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
f