“I’ll give you a check.  I want the registry transferred to me at once,” MacRae continued.  “That done, you can cease worrying over me, Stub.  You’ve been square, and I’ve made money on the deal.  You would be foolish to fight unless you have a fighting chance.  Oh, another thing.  Will the Terminal shut off on me, too?”

“No,” Stubby declared.  “The Terminal is one of the weapons I intend ultimately to use as a club on the heads of this group of gentlemen who want to make a close corporation of the salmon industry on the British Columbia coast.  If I get by this season, I shall be in shape to show them something.  They will not bother about the Terminal, because the Terminal is small.  All the salmon they could take from you wouldn’t hurt Gower.  What they want is to enable Gower to get up his usual fall pack.  It has taken him this long to get things shaped so he could call me off.  He can’t reach a local concern like the Terminal.  No, the Terminal will continue to buy salmon from you, Jack.  But you know they haven’t the facilities to handle a fourth of the salmon you have been running lately.”

“I’ll see they get whatever they can use,” MacRae declared.  “And if it is any satisfaction to you personally, Stub, I can assure you that I shall continue to do business as usual.”

Stubby looked curious.

“You’ve got something up your sleeve?”

“Yes,” MacRae admitted.  “No stuffed club, either.  It’s loaded.  You wait and keep your ears open.”

MacRae’s face twisted into a mirthless smile.  His eyes glowed with the fire that always blazed up in them when he thought too intensely of Horace Gower and the past, or of Gower’s various shifts to defeat him in what he undertook.  He had anticipated this move.  He was angrily determined that Gower should not get one more salmon, or buy what he got a cent cheaper, by this latest strategy.

“You appear to like old Horace,” Stubby said thoughtfully, “about as much as our fellows used to like Fritz when he dropped high explosives on supposedly bomb-proof shelters.”

“Just about as much,” MacRae said shortly.  “Well, you’ll transfer that registry—­when?  I want to get back to Squitty as soon as possible.”

“I’ll go to town with you now, if you like,” Stubby offered.

They acted on that.  Within two hours MacRae was the owner of two motor launches under British registry.  Payment in full left him roughly with five thousand dollars working capital, enough by only a narrow margin.  At sunset Vancouver was a smoky smudge on a far horizon.  At dusk he passed in the narrow mouth of Squitty Cove.  The Bluebird was swinging about to go when her sister ship ranged alongside.  Vincent Ferrara dropped his hook again.  There were forty trollers in the Cove.  MacRae called to them.  They came in skiffs and dinghys, and when they were all about his stern and some perched in sea boots along the Blackbird’s low bulwarks, MacRae said what he had to say.