Poor Man's Rock

by Bertrand W. Sinclair

  CHAPTER VII

  Sea Boots and Salmon

  From November to April the British Columbian coast is a region ofweeping skies, of intermittent frosts and fog, and bursts of sleetysnow. The frosts, fogs, and snow squalls are the punctuation points, soto speak, of the eternal rain. Murky vapors eddy and swirl along thecoast. The sun hides behind gray banks of cloud, the shining face of hima rare miracle bestowed upon the sight of men as a promise that brightdays and blossoming flowers will come again. When they do come the coastis a pleasant country. The mountains reveal themselves, duskily greenupon the lower slopes, their sky-piercing summits crowned with snow capswhich endure until the sun comes to his full strength in July. The Gulfis a vista of purple-distant shore and island, of shimmering sea. Andthe fishermen come out of winter quarters to overhaul boats and gearagainst the first salmon run.

  The blueback, a lively and toothsome fish, about which rages anichthyological argument as to whether he is a distant species of thesalmon tribe or merely a half-grown coho, is the first to show in greatschools. The spring salmon is always in the Gulf, but the spring is afinny mystery with no known rule for his comings and goings, nor hisnumbers. 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 asa man reckons on changes of the moon. These are the mainstay of thesalmon canners. Upon their taking fortunes have been built--andsquandered--men have lived and died, loved and hated, gone hungry anddressed their women in silks and furs. The can of pink meat some inlandchef dresses meticulously with parsley and sauces may have cost somefisherman his life; a multiplicity of cases of salmon may have produceda divorce in the packer's household. We eat this fine red fish and heaveits container into the garbage tin, with no care for the tragedy orhumors that have attended its getting for us.

  In the spring, when life takes on a new prompting, the blueback salmonshows first in the Gulf. He cannot be taken by net or bait,--unless thebait be a small live herring. He may only be taken in commercialquantities by a spinner or a wobbling spoon hook of silver or brass orcopper drawn through the water at slow speed. The dainty gear of thetrout spinner gave birth to the trolling fleets of the Pacific Coast.

  At first the schools pass into the Straits of San Juan. Here the jointfleets of British Columbia and of Puget Sound begin to harry them. Aweek or ten days later the vanguard will be off Nanaimo. And in anotherweek they will be breaking water like trout in a still pool around therocky base of the Ballenas Light and the kelp beds and reefs of SquittyIsland.

  By the time they were there, in late April, there were twenty localpower boats to begin taking them, for Jack MacRae made the rounds ofSquitty to tell the fishermen that he was putting on a carrier to takethe first run of blueback to Vancouver markets.

  They were a trifle pessimistic. Other buyers had tried it, men gamblingon a shoestring for a stake in the fish trade, buyers unable to makeregular trips, whereby there was a tale of many salmon rotted in waitingfish holds, through depending on a carrier that did not come. What wasthe use of burning fuel, of tearing their fingers with the gear, ofcatching fish to rot? Better to let them swim.

  But since the Folly Bay cannery never opened until the fish ran togreater size and number, the fishermen, chafing against inaction afteran idle winter, took a chance and trolled for Jack MacRae.

  To the trailers' surprise they found themselves dealing with a new typeof independent buyer,--a man who could and did make his market tripswith clocklike precision. If MacRae left Squitty with a load on Monday,saying that he would be at Squitty Cove or Jenkins Island or ScottishBay by Tuesday evening, he was there.

  He managed it by grace of an able sea boat, engined to drive through seaand 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 weretrips when he drove through with three thousand salmon under battenedhatches, his decks awash from boarding seas, ten and twelve and fourteenhours of rough-and-tumble work that brought him into the Narrows and thedocks inside with smarting eyes and tired muscles, his head splittingfrom the pound and clank of the engine and the fumes of gas and burnedoil.

  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 fewthings worth while come easy. The world, so far as he knew, seldomhanded a man a fortune done up in tissue paper merely because hehappened to crave its possession. He was young and eager to do. Therewas 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. Andhe had an object, which, if it did not always lie in the foreground ofhis mind, he was nevertheless keen on attaining.

  The risks and work and strain, perhaps because he put so much of himselfinto the thing, paid from the beginning more than he had dared hope. Hemade a hundred dollars his first trip, paid the trollers five cents afish more on the second trip and cleared a hundred and fifty. In thesecond week of his venture he struck a market almost bare of freshsalmon with thirty-seven hundred shining bluebacks in his hold. He madeseven hundred dollars on that single cargo.

  A Greek buyer followed the _Blackbird_ out through the Narrows thattrip. MacRae beat him two hours to the trolling fleet at Squitty, afleet that was growing in numbers.

  "Bluebacks are thirty-five cents," he said to the first man who rangedalongside to deliver. "And I want to tell you something that you cantalk over with the rest of the crowd. I have a market for every fishthis bunch can catch. If I can't handle them with the _Blackbird_, I'llput on another boat. I'm not here to buy fish just till the Folly Baycannery opens. I'll be making regular trips to the end of the salmonseason. My price will be as good as anybody's, better than some. IfGower gets your bluebacks this season for twenty-five cents, it will bebecause you want to make him a present. Meantime, there's another buyeran hour behind me. I don't know what he'll pay. But whatever he paysthere aren't enough salmon being caught here yet to keep two carriersrunning. You can figure it out for yourself."

