was a trifle +disappointing to see how readily any troller would unload his catch into +a 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 know +what would happen. Gower would drop the price with a bang. You'd think +these damned idiots would know that. Yet they're feeding him fish by the +thousand. They don't appear to care a hoot whether you get any or not. I +used to think fishermen had some sense. These fellows can't see an inch +past their cursed noses. Pull off your boats for a couple of weeks and +let them get their bumps." + +"What do you expect?" MacRae said lightly. "It's a scramble, and they +are acting precisely as they might be expected to act. I don't blame +them. They're under the same necessity as the rest of us--to get it +while they can. Did you think they'd sell me fish for sixty if somebody +else offered sixty-five? You know how big a nickel looks to a man who +earns 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 soon +Gower got 'em as you. You paid more than Folly Bay all last season. You +put all kinds of money in their pockets that you didn't have to." + +"And when the pinch comes, they'll remember that," MacRae said. "You +watch, Vin. The season is young yet. Gower may beat me at this game, but +he won't make any money at it." + +MacRae kept abreast of Folly Bay for ten days and emerged from that +period with a slight loss, because at the close he was paying more than +the salmon were worth at the Terminal warehouse. But when he ran his +first load into Crow Harbor Stubby looked over the pile of salmon his +men were forking across the floor and drew Jack into his office. + +"I've made a contract for delivery of my entire sockeye and blueback +pack," he said. "I know precisely where I stand. I can pay up to ninety +cents 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 either +the _Blanco_ or the _Bluebird_ was on his heels. MacRae could cover more +ground and carry more cargo, and keep it fresh, than any mustard pot. +The _Bluebird_ covered little outlying nooks, the stragglers, the +rowboat men in their beach camps. The _Blanco_ kept mostly in touch with +the main fleet patrolling the southeastern end of Squitty like a naval +flotilla, wheeling and counterwheeling over the grounds where the +blueback played. MacRae forced the issue. He raised the price to +sixty-five, to seventy, to seventy-five, to eighty, and the boats under +the yellow house flag had to pay that to get a fish. MacRae crowded them +remorselessly to the limit. So long as he got five cents a fish he could +make money. He suspected that it cost Gower a great deal more than five +cents 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 north +the Japs abandoned trolling for the gill net. The white trollers +returned to their first love because he courted them assiduously. There +was always a MacRae carrier in the offing. It cost MacRae his sleep and +rest, 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 many +a time, after tallying fish all day. Three hours' sleep was like a gift +from the gods. But he kept it up. He had a sense of some approaching +crisis. + +By the third week in July MacRae was taking three fourths of the +bluebacks caught between the Ballenas and Folly Bay. He would lie +sometimes within a stone's throw of Gower's cannery, loading salmon. + +He was swinging at anchor there one day when a rowboat from the cannery +put out to the _Blanco_. The man in it told MacRae that Gower would like +to 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. Some +time or other he would have to meet his father's enemy, face him, talk +to him, listen to what he might say, tell him things. Curiosity was +roused in him a little now. He desired to know what Gower had to say. He +wondered 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 above +sun-browned forearms. He stood before Gower with his hands thrust in the +pockets of duck overalls speckled with fish scales, smelling of salmon. +Gower stared at him silently, critically, it seemed to MacRae, for a +matter 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 a +while. 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 into +his dinghy he glanced up at the wharf towering twenty feet above his +head. Betty Gower was sitting on a pile head. She was looking down at +him. But she was not smiling. And she did not speak. MacRae rowed back +to the _Blanco_ in an ugly mood. + +In the next forty-eight hours Folly Bay jumped the price of bluebacks to +ninety cents, to ninety-five, to a dollar. The _Blanco_ wallowed down to +Crow Harbor with a load which represented to MacRae a dead loss of four +hundred dollars cash. + +"He must be crazy," Stubby fumed. "There's no use canning salmon at a +loss." + +"Has he reached the loss point yet?" MacRae inquired. + +"He's shaving close. No cannery can make anything worth reckoning at a +dollar or so a case profit." + +"Is ninety cents and five cents' commission your limit?" MacRae +demanded. + +"Just about," Stubby grunted. "Well"--reluctantly--"I can stand a +dollar. 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 dead +loss, 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 had +determined to have the salmon. Very well, then, he should have them. But +he would have to take them at a loss, in so far as MacRae could inflict +loss upon him. He knew of no other way to hurt effectively such a man as +Gower. Money was life blood to him, and it was not of great value to +MacRae as yet. With deliberate calculation he decided to lose the +greater part of what he had made, if for every dollar he lost himself he +could inflict equal or greater loss on Gower. + +The trailers who combed the Squitty waters were taking now close to five +thousand salmon a day. Approximately half of these went to Folly Bay. +MacRae took the rest. In this battle of giants the fishermen had lost +sight of the outcome. They ceased to care who got fish. They only +watched eagerly for him who paid the biggest price. They were making +thirty, forty, fifty dollars a day. They no longer held salmon--only a +few of the old-timers--for MacRae's carriers. It was nothing to them who +made a profit or suffered a loss. Only a few of the older men wondered +privately how long MacRae could stand it and what would happen when he +gave up. + +MacRae met every raise Folly Bay made. He saw bluebacks go to a dollar +ten, then to a dollar fifteen. He ran cargo after cargo to Crow Harbor +and dropped from three to seven hundred dollars on each load, until even +Stubby lost patience with him. + +"What's the sense in bucking him till you go broke? I'm in too deep to +stand any loss myself. Quit. Tie up your boats, Jack. Let him have the +salmon. Let those blockheads of fishermen see what he'll do to 'em once +you stop." + +But MacRae held on till the first hot days of August were at hand and +his money was dwindling to the vanishing point. Then he ran the _Blanco_ +and the _Bluebird_ into Squitty Cove and tied them to permanent +moorings in shoal water near the head. For a day or two the salmon had +shifted mysteriously to the top end, around Folly Bay and the Siwash +Islands and Jenkins Pass. The bulk of the fleet had followed them. Only +a few stuck to the Cove and Poor Man's Rock. To these and the rowboat +trollers 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_ and +slept the clock around, the first decent rest he had taken in two +months. He had not realized till then how tired he was. + +When he wakened he washed, ate, changed his clothes and went for a walk +along the cliffs to stretch his legs. Vin had gone up to the Knob to see +Dolly and Uncle Peter. His helper on the _Bluebird_ was tinkering about +his engine. MacRae's two men loafed on the clean-slushed deck. They were +none of them company for MacRae in his present mood. He sought the +cliffs to be alone. + +Gower had beaten him, it would seem. And MacRae did not take kindly to +being beaten. But he did not think this was the end yet. Gower would do +as he had done before. When he felt himself secure in his monopoly he +would squeeze the fishermen, squeeze them hard. And as soon as he did +that MacRae would buy again. He could not make any money himself, +perhaps. But he could make Gower operate at a loss. That would be +something accomplished. + +MacRae walked along the cliffs until he saw the white cottage, and saw +also that some one sat on the steps in the sun. Whereupon he turned +back. He didn't want to see Betty. He conceived that to be an ended +chapter in his experiences. He had hurt her, and she had put on her +armor against another such hurt. There was a studied indifference about +her now, when he met her, which hurt him terribly. He supposed that in +addition to his own incomprehensible attitude which she resented, she +took sides with her father in this obvious commercial warfare which was +bleeding them both financially. Very likely she saw in this only the +open workings of his malice toward Gower. In which MacRae admitted she +would be quite correct. He had not been able to discover in that +flaring-up of passion for Betty any reason for a burial of his feud with +Gower. There was in him some curious insistence upon carrying this to +the 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. The +fighting instinct in MacRae lurked always very near the surface. + +He spent a good many hours during the next three or four days lying in +the shade of a gnarly arbutus which gave on the cliffs. He took a book +up there with him, but most of the time he lay staring up at the blue +sky through the leaves, or at the sea, or distant shore lines, thinking +always 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 its +business. There was not a great deal to be got in the Cove. The last gas +boat had scuttled away to the top end, where the blueback were schooling +in vast numbers. There were still salmon to be taken about Poor Man's +Rock. The rowboat men took a few fish each day and hoped for another big +run. + +There came a day when the mustard pot failed to show in the Cove. The +rowboat men had three hundred salmon, and they cursed Folly Bay with a +fine flow of epithet as they took their rotting fish outside the Cove +and dumped them in the sea. Nor did a Gower collector come, although +there was nothing in the wind or weather to stop them. The rowboat +trollers fumed and stewed and took their troubles to Jack MacRae. But he +could neither inform nor help them. + +Then upon an evening