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Mascola completed his repairs, started his motor and raced away in the direction of his fleet with the Richard running close at his side. But when he came abreast of the cannery fishing-boats, he made no effort to head in. "He don't want to rough it any more with this one," Bronson commented. "I reckon when he looks over his boat it'll mean a job for the shop putting in a few ribs."
As long as I can handle a load of salmon I'll make the run. But I've got to run them farther, and you fellows will have to wait a bit for me now and then, perhaps. The cannery men hang together. They are making it bad for me because I'm paying a few cents more for salmon. They have choked off Crow Harbor. Gower is hungry for cheap salmon.
Here Alton Clyde clamored for enlightenment as to the reason for this eruption. "That is the fellow we will have to fight, "Boyd explained. "He is the head of the cannery combination at Kalvik, and a bitter enemy of George's. If he suspects our motives or gets wind of our plans, we're done for." Clyde spoke more earnestly than at any time during the evening.
"Where can we find the local judge?" Gregory asked quickly. The notary shook his head. "Hard telling," he answered. "He went out a while ago with Mr. Rock and one of the real estate men in this office to look at a piece of property. Haven't seen Joe back since so I suppose they're still out." When Gregory arrived at the cannery it lacked ten minutes of being four o'clock.
As dawn broke the cannery tender from the station near by nosed her way up to the gravelly shore where the castaways were gathered and blew a cheering toot-toot on her whistle. She was a flat-bottomed, "wet-sterned" craft, and the passengers of the Nebraska trooped to her deck over a gang-plank.
"You are laboring under the common error about cannery profits," Robbin-Steele declared pointedly. "Considering the capital invested, the total of the pack, the risk and uncertainty of the business, our returns are not excessive." MacRae smiled amusedly. "That all depends on what you regard as excessive. But there is nothing to be gained by an argument on that subject.
With Dickie following, he lead the way out into the cannery where he stopped for a moment to speak to McCoy. "I'm going outside for a while, Mac. If the Western people call up, tell them we're shipping the last of those sardines to-day. Sound them out on albacore prices in job lots." Dickie turned away at the mention of the jobbers. Gregory evidently thought very little of her advice.
By hauling the boats over into this body of water a task made easy by the presence of a tiny tramway with one dilapidated push-car which had been a part of the cannery equipment it would be possible to save much time and labor. "I've heard there was a way through," O'Neil confessed, "but nobody seemed to know just where it was." "I know," the young man assured him.
In the days that followed she was at his elbow constantly, aiding him at every turn in his zeal to acquire a knowledge of the cannery system.
He knew the man, a preemptor of Folly Bay, a truckler to the cannery because he was always in debt to the cannery, and a quarrelsome individual besides, who took advantage of his size and strength to browbeat less able men. MacRae had got few salmon off Sam Kaye since the cannery opened. He had never asked Kaye to hold fish for him.
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