He was swinging at anchor there one day when a rowboat from the cannery put out to the Blanco. The man in it told MacRae that Gower would like to see him. MacRae's first impulse was to grin and ignore the request. Then he changed his mind, and taking his own dinghy rowed ashore. Some time or other he would have to meet his father's enemy, face him, talk to him, listen to what he might say, tell him things. Curiosity was roused in him a little now. He desired to know what Gower had to say. He wondered if Gower was weakening; what he could want.
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."