Poor Man's Rock

by Bertrand W. Sinclair

  CHAPTER VI

  The Springboard

  With a basic knowledge to start from, any reasonably clever man candigest an enormous amount of information about any given industry in avery brief time. Jack MacRae spent three weeks in Vancouver as a one-mancommission, self-appointed, to inquire into the fresh-salmon trade. Hetalked to men who caught salmon and to men who sold them, both wholesaleand retail. He apprised himself of the ins and outs of salmon canning,and of the independent fish collector who owned his own boat, financedhimself, and chanced the market much as a farmer plants his seed, truststo the weather, and makes or loses according to the yield andmarket,--two matters over which he can have no control.

  MacRae learned before long that old Manuel Ferrara was right when hesaid no man could profitably buy salmon unless he had a cast-ironagreement either with a cannery or a big wholesaler. MacRae soon sawthat the wholesaler stood like a wall between the fishermen and thosewho ate fish. They could make or break a buyer. MacRae was not longrunning afoul of the rumor that the wholesale fish men controlled theretail price of fresh fish by the simple method of controlling thesupply, which they managed by cooeperation instead of competition amongthemselves. He heard this stated. And more,--that behind the big dealersstood the shadowy figure of the canning colossus. This was told himcasually by fishermen. Fish buyers repeated it, sometimes with a touchof indignation. That was one of their wails,--the fish combine. It wasair-tight, they said. The packers had a strangle hold on the fishingwaters, and the big local fish houses had the same unrelenting grip onthe market.

  Therefore the ultimate consumer--whose exploitation was the prize plumof commercial success--paid thirty cents per pound for spring salmonthat a fisherman chivied about in the tumbling Gulf seas fifty milesup-coast had to take fourteen cents for. As for the salmon packers, themen who pack the good red fish in small round tins which go to all theends of the earth to feed hungry folk,--well, no one knew _their_profits. Their pack was all exported. The back yards of Europe arestrewn with empty salmon cans bearing a British Columbia label. But theymade money enough to be a standing grievance to those unable to get inon this bonanza.

  MacRae, however, was chiefly concerned with the local trade in freshsalmon. His plan didn't look quite so promising as when he mulled overit at Squitty Cove. He put out feelers and got no hold. A fresh-fishbuyer operating without approved market connections might make aboutsuch a living as the fishermen he bought from. To Jack MacRae, eager andsanguine, making a living was an inconspicuous detail. Making aliving,--that was nothing to him. A more definite spur roweled hisflank.

  It looked like an air-tight proposition, he admitted, at last. But, hesaid to himself, anything air-tight could be punctured. And undoubtedlya fine flow of currency would result from such a puncture. So he kepton looking about, asking casual questions, listening. In the language ofthe street he was getting wise.

  Incidentally he enjoyed himself. The battle ground had been transferredto Paris. The pen, the typewriter, and the press dispatch, with immensereserves of oratory and printer's ink, had gone into action. And thesoldiers were coming home,--officers of the line and airmen first, sinceto these leave and transportation came easily, now that the guns weresilent. 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 wasover. And they had the social instinct. During intervals of fightingthey 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 whenhe met another R.A.F. man. So he found himself invited to homes, theinside of which he would otherwise never have seen, and to pleasantfunctions among people who would never have known of his existence savefor the circumstance of war. Pretty, well-bred girls smiled at him,partly because airmen with notable records were still a novelty, andpartly because Jack MacRae was worth a second look from any girl who wasfancy-free. Matrons were kind to him because their sons said he was theright sort, and some of these same matrons mothered him because he waslike boys they knew who had gone away to France and would never comeback.

  This was very pleasant. MacRae was normal in every respect. He liked todance. 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 hisobjective. These people could relax and give themselves up to enjoymentbecause they were "heeled"--as a boy lieutenant slangily put it--toMacRae.

