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There were times when he wished he could see smoke lifting from that chimney and know that he could find Betty somewhere along the beach. But these were only times when his spirits were very low. Also he occasionally wondered if it were true, as Stubby Abbott declared, that Gower had fallen into a financial hole. MacRae doubted that. Men like Gower always got out of a hole.
MacRae was not long running afoul of the rumor that the wholesale fish men controlled the retail price of fresh fish by the simple method of controlling the supply, which they managed by coöperation instead of competition among themselves. He heard this stated. And more, that behind the big dealers stood the shadowy figure of the canning colossus. This was told him casually by fishermen.
'He could open it with a quill, I believe, said Blake. 'They do in novels. Merton felt very uneasy. 'What was the end of it? he asked. 'Oh, I said that if the man was within his duty the accident was only one of those which so singular a misfortune brings with it. I would stay while Mr. Macrae wanted me.
Indeed, MacRae stood watching them until he recalled with a start that he had this dance with Etta Robbin-Steele, who would, in her own much-used phrase, be "simply furious" at anything that might be construed as neglect; only Etta's fury would consist of showing her white, even teeth in a pert smile with a challenging twinkle in her very black eyes.
When he listened he could hear the melancholy drone of the southeaster and the rumble of the surf, two sounds that fitted well his mood. He felt a strange relief when Betty came tiptoeing in from the kitchen. She bent over him. MacRae closed his eyes and slept again. He awakened at last, alert, refreshed, free of that depression which had rested so heavily on him.
So he let matters stand and celebrated Christmas with them. Afterward they got aboard the Bluebird and went to a dance at Potter's Landing, where for all that Jack MacRae was the local hero, both of the great war and the salmon war of the past season, both Dolly and Norman, he privately conceded, enjoyed themselves a great deal more than he did.
Young Jack sat staring into the coals, seeing much, understanding more. It was all there in those written pages, a powerful spur to a vivid imagination. No MacRae had ever lain down unwhipped. Nor had Donald MacRae, his father.
Already the patch of brush in which lay the renegade Policemen was hidden in the smudge, shut away from our sight. We hailed MacRae when he reached the foot of the hill, and he came crashing through sage and buck-brush and threw himself, panting, on the ground. "The fire," he gasped, "is coming down the gorge. They're cut off at the other end.
"He says he loves me, that he has loved me all the time, that he feels as if he had been walking in his sleep and fallen into some muddy hole. And I believe him. It's terrible, Johnny." "It's impossible," MacRae declared savagely. "If he's got in that kind of a hole, let him stay there. You're well out of it. You ought to be glad." "But I'm not," she said sadly. "I'm not made that way.
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."
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