when the sun rested on the serrated backbone of +Vancouver Island, a fiery ball against a sky of burnished copper, +flinging a red haze down on a slow swell that furrowed the Gulf, Jack +MacRae, perched on a mossy boulder midway between the Cove and Point +Old, saw first one boat and then another come slipping and lurching +around Poor Man's Rock. Converted Columbia River sailboats, Cape +Flattery trollers, double-enders, all the variegated craft that +fishermen use and traffic with, each rounded the Rock and struck his +course for the Cove, broadside on to the rising swell, their twenty-foot +trolling poles lashed aloft against a stumpy mast and swinging in a +great arc as they rolled. One, ten, a dozen, an endless procession, +sometimes three abreast, again a string in single file. MacRae was +reminded 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 trolling +fleet normally shifted by pairs and dozens. This was a squadron +movement, the Grand Fleet steaming to some appointed rendezvous. MacRae +watched till the sun dipped behind the hills, and the reddish tint left +the sea to linger briefly on the summit of the Coast Range flanking the +mainland 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 fisherman +humped over his steering gear. From each cleaving stem the bow-wave +curled in white foam. + +There was something in the wind. MacRae felt it like a premonition. He +left his boulder and hurried back toward the Cove. + +The trolling boats were packed about the _Blanco_ so close that MacRae +left his dinghy on the outer fringe and walked across their decks to the +deck of his own vessel. The _Blanco_ loomed in the midst of these lesser +craft like a hen over her brood of chicks. The fishermen had gathered on +the 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 convention +of 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 if +you'd start buying again." + +MacRae sat down on one sheave of his deck winch. He took out a cigarette +and lighted it, swung one foot back and forth. He did not make haste to +reply. An expectant hush fell on the crowd. In the slow-gathering dusk +there was no sound but the creak of rubbing gunwales, the low snore of +the sea breaking against the cliffs, and the chug-chug of the last +stragglers beating into the shelter of the Cove. + +"He shut down the cannery," the fishermen's spokesman said at last. "We +ain't seen a buyer or collector for three days. The water's full of +salmon, an' we been suckin' our thumbs an' watching 'em play. If you +won't buy here again we got to go where there is buyers. And we'd +rather not do that. There's no place on the Gulf as good fishin' as +there is here now." + +"What was the trouble?" MacRae asked absently. "Couldn't you supply him +with fish?" + +"Nobody knows. There was plenty of salmon. He cut the price the day +after you tied up. He cut it to six bits. Then he shut down. Anyway, we +don't care why he shut down. It don't make no difference. What we want +is for you to start buyin' again. Hell, we're losin' money from daylight +to dark! The water's alive with salmon. An' the season's short. Be a +sport, MacRae." + +MacRae laughed. + +"Be a sport, eh?" he echoed with a trace of amusement in his tone. "I +wonder how many of you would have listened to me if I'd gone around to +you a week ago and asked you to give me a sporting chance?" + +No one answered. MacRae threw away his half-smoked cigarette. He stood +up. + +"All right, I'll buy salmon again," he said quietly. "And I won't ask +you to give me first call on your catch or a chance to make up some of +the money I lost bucking Folly Bay, or anything like that. But I want to +tell you something. You know it as well as I do, but I want to jog your +memory with it." + +He raised his voice a trifle. + +"You fellows know that I've always given you a square deal. You aren't +fishing for sport. You're at this to make a living, to make money if you +can. So am I. You are entitled to all you can get. You earn it. You work +for it. So am I entitled to what I can make. I work, I take certain +chances. Neither of us is getting something for nothing. But there is a +limit to what either of us can get. We can't dodge that. You fellows +have been dodging it. Now you have to come back to earth. + +"No fisherman can get the prices you have had lately. No cannery can +pack salmon at those prices. Sockeye, the finest canning salmon that +swims in the sea, is bringing eighty cents on the Fraser. Bluebacks are +sixty-five cents at Nanaimo, sixty at Cape Mudge, sixty at the +Euclataws. + +"I can do a little better than that," MacRae hesitated a second. "I can +pay a little more, because the cannery I'm supplying is satisfied with a +little less profit than most. Stubby Abbott is not a hog, and neither am +I. I can pay seventy-five cents and make money. I have told you before +that it is to your interest as well as mine to keep me running. I will +always pay as much as salmon are worth. But I cannot pay more. If your +appreciation of Folly Bay's past kindness to you is so keen that you +would rather sell him your fish, why, that's your privilege." + +"Aw, that's bunk," a man called. "You know blamed well we wouldn't. Not +after him blowin' up like this." + +"How do I know?" MacRae laughed. "If Gower opened up to-morrow again and +offered eighty or ninety cents, he'd get the salmon--even if you knew he +would make you take thirty once he got you where he wanted you." + +"Would he?" another voice uprose. "The next time a mustard pot gets any +salmon from me, it'll be because there's no other buyer and no other +grounds to fish." + +A growled chorus backed this reckless statement. + +"That's all right," MacRae said good-naturedly. "I don't blame you for +picking up easy money. Only easy money isn't always so good as it +looks. Fly at it in the morning, and I'll take the fish at the price +I'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 his +bunk, falling asleep to the slow beat of a dead swell breaking in the +Cove'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 stage +of the game?" + +MacRae shook his head. He was wondering that himself. + + + + +CHAPTER XIX + +Top Dog + + +Some ten days later the _Bluebird_ swung at anchor in the kelp just +clear of Poor Man's Rock. From a speck on the horizon the _Blanco_ grew +to full shape, flaring bow and pilot house, walking up the Gulf with a +bone in her teeth. She bore down upon her consort, sidled alongside and +made fast with lines to the bitts fore and aft. Vin Ferrara threw back +his hatch covers. His helper forked up salmon with a picaroon. Vin +tossed them across into the _Blanco's_ hold. At the same time the larger +carrier'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 decks +clean with buckets of sea water. + +"Twenty-seven hundred," MacRae said. "Big morning. Every troller in the +Gulf must be here." + +"No, I have to go to Folly Bay and Siwash Islands to-night," Vin told +him. "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 beat +mercilessly, a dog-day sun blazing upon glassy waters, reflected upward +in eye-straining shafts. The heat seared. Within a radius of a mile +outside the Rock the trollers chug-chugged here and there, driving +straight ahead, doubling short, wheeling in slow circles, working the +eddies. They stood in the small cockpit aft, the short tiller between +their legs, leaving their hands free to work the gear. They stood out in +the hot sun without shade or cover, stripped to undershirt and duck +trousers, many of them barefooted, brown arms bare, wet lines gleaming. +Wherever a man looked some fisherman hauled a line. And everywhere the +mirror of the sea was broken by leaping salmon, silver crescents +flashing in the sun. + +"Say, what do you know about it?" Vin smiled at MacRae. "Old Gower is +trolling." + +"Trolling!" + +"Rowboat. Plugging around the Rock. He was at it when daylight came. He +sold me fifteen fish. Think of it. Old H.A. rowboat trolling. Selling +his fish to you." + +Vincent chuckled. His eyes rested curiously on Jack's face. + +"Haughty spirit that goes before destruction, as Dolly used to say," he +rambled on. "Some come-down for him. He must be broke flat as a +flounder." + +"He sold you his salmon?" + +"Sure. Nobody else to sell 'em to, is there? Said he was trying his +hand. Seemed good-natured about it. Kinda pleased, in fact, because he +had one more than Doug Sproul. He started joshin' Doug. You know what a +crab old Doug is. He got crusty as blazes. Old Gower just grinned at him +and rowed off." + +MacRae made no comment, and their talk turned into other channels until +Vin hauled his hook and bore away. MacRae saw to dropping the +_Blanco's_ anchor. He would lie there till dusk. Then he sat in the +shade 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 the +current talk reached MacRae through Stubby. That price-war had been +Gower's last kick, an incomprehensible, ill-judged effort to reestablish +his hold on the Squitty grounds, so it was said. + +"He never was such a terribly big toad in the cannery puddle," Stubby +recited, "and I guess he has made his last splash. They always cut a +wide swath in town, and that sort of thing can sure eat up coin. I'm +kind of sorry for Betty. Still, she'll probably marry somebody with +money. I know two or three fellows who would be tickled to death to get +her." + +"Why don't _you_ go to the rescue?" MacRae had suggested, with an irony +that 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 a +microscope. And I've found a girl who seems to think a winged duck is +worth 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 he +can and try to make a fresh start. It seems there has been friction in +the family, and his wife refused to come through with any of her +available cash. Seems kind of a complicated hole he got into. He's +cleaned, anyway. Robbin-Steele got all his cannery tenders and took over +several thousand cases of salmon. I hear he still has a few debts to be +settled when the cannery is sold. Why don't you figure a way of getting +hold of that cannery, Jack?" + +"I'm no cannery man," MacRae replied. "Why don't you? I thought you +made him an offer." + +"I withdrew it," Stubby said. "I have my hands full without that. You've +knocked 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 that +end, 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. And +MacRae was ready to pay any price in reason to get it back. That seemed +a