It struck MacRae that there was something more than mere casual speculation in Stubby’s words.  But he did not attempt to delve into motives.

“A good general,” he said with a dry smile, “doesn’t advertise his plan of campaign in advance.  Without Crow Harbor as a market I could not have done what I have done this season.  But Crow Harbor could shut down to-morrow—­and I’d go on just the same.”

Stubby poked thoughtfully with a pencil at the blotter on his desk.

“Well, Jack, I may as well be quite frank with you,” he said at last.  “I have had hints that may mean something.  The big run will be over at Squitty in another month.  I don’t believe I can be dictated to on short notice.  But I cannot positively say.  If you can see your way to carry on, it will be quite a relief to me.  Another season it may be different.”

“I think I can.”

But though MacRae said this confidently, he was privately not so sure.  From the very beginning he had expected pressure to come on Stubby, as the active head of Crow Harbor.  It was as Stubby said.  Unless he—­MacRae—­had a market for his fish, he could not buy.  And within the limits of British Columbia the salmon market was subject to control; by just what means MacRae had got inklings here and there.  He had not been deceived by the smoothness of his operations so far.  Below the clear horizon there was a storm gathering.  A man like Gower did not lie down and submit passively to being beaten at his own game.

But MacRae believed he had gone too far to be stopped now, even if his tactics did not please the cannery interests.  They could have squelched him easily enough in the beginning, when he had no funds to speak of, when his capital was mostly a capacity for hard, dirty work and a willingness to take chances.  Already he had run his original shoestring to fifteen thousand dollars cash in hand.  It scarcely seemed possible.  It gave him a startling vision of the profits in the salmon industry, and it was not a tenable theory that men who had controlled such a source of profits would sit idle while he undermined their monopoly.  Nevertheless he had made that much money in four months.  He had at his back a hundred fishermen who knew him, liked him, trusted him, who were anxious that he should prosper, because they felt that they were sharing in that prosperity.  Ninety per cent. of these men had a grievance against the canneries.  And he had the good will of these men with sun-browned faces and hook-scarred hands.  The human equation in industrial processes is a highly important one, as older, wiser men than Jack MacRae had been a longer time discovering.