u are entitled to all you can get. You earn it. You work
for it. So am I entitled to what I can make. I work, I take certain
chances. Neither of us is getting something for nothing. But there is a
limit to what either of us can get. We can't dodge that. You fellows
have been dodging it. Now you have to come back to earth.

"No fisherman can get the prices you have had lately. No cannery can
pack salmon at those prices. Sockeye, the finest canning salmon that
swims in the sea, is bringing eighty cents on the Fraser. Bluebacks are
sixty-five cents at Nanaimo, sixty at Cape Mudge, sixty at the
Euclataws.

"I can do a little better than that," MacRae hesitated a second. "I can
pay a little more, because the cannery I'm supplying is satisfied with a
little less profit than most. Stubby Abbott is not a hog, and neither am
I. I can pay seventy-five cents and make money. I have told you before
that it is to your interest as well as mine to keep me running. I will
always pay as much as salmon are worth. But I cannot pay more. If your
appreciation of Folly Bay's past kindness to you is so keen that you
would rather sell him your fish, why, that's your privilege."

"Aw, that's bunk," a man called. "You know blamed well we wouldn't. Not
after him blowin' up like this."

"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.

CHAPTER XIX

Top Dog

Some ten days later the _Bluebird_ swung at anchor in the kelp just
clear of Poor Man's Rock. From a sp