United States or Afghanistan ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Whatever went on in their secret bosoms, they smiled and joked and were unfailingly courteous. He made another discovery within a few minutes. Stubby maneuvered himself close to Etta Robbin-Steele. Stubby was not quite so adept at repression as most of his class. He was a little more naïve, more prone to act upon his natural, instinctive impulses. MacRae was aware of that.
They were fierce and remorseless pursuers of the main chance. When they were cast down they climbed up straightway over the backs of lesser men. He thought of Robbin-Steele. A man like that would die with the harness of the money-game on his back, reaching for more.
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."
The Northwest was eager to buy. They would pay him, sub rosa, two cents a pound over the market price for fresh salmon if he would supply them with the largest possible quantity from the beginning of the blueback run. As with Robbin-Steele, MacRae refused to commit himself. More clearly he perceived that the scramble was beginning. The packers and the cold-storage companies had lost control.
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.
You only amuse me when you speak of doubtful returns. I wish I could have your cinch for a season or two." "You shouldn't have any quarrel with us. You started with nothing and made twenty thousand dollars in a single season," Robbin-Steele reminded. "I worked like a dog. I took chances. And I was very lucky," MacRae agreed. "I did make a lot of money.
His thought reached out in wide circles, embracing many things, many persons: Norman Gower and Dolly, who had had courage to put the past behind them and reach for happiness together; Stubby Abbott and Etta Robbin-Steele, who were being flung together by the same inscrutable forces within them. Love might not truly make the world go round, but it was a tremendous motive power in human actions.
"The chances are old H.A. will raise what cash he can and try to make a fresh start. It seems there has been friction in the family, and his wife refused to come through with any of her available cash. Seems kind of a complicated hole he got into. He's cleaned, anyway. Robbin-Steele got all his cannery tenders and took over several thousand cases 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.
He did not commit himself further. But he resented the suggestion. There was also an amusing phase of Nelly's declaration which did not escape him, the pot calling the kettle black. Etta Robbin-Steele did flirt. She had dancing black eyes that flung a challenge to men. But Nelly herself was no shrinking violet, for all her baby face. She was like an elf.
Word Of The Day