When the Blanco unloaded her cargo of eight-thousand-odd salmon into the Terminal and MacRae checked his receipts and expenditures for that trip, he discovered that he had neither a profit nor a loss.

He went to see Stubby, explained briefly the situation.

“You can’t get any more cheap salmon for cold storage until the seiners begin to take coho, that’s certain,” he declared.  “How far can you go in this price fight when you open the cannery?”

“Gower appears to have gone a bit wild, doesn’t he?” Stubby ruminated.  “Let’s see.  Those fish are running about five pounds now.  They’ll get a bit heavier as we go along.  Well, I can certainly pack as cheaply as he can.  I tell you, go easy for a week, till I get Crow Harbor under way.  Then you can pay up to seventy-five cents and I’ll allow you five cents a fish commission.  I don’t believe he’ll dare pay more than that before late in July.  If he does, why, we’ll see what we can do.”

MacRae went back to Squitty.  He could make money with the Blanco on a five-cent commission,—­if he could get the salmon within the price limit.  So for the next trip or two he contented himself with meeting Gower’s price and taking what fish came to him.  The Folly Bay mustard pots—­three of them great and small—­scurried here and there among the trollers, dividing the catch with the Bluebird and the Blanco.  There was always a mustard-pot collector in sight.  The weather was getting hot.  Salmon would not keep in a troller’s hold.  Part of the old guard stuck tight to MacRae.  But there were new men fishing; there were Japanese and illiterate Greeks.  It was not to be expected that these men should indulge in far-sighted calculations.  But it was a trifle disappointing to see how readily any troller would unload his catch into a mustard pot if neither of MacRae’s carriers happened to be at hand.

“Why don’t you tie up your boats, Jack?” Vin asked angrily.  “You know what would happen.  Gower would drop the price with a bang.  You’d think these damned idiots would know that.  Yet they’re feeding him fish by the thousand.  They don’t appear to care a hoot whether you get any or not.  I used to think fishermen had some sense.  These fellows can’t see an inch past their cursed noses.  Pull off your boats for a couple of weeks and let them get their bumps.”

“What do you expect?” MacRae said lightly.  “It’s a scramble, and they are acting precisely as they might be expected to act.  I don’t blame them.  They’re under the same necessity as the rest of us—­to get it while they can.  Did you think they’d sell me fish for sixty if somebody else offered sixty-five?  You know how big a nickel looks to a man who earns it as hard as these fellows do.”

“No, but they don’t seem to care who gets their salmon,” Vin growled.  “Even when you’re paying the same, they act like they’d just as soon Gower got ’em as you.  You paid more than Folly Bay all last season.  You put all kinds of money in their pockets that you didn’t have to.”