"I'm a man without a home and you've just _got_ to take me in, Nan"
I
In the living-room of The Dreamerie, his home on Tyee Head, Hector
McKaye, owner of the Tyee Lumber Company and familiarly known as "The
Laird," was wont to sit in his hours of leisure, smoking and building
castles in Spain--for his son Donald. Here he planned the acquisition
of more timber and the installation of an electric-light plant to
furnish light, heat, and power to his own town of Port Agnew; ever and
anon he would gaze through the plate-glass windows out to sea and
watch for his ships to come home. Whenever The Laird put his dreams
behind him, he always looked seaward. In the course of time, his
home-bound skippers, sighting the white house on the headland and
knowing that The Laird was apt to be up there watching, formed the
habit of doing something that pleased their owner mightily. When the
northwest trades held steady and true, and while the tide was still at
the flood, they would scorn the services of the tug that went out to
meet them and come ramping into the bight, all their white sails set
and the glory of the sun upon them; as they swept past, far below The
Laird, they would dip his house-flag--a burgee, scarlet-edged, with a
fir tree embroidered in green on a field of white--the symbol to the
world that here was a McKaye ship. And when the house-flag fluttered
half-way to the deck and climbed again to the masthead, the soul of
Hector McKaye would thrill.
"Guid lads! My bonny brave lads!" he would murmur aloud, with just a
touch of his parents' accent, and press a button which discharged an
ancient brass cannon mounted at the edge of the cliff. Whenever he saw
one of his ships in the offing--and he could identify his ships as far
as he could see them--he ordered the gardener to load this cannon.
Presently the masters began to dip the house-flag when outward bound,
and discovered that, whether The Laird sat at his desk in the mill
office or watched from the cliff, they drew an answering salute.
This was their hail and farewell.
One morning, the barkentine Hathor, towing out for Delagoa Bay, dipped
her house-flag, and the watch at their stations bent their gaze upon
the house on the cliff. Long they waited but no answering salute
greeted the acknowledgment of their affectionate and willing service.
The mate's glance met the master's.
"The old laird must be unwell, sir," he opined.
But the master shook his head.
"He was to have had dinner aboard with us last night, but early in the
afternoon he sent over word that he'd like to be excused. He's sick at
heart, poor man! Daney tells me he's heard the town gossip about young
Donald."
"The lad's a gentleman, sir," the mate defended. "He'll not disgrace
his people."
"He's young--and youth must be served. Man, I was young myself
once--and Nan of the Sawdust Pile is not a woman a young man would
look at once and go his way."
* * * * *
In the southwestern corner of the state of Washington, nestled in the
Bight of Tyee and straddling the Skookum River, lies the little
sawmill town of Port Agnew. It is a community somewhat difficult to
locate, for the Bight of Tyee is not of sufficient importance as a
harbor to have won consideration by the cartographers of the Coast and
Geodetic Survey, and Port Agnew is not quite forty years old.
Consequently, it appears only on the very latest state maps and in the
smallest possible type.
When Hector McKaye first gazed upon the bight, the transcontinental
lines had not yet begun to consider the thrusting of their tentacles
into southwestern Washington, and, with the exception of those regions
where good harbors had partially solved the problem of transportation,
timber in Washington was very cheap. Consequently, since Hector McKaye
was one of those hardy men who never hesitate to take that which no
man denies them, he reached forth and acquired timber.
A strip of land a quarter of a mile wide and fronting the beach was
barren of commercial timber. As grazing-land, Hector McKaye was
enabled to file on a full section of this, and, with its acquisition,
he owned the key to the outlet. While "proving up" his claim, he
operated a general store for trading with the Indians and trappers,
and at this he prospered. From time to time he purchased timber-claims
from the trappers as fast as they "proved up," paying for these
stumpage-prices varying from twenty-five to fifty cents per thousand.
On his frequent trips to the outer world, McKaye extolled the
opportunities for acquiring good timber-claims down on the Skookum; he
advertised them in letters and in discreet interviews with the editors
of little newspapers in the sawmill towns on Puget Sound and Grays
Harhor; he let it be known that an honest fellow could secure credit
for a winter's provisions from him, and pay for it with pelts in the
spring.
