“One or two things,” MacRae admitted.  “I grew up in the Gulf, remember, among salmon fishermen.”

“Well, I’ll be a little more explicit,” Stubby volunteered.  “Briefly, my father, as you know, died while I was overseas.  We own the Crow Harbor cannery.  I will say that while I was still going to school he started in teaching me the business, and he taught me the way he learned it himself—­in the cannery and among fishermen.  If I do say it, I know the salmon business from gill net and purse seine to the Iron Chink and bank advances on the season’s pack.  But Abbott, senior, it seems, wasn’t a profiteer.  He took the war to heart.  His patriotism didn’t consist of buying war bonds in fifty-thousand dollar lots and calling it square.  He got in wrong by trying to keep the price of fresh fish down locally, and the last year he lived the Crow Harbor cannery only made a normal profit.  Last season the plant operated at a loss in the hands of hired men.  They simply didn’t get the fish.  The Fraser River run of sockeye has been going downhill.  The river canneries get the fish that do run.  Crow Harbor, with a manager who wasn’t up on his toes, got very few.  I don’t believe we will ever see another big sockeye run in the Fraser anyway.  So we shall have to go up-coast to supplement the Howe Sound catch and the few sockeyes we can get from gill-netters.

“The Packers’ Association can’t hurt me—­much.  For one thing, I’m a member.  For another, I can still swing enough capital so they would hesitate about using pressure.  You understand.  I’ve got to make that Crow Harbor plant pay.  I must have salmon to do so.  I have to go outside my immediate territory to get them.  If I could get enough blueback to keep full steam from the opening of the sockeye season until the coho run comes—­there’s nothing to it.  I’ve been having this matter looked into pretty thoroughly.  I can pay twenty per cent. over anything Gower has ever paid for blueback and coin money.  The question is, how can I get them positively and in quantity?”

“Buy them,” MacRae put in softly.

“Of course,” Stubby agreed.  “But buying direct means collecting.  I have the carriers, true.  But where am I going to find men to whom I can turn over a six-thousand-dollar boat and a couple of thousand dollars in cash and say to him, ‘Go buy me salmon’?  His only interest in the matter is his wage.”

“Bonus the crew.  Pay ’em percentage on what salmon they bring in.”

“I’ve thought of that,” Stubby said between puffs.  “But—­”

“Or,” MacRae made the plunge he had been coming to while Stubby talked, “I’ll get them for you.  I was going to buy bluebacks around Squitty anyway for the fresh-fish market in town if I can make a sure-delivery connection.  I know those grounds.  I know a lot of fishermen.  If you’ll give me twenty per cent. over Gower prices for bluebacks delivered at Crow Harbor I’ll get them.”

“This grows interesting.”  Stubby straightened in his chair.  “I thought you were going to ranch it!  Lord, I remember the night we sat watching for the bombers to come back from a raid and you first told me about that place of yours on Squitty Island.  Seems ages ago—­yet it isn’t long.  As I remember, you were planning all sorts of things you and your father would do.”