debt he owed old Donald MacRae, apart from his own craving to sometime +carry out plans they had made together long before he went away to +France. The lives of some men are rooted in the soil where they were +born, where they grow to manhood. Jack MacRae was of that type. He loved +the 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. All +seamen are. They come ashore when they are old and feeble, to give their +bodies at last to the earth. MacRae loved the sea, but he loved better +to stand on the slopes running back from Squitty's cliffs, to look at +those green meadows and bits of virgin forest and think that it would +all be his again, to have and to hold. + +So he had set a firm in Vancouver the task of approaching Gower, to +sound him, to see if he would sell, while he kept in the background. He +believed that it was necessary for him to remain in the background. He +believed that Gower would never willingly relinquish that land into his +hands. + +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 lonely +headland strange things had come to pass. Donald MacRae had felt his +first abiding grief there and cried his hurt to a windy sky. He had +lived his last years snatching a precarious living from the seas that +swirled about the Rock. The man who had been the club with which fate +bludgeoned 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 between +tides, the salmon would still play along the kelp beds, in the eddies +about 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 sea +endured and men were passing shadows. + +Afternoon waned. Faint, cool airs wavered off the land, easing the heat +and the sun-glare. MacRae saw Betty and her father come down to the +beach. She helped him slide his rowboat afloat. Then Gower joined the +rowers who were putting out to the Rock for the evening run. He passed +close by the _Blanco_ but MacRae gave him scant heed. His eyes were all +for the girl ashore. Betty sat on a log, bareheaded in the sun. MacRae +had a feeling that she looked at him. And she would be thinking,--God +only knew what. + +In MacRae's mind arose the inevitable question,--one that he had choked +back dozens of times: Was it worth while to hurt her so, and himself, +because their fathers had fought, because there had been wrongs and +injustices? MacRae shook himself impatiently. He was backsliding. +Besides that unappeasable craving for her, vivid images of her with +tantalizing mouth, wayward shining hair, eyes that answered the passion +in his own, besides these luring pictures of her which troubled him +sometimes both in waking hours and sleeping, there was a strange, +deep-seated distrust of Betty because she was the daughter of her +father. That was irrational, and Jack MacRae knew it was irrational. But +he could not help it. It colored his thought of her. It had governed his +reactions. + +MacRae himself could comprehend all too clearly the tragedy of his +father's life. But he doubted if any one else could. He shrank from +unfolding it even to Betty,--even to make clear to her why his hand must +be against her father. MacRae knew, or thought he knew--he had reasoned +the thing out many times in the last few months--that Betty would not +turn to him against her own flesh and blood without a valid reason. He +could not, even, in the name of love, cut her off from all that she had +been, from all that had made her what she was, and make her happy. And +MacRae knew that if they married and Betty were not happy and contented, +they would both be tigerishly miserable. There was only one possible +avenue, one he could not take. He could not seek peace with Gower, even +for 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: keep +Betty out of his mind as much as possible and go on determinedly making +his fight to be top dog in a world where the weak get little mercy and +even the strong do not always come off unscarred. + +Jack MacRae was no philosopher, nor an intellectual superman, but he +knew that love did not make the world go round. It was work. Work and +fighting. Men spent most of their energies in those two channels. + +This they could not escape. Love only shot a rosy glow across life. It +did not absolve a man from weariness or scars. By it, indeed, he might +suffer greater stress and deeper scars. To MacRae, love, such as had +troubled his father's life and his own, seemed to be an emotion pregnant +with sorrow. But he could not deny the strange power of this thing +called love, when it stirred men and women. + +His deck hand, who was also cook, broke into MacRae's reflections with a +call to supper. Jack went down the companion steps into a forepeak +stuffy with the heat of the sun and a galley stove, a cramped place +where they ate heartily despite faint odors of distillate and burned +lubricating oil from the engine room and bilge water that smelled of +fish. + +A troller's boat was rubbing against the _Blanco's_ fenders when they +came on deck again. Others were hoisting the trolling poles, coming in +to deliver. The sun was gone. The long northern twilight cast a pearly +haze along far shores. MacRae threw open his hatches and counted the +salmon as they came flipping off the point of a picaroon. For over an +hour he stood at one hatch and his engineer at the other, counting fish, +making out sale slips, paying out money. It was still light--light +enough to read. But the bluebacks had stopped biting. The rowboat men +quit 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 tow +around to the Cove. + +Gower had rowed back and forth for three hours. MacRae had seen him +swing around the Rock, up under the cliffs and back again, pulling slow +and steady. He was last to haul in his gear. He came up to the carrier +and lay alongside Doug Sproul while that crabbed ancient chucked his +salmon on deck. Then he moved into the place Sproul vacated. The bottom +of 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 another +with 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 that +was Gower's. He did not want to see him or talk to him. He desired, in +so far as he was conscious of any desire in the matter, that Gower +should keep his distance. But he had a horror of meanness, of petty +spite. 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 into +the chilly hold, marked a slip, handed Gower the money for them. The +hand 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 sun +on the Gulf. MacRae knew its bite and sting. So had his father known. He +wondered 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 took +his oars in hand, albeit a trifle gingerly. And he said to old Doug +Sproul, 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 deep +voice. But he laughed. And he rowed away to the beach before his house. +MacRae watched. Betty came down to meet him. Together they hauled the +heavy 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, occasionally +relieving him at the oars. No matter what the weather, if a rowboat +could work a line Gower was one of them. Rains came, and he faced them +in yellow oilskins. He sweltered under that fiery sun. If his life had +been soft and easy, softness and ease did not seem to be wholly +necessary to his existence, not even to his peace of mind. For he had +that. MacRae often wondered at it, knowing the man's history. Gower +joked his way to acceptance among the rowboat men, all but old Doug +Sproul, 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 their +lives. He sold his fish to the _Blanco_ or the _Bluebird_, whichever was +on the spot. The run held steady at the Cove end of Squitty, a +phenomenal 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 was +puzzled, not alone about Gower, but about himself. He had dreamed of a +fierce satisfaction in beating this man down, in making him know poverty +and work and privation,--rubbing his nose in the dirt, he had said to +himself. + +He had managed it. Gower had joined the ranks of broken men. He was +finished as a figure in industry, a financial power. MacRae knew that, +beyond a doubt. Gower had debts and no assets save his land on the +Squitty cliffs and the closed cannery at Folly Bay. The cannery was a +white elephant, without takers in the market. No cannery man would touch +it unless he could first make a contract with MacRae for the bluebacks. +They had approached him with such propositions. Like wolves, MacRae +thought, seeking to pick the bones of one of their own pack who had +fallen. + +And if MacRae needed other evidence concerning Gower, he had it daily +before his eyes. To labor at the oars, to troll early and late in +drizzling rain or scorching sunshine, a man only does that because he +must. MacRae's father had done it. As a matter of course, without +complaint, with unprotesting patience. + +So did Gower. That did not fit Jack MacRae's conception of the man. If +he 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 there +was no hint of rancor in his silences. It was simply as if he understood +that MacRae did not wish to talk to him, and that he conceded this to be +a proper attitude. He talked with the fishermen. He joked with them. If +one slammed out at him now and then with a touch of the old resentment +against Folly Bay he laughed as if he understood and bore no malice. He +baffled MacRae. How could this man who had walked on fishermen's faces +for twenty years, seeking and exacting always his own advantage, playing +the game under harsh rules of his own devising which had enabled him to +win--until this last time--how could he see the last bit of prestige +wrested from him and still be cheerful? How could he earn his daily +bread in the literal sweat of his brow, endure blistered hands and sore +muscles and the sting of slime-poison in fingers cut by hooks and +traces, with less outward protest than men who had never known anything +else? + +MacRae could find no answer to that. He could only wonder. He only knew +that some shift of chance had helped him to put Gower where Gower had +put his father. And there was no satisfaction in the achievement, no +sense of victory. He looked at the man and felt sorry for him, and was +uncomfortably aware that Gower, taking salmon for his living with other +poor men around Poor Man's Rock, was in no need of pity. This podgy man +with the bright blue eyes and heavy jaw, who had been Donald MacRae's +jealous Nemesis, had lost everything that was supposed to make life +worth living to men of his type. And