The influx of homesteaders increased--single men, for the most part,
and poor--men who labored six months of the year elsewhere and lived
the remaining six months in rude log huts on their claims down on the
Skookum. And when the requirements of the homestead laws had been
complied with and a patent to their quarter-section obtained from the
Land Office in Washington, the homesteaders were ready to sell and
move on to other and greener pastures. So they sold to the only
possible purchaser, Hector McKaye, and departed, quite satisfied with
a profit which they flattered themselves had been the result of their
own prudence and foresight.
Thus, in the course of ten years, Hector McKaye' acquired ten thousand
acres of splendid Douglas fir and white cedar. But he had not been
successful in acquiring claims along the south bank of the Skookum.
For some mysterious reason, he soon found claims on the north bank
cheaper and easier to secure, albeit the timber showed no variance in
quantity or quality. Discreet investigations brought to light the fact
that he had a competitor--one Martin Darrow, who dwelt in St. Paul,
Minnesota. To St. Paul, therefore, journeyed Hector McKaye, and
sought an audience with Martin Darrow.
"I'm McKaye, from the Skookum River, Washington," he announced,
without preamble.
"I've been expecting you, Mr. McKaye," Darrow replied. "Got a
proposition to submit?"
"Naturally, or I wouldn't have come to St. Paul. I notice you have a
weakness for the timber on the south bank of the Skookum. You've
opposed me there half a dozen times and won. I have also observed that
I have a free hand with claims north of the river. That's fair--and
there's timber enough for two. Hereafter, I'll keep to my own side of
the river."
"I see we're going to come to an understanding, Mr. McKaye. What will
you give me to stick to my side of the river?"
"An outlet through the bight for your product when you commence
manufacturing. I control the lower half-mile of the river and the only
available mill-sites. I'll give you a mill-site if you'll pay half the
expense of digging a new channel for the Skookum, and changing its
course so it will emerge into the still, deep water under the lee of
Tyee Head."
"We'll do business," said Martin Darrow--and they did, although it was
many years after Hector McKaye had incorporated the Tyee Lumber
Company and founded his town of Port Agnew before Darrow began
operations.
True to his promise, McKaye deeded him a mill-and town-site, and he
founded a settlement on the eastern edge of Port Agnew, but quite
distinct from it, and called it Darrow, after himself. It was not a
community that Hector McKaye approved of, for it was squalid and
unsanitary, and its untidy, unpainted shacks of rough lumber harbored
southern European labor, of which Hector McKaye would have none. In
Darrow, also, there were three groggeries and a gambling-house, with
the usual concomitant of women whose profession is the oldest and the
saddest in the world.
Following his discovery of the Bight of Tyee, a quarter of a century
passed. A man may prosper much in twenty-five years, and Hector
McKaye, albeit American born, was bred of an acquisitive race. When
his Gethsemane came upon him, he was rated the richest lumberman in
the state of Washington; his twenty-thousand board-feet capacity per
day sawmill had grown to five hundred thousand, his ten thousand acres
to a hundred thousand. Two thousand persons looked to him and his
enterprise for their bread and butter; he owned a fleet of half a
dozen steam-schooners and sixteen big wind-jammers; he owned a town
which he had called Port Agnew, and he had married and been blessed
with children. And because his ambition no longer demanded it, he was
no longer a miser.
[Illustration: HECTOR MCKAYE WAS BRED OF AN ACQUISITIVE RACE.]
In a word, he was a happy man, and in affectionate pride and as a
tribute to his might, his name and an occasional forget-me-not of
speech which clung to his tongue, heritage of his Scotch forebears,
his people called him "The Laird of Tyee." Singularly enough, his
character fitted this cognomen rather well. Reserved, proud,
independent, and sensitive, thinking straight and talking straight, a
man of brusque yet tender sentiment which was wont to manifest itself
unexpectedly, it had been said of him that in a company of a hundred
of his mental, physical, and financial peers, he would have stood
forth preeminently and distinctively, like a lone tree on a hill.
Although The Laird loved his town of Port Agnew, because he had
created it, he had not, nevertheless, resided in it for some years
prior to the period at which this chronicle begins. At the very apex
of the headland that shelters the Bight of Tyee, in a cuplike
depression several acres in extent, on the northern side and ideally
situated two hundred feet below the crest, thus permitting the howling
southeasters to blow over it, Hector McKaye, in the fulness of time,
had built for himself a not very large two-story house of white stone
native to the locality. This house, in the center of beautiful and
well-kept grounds, was designed in the shape of a letter T, with the
combination living-room and library forming the entire leg of the T
and enclosed on all three sides by heavy plate-glass French windows.
