He found Gower in a cubby-hole of an office behind the cannery store.

“You wanted to see me,” MacRae said curtly.

He was in sea boots, bareheaded.  His shirt sleeves were rolled above sun-browned forearms.  He stood before Gower with his hands thrust in the pockets of duck overalls speckled with fish scales, smelling of salmon.  Gower stared at him silently, critically, it seemed to MacRae, for a matter of seconds.

“What’s the sense in our cutting each other’s throats over these fish?” Gower asked at length.  “I’ve been wanting to talk to you for quite a while.  Let’s get together.  I—­”

MacRae’s temper flared.

“If that’s what you want,” he said, “I’ll see you in hell first.”

He turned on his heel and walked out of the office.  When he stepped into his dinghy he glanced up at the wharf towering twenty feet above his head.  Betty Gower was sitting on a pile head.  She was looking down at him.  But she was not smiling.  And she did not speak.  MacRae rowed back to the Blanco in an ugly mood.

In the next forty-eight hours Folly Bay jumped the price of bluebacks to ninety cents, to ninety-five, to a dollar.  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.”

“Is ninety cents and five cents’ commission your limit?” MacRae demanded.

“Just about,” Stubby grunted.  “Well”—­reluctantly—­“I can stand a dollar.  That’s the utmost limit, though.  I can’t go any further.”

“And if he gets them all at a dollar or more, he’ll be canning at a dead loss, eh?”

“He certainly will,” Stubby declared.  “Unless he cans ’em heads, tails, and scales, and gets a bigger price per case than has been offered yet.”

MacRae went back to Squitty with a definite idea in his mind.  Gower had determined to have the salmon.  Very well, then, he should have them.  But he would have to take them at a loss, in so far as MacRae could inflict loss upon him.  He knew of no other way to hurt effectively such a man as Gower.  Money was life blood to him, and it was not of great value to MacRae as yet.  With deliberate calculation he decided to lose the greater part of what he had made, if for every dollar he lost himself he could inflict equal or greater loss on Gower.

The trailers who combed the Squitty waters were taking now close to five thousand salmon a day.  Approximately half of these went to Folly Bay.  MacRae took the rest.  In this battle of giants the fishermen had lost sight of the outcome.  They ceased to care who got fish.  They only watched eagerly for him who paid the biggest price.  They were making thirty, forty, fifty dollars a day.  They no longer held salmon—­only a few of the old-timers—­for MacRae’s carriers.  It was nothing to them who made a profit or suffered a loss.  Only a few of the older men wondered privately how long MacRae could stand it and what would happen when he gave up.