he did not seem to care. He seemed +quite content to smoke a pipe and troll for salmon. He seemed to be a +stranger 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 and +hard, dirty work would be the fittest requital he could bestow. If Jack +MacRae had been gifted with omnipotence when he read that penned history +of his father's life, he would have devised no fitter punishment, no +more fitting vengeance for Gower than that he should lose his fortune +and his prestige and spend his last years getting his bread upon the +waters by Poor Man's Rock in sun and wind and blowy weather. + +And MacRae was conscious that if there were any suffering involved in +this matter now, it rested upon him, not upon Gower. Most men past +middle age, who have drunk deeply the pleasant wine of material +success, shrink from the gaunt specter of poverty. They have shot their +bolt. They cannot stand up to hard work. They cannot endure privation. +They lose heart. They go about seeking sympathy, railing against the +fate. They lie down and the world walks unheeding over their prone +bodies. + +Gower was not doing that. If he had done so, MacRae would have sneered +at him with contempt. As it was, in spite of the rancor he had nursed, +the feeling which had driven him to reprisal, he found himself +sorry--sorry for himself, sorry for Betty. He had set out to bludgeon +Gower, to humiliate him, and the worst arrows he could sling had blunted +their points against the man's invulnerable spirit. + +Betty had been used to luxury. It had not spoiled her. MacRae granted +that. It had not made her set great store by false values. MacRae was +sure of that. She had loved him simply and naturally, with an almost +primitive directness. Spoiled daughters of the leisure class are not so +simple and direct. MacRae began to wonder if she could possibly escape +resenting his share in the overturning of her father's fortunes, whereby +she herself must suffer. + +By the time MacRae came slowly to these half-formed, disturbing +conclusions he was already upon the verge of other disturbing +discoveries in the realm of material facts. + +For obvious reasons he could not walk up to Gower's house and talk to +Betty. At least he did not see how he could, although there were times +when he was tempted. When he did see her he was acutely sensitive to a +veiled reproach in her eyes, a courteous distance in her speech. She +came off the beach one day alone, a few minutes after MacRae dropped +anchor in the usual spot. She had a dozen salmon in the boat. When she +came alongside MacRae set foot over the bulwark with intent to load them +himself. She forestalled him by picking the salmon up and heaving them +on the _Blanco's_ deck. She was dressed for the work, in heavy nailed +shoes, a flannel blouse, a rough tweed skirt. + +"Oh, say, take the picaroon, won't you?" He held it out to her, the +six-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 and +jab that pointed thing through the bottom of the boat." + +She laughed lightly, with no particular mirth in her voice. And MacRae +was stricken dumb. She was angry. He knew it, felt it intuitively. Angry +at him, warning him to keep his distance. He watched her dabble her +hands in the salt chuck, dry them coolly on a piece of burlap. She took +the 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 in +everything. He had succeeded in his undertaking beyond all the +expectations which had spurred him so feverishly in the beginning. But +there was no joy in it; not when Betty Gower looked at him with that +cold gleam in her gray eyes. Yet he told himself savagely that if he had +to take his choice he would not have done otherwise. And when he had +accomplished 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 existed +to fill a man's days with unhappiness. That, it seemed to him, must be +the final disposition of this problem which his father and Horace Gower +and Elizabeth Morton had set for him years before he was born. + +There came a burst of afternoon westerlies which blew small hurricanes +from noon to sundown. But there was always fishing under the broad lee +of the cliffs. The _Bluebird_ continued to scuttle from one outlying +point to another, and the _Blanco_ wallowed down to Crow Harbor every +other day with her hold crammed. When she was not under way and the sea +was fit the big carrier rode at anchor in the kelp close by Poor Man's +Rock, convenient for the trollers to come alongside and deliver when +they chose. There were squalls that blew up out of nowhere and drove +them all to cover. There were days when a dead swell rolled and the +trolling boats dipped and swung and pointed their bluff bows skyward as +they climbed the green mountains,--for the salmon strike when a sea is +on, and a troller runs from heavy weather only when he can no longer +handle his gear. + +MacRae was much too busy to brood long at a time. The phenomenal run of +blueback still held, with here and there the hook-nosed coho coming in +stray schools. He had a hundred and forty fishermen to care for in the +matter of taking their catch, keeping them supplied with fuel, bringing +them foodstuffs such as they desired. The _Blanco_ came up from +Vancouver sometimes as heavily loaded as when she went down. But he +welcomed the work because it kept him from too intense thinking. He +shepherded his seafaring flock for his profit and theirs alike and +poured salmon by tens of thousands into the machines at Crow +Harbor,--red meat to be preserved in tin cans which in months to come +should feed the hungry in the far places of the earth. + +MacRae sometimes had the strange fancy of being caught in a vast machine +for feeding the world, a machine which did not reckon such factors as +pain and sorrow in its remorseless functioning. Men could live without +love or ease or content. They could not survive without food. + +He came up to Squitty one bright afternoon when the sea was flat and +still, unharassed by the westerly. The Cove was empty. All the fleet was +scattered over a great area. The _Bluebird_ was somewhere on her rounds. +MacRae dropped the _Blanco's_ hook in the middle of Cradle Bay, a spot +he seldom chose for anchorage. But he had a purpose in this. When the +bulky carrier swung head to the faint land breeze MacRae was sitting on +his berth in the pilot house, glancing over a letter he held in his +hand. It was from a land-dealing firm in Vancouver. One paragraph is +sufficiently 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 thoughtfully +through an open window which gave on shore and cottage. He could see +Gower sitting on the porch, the thick bulk of the man clean-cut against +the 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 sight +among the stunted, wind-twisted firs. + +He walked to the after deck, laid hold of the dinghy, and slid it +overboard. Five minutes later he had beached it and was walking up the +gravel path to the house. + +He was conscious of a queer irritation against Gower. If he were willing +to sell the place, why did he sit like a spider in his web and demand +that victims come to him? MacRae was wary, distrustful, suspicious, as +he walked up the slope. Some of the old rancor revived in him. Gower +might have a shaft in his quiver yet, and the will to use it. + + + + +CHAPTER XX + +The Dead and Dusty Past + + +Gower sat in a deep grass chair, a pipe sagging one corner of his mouth, +his slippered feet crossed on a low stool. His rubber sea boots lay on +the porch floor as if he had but discarded them. MacRae took in every +detail of his appearance in one photographic glance, as a man will when +his gaze rests upon another with whom he may be about to clash. + +Gower no longer resembled the well-fed plutocrat. He scarcely seemed the +same man who, nearly two years before, had absently bestowed upon MacRae +a dollar for an act of simple courtesy. He wore nondescript trousers +which betrayed a shrunken abdominal line, a blue flannel shirt that +bared his short, thick neck. And in that particular moment, at least, +the habitual sullenness of his heavy face was not in evidence. He looked +placid in spite of the fiery redness which sun and wind had burned into +his skin. He betrayed no surprise at MacRae's coming. The placidity of +his blue eyes did not alter in any degree. + +"Hello, MacRae," he said. + +"How d' do," MacRae answered. "I came to speak to you about a little +matter of business." + +"Yes?" Gower rumbled. "I've been sort of expecting you." + +"Oh?" MacRae failed to conceal altogether his surprise at this +statement. "I understand you are willing to sell this place. I want to +buy it." + +"It was yours once, wasn't it?" + +The words were more of a comment than a question, but MacRae answered: + +"You know that, I think." + +"And you want it back?" + +"Naturally." + +"If that's what you want," Gower said slowly. "I'll see you in----" + +He cut off the sentence. His round stomach--less round by far than it +had been two months earlier--shook with silent laughter. His eyes +twinkled. His thick, stubby fingers drummed on the chair arm. + +MacRae's face grew hot. He recognized the unfinished sentence as one of +his own, words he had flung in Gower's face not so long since. If that +was the way of it he could save his breath. He turned silently. + +"Wait." + +He faced about at the changed quality of Gower's tone. The amused +expression had vanished. Gower leaned forward a little. There was +something very like appeal in his expression. MacRae was suddenly +conscious of facing a still different man,--an oldish, fat man with +thinning hair and tired, wistful eyes. + +"I just happened to think of what you said to me not long ago," Gower +explained. "It struck me as funny. But that isn't how I feel. If you +want this land you can have it. Take a chair. Sit down. I want to talk +to you." + +"There is nothing the matter with my legs," MacRae said shortly. "I do +want this land. I will pay you the price you paid for it, in cash, when +you execute a legal transfer. Is that satisfactory?" + +"What about this house?" Gower asked casually. "It's worth something, +isn't it?" + +"Not to me," MacRae replied. "I don't want the house. You can take it +away with you, if you like." + +Gower looked at him thoughtfully. + +"The Scotch," he said, "cherish a grudge like a family heirloom." + +"Perhaps they do," MacRae answered. "Why not? If you knock a man down +you don't expect him to jump up and shake hands with