ty 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