  MacRae thought he knew his men. Nor was his judgment in error. The Greekhung around. In twenty-four hours he got three hundred salmon. MacRaeloaded nearly three thousand.

  Once or twice after that he had competitive buyers in Squitty Cove andthe various rendezvous of the trolling fleet. But the fishermen had aloyalty born of shrewd reckoning. They knew from experience the way ofthe itinerant buyer. They knew MacRae. Many of them had known hisfather. If Jack MacRae had a market for all the salmon he could buy onthe Gower grounds all season, they saw where Folly Bay would buy no fishin the old take-it-or-leave it fashion. They were keenly alive to thefact that they were getting mid-July prices in June, that Jack MacRaewas the first buyer who had not tried to hold down prices by pulling apoor mouth and telling fairy tales of poor markets in town. He hadjumped prices before there was any competitive spur. They admired youngMacRae. He had nerve; he kept his word.

  Wherefore it did not take them long to decide that he was a good man tokeep going. As a result of this decision other casual buyers got fewfish even when they met MacRae's price.

  When he had run a little over a month MacRae took stock. He paid theCrow Harbor Canning Company, which was Stubby Abbott's trading name, twohundred and fifty a month for charter of the _Blackbird_. He hadoperating outlay for gas, oil, crushed ice, and wages for VincentFerrara, whom he took on when he reached the limit of single-handedendurance. Over and above these expenses he had cleared twenty-sixhundred dollars.

  That was only a beginning he knew,--only a beginning of profits and ofwork. He purposely thrust the taking of salmon on young Ferrara, let himhandle the cash, tally in the fish, watched Vincent nonchalantly chuckout overripe salmon that careless trollers would as nonchalantly heavein for fresh ones if they could get away with it. For Jack MacRae had itin his mind to go as far and as fast as he could while the going wasgood. That meant a second carrier on the run as s
oon as the Folly Baycannery opened, and it meant that he must have in charge of the secondboat an able man whom he could trust. There was no question abouttrusting Vincent Ferrara. It was only a matter of his ability to handlethe 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. "Idon'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 saidabruptly. "How many bluebacks are you going to get for us?"

  "Just about all that are caught around Squitty Island," MacRae saidquietly. "That's why I want another carrier."

  "Huh!" Stubby grunted. His tone was slightly incredulous. "You'll haveto 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?" Stubbyreflected.

  "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'sself-preservation with me. Let old Horace look out for himself. He hadhis fingers in the pie while we were in France. I don't have to havefour 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 Itold you, lack of them may bust me."

  "By the way," Stubby said as MacRae rose to go, "don't you ever have anhour 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 getyour 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 willstill be up on the corner when the salmon run is over. Don't forgetthat."

  MacRae went off to Coal Harbor to take over the second carrier. And hewondered as he went if it would all be such clear sailing, if it werepossible that at the first thrust he had found an open crack in Gower'sarmor through which he could prick the man and make him squirm.

  He looked at his hands. When they fingered death as a daily task theyhad been soft, white, delicate,--dainty instruments equally fit for themanipulation of aerial controls, machine guns or teacups. Why shouldhonest work prevent a man from meeting pleasant people amid pleasantsurroundings? Well, it was not the work itself, it was simply theeffects of that gross labor. On the American continent, at least, a mandid not lose caste by following any honest occupation,--only he couldnot work with the workers and flutter with the butterflies. MacRae,walking down the street, communing with himself, knew that he must pay apenalty for working with his hands. If he were a drone inuniform--necessarily a drone since the end of war--he could dance andplay, flirt with pretty girls, be a welcome guest in great houses, makethe heroic past pay social dividends.

  It took nearly as much courage and endurance to work as it had taken tofight; indeed it took rather more, at times, to keep on working.Theoretically he should not lose caste. Yet MacRae knew hewould,--unless he made a barrel of money. There had been stray straws inthe past month. There were, it seemed, very nice people who could notquite understand why an officer and a gentleman should do work thatwasn't,--well, not even clean. Not clean in the purely objective,physical sense, like banking or brokerage, or teaching, or any of thosesemi-genteel occupations which permit people to make a living withoutstraining their backs or soiling their hands. He wasn't even sure thatStubby 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 inhis business Stubby wouldn't cultivate that man socially merely becausehe needed his producing capacity.

  The solace for long hours and aching flesh and sleep-weary eyes was aglimpse of concrete reward,--money which meant power, power to repay adebt, opportunity to repay an ancient score. It seemed to Jack MacRaethat his personal honor was involved in getting back all that broadsweep of land which his father had claimed from the wilderness, that hemust exact an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. That was the whyof his unceasing energy, his uncomplaining endurance of long hours insea boots, the impatient facing of storms that threatened to delay. Manstrives under the spur of a vision, a deep longing, an imperativesquaring of needs with desires. MacRae moved under the whip of allthree.

  He was quite sanguine that he would succeed in this undertaking. But hehad not looked much beyond the first line of trenches which he plannedto storm. They did not seem to him particularly formidable. The Scotchhad been credited with uncanny knowledge of the future. Jack MacRae,however, though his Highland blood ran undiluted, had no such gift ofprescience. He did not know that the highway of modern industry isstrewn with the casualties of commercial warfare.