you. You had your +inning. It was a long one." + +"I wonder," Gower said slowly, "why old Donald MacRae kept his mouth +closed to you about trouble between us until he was ready to die?" + +"How do you know he did that?" MacRae demanded harshly. + +"The night you came to ask for the _Arrow_ to take him to town you had +no such feeling against me as you have had since," Gower said. "I know +you didn't. You wouldn't have come if you had. I cut no figure in your +eyes, one way or the other, until after he was dead. So he must have +told you at the very last. What did he tell you? Why did he have to pass +that old poison on to another generation?" + +"Why shouldn't he?" MacRae demanded. "You made his life a failure. You +put a scar on his face--I can remember when I was a youngster wondering +how he got that mark--I remember how it stood like a ridge across his +cheek bone when he was dead. You put a scar upon his soul that no one +but himself ever saw or felt--except as I have been able to feel it +since I knew. You weren't satisfied with that. You had to keep on +throwing your weight against him for thirty years. You didn't even stop +when the war made everything seem different. You might have let up +then. We were doing our bit. But you didn't. You kept on until you had +deprived him of everything but the power to row around the Rock day +after day and take a few salmon in order to live. You made a pauper of +him and sat here gloating over it. It preyed on his mind to think that I +should come back from France and find myself a beggar because he was +unable to cope with you. He lived his life without whimpering to me, +except to say he did not like you. He only wrote this down for me to +read--when he began to feel that he would never see me again--the +reasons why he had failed in everything, lost everything. When I pieced +out the story, from the day you used your pike pole to knock down a man +whose fighting hands were tied by a promise to a woman he loved, from +then till the last cold-blooded maneuver by which you got this land of +ours, I hated you, and I set out to pay you back in your own coin. + +"But," MacRae continued after a momentary hesitation, "that is not what +I came here to say. Talk--talk's cheap. I would rather not talk about +these things, or think of them, now. I want to buy this land from you if +you are willing to sell. That's all." + +Gower scarcely seemed to hear him. He was nursing his heavy chin with +one hand, looking at MacRae with a curious concentration, looking at him +and seeing something far beyond. + +"Hell; it is a true indictment, up to a certain point," he said at last. +"What a curse misunderstanding is--and pride! By God, I have envied your +father, MacRae, many a time. I struck him an ugly blow once. Yes. I was +young and hot-headed, and I was burning with jealousy. But I did him a +good turn at that, I think. I--oh, well, maybe you wouldn't understand. +I suppose you wouldn't believe me if I say I didn't swoop down on him +every time I got a chance; that I didn't bushwhack--no matter if he +believed I did." + +"No?" MacRae said incredulously. "You didn't break up a logging venture +on the Claha when he had a chance to make a stake? You didn't show your +fine Italian hand in that marble quarry undertaking on Texada? Nor other +things that I could name as he named them. Why crawl now? It doesn't +matter. I'm not swinging a club over your head." + +Gower shook himself. + +"No," he declared slowly. "He interfered with the Morton interests in +that Claha logging camp, and they did whatever was done. The quarry +business I know nothing about, except that I had business dealings with +the people whom he ran foul of. I tell you, MacRae, after the first +short period of time when I was afire with the fury of jealousy, I did +not do these things. I didn't even want to do them. I wish you would get +that straight. I wanted Bessie Morton and I got her. That was an issue +between us, I grant. I gained my point there. I would have gone farther +to gain that point. But I paid for it. It was not so long before I knew +that I was going to pay dearly for it. I tell you I came to envy Donald +MacRae. I don't know if he nursed a disappointment--which I came to know +was an illusion. Perhaps he did. But he had nothing real to regret, +nothing to prick, prick him all the time. He married a woman who seemed +to care for him. At any rate, she respected him and was a mate, living +his life while she did live. + +"Look, MacRae. I married Bessie Morton because I wanted her, wanted her +on any terms. She didn't want me. She wanted Donald MacRae. But she had +wanted other men. That was the way she was made. She was facile. And +she never loved any one half so much as she loved herself. She was only +a beautiful peacock preening her feathers and sighing for homage. She +was--she is--the essence of self from the top of her head to her shoes. +Her feelings, her wants, her wishes, her whims, her two-by-four outlook, +nothing else counted. She couldn't comprehend anything outside of +herself. She would have made Donald MacRae's life a misery to him when +the novelty of that infatuation wore off. The Mortons are like that. +They want everything. They give nothing. + +"She was cowardly too. Do you think two old men and myself would have +taken her, or anything else, from your father out in the middle of the +Gulf, if she had had any spirit? You knew your father. He wasn't a tame +man. He would have fought--fought like a tiger. We might have killed +him. It is more likely that he would have killed us. But we could not +have beaten him. But she had to knuckle down--take the easy way for her. +She cried; and he promised." + +Gower lay back in his chair. His chin sunk on his breast. He spoke +slowly, groping for his words. MacRae did not interrupt. Something +compelled him to listen. There was a pained ring in Gower's voice that +held him. The man was telling him these things with visible reluctance, +with a simple dignity that arrested him, even while he felt that he +should not listen. + +"She used to taunt me with that," he went on, "taunt me with striking +Donald MacRae. For years after we were married she used to do that. Long +after--and that wasn't so long--she had ceased to care if such a man as +your father existed. That was only an episode to her, of which she was +snobbishly ashamed in time. But she often reminded me that I had struck +him like a hardened butcher, because she knew she could hurt me with +that. So that I used to wish to God I had never followed her out into +the Gulf. + +"For thirty years I've lived and worked and never known any real +satisfaction in living--or happiness. I've played the game, played it +hard. I've been hard, they say. Probably I have. I didn't care. A man +had to walk on others or be walked on himself. I made money. Money--I +poured it into her hands, like pouring sand in a rat-hole. She lived for +herself, her whims, her codfish-aristocracy standards, spending my money +like water to make a showing, giving me nothing in return, nothing but +whining and recrimination if I crossed her ever so little. She made a +lap dog of her son the first twenty-five years of his life. She would +have made Betty a cheap imitation of herself. But she couldn't do that." + +He stopped a moment and shook his head gently. + +"No," he resumed, "she couldn't do that. There's iron in that girl. +She's all Gower. I think I should have thrown up my hands long ago only +for Betty's sake." + +MacRae shifted uneasily. + +"You see," Gower continued, "my life has been a failure, too. When +Donald MacRae and I clashed, I prevailed. I got what I wanted. But it +was only a shadow. There was no substance. It didn't do me any good. I +have made money, barrels of it, and that has not done me any good. I've +been successful at everything I undertook--except lately--but succeeding +as the world reckons success hasn't made me happy. In my personal life +I've been a damned failure. I've always been aware of that. And if I +have held a feeling toward Donald MacRae these thirty-odd years, it was +a feeling of envy. I would have traded places with him and been the +gainer. I would have liked to tell him so. But I couldn't. He was a dour +Scotchman and I suppose he hated me, although he kept it to himself. I +suppose he loved Bessie. I know I did. Perhaps he cherished hatred of me +for wrecking his dream, and so saw my hand in things where it never was. +But he was wrong. Bessie would have wrecked it and him too. She would +have whined and sniffled about being a poor man's wife, once she learned +what it was to be poor. She could never understand anything but a +silk-lined existence. She loved herself and her own illusions. She would +have driven him mad with her petty whims, her petty emotions. She +doesn't know the meaning of loyalty, consideration, or even an open, +honest hatred. And I've stood it all these years--because I don't shirk +responsibilities, and I had brought it on myself." + +He stopped a second, staring out across the Gulf. + +"But apart from that one thing, I never consciously or deliberately +wronged Donald MacRae. He may honestly have believed I did. I have the +name of being hard. I dare say I am. The world is a hard place. When I +had to choose between walking on a man's face and having my own walked +on, I never hesitated. There was nothing much to make me soft. I moved +along the same lines as most of the men I know. + +"But, I repeat, I never put a straw in your father's way. I know that +things went against him. I could see that. I knew why, too. He was too +square for his time and place. He trusted men too much. You can't always +do that. He was too scrupulously honest. He always gave the other fellow +the best of it. That alone beat him. He didn't always consider his own +interest and follow up every advantage. I don't think he cared to +scramble for money, as a man must scramble for it these days. He could +have held this place if he had cast about for ways to do so. There were +plenty of loopholes. But he had that old-fashioned honor which doesn't +seek loopholes. He had borrowed money on it. He would have taken the +coat off his back, beggared himself any day to pay a debt. Isn't that +right?" + +MacRae nodded. + +"So this place came into my hands. It was deliberate on my part--but +only, mind you, when I knew that he was bound to lose it. Perhaps it was +bad judgment on my part. I didn't think that