hese
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