labor. They would see that he got fish. They told
him that.

"If somebody else offered sixty cents you'd sell to him, wouldn't you?"
MacRae asked a dozen of them sitting on the _Blanco's_ deck one
afternoon. They had been talking about canneries and competition.

"Not if he was boosting the price up just to make you quit, and then cut
it in two when he had everything to himself," one man said. "That's been
done too often."

"Remember that when the canneries open, then," MacRae said dryly.
"There is not going to be much, of a price for humps and dog salmon this
fall. But there is going to be a scramble for the good canning fish. I
can pay as much as salmon are worth, but I can't go any further. If I
should have to pull my boats off in mid-season you can guess what
they'll pay around Squitty."

MacRae was not crying "wolf." There were signs and tokens of uneasiness
and irritation among those who still believed it was their right and
privilege to hold the salmon industry in the hollows of their grasping
hands. Stubby Abbott was a packer. He had the ears of the other packers.
They were already complaining to Stubby, grouching about MacRae, unable
to understand that Stubby listened to them with his tongue in his cheek,
that one of their own class should have a new vision of industrial
processes, a vision that was not like their own.

"They're cultivating quite a grievance about the price you're paying,"
Stubby told Jack in confidence. "They say you are a damned fool. You
could get those fish for thirty cents and you are paying forty. The
fishermen will want the earth when the canneries open. They hint around
that something will drop with a loud bang one of these days. I think
it's just hot air. They can't hurt either of us. I'll get a fair pack at
Crow Harbor, and I'll have this plant loaded. I've got enough money to
carry on. It makes me snicker to myself to imagine how they'll squirm
and squeal next winter when I put frozen salmon on the market ten cents
a pound below what they figure on getting. Oh, yes, our friends in the
fish business are going to have a lot of grievances. But just now they
are chiefly grouching at you."

MacRae seldom set foot ashore those crowded days. But he passed within
sight of Squitty Cove and Poor Man's Rock once at least in each
forty-eight hours. For weeks he had seen smoke drifting blue from the
cottage chimney in Cradle Bay. He saw now and then the flutter of
something white or blue