At a period in his upward climb to fortune, when as yet Hector McKaye
had not fulfilled his dream of a factory for the manufacture of his
waste and short-length stock into sash, door, blinds, moldings, and so
forth, he had been wont to use about fifty per cent. of this material
for fuel to maintain steam in the mill boilers, while the remainder
passed out over the waste-conveyor to the slab pile, where it was
burned.
The sawdust, however, remained to be disposed of, and since it was not
possible to burn this in the slab fire for the reason that the wet
sawdust blanketed the flames and resulted in a profusion of smoke that
blew back upon the mill to the annoyance of the employees, for many
years The Laird had caused this accumulated sawdust to be hauled to
the edge of the bight on the north side of the town, and there dumped
in a low, marshy spot which formerly had bred millions of mosquitoes.
Subsequently, in the process of grading the streets of Port Agnew and
excavating cellars, waste dirt had been dumped with the sawdust, and,
occasionally, when high winter tides swept over the spot, sand, small
stones, sea-shells, and kelp were added to the mixture. And as if this
were not sufficient, the citizens of Port Agnew contributed from time
to time old barrels and bottles, yard-sweepings, tin cans, and
superannuated stoves and kitchen utensils.
Slowly this dump crept out on the beach, and in order to prevent the
continuous attrition of the surf upon the outer edge of it from
befouling the white-sand bathing-beach farther up the Bight of Tyee,
The Laird had driven a double row of fir piling parallel with and
beyond the line of breakers. This piling, driven as close together as
possible and reenforced with two-inch planking between, formed a
bulkhead with the flanks curving in to the beach, thus insuring
practically a water-tight pen some two acres in extent; and, with the
passage of years, this became about two-thirds filled with the waste
from the town. Had The Laird ever decided to lay claim to the Sawdust
Pile, there would have been none in Port Agnew to contest his title;
since he did not claim it, the Sawdust Pile became a sort of No Man's
Land.
After The Laird erected his factory and began to salvage his waste,
the slab fire went out forever for lack of fuel, and the modicum of
waste from the mill and factory, together with the sawdust, was
utilized for fuel in an electric-light plant that furnished light,
heat, and power to the town. Consequently, sawdust no longer
mercifully covered the trash on the Sawdust Pile as fast as this trash
arrived, and, one day, Hector McKaye, observing this, decided that it
was an unsightly spot and not quite worthy of his town of Port Agnew.
So he constructed a barge somewhat upon the principle of a patent
dump-wagon, moored it to the river-bank, created a garbage monopoly in
Port Agnew, and sold it for five thousand dollars to a pair of
ambitious Italians. With the proceeds of this garbage deal, The Laird
built a very pretty little public library.
Having organized his new garbage system (the garbage was to be towed
twenty miles to sea and there dumped), The Laird forbade further
dumping on the Sawdust Pile. When the necessity for more dredger-work
developed, in order to keep the deep channel of the Skookum from
filling, he had the pipes from the dredger run out to the Sawdust Pile
and covered the unsightly spot with six feet of rich river-silt up to
the level of the piling.
"And now," said Hector McKaye to Andrew Daney, his general manager,
"when that settles, we'll run a light track out here and use the
Sawdust Pile for a drying-yard."
The silt settled and dried, and almost immediately thereafter a
squatter took possession of the Sawdust Pile. Across the neck of the
little promontory, and in line with extreme high-water mark on each
side, he erected a driftwood fence; he had a canvas, driftwood, and
corrugated-iron shanty well under way when Hector McKaye appeared on
the scene and bade him a pleasant good-morning.
The squatter turned from his labor and bent upon his visitor an
appraising glance. His scrutiny appearing to satisfy him as to the
identity of the latter, he straightened suddenly and touched his
forelock in a queer little salute that left one in doubt whether he
was a former member of the United States navy or the British
mercantile marine. He was a threadbare little man, possibly sixty
years old, with a russet, kindly countenance and mild blue eyes; apart
from his salute, there was about him an intangible hint of the sea. He
was being assisted in his labors by a ragamuffin girl of perhaps
thirteen years.
"Thinking of settling in Port Agnew?" The Laird inquired.
"Why, yes, sir. I thought this might make a good safe anchorage for
Nan and me. My name is Caleb Brent. You're Mr. McKaye, aren't you?"
The Laird nodded.
