Poor Man's Rock

by Bertrand W. Sinclair

MacRae battened his hatch covers, started his engine, heaved up the hook, and hauled out of the bay.

In the Gulf the obscuring clouds parted to lay a shaft of silver on smooth, windless sea. The Blackbird wallowed down the moon-trail. MacRae stood at the steering wheel. Beside him Steve Ferrara leaned on the low cabin.

"She's getting day," Steve said, after a long silence. He chuckled. "Some raid. If they can keep that lick up those boys will all have new boats for next season. You'll break old Gower if you keep on, Jack."

The thought warmed MacRae. To break Gower, to pull him down to where he must struggle for a living like other common men, to deprive him of the power he had abused, to make him suffer as such a man would suffer under that turn of fortune,—that would help to square accounts. It would be only a measure of justice. To be dealt with as he had dealt with others,—MacRae asked no more than that for himself.

But it was not likely, he reflected. One bad season would not seriously involve a wary old bird like Horace Gower. He was too secure behind manifold bulwarks. Still in the end,—more spectacular things had come to pass in the affairs of men on this kaleidoscopic coast. MacRae's face was hard in the moonlight. His eyes were somber. It was an ugly feeling to nurse. For thirty years that sort of impotent bitterness must have rankled in his father's breast—with just cause, MacRae told himself moodily. No wonder old Donald had been a grave and silent man; a just, kindly, generous man, too. Other men had liked him, respected him. Gower alone had been implacable.

Well into the red and yellow dawn MacRae stood at the wheel, thinking of this, an absent look in eyes which still kept keen watch ahead. He was glad when it came time for Steve's watch on deck, and he could lie down and let sleep drive it out of his mind. He did not live solely to revenge himself upon Horace Gower. He had his own way to make and his own plans—even if they were still a bit nebulous—to fulfill. It was only now and then that the past saddened him and made him bitter.

The week following brought great runs of salmon to the Jew's Mouth. Of these the Folly Bay No. 5 somehow failed to get the lion's share. The gill-net men laughed in their soiled sleeves and furtively swept the bay clear each night and all night, and the daytime haul of the seine fell far below the average. The Blackbird and the Bluebird waddled down a placid Gulf with all they could carry.

And although there was big money-making in this short stretch, and the secret satisfaction of helping put another spoke in Gower's wheel, MacRae did not neglect the rest of his territory nor the few trollers that still worked Squitty Island. He ran long hours to get their few fish. It was their living, and MacRae would not pass them up because their catch meant no profit compared to the time he spent and the fuel he burned making this round. He would drive straight up the Gulf from Bellingham to Squitty, circle the Island and then across to the mouth of the Solomon. The weather was growing cool now. Salmon would keep unspoiled a long time in a trailer's hold. It did not matter to him whether it was day or night around Squitty. He drove his carrier into any nook or hole where a troller might lie waiting with a few salmon.

The Blackbird came pitching and diving into a heavy southeast swell up along the western side of Squitty at ten o'clock in the black of an early October night. There was a storm brewing, a wicked one, reckoned by the headlong drop of the aneroid. MacRae had a hundred or so salmon aboard for all his Squitty round, and he had yet to pick up those on the boats in the Cove. He cocked his eye at a cloud-wrack streaking above, driving before a wind which had not yet dropped to the level of the Gulf, and he said to himself that it would be wise to stay in the Cove that night. A southeast gale, a beam sea, and the tiny opening of the Jew's Mouth was a bad combination to face in a black night. As he stood up along Squitty he could hear the swells break along the shore. Now and then a cold puff of air, the forerunner of the big wind, struck him. Driving full speed the Blackbird dipped her bow deep in each sea and rose dripping to the next. He passed Cradle Bay at last, almost under the steep cliffs, holding in to round Poor Man's Rock and lay a compass course to the mouth of Squitty Cove.