  "It's a great game, Jack, if you don't weaken," he said. "But a fellowcan't play it through on a uniform and a war record. I'm having atop-hole time, but it'll be different when I plant myself at a desk insome 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 youcan't stay in it without a bank roll."

  Which was true enough. Only the desire to "see it through" socially wasnot driving Jack MacRae. He had a different target, and his eye did notwander far from the mark. And perhaps because of this, chance and hissocial gadding about gave him the opening he sought when he leastexpected to find one.

  To be explicit, he happened to be one of an after-theater party at aninformal supper dance in the Granada, which is to Vancouver what theBiltmore is to New York or the Fairmont to San Francisco,--a place whereone can see everybody that is anybody if one lingers long enough. Andalmost the first man he met was a stout, ruddy-faced youngster about hisown age. They had flown in the same squadron until "Stubby" Abbott camea cropper and was invalided home.

  Stubby fell upon Jack MacRae, pounded him earnestly on the back, andhaled him straight to a table where two women were sitting.

  "Mother," he said to a plump, middle-aged woman, "here's Silent JohnMacRae."

  Her eyes lit up pleasantly.

  "I've heard of you," she said, and her extended hand put the pressureof the seal of sincerity on her words. "I've wanted to thank you. Youcan scarcely know what you did for us. Stubby's the only man in thefamily, 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 wasvery fair with eyes of true violet, a baby-doll sort of young woman, andshe took possession of Jack MacRae as easily and naturally as if she hadknown him for years. They drifted away in a dance, sat the next one outtogether with Stubby and a slim young thing in orange satin whose talkran undeviatingly upon dances and sports and motor trips, past andanticipated. Listening to her, Jack MacRae fell dumb. Her father wasworth half a million. Jack wondered how much of it he would give toendow his daughter with a capacity for thought. A label on her programmaterialized to claim her presently. Stubby looked after her andgrinned. MacRae looked thoughtful. The girl was pretty, almostbeautiful. 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 mydepth, I'm afraid," said he. "I can't follow her."

  "She'd lead you a chase if you tried," Stubby grinned and saunteredaway to smoke.

  "Is that sarcasm?" Nelly drawled. "I wonder if you are called SilentJohn 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 knowNorman 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 hasbeen whispered about that he pulled every string to keep away from thefront,--that all he has done over there is to hold down cushy jobs
inEngland. Did you ever hear any such talk?"

  "We were too busy to gossip about the boys at home, except to envythem." 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 talkingto Stubby. Come over and meet her. They've been up on their island for along time, while the flu raged."

  MacRae couldn't very well avoid it without seeming rude or making anexplanation which he did not intend to make to any one. His grudgeagainst the Gower clan was focused on Horace Gower. His feeling had notabated a jot. But it was a personal matter, something to remain lockedin his own breast. So he perforce went with Nelly Abbott and was dulypresented 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 toMacRae:

  "Who are you with, Jack?"

  "The Robbin-Steeles."

  "If I don't get a chance to talk to you again, come out to the houseto-morrow," Stubby said. "The mater said so, and I want to talk to youabout 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 himselfchatty with Betty Gower. She was graceful and clear-eyed, a vigorouslyhealthy girl with a touch of color in her cheeks that came out ofNature's rouge pot. But MacRae was subtly conscious of a stiffnessbetween 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 takeeverything a fellow says so seriously as that?"