"I had an idea, when I filled this spot in and built that bulkhead,
Mr. Brent, that some day this would make a safe anchorage for some of
my lumber. I planned a drying-yard here. What's that you're building,
Brent? A hen-house?"
Caleb Brent flushed.
"Why, no, sir. I'm making shift to build a home here for Nan and me."
"Is this little one Nan?"
The ragamuffin girl, her head slightly to one side, had been regarding
Hector McKaye with alert curiosity mingled with furtive apprehension.
As he glanced at her now, she remembered her manners and dropped him a
courtesy--an electric, half-defiant jerk that reminded The Laird of a
similar greeting customarily extended by squinch-owls.
Nan was not particularly clean, and her one-piece dress, of heavy blue
navy-uniform cloth was old and worn and spotted. Over this dress she
wore a boy's coarse red-worsted sweater with white-pearl buttons. The
skin of her thin neck was fine and creamy; the calves, of her bare
brown legs were shapely, her feet small, her ankles dainty.
With the quick eye of the student of character, this man, proud of his
own ancient lineage for all his humble beginning, noted that her
hands, though brown and uncared-for, were small and dimpled, with
long, delicate fingers. She had sea-blue eyes like Caleb Brent's,
and, like his, they were sad and wistful; a frowsy wilderness of
golden hair, very fine and held in confinement at the nape of her neck
by the simple expedient of a piece of twine, showed all too plainly
the lack of a mother's care.
The Laird returned Nan's courtesy with a patronizing inclination of
his head.
"Your granddaughter, I presume?" he addressed Caleb Brent.
"No; my daughter, sir. I was forty when I married, and Nan came ten
years later. She's thirteen now, and her mother's been dead ten
years."
Hector McKaye had an idea that the departed mother was probably just
as well, if not better, off, free of the battle for existence which
appeared to confront this futile old man and his elf of a daughter. He
glanced at the embryo shack under construction and, comparing it with
his own beautiful home on Tyee Head, he turned toward the bight. A
short distance off the bulkhead, he observed a staunch forty-foot
motor-cruiser at anchor. She would have been the better for a coat of
paint; undeniably she was of a piece with Caleb Brent and Nan, for,
like them, The Laird had never seen her before.
"Yours?" he queried.
"Yes, sir."
"You arrived in her, then?"
"I did, sir. Nan and I came down from Bremerton in her, sir."
The Laird owned many ships, and he noted the slurring of the "sir" as
only an old sailor can slur it. And there was a naval base at
Bremerton.
"You're an old sailor, aren't you, Brent?" he pursued.
"Yes, sir. I was retired a chief petty officer, sir. Thirty years'
continuous service, sir--and I was in the mercantile marine at
sixteen. I've served my time as a shipwright. Am--am I intruding here,
sir?"
The Laird smiled, and followed the smile with a brief chuckle.
"Well--yes and no. I haven't any title to this land you've elected to
occupy, although I created it. You see, I'm sort of lord of creation
around here. My people call me 'The Laird of Tyee,' and nobody but a
stranger would have had the courage to squat on the Sawdust Pile
without consulting me. What's your idea about it, Brent?"
"I'll go if you want me to, sir."
"I mean what's your idea if you stay? What do you expect to do for a
living?"
"You will observe, sir, that I have fenced off only that portion of
the dump beyond high-water mark. That takes in about half of it--about
an acre and a half. Well, I thought I'd keep some chickens and raise
some garden truck. This silt will grow anything. And I have my launch,
and can do some towing, maybe, or take fishing parties out. I might
supply the town with fish. I understand you import your fish from
Seattle--and with the sea right here at your door."
"I see. And you have your three-quarters pay as a retired chief petty
officer?"
"Yes, sir."
"Anything in bank? I do not ask these personal questions, Brent, out
of mere idle curiosity. This is my town, you know, and there is no
poverty in it. I'm rather proud of that, so I--"
"I understand, sir. That's why I came to Port Agnew. I saw your son
yesterday, and he said I could stay."
"Oh! Well, that's all right, then. If Donald told you to stay, stay
you shall. Did he give you the Sawdust Pile?"
"Yes, sir; he did!"
"Well, I had other plans for it, Brent; but since you're here, I'll
offer no objection."
Nan now piped up.
"We haven't any money in bank, Mr. Laird, but we have some saved up."
"Indeed! That's encouraging. Where do you keep it?"
"In the brown teapot in the galley. We've got a hundred and ten
dollars."
