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The fishermen have made a noise that disturbs the politicians, I guess. Another thing, there's a slack in the demand for all but the best grades of salmon. But the number one grades, sockeye and blueback and coho, are short. So that a cannery man with an efficient plant can pay big for those fish. If you can hold that Squitty fleet of trollers like you did last year, you'll make some money."
But MacRae in the Blanco could take six, eight, ten thousand salmon profitably on a margin which the other buyers said was folly. The trolling fleet swelled in numbers. The fish were there. The old-timers had prophesied a big blueback year, and for once their prophecy was by way of being fulfilled.
The Blanco kept mostly in touch with the main fleet patrolling the southeastern end of Squitty like a naval flotilla, wheeling and counterwheeling over the grounds where the blueback played. MacRae forced the issue. He raised the price to sixty-five, to seventy, to seventy-five, to eighty, and the boats under the yellow house flag had to pay that to get a fish.
The lordly spring, which attains to seventy pounds, the small, swift blueback, and the fighting coho could all be lured to a hook on a wobbling bit of silver or brass at the end of a long line weighted with lead to keep it at a certain depth behind a moving boat.
But they know also that they are getting more out of it than they ever got before, and that if I were not on the job they would get a lot less." "They certainly would," Abbott drawled. "You have been, and are now, paying more for blueback salmon than any buyer on the Gulf." "Well, it has paid me. And it has been highly profitable to you, hasn't it?" MacRae said.
Stubby wanted to get in on the blueback salmon run again. He had put a big pack through Crow Harbor and got a big price for the pack. In a period of mounting prices canned salmon was still ascending. Food in any imperishable, easily transported form was sure of a market in Europe. There was a promise of even bigger returns for Pacific salmon packers in the approaching season.
He based his payments on a decent profit, without which he could not carry on. Running heavier cargoes at less cost he raised the price to the fishermen as succeeding runs of blueback salmon were made up of larger, heavier fish. Other buyers came, lingered awhile, cursed him and went away. They could not run to Vancouver with small quantities of salmon and meet his price.
Even when American buyers trailed MacRae to the source of his supply their competition hurt Gower instead of MacRae. The trollers supplied MacRae with all the salmon he could carry. It was still fresh in their minds that he had come into the field that season as their special Providence. But the blueback run tapered off at Squitty.
"Anywhere from forty to a hundred, from ten to thirty 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 knows every pot-hole where a troller can lie. He's not afraid of wind or sea or work. No wonder he gets the fish. Those damned " Gower cut his soliloquy off in the middle to watch the Blackbird slide out of sight behind a point. He knew all about Jack MacRae's operations, the wide swath he was cutting in the matter of blueback salmon. The Folly Bay showing to date was a pointed reminder.
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