  "No. It wasn't so much what you said as the way you said it," shereplied. "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 dressesand ropes of pearls," he drawled. "Would you care to take on thecoaching 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. BettyGower was nice,--he had to admit it. To glide around on a polished floorwith his arm around her waist, her soft hand clasped in his, and herface close to his own, her grayish-blue eyes, which were so very likehis own, now smiling and now soberly reflective, was not the way tocarry on an inherited feud. He couldn't subject himself to thatpeculiarly feminine attraction which Betty Gower bore like an aura andnurse a grudge. In fact, he had no grudge against Betty Gower exceptthat she was the daughter of her father. And he couldn't explain to herthat he hated her father because of injustice and injury done beforeeither of them was born. In the genial atmosphere of the Granada thatsort of thing did not seem nearly so real, so vivid, as when he stood onthe cliffs of Squitty listening to the pound of the surf. Then it welledup in him like a flood,--the resentment for all that Gower had made hisfather suffer, for those thirty years of reprisal which had culminatedin reducing his patrimony to an old log house and a garden patch out ofall that wide sweep of land along the southern face of Squitty. Helooked at Betty and wished silently that she were,--well, StubbyAbbott's sister. He could be as nice as he wanted to then. Whereupon,instinctively feeling himself upon dangerous ground, he diverged fromthe personal, talked without saying much until the music stopped andthey found seats. And when another partner claimed Betty, Jack as amatter of courtesy had to rejoin his own party.

  The affair broke up at length. MacRae slept late the next morning. Bythe time he had dressed and breakfasted and taken a flying trip to CoalHarbor to look over a forty-five-foot fish carrier which was advertisedfor sale, he bethought himself of Stubby Abbott's request and, gettingon a car, rode out to the Abbott home. This was a roomy stone houseoccupying a sightly corner in the West End,--that sharply definedresidential area of Vancouver which real estate agents unctuously speakof as "select." There was half a block of ground in green lawn borderedwith rosebushes. The house itself was solid, homely, built for use, andbuilt to endure, all stone and heavy beams, wide windows and deepporches, and a red tile roof lifting above the gray stone walls.

  Stubby permitted MacRae a few minutes' exchange of pleasantries with hismother and sister.

  "I want to extract some useful information from this man," Stubby saidat 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 ledJack away upstairs into a small cheerful room lined with bookshelves,warmed by glowing coals in a grate, and with windows that gave a lookdown on a sandy beach facing the Gulf.

  Stubby pushed two chairs up to the fire, waved Jack to one, and extendedhis own feet to the blaze.

  "I've seen the inside of a good many homes in town lately," MacRaeobserved. "This is the homiest one yet."

  "I'll say it is," Stubby agreed. "A place that has been lived in andcared 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 withvirgin timber."

  "How'd you like to be born and grow up in a house that your fatherbuilt with a vision of future generations of his blood growing up in,"Stubby murmured, "and come home crippled after three years in the redmill 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 distastefulexperience Stubby mentioned as a possibility. He waited for Stubby to goon.

  "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 toany one but you, Jack. The mater has only a hazy idea of how thingsstand, and she's an incurable optimist anyway. Nelly and the Infant--youhaven't met the Infant yet--don't know anything about it. I tell you itput the breeze up when I got able to go into our affairs and learned howthings stood. I thought I'd get mended and then be a giddy idler for ayear or so. But it's up to me. I have to get into the collar. OtherwiseI should have stayed south all winter. You know we've just got home. Ihad to loaf in the sun for practically a year. Now I have to get busy. Idon'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'tafford to keep up this place.

  "And I'd damn well like to keep it going." Stubby paused to light acigarette. "I like it. It's our home. We'd be deucedly sore at seeinganybody else hang up his hat and call it home. So behold in me an activecannery operator when the season opens, a conscienceless profiteer forsentiment'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 hismind. He knew that the Abbotts owned the Crow Harbor cannery, in themouth of Howe Sound just outside Vancouver Harbor. When he spoke heasked 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 cannerybusiness, 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, myfather, as you know, died while I was overseas. We own the Cro
w Harborcannery. I will say that while I was still going to school he started inteaching me the business, and he taught me the way he learned ithimself--in the cannery and among fishermen. If I do say it, I know thesalmon business from gill net and purse seine to the Iron Chink and bankadvances on the season's pack. But Abbott, senior, it seems, wasn't aprofiteer. He took the war to heart. His patriotism didn't consist ofbuying war bonds in fifty-thousand dollar lots and calling it square. Hegot in wrong by trying to keep the price of fresh fish down locally, andthe last year he lived the Crow Harbor cannery only made a normalprofit. Last season the plant operated at a loss in the hands of hiredmen. They simply didn't get the fish. The Fraser River run of sockeyehas 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. Idon't believe we will ever see another big sockeye run in the Fraseranyway. So we shall have to go up-coast to supplement the Howe Soundcatch and the few sockeyes we can get from gill-netters.