"Well, my little lady, I think you might do well to take your hundred
and ten dollars out of the brown teapot in the galley and deposit it
in the Port Agnew bank. Suppose that motor-cruiser should spring a
leak and sink?"
Nan smiled and shook her golden head in negation. They had beaten
round Cape Flattery in that boat, and she had confidence in it.
"Would you know my boy if you should see him again, Nan?" The Laird
demanded suddenly.
"Oh, yes, indeed, sir! He's such a nice boy."
"I think, Nan, that if you asked him, he might help your father build
this house."
"I'll see him this afternoon when he comes out of high school," Nan
declared.
"You might call on Andrew Daney, my general manager," The Laird
continued, turning to Caleb Brent, "and make a dicker with him for
hauling our garbage-scow out to sea and dumping it. I observe that
your motor-boat is fitted with towing-bitts. We dump twice a week. And
you may have a monopoly on fresh fish if you desire it. We have no
fishermen here, because I do not care for Greeks and Sicilians in Port
Agnew. And they're about the only fishermen on this coast."
"Thank you, Mr. McKaye."
"Mind you don't abuse your monopoly. If you do, I'll take it away from
you."
"You are very kind, sir. And I can have the Sawdust Pile, sir?"
"Yes; since Donald gave it to you. However, I wish you'd tear down
that patchwork fence and replace it with a decent job the instant you
can afford it."
"Ah, just wait," old Brent promised. "I know how to make things neat
and pretty and keep them shipshape. You just keep your eye on the
Sawdust Pile, sir." The old wind-bitten face flushed with pride; the
faded sea-blue eyes shone with joyous anticipation. "I've observed
your pride in your town, sir, and before I get through, I'll have a
prettier place than the best of them."
A few days later, The Laird looked across the Bight of Tyee from his
home on Tyee Head, and through his marine glasses studied the Sawdust
Pile. He chuckled as he observed that the ramshackle shanty had
disappeared almost as soon as it had been started and in its place a
small cottage was being erected. There was a pile of lumber in the
yard--bright lumber, fresh from the saws--and old Caleb Brent and the
motherless Nan were being assisted by two carpenters on the Tyee
Lumber Company's pay-roll.
When Donald came home from school that night, The Laird asked him
about the inhabitants of the Sawdust Pile with relation to the lumber
and the two carpenters.
"Oh, I made a trade with Mr. Brent and Nan. I'm to furnish the lumber
and furniture for the house, and those two carpenters weren't very
busy, so Mr. Daney told me I could have them to help out. In return,
Mr. Brent is going to build me a sloop and teach me how to sail it."
The Laird nodded.
"When his little home is completed, Donald," he suggested presently,
"you might take old Brent and his girl over to our old house in town
and let them have what furniture they require. See if you cannot
manage to saw off some of your mother's antiques on them," added
whimsically. "By the way, what kind of shanty is old Brent going to
build?"
"A square house with five rooms and a cupola fitted up like a
pilot-house. There's to be a flagpole on the cupola, and Nan says
they'll have colors every night and morning. That means that you hoist
the flag in the morning and salute it, and when you haul it down at
night, you salute it again. They do that up at the Bremerton
navy-yard."
"That's rather a nice, sentimental idea," Hector McKaye replied. "I
rather like old Brent and his girl for that. We Americans are too
prone to take our flag and what it stands for rather lightly."
"Nan wants me to have colors up here, too," Donald continued. "Then
she can see our flag, and we can see theirs across the bight."
"All right," The Laird answered heartily, for he was always profoundly
interested in anything that interested his boy. "I'll have the woods
boss get out a nice young cedar with, say, a twelve-inch butt, and
we'll make it into a flagpole."
"If we're going to do the job navy-fashion, we ought to fire a sunrise
and sunset gun," Donald suggested with all the enthusiasm of his
sixteen years.
"Well, I think we can afford that, too, Donald."
Thus it came about that the little brass cannon was installed on its
concrete base on the cliff. And when the flagpole had been erected,
old Caleb Brent came up one day, built a little mound of smooth,
sea-washed cobblestones round the base, and whitewashed them.
Evidently he was a prideful little man, and liked to see things done
in a seamanlike manner. And presently it became a habit with The Laird
to watch night and morning, for the little pin-prick of color to
flutter forth from the house on the Sawdust Pile, and if his own
colors did not break forth on the instant and the little cannon boom
from the cliff, he was annoyed and demanded an explanation.