"How do I know?" MacRae laughed. "If Gower opened up to-morrow again and offered eighty or ninety cents, he'd get the salmon—even if you knew he would make you take thirty once he got you where he wanted you."
"Would he?" another voice uprose. "The next time a mustard pot gets any salmon from me, it'll be because there's no other buyer and no other grounds to fish."
A growled chorus backed this reckless statement.
"That's all right," MacRae said good-naturedly. "I don't blame you for picking up easy money. Only easy money isn't always so good as it looks. Fly at it in the morning, and I'll take the fish at the price I've said. If Folly Bay gets into the game again, it's up to you."
When the lights were doused and every fisherman was stretched in his bunk, falling asleep to the slow beat of a dead swell breaking in the Cove's mouth, Vin Ferrara stood up to seek his own bed.
"I wonder," he said to Jack, "I wonder why Gower shut down at this stage of the game?"
MacRae shook his head. He was wondering that himself.