he would see it as an end +I'd been working for. As I grew older, I found myself wanting now and +then to wipe out that old score between us. I would have given a good +deal to sit down with him over a pipe. A woman, who wasn't much as women +go, had made us both suffer. So I built this cottage and came here to +stay now and then. I liked the place. I liked to think that now he and I +were getting to be old men, we could be friends. But he was too bitter. +And I'm human. I've got a bit of pride. I couldn't crawl. So I never got +nearer to him than to see him rowing around the Rock. And he died full +of that bitterness. I don't like to think of that. Still, it cannot be +helped. Do you grasp this, MacRae? Do you believe me?" + +Incredible as it seemed, MacRae had no choice but to accept that +explanation of strangely twisted motives, those misapprehensions, the +murky cloud of misunderstanding. The tone of Gower's voice, his +attitude, carried supreme conviction. And still-- + +"Yes," he said at last. "It is all a contradiction of things I have been +passionately sure of for nearly two years. But I can see--yes, it must +be as you say. I'm sorry." + +"Sorry? For what?" Gower regarded him soberly. + +"Many things. Why did you tell me this?" + +"Why should the anger and bitterness of two old men be passed on to +their children?" Gower asked him gently. + +MacRae stared at him. Did he know? Had he guessed? Had Betty told him? +He wondered. It was not like Betty to have spoken of what had passed +between them. Yet he did not know how close a bond might exist between +this father and daughter, who were, MacRae was beginning to perceive, +most singularly alike. And this was a shrewd old man, sadly wise in +human weaknesses, and much more tolerant than MacRae had conceived +possible. He felt a little ashamed of the malice with which he had +fought this battle of the salmon around Squitty Island. Yet Gower by his +own admission was a hard man. He had lived with a commercial sword in +his hand. He knew what it was to fall by that weapon. He had been hard +on the fishermen. He had exploited them mercilessly. Therein lay his +weakness, whereby he had fallen, through which MacRae had beaten him. +But had he beaten him? MacRae was not now so sure about that. But it was +only a momentary doubt. He struggled a little against the reaction of +kindliness, this curious sympathy for Gower which moved him now. He +hated sentimentalism, facile yielding to shallow emotions. He wanted to +talk and he was dumb. Dumb for appropriate words, because his mind kept +turning with passionate eagerness upon Betty Gower. + +"Does Betty know what you have just told me?" he asked at last. + +Gower shook his head. + +"She knows there is something. I can't tell her. I don't like to. It +isn't a nice story. I don't shine in it--nor her mother." + +"Nor do I," MacRae muttered to himself. + +He stood looking over the porch rail down on the sea where the _Blanco_ +swung at her anchor chain. There seemed nothing more to say. Yet he was +aware of Gower's eyes upon him with something akin to expectancy. An +uncertain smile flitted across MacRae's face. + +"This has sort of put me on my beam ends," he said, using a sailor's +phrase. "Don't you feel as if I'd rather done you up these two seasons?" + +Gower's heavy features lightened with a grimace of amusement. + +"Well," he said, "you certainly cost me a lot of money, one way and +another. But you had the nerve to go at it--and you used better judgment +of men and conditions than anybody has manifested in the salmon business +lately, unless it's young Abbott. So I suppose you are entitled to win +on your merits. By the way, there is one condition tacked to selling you +this ranch. I hesitated about bringing it up at first. I would like to +keep this cottage and a strip of ground a hundred and fifty feet wide +running down to the beach." + +"All right," MacRae agreed. "We can arrange that later. I'll come +again." + +He set foot on the porch steps. Then he turned back. A faint flush stole +up in his sun-browned face. He held out his hand. + +"Shall we cry quits?" he asked. "Shall we shake hands and forget it?" + +Gower rose to his feet. He did not say anything, but the grip in his +thick, stubby fingers almost made Jack MacRae wince,--and he was a +strong-handed man himself. + +"I'm glad you came to-day," Gower said huskily. "Come again--soon." + +He stood on the porch and watched MacRae stride down to the beach and +put off in his dinghy. Then he took out a handkerchief and blew his nose +with a tremendous amount of unnecessary noise and gesture. There was +something suspiciously like moisture brightening his eyes. + +But when he saw MacRae stand in the dinghy alongside the _Blanco_ and +speak briefly to his men, then row in under Point Old behind Poor Man's +Rock which the tide was slowly baring, when he climbed up over the Point +and took the path along the cliff edge, that suspicious brightness in +Gower's keen old eyes was replaced by a twinkle. He sat down in his +grass chair and hummed a little tune, the while one slippered foot kept +time, rat-a-pat, on the floor of the porch. + + + + +CHAPTER XXI + +As it Was in the Beginning + + +MacRae followed the path along the cliffs. He did not look for Betty. +His mind was on something else, engrossed in considerations which had +little to do with love. If it be true that a man keeps his loves and +hates and hobbies and ambitions and appetites in separate chambers, any +of which may be for a time so locked that what lies therein neither +troubles nor pleases him, then that chamber in which he kept Betty +Gower's image was hermetically sealed. Her figure was obscured by other +figures,--his father and Horace Gower and himself. + +Not until he had reached the Cove's head and come to his own house did +he recall that Betty had gone along the cliffs, and that he had not seen +her as he passed. But that could easily happen, he knew, in that mile +stretch of trees and thickets, those deep clefts and pockets in the +rocky wall that frowned upon the sea. + +He went into the house. Out of a box on a shelf in his room he took the +message his father had left him and sitting down in the shadowy coolness +of the outer room began to read it again, slowly, with infinite care for +the reality his father had meant to convey. + +All his life, as Jack remembered him, Donald MacRae had been a silent +man, who never talked of how he felt, how things affected him, who never +was stricken with that irresistible impulse to explain and discuss, to +relieve his troubled soul with words, which afflicts so many men. It +seemed as if he had saved it all for that final summing-up which was to +be delivered by his pen instead of his lips. He had become articulate +only at the last. It must have taken him weeks upon weeks to write it +all down, this autobiography which had been the mainspring of his son's +actions for nearly two years. There was wind and sun in it, and blue sky +and the gray Gulf heaving; somber colors, passion and grief, an apology +and a justification. + +MacRae laid down the last page and went outside to sit on the steps. +Shadows were gathering on the Cove. Far out, the last gleam of the sun +was touching the Gulf. A slow swell was rising before some far, +unheralded wind. The _Blanco_ came gliding in and dropped anchor. +Trollers began to follow. They clustered about the big carrier like +chickens under the mother wing. By these signs MacRae knew that the fish +had stopped biting, that it was lumpy by Poor Man's Rock. He knew there +was work aboard. But he sat there, absent-eyed, thinking. + +He was full of understanding pity for his father, and also for Horace +Gower. He was conscious of being a little sorry for himself. But then he +had only been troubled a short two years by this curious aftermath of +old passions, whereas they had suffered all their lives. He had got a +new angle from which to approach his father's story. He knew now that he +had reacted to something that was not there. He had been filled with a +thirst for vengeance, for reprisal, and he had declared war on Gower, +when that was not his father's intent. Old Donald MacRae had hated Gower +profoundly in the beginning. He believed that Gower hated him and had +put the weight of his power against him, wherever and whenever he +could. But life itself had beaten him,--and not Gower. That was what he +had been trying to tell his son. + +And life itself had beaten Gower in a strangely similar fashion. He too +was old, a tired, disappointed man. He had reached for material success +with one hand and happiness with the other. One had always eluded him. +The other Jack MacRae had helped wrest from him. MacRae could see +Gower's life in detached pictures, life that consisted of making money +and spending it, life with a woman who whined and sniffled and +complained. These things had been a slow torture. MacRae could no longer +regard this man as a squat ogre, merciless, implacable, ready and able +to crush whatsoever opposed him. He was only a short, fat, oldish man +with tired eyes, who had been bruised by forces he could not understand +or cope with until he had achieved a wistful tolerance for both things +and men. + +Both these old men, MacRae perceived, had made a terrible hash of their +lives. Neither of them had succeeded in getting out of life much that a +man instinctively feels that he should get. Both had been capable of +happiness. Both had struggled for happiness as all men struggle. Neither +had ever securely grasped any measure of it, nor even much of content. + +MacRae felt a chilly uncertainty as he sat on his doorstep considering +this. He had been traveling the same road for many months,--denying his +natural promptings, stifling a natural passion, surrendering himself to +an obsession of vindictiveness, planning and striving to return evil for +what he conceived to be evil, and being himself corrupted by the +corrosive forces of hatred. + +He had been diligently bestowing pain on Betty, who loved him quite +openly and frankly as he desired to be loved; Betty, who was innocent of +these old coils of bitterness, who was primitive enough in her emotions, +MacRae suspected, to let nothing stand between her and her chosen mate +when that mate beckoned. + +But she was proud. He knew that he had puzzled her to the point of +anger, hurt her in a woman's most vital spot. + +"I've been several kinds of a fool," MacRae