Thus, The Laird was enabled to command a view of the bight, with Port
Agnew nestled far below; of the silver strip that is the Skookum River
flowing down to the sea through the logged-over lands, now
checker-boarded into little green farms; of the rolling back country
with its dark-green mantle of fir and white cedar, fading in the
distance to dark blue and black; of the yellow sandstone bluffs of the
coast-line to the north, and the turquoise of the Pacific out to the
horizon.
This room Hector McKaye enjoyed best of all things in life, with the
exception of his family; of his family, his son Donald was nearest and
dearest to him. This boy he loved with a fierce and hungry love,
intensified, doubtless, because to the young Laird of Tyee, McKaye
was still the greatest hero in the world. To his wife, The Laird was
no longer a hero, although in the old days of the upward climb, when
he had fiercely claimed her and supported her by the sweat of his
brow, he had been something akin to a god. As for Elizabeth and Jane,
his daughters, it must be recorded that both these young women had
long since ceased to regard their father as anything except an
unfailing source of revenue--an old dear who clung to Port Agnew,
homely speech, and homely ways, hooting good-naturedly at the
pretensions of their set, and, with characteristic Gaelic
stubbornness, insisting upon living and enjoying the kind of life that
appealed to him with peculiar force as the only kind worth living.
Indeed, in more than one humble home in Port Agnew, it had been said
that the two McKaye girls were secretly ashamed of their father. This
because frequently, in a light and debonair manner, Elizabeth and Jane
apologized for their father and exhibited toward him an indulgent
attitude, as is frequently the case with overeducated and
supercultured young ladies who cannot recall a time when their
slightest wish has not been gratified and cannot forget that the good
fairy who gratified it once worked hard with his hands, spoke the
language and acquired the habits of his comrades in the battle for
existence.
Of course, Elizabeth and Jane would have resented this analysis of
their mental attitude toward their father. Be that as it may, however,
the fact remained that both girls were perfunctory in their
expressions of affection for their father, but wildly extravagant in
them where their mother was concerned. Hector McKaye liked it so. He
was a man who never thought about himself, and he had discovered that
if he gave his wife and daughters everything they desired, he was not
apt to be nagged.
Only on one occasion had Hector McKaye declared himself master in his
own house, and, at the risk of appearing paradoxical, this was before
the house had been built. One day, while they still occupied their
first home (in Port Agnew), a house with a mansard roof, two towers,
jig-saw and scroll-work galore, and the usual cast-iron mastiffs and
deer on the front lawn, The Laird had come gleefully home from a trip
to Seattle and proudly exhibited the plans for a new house.
Ensued examination and discussion by his wife and the young ladies.
Alas! The Laird's dream of a home did not correspond with that of his
wife, although, as a matter of fact, the lady had no ideas on the
subject beyond an insistence that the house should be "worthy of their
station," and erected in a fashionable suburb of Seattle. Elizabeth
and Jane aided and abetted her in clamoring for a Seattle home,
although both were quick to note the advantages of a picturesque
country home on the cliffs above the bight. They urged their father to
build his house, but condemned his plans. They desired a house some
three times larger than the blue-prints called for.
Hector McKaye said nothing. The women chattered and argued among
themselves until, Elizabeth and Jane having vanquished their mother,
all three moved briskly to the attack upon The Laird. When they had
talked themselves out and awaited a reply, he gave it with the simple
directness of his nature. It was evident that he had given his answer
thought.
"I can never live in Seattle until I retire, and I cannot retire
until Donald takes my place in the business. That means that Donald
must live here. Consequently, I shall spend half of my time with you
and the girls in Seattle, mother, and the other half with Donald here.
When we built our first home, you had your way--and I've lived in this
architectural horror ever since. This time, I'm going to have my own
way--and you've lived with me long enough to know that when I declare
for a will of my own, I'll not be denied. Well I realize you and the
girls have outgrown Port Agnew. There's naught here to interest you,
and I would not have woman o' mine unhappy. So plan your house in
Seattle, and I'll build it and spare no expense. As for this house on
the headland, you have no interest in it. Donald's approved the plans,
and him only will I defer to. 'Twill be his house some day--his and
his wife's, when he gets one. And there will be no more talk of it, my
dears. I'll not take it kindly of ye to interfere."