changed his mind, and taking his own dinghy rowed ashore. Some
time or other he would have to meet his father's enemy, face him, talk
to him, listen to what he might say, tell him things. Curiosity was
roused in him a little now. He desired to know what Gower had to say. He
wondered if Gower was weakening; what he could want.

He found Gower in a cubby-hole of an office behind the cannery store.

"You wanted to see me," MacRae said curtly.

He was in sea boots, bareheaded. His shirt sleeves were rolled above
sun-browned forearms. He stood before Gower with his hands thrust in the
pockets of duck overalls speckled with fish scales, smelling of salmon.
Gower stared at him silently, critically, it seemed to MacRae, for a
matter of seconds.

"What's the sense in our cutting each other's throats over these fish?"
Gower asked at length. "I've been wanting to talk to you for quite a
while. Let's get together. I--"

MacRae's temper flared.

"If that's what you want," he said, "I'll see you in hell first."

He turned on his heel and walked out of the office. When he stepped into
his dinghy he glanced up at the wharf towering twenty feet above his
head. Betty Gower was sitting on a pile head. She was looking down at
him. But she was not smiling. And she did not speak. MacRae rowed back
to the _Blanco_ in an ugly mood.

In the next forty-eight hours Folly Bay jumped the price of bluebacks to
ninety cents, to ninety-five, to a dollar. The _Blanco_ wallowed down to
Crow Harbor with a load which represented to MacRae a dead loss of four
hundred dollars cash.

"He must be crazy," Stubby fumed. "There's no use canning salmon at a
loss."

"Has he reached the loss point yet?" MacRae inquired.

"He's shaving close. No cannery can make anything worth reckoning at a
dollar or so a case profit."

"Is ninety cents and five cents' commission your limit?" MacRae
demanded.

"Just about," Stubby grunted. "Well"--reluctantly--"I can stand a
dollar. That's the utmost limit, though. I can't go any further."

"And if he gets them all at a dollar or more, he'll be canning at a dead
loss, eh?"

"He certainly will," Stubby declared. "Unless he cans 'em heads, tails,
and scales, and gets a bigger price per case than has been offered yet."

MacRae went back to Squitty with a definite idea in his mind. Gower had
determined to have the salmon. Very well, then, he should have them. But
he would have to take them at a loss, in so far as M