said to himself. "I have +been fooling myself." + +He had said to himself once, in a somber mood, that life was nothing but +a damned dirty scramble in which a man could be sure of getting hurt. +But it struck him now that he had been sedulously inflicting those hurts +upon himself. Nature cannot be flouted. She exacts terrible penalties +for the stifling, the inhibition, the deflection of normal instincts, +fundamental impulses. He perceived the operation of this in his father's +life, in the thirty years of petty conflict between Horace Gower and his +wife. And he had unconsciously been putting himself and Betty in the way +of similar penalties by exalting revenge for old, partly imagined wrongs +above that strange magnetic something which drew them together. + +Twilight was at hand. Looking through the maple and alder fringe before +his house MacRae saw the fishing boats coming one after the other, +clustering about the _Blanco_. He went down and slid the old green +dugout afloat and so gained the deck of his vessel. For an hour +thereafter he worked steadily until all the salmon were delivered and +stowed in the _Blanco's_ chilly hold. + +He found it hard to keep his mind on the count of salmon, on money to be +paid each man, upon these common details of his business. His thought +reached out in wide circles, embracing many things, many persons: +Norman Gower and Dolly, who had had courage to put the past behind them +and reach for happiness together; Stubby Abbott and Etta Robbin-Steele, +who were being flung together by the same inscrutable forces within +them. Love might not truly make the world go round, but it was a +tremendous motive power in human actions. Like other dynamic forces it +had its dangerous phases. Love, as MacRae had experienced it, was a +curious mixture of affection and desire, of flaming passion and infinite +tenderness. Betty Gower warmed him like a living flame when he let her +take possession of his thought. She was all that his fancy could conjure +as desirable. She was his mate. He had felt that, at times, with a +conviction beyond reason or logic ever since the night he kissed her in +the Granada. If fate, or the circumstances he had let involve him, +should juggle them apart, he felt that the years would lead him down +long, drab corridors. + +And he was suddenly determined that should not happen. His imagination +flung before him kinetoscopic flashes of what his father's life had been +and Horace Gower's. That vision appalled MacRae. He would not let it +happen,--not to him and Betty. + +He washed, ate his supper, lay on his bunk in the pilot house and smoked +a cigarette. Then he went out on deck. The moon crept up in a cloudless +sky, dimming the stars. There was no wind about the island. But there +was wind loose somewhere on the Gulf. The glass was falling. The swells +broke more heavily along the cliffs. At the mouth of the Cove white +sheets of spray lifted as each comber reared and broke in that narrow +place. + +He recollected that he had left the _Blanco's_ dinghy hauled up on the +beach on the tip of Point Old. He got ashore now in the green dugout and +walked across to the Point. + +A man is seldom wholly single-track in his ideas, his impulses. MacRae +thought of the dinghy. He had a care for its possible destruction by the +rising sea. But he thought also of Betty. There was a pleasure in simply +looking at the house in which she lived. Lights glowed in the windows. +The cottage glistened in the moonlight. + +When he came out on the tip of the Point the dinghy, he saw, lay safe +where he had dragged it up on the rocks. And when he had satisfied +himself of this he stood with hands thrust deep in his pockets, looking +down on Poor Man's Rock, watching the swirl and foam as each swell ran +over its sunken head. + +MacRae had a subconscious perception of beauty, beauty of form and +color. It moved him without his knowing why. He was in a mood to respond +to beauty this night. He had that buoyant, grateful feeling which comes +to a man when he has escaped some great disaster, when he is suddenly +freed from some grim apprehension of the soul. + +The night was one of wonderful beauty. The moon laid its silver path +across the sea. The oily swells came up that moon-path in undulating +folds to break in silver fragments along the shore. The great island +beyond the piercing shaft of the Ballenas light and the mainland far to +his left lifted rugged mountains sharp against the sky. From the +southeast little fluffs of cloud, little cottony flecks white as virgin +snow, sailed before the wind that mothered the swells. But there was no +wind on Squitty yet. There was breathless stillness except for the low, +spaced mutter of the surf. + +He stood a long time, drinking in the beauty of it all,--the sea and +the moon-path, and the hushed, dark woods behind. + +Then his gaze, turning slowly, fell on something white in the shadow of +a bushy, wind-distorted fir a few feet away. He looked more closely. His +eyes gradually made out a figure in a white sweater sitting on a flat +rock, elbows on knees, chin resting in cupped palms. + +He walked over. Betty's eyes were fixed on him. He stared down at her, +suddenly tongue-tied, a queer constricted feeling in his throat. She did +not speak. + +"Were you sitting here when I came along?" he asked at last. + +"Yes," she said. "I often come up here. I have been sitting here for +half an hour." + +MacRae sat down beside her. His heart seemed to be trying to choke him. +He did not know where to begin, or how, and there was much he wanted to +say that he must say. Betty did not even take her chin out of her palms. +She stared out at the sea, rolling up to Squitty in silver windrows. + +MacRae put one arm around her and drew her up close to him, and Betty +settled against him with a little sigh. Her fingers stole into his free +hand. For a minute they sat like that. Then he tilted her head back, +looked down into the gray pools of her eyes, and kissed her. + +"You stood there looking down at the sea as if you were in a dream," she +whispered; "and all the time I was crying inside of me for you to come +to me. And presently, I suppose, you will go away." + +"No," he said. "This time I have come for good." + +"I knew you would, sometime," she murmured. "At least, I hoped you +would. I wanted you so badly." + +"But because one wants a thing badly it doesn't always follow that one +gets it." + +MacRae was thinking of his father when he spoke. + +"I know that," Betty said. "But I knew that you wanted me, you see. And +I had faith that you would brush away the cobwebs somehow. I've been +awfully angry at you sometimes. It's horrible to feel that there is an +imaginary wall between you and some one you care for." + +"There is no wall now," MacRae said. + +"Was there ever one, really?" + +"There seemed to be." + +"And now there is none?" + +"None at all." + +"Sure?" she murmured. + +"Honest Injun," MacRae smiled. "I went to see your father to-day about a +simple matter of business. And I found--I learned--oh, well, it doesn't +matter. I buried the hatchet. We are going to be married and live +happily ever after." + +"Well," Betty said judiciously, "we shall have as good a chance as any +one, I think. Look at Norman and Dolly. I positively trembled for +them--after Norman getting into that mess over in England. He never +exactly shone as a real he-man, that brother of mine, you know. But they +are really happy, Jack. They make me envious." + +"I think you're a little hard on that brother of yours," MacRae said. He +was suddenly filled with a great charity toward all mankind. "He never +had much of a chance, from all I can gather." + +He went on to tell her what Norman had told him that afternoon on the +hill above the Cove. But Betty interrupted. + +"Oh, I know that now," she declared. "Daddy told me just recently. +Daddy knew what Norman was doing over there. In fact, he showed me a +letter from some British military authority praising Norman for the work +he did. But Daddy kept mum when Norman came home and those nasty rumors +began to go around. He thought it better for Norman to take his +medicine. He was afraid mother would smother him with money and insist +on his being a proper lounge lizard again, and so he would gradually +drop back into his old uselessness. Daddy was simply tickled stiff when +Norman showed his teeth--when he cut loose from everything and married +Dolly, and all that. He's a very wise old man, that father of mine, +Jack. He hasn't ever got much real satisfaction in his life. He has been +more content this last month or so than I can ever remember him. We have +always had loads of money, and while it's nice to have plenty, I don't +think it did him any good. My whole life has been lived in an atmosphere +of domestic incompatibility. I think I should make a very capable +wife--I have had so many object lessons in how not to be. My mother +wasn't a success either as a wife or a mother. It is a horrible thing to +say, but it's really true, Jack. Mamma's a very well-bred, +distinguished-looking person with exquisite taste in dress and dinner +parties, and that's about the only kind thing I can say for her. Do you +really love me, Jack? Heaps and heaps?" + +She shot this question at him with a swift change of tone and an +earnestness which straightway drove out of MacRae's mind every +consideration save the proper and convincing answer to such intimate +questions. + +"Look," Betty said after a long interval. "Daddy has built a fire on the +beach. He does that sometimes, and we sit around it and roast clams in +the coals. Johnny, Johnny," she squeezed his arm with a quick pressure, +"we're going to have some good times on this island now." + +MacRae laughed indulgently. He was completely in accord with that +prophecy. + +The blaze Gower had kindled flickered and wavered, a red spot on the +duskier shore, with a yellow nimbus in which they saw him move here and +there, and sit down at last with his back to a log and his feet +stretched to the fire. + +"Let's go down," MacRae suggested, "and break the news to him." + +"I wonder what he'll say?" Betty murmured thoughtfully. + +"Haven't you any idea?" MacRae asked curiously. + +"No. Honestly, I haven't," Betty replied. "Daddy's something like you, +Jack. That is, he does and says unexpected things, now and then. No, I +really don't know what he will say." + +"We'll soon find out." + +MacRae took her