Gower's heavy features lightened with a grimace of amusement.
"Well," he said, "you certainly cost me a lot of money, one way and another. But you had the nerve to go at it—and you used better judgment of men and conditions than anybody has manifested in the salmon business lately, unless it's young Abbott. So I suppose you are entitled to win on your merits. By the way, there is one condition tacked to selling you this ranch. I hesitated about bringing it up at first. I would like to keep this cottage and a strip of ground a hundred and fifty feet wide running down to the beach."
"All right," MacRae agreed. "We can arrange that later. I'll come again."
He set foot on the porch steps. Then he turned back. A faint flush stole up in his sun-browned face. He held out his hand.
"Shall we cry quits?" he asked. "Shall we shake hands and forget it?"
Gower rose to his feet. He did not say anything, but the grip in his thick, stubby fingers almost made Jack MacRae wince,—and he was a strong-handed man himself.
"I'm glad you came to-day," Gower said huskily. "Come again—soon."
He stood on the porch and watched MacRae stride down to the beach and put off in his dinghy. Then he took out a handkerchief and blew his nose with a tremendous amount of unnecessary noise and gesture. There was something suspiciously like moisture brightening his eyes.
But when he saw MacRae stand in the dinghy alongside the Blanco and speak briefly to his men, then row in under Point Old behind Poor Man's Rock which the tide was slowly baring, when he climbed up over the Point and took the path along the cliff edge, that suspicious brightness in Gower's keen old eyes was replaced by a twinkle. He sat down in his grass chair and hummed a little tune, the while one slippered foot kept time, rat-a-pat, on the floor of the porch.