  "The Packers' Association can't hurt me--much. For one thing, I'm amember. For another, I can still swing enough capital so they wouldhesitate about using pressure. You understand. I've got to make thatCrow Harbor plant pay. I must have salmon to do so. I have to go outsidemy immediate territory to get them. If I could get enough blueback tokeep full steam from the opening of the sockeye season until the cohorun comes--there's nothing to it. I've been having this matter lookedinto pretty thoroughly. I can pay twenty per cent. over anything Gowerhas ever paid for blueback and coin money. The question is, how can Iget them positively and in quantity?"

  "Buy them," MacRae put in softly.

  "Of course," Stubby agreed. "But buying direct means collecting. I havethe carriers, true. But where am I going to find men to whom I can turnover a six-thousand-dollar boat and a couple of thousand dollars in cashand say to him, 'Go buy me salmon'? His only interest in the matter ishis 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 Squittyanyway for the fresh-fish market in town if I can make a sure-deliveryconnection. I know those grounds. I know a lot of fishermen. If you'llgive me twenty per cent. over Gower prices for bluebacks delivered atCrow Harbor I'll get them."

  "This grows interesting." Stubby straightened in his chair. "I thoughtyou were going to ranch it! Lord, I remember the night we sat watchingfor the bombers to come back from a raid and you first told me aboutthat place of yours on Squitty Island. Seems ages ago--yet it isn'tlong. As I remember, you were planning all sorts of things you and yourfather 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 fluthe night I got home. The ranch, or all of it but the old log house Iwas born in and a patch of ground the size of a town lot, has gone theway 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'mfor 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 endof 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 minutestaring out to sea, looking in that direction by chance, because thewindow happened to face that way, to where the Gulf haze lifted above afaint 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 aboutthis fish business. If you think you can get them, I'll certainly go youon that twenty per cent. proposition--up to the point where Gower boostsme out of the game, if that is possible. We shall have to readjust ourarrangement then."

  "Will you give me a contract to that effect?" MacRae asked.

  "Absolutely. We'll get together at the office to-morrow and draft anagreement."

  They shook hands to bind the bargain, grinning at each other a trifleself-consciously.

  "Have you a suitable boat?" Stubby asked after a little.

  "No," MacRae admitted. "But I have been looking around. I find that Ican charter one cheaper than I can build--until such time as I makeenough to build a fast, able carrier."

  "I'll charter you one," Stubby offered. "That's where part of our moneyis uselessly tied up, in expensive boats that never carried their weightin salmon. I'm going to sell two fifty-footers and a seine boat. There'sone called the _Blackbird_, fast, seaworthy rig, you can have at anominal rate."

  "All right," MacRae nodded. "By chartering I have enough cash in hand tofinance the buying. I'm going to start as soon as the bluebacks comeand 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 theTerminal Fish Company. The pater organized it to give Vancouver peoplecheap fish, but somehow it didn't work as he intended. It's a fairlystrong concern. I'll introduce you. They'll buy your salmon, and they'lltreat you right."

  "And now," Stubby rose and stretched his one good arm and the other thatwas 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 heartwittering 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 gomuch on Norman. But I'll say Betty Gower is some girl. What do youthink, Silent John?"

  And Jack MacRae had to admit that Betty was. Oddly enough, Stubby Abbotthad merely put into words an impression to which MacRae himself wasslowly and reluctantly subscribing.