hand. They went down off the backbone of the Point, +through ferns and over the long uncut grass, down to the fire where the +wash from the heavy swell outside made watery murmurs along the gravelly +beach. + +Gower looked up at them, waited for them to speak. + +"Betty and I are going to be married soon," MacRae announced abruptly. + +"Oh?" Gower took the pipe out of his mouth and rapped the ash out of it +in the palm of his hand. "You don't do things half-heartedly, do you, +MacRae? You deprive me of a very profitable business. You want my +ranch--and now my housekeeper." + +"Daddy!" Betty remonstrated. + +"Oh, well, I suppose I can learn to cook for myself," Gower rumbled. + +He was frowning. He looked at them staring at him, nonplussed. Suddenly +he burst into deep, chuckling laughter. + +"Sit down, sit down, and look at the fire," he said. "Bless your soul, +if you want to get married that's your own business. + +"Mind you," he chuckled after a minute, when Betty had snuggled down +beside him, and MacRae perched on the log by her, "I don't say I like +the idea. It don't seem fair for a man to raise a daughter and then have +some young fellow sail up and take her away just when she is beginning +to make herself useful." + +"Daddy, you certainly do talk awful nonsense," Betty reproved. + +"I expect you haven't talked much else the last little while," he +retorted. + +Betty subsided. MacRae smiled. There was a whimsicality about Gower's +way of taking this that pleased MacRae. + +They toasted their feet at the fire until the wavering flame burned down +to a bed of glowing coals. They talked of this and that, of everything +but themselves until the moon was swimming high and the patches of +cottony cloud sailing across the moon's face cast intense black patches +on the silvery radiance of the sea. + +"I've got some clams in a bucket," Gower said at last. "Let's roast +some. You get plates and forks and salt and pepper and butter, Bet, +while I put the clams on the fire." + +Betty went away to the house. Gower raked a flat rock, white-hot, out to +the edge of the coals and put fat quahaugs on it to roast. Then he sat +back and looked at MacRae. + +"I wonder if you realize how lucky you are?" he said. + +"I think I do," MacRae answered. "You don't seem much surprised." + +Gower smiled. + +"Well, no. I can't say I am. That first night you came to the cottage to +ask for the _Arrow_ I got a good look at you, and you struck me as a +fine, clean sort of boy, and I said to myself, 'Old Donald has never +told him anything and he has no grudge against me, and wouldn't it be a +sort of compensation if those two should fall naturally and simply in +love with each other?' Yes, it may seem sentimental, but that idea +occurred to me. Of course, it was just an idea. Betty would marry +whoever she wanted to marry. I knew that. Nothing but her own judgment +would influence her in a matter of that sort. I know. I've watched her +grow up. Maybe it's a good quality or maybe it's a bad one, but she has +always had a bull-dog sort of persistence about anything that strikes +her as really important. + +"And of course I had no way of knowing whether she would take a fancy to +you or you to her. So I just watched. And maybe I boosted the game a +little, because I'm a pretty wise old fish in my own way. I took a few +whacks at you, now and then, and she flew the storm signals without +knowing it." + +Gower smiled reminiscently, stroking his chin with his hand. + +"I had to fight you, after a fashion, to find out what sort of stuff you +were, for my own satisfaction," he continued. "I saw that you had your +Scotch up and were after my scalp, and I knew it couldn't be anything +but that old mess. That was natural. But I thought I could square that +if I could ever get close enough to you. Only I couldn't manage that +naturally. And this scramble for the salmon got me in deep before I +realized where I was. I used to feel sorry for you and Betty. I could +see it coming. You both talk with your eyes. I have seen you both when +you didn't know I was near. + +"So when I saw that you would fight me till you broke us both, and also +that if I kept on I would not only be broke but so deep in the hole that +I could never get out, I shut the damned cannery up and let everything +slide. I knew as soon as you were in shape you would try to get this +place back. That was natural. And you would have to come and talk to me +about it. I was sure I could convince you that I was partly human. So +you see this is no surprise to me. Lord, no! Why, I've been playing +chess for two years--old Donald MacRae's knight against my queen." + +He laughed and thumped MacRae on the flat of his sturdy back. + +"It might have been a stalemate, at that," MacRae said. + +"But it wasn't," Gower declared. "Well, I'll get something out of +living, after all. I've often thought I'd like to see a big, roomy house +somewhere along these cliffs, and kids playing around. You and Betty may +have your troubles, but you're starting right. You ought to get a lot +out of life. I didn't. I made money. That's all. Poured it into a rat +hole. Bessie is sitting over on Maple Point in a big drafty house with +two maids and a butler, a two-thousand-acre estate, and her pockets full +of Victory Bonds. She isn't happy, and she never can be. She never cared +for anybody but herself, not even her children, and nobody cares for +her, I'm all but broke, and I'm better off than she is. I hate to think +I ever fought for her. She wasn't worth it, MacRae. That's a hell of a +thing for a man to say about a woman he lived with for over thirty +years. But it's true. It took me a good many miserable years to admit +that to myself. + +"I suppose she'll cling to her money and go on playing the _grande +dame_. And if she can get any satisfaction out of that I'm willing. I've +never known as much real peace and satisfaction as I've got now. All I +need is a place to sleep and a comfortable chair to sit in. I don't want +to chase dollars any more. All I want is to row around the Rock and +catch a few salmon now and then and sit here and look at the sea when +I'm tired. You're young, and you have all your life before you--you and +Betty. If you need money, you are pretty well able to get it for +yourself. But I'm old, and I don't want to bother." + +He rambled on until Betty came down with plates and other things. The +fat clams were opening their shells on the hot rock. They put butter and +seasoning on the tender meat and ate, talking of this and that. And when +the last clam had vanished, Gower stuffed his pipe and lit it with a +coal. He gathered up the plates and forks and rose to his feet. + +"Good night," he said benevolently. "I'm going to the house and to bed. +Don't sit out here dreaming all night, you two." + +He stumped away up the path. MacRae piled driftwood on the fire. Then he +sat down with his back against the log, and Betty snuggled beside him, +in the crook of his arm. Beyond the Point the booming of the surf rose +like far thunder. The tide was on the ebb. Poor Man's Rock bared its +kelp-thatched head. The racing swells covered it with spray that shone +in the moonlight. + +They did not talk. Speech had become nonessential. It was enough to be +together. + +So they sat, side by side, their backs to the cedar log and their feet +to the fire, talking little, dreaming much, until the fluffy clouds +scudding across the face of the moon came thicker and faster and lost +their snowy whiteness, until the radiance of the night was dimmed. + +Across the low summit of Point Old a new sound was carried to them. +Where the moonlight touched the Gulf in patches, far out, whitecaps +showed. + +"Listen," MacRae murmured. + +The wind struck them with a puff that sent sparks flying. It rose and +fell and rose again until it whistled across the Point in a steady +drone,--the chill breath of the storm-god. + +MacRae turned up Betty's wrist and looked at her watch. + +"Look at the time, Betty mine," he said. "And it's getting cold. +There'll be another day." + +He walked with her to the house. When she vanished within, blowing him a +kiss from her finger tips, MacRae cut across the Point. He laid hold of +the _Blanco's_ dinghy and drew it high to absolute safety, then stood a +minute gazing seaward, looking down on the Rock. Clouds obscured the +moon now. A chill darkness hid distant shore lines and mountain ranges +which had stood plain in the moon-glow, a darkness full of rushing, +roaring wind and thundering seas. Poor Man's Rock was a vague bulk in +the gloom, forlorn and lonely, hidden under great bursts of spray as +each wave leaped and broke with a hiss and a roar. + +MacRae braced himself against the southeaster. It ruffled his hair, +clawed at him with strong, invisible fingers. It shrieked its fury among +the firs, stunted and leaning all awry from the buffeting of many +storms. + +He took a last look behind him. The lights in Gower's house were out and +the white-walled cottage stood dim against the darkened hillside. Then +MacRae, smiling to himself in the dark, set out along the path that led +to Squitty Cove. + + + + +THE END + + + + + +By the author of "Big Timber" + +NORTH OF FIFTY-THREE + +By BERTRAND W. SINCLAIR + +Illustrated. 12mo. Cloth. + + * * * * * + +He has created the atmosphere of the frozen North with wonderful +realism.--_Boston Globe_. + +Mr. Sinclair's two characters are exceptionally well-drawn and +sympathetic. His style is robust and vigorous. His pictures of Canadian +life stimulating.--_New York Nation_. + +Mr. Sinclair sketches with bold strokes as befits a subject set amid +limitless surroundings. The book is readable and shows consistent +progress in the art of novel writing.--_St. Louis Globe-Democrat_. + +An unusually good story of the conflict between a man and a woman. It is +a readable, well written book showing much observation and good sense. +The hero is a fine fellow and manages to have his fling at a good many +conventions without being tedious.--_New York Sun_. + +The story is well written. It is rich in strong situation, romance and +heart-stirring scenes, both of the emotional and courage-stirring order. +It ranks with the best of its type.--_Springfield Republican_. + + * * * * * + +LITTLE, BROWN & CO., Publishers + +34 Beacon St., Boston. + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Poor Man's Rock, by Bertrand W. 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