WHEREIN "FINGERLESS" FRASER RETURNS
Big George had lost no time, and already the tow-boats were overboard,
while a raft of timber was taking form alongside the ship. As soon as
it was completed, it was loaded with crates and boxes and paraphernalia
of all sorts, then towed ashore as the tide served. Another took its
place, and another and another. All that night the torches flared and
the decks drummed to a ceaseless activity. In the morning Boyd sent a
squad of fishermen ashore to clear the ground for his buildings, and
all day new rafts of lumber and material helped to increase the pile at
the water's edge.
His early training as an engineer now stood him in good stead, for a
thousand details demanded expert supervision; but he was as completely
at home at this work as was Big George in his own part of the
undertaking, and it was not long before order began to emerge from what
seemed a hopeless chaos. Never did men have more willing hands to do
their bidding than did he and George; and when a week later _The
Juliet_, with Willis Marsh on board, came to anchor, the bunk-houses
were up and peopled, while the new site had become a beehive of
activity.
The mouth of the Kalvik River is several miles wide, yet it contains
but a small anchorage suitable for deep-draught ships, the rest of the
harbor being underlaid with mud-bars and tide-flats over which none but
small boats may pass; and as the canneries are distributed up and down
the stream for a considerable distance, it is necessary to transport
all supplies to and from the ships by means of tugs and lighters. Owing
to the narrowness of the channel, _The Juliet_ came to her moorings not
far from _The Bedford Castle_.
To Marsh, already furious at the trick the ice had played him, this
forced proximity to his rival brought home with added irony the fact
that he had been forestalled, while it emphasized his knowledge that
henceforth the conflict would be carried on at closer quarters. It
would be a contest between two men, both determined to win by fair
means or foul.
Emerson was a dream-dazzled youth, striving like a knight-errant for
the love of a lady and the glory of conquest, but he was also a born
fighter, and in every emergency he had shown himself as able as his
experienced opponent.
As Marsh looked about and saw how much Boyd's well-directed energy was
accomplishing, he was conscious of a slight disheartenment. Still, he
was on his own ground, he had the advantage of superior force, and
though he was humiliated by his failure to throttle the hostile
enterprise in its beginning, he was by no means at the end of his
expedients. He was curious to see his rival in action, and he decided
to visit him and test his temper.
It was on the afternoon following his arrival that Marsh, after a tour
of inspection, landed from his launch and strolled up to where Boyd
Emerson was at work. He was greeted courteously, if a bit coolly, and
found, as on their last meeting, that his own bearing was reflected
exactly in that of Boyd. Both men, beneath the scant politeness of
their outward manner, were aware that the time for ceremony had passed.
Here in the Northland they faced each other at last as man to man.
"I see you have a number of my old fishermen," Marsh observed.
"Yes, we were fortunate in getting such good ones."
"You were fortunate in many ways. In fact you are a very lucky young
man."
"Indeed! How?"
"Well, don't you think you were lucky to beat that strike?"
"It wasn't altogether luck. However, I do consider myself fortunate in
escaping at the last moment," Boyd laughed easily. "By the way, what
happened to the man they mistook for me?"
"Let him go, I believe. I didn't pay much attention to the matter."
Marsh had been using his eyes to good advantage, and, seeing the work
even better in hand than he had supposed, he was moved by irritation
and the desire to goad his opponent to say more than he had intended:
"I rather think you will have a lot to explain, one of these days," he
said, with deliberate menace.
"With fifty thousand cases of salmon aboard _The Bedford Castle_ I will
explain anything. Meanwhile the police may go to the devil!" The cool
assurance of the young man's tone roused his would-be tormentor like a
personal affront.
"You got away from Seattle, but there is a commissioner at Dutch
Harbor, also a deputy marshal, who may have better success with a
warrant than those policemen had." The Trust's manager could not keep
down the angry tremor in his voice, and the other, perceiving it,
replied in a manner designed to inflame him still more:
"Yes, I have heard of those officers. I understand they are both in
your employ."
"What!"
"I hear you have bought them."
"Do you mean to insinuate--"
"I don't mean to insinuate anything. Listen! We are where we can talk
plainly, Marsh, and I am tired of all this subterfuge. You did what you
could to stop me, you even tried to have me killed--"
"You dare to--"
"But I guess it never occurred to you that I may be just as desperate
as you are."
The men stared at each other with hostile eyes, but the accusation had
come so suddenly and with such boldness as to rob Marsh of words.
Emerson went on in the same level voice: "I broke through in spite of
you, and I'm on the job. If you want to cry quits, I'm willing; but, by
God! I won't be balked, and if any of your hired marshals try to take
me before I put up my catch I'll put you away. Understand?"
Willis Marsh recoiled involuntarily before the sudden ferocity that
blazed up in the speaker's face. "You are insane," he cried.
"Am I?" Emerson laughed, harshly. "Well, I'm just crazy enough to do
what I say. I don't think you're the kind that wants hand-to-hand
trouble, so let's each attend to his own affair. I'm doing well, thank
you, and I think I can get along better if yon don't come back here
until I send for you. Something might fall on you."
Marsh's full, red lips went pallid with rage as he said "Then it is to
be war, eh?"
"Suit yourself." Boyd pointed to the shore. "Your boatman is waiting
for you."
As Marsh made his way to the water's edge he stumbled like a blind man;
his lips were bleeding where his small, sharp teeth had bitten them,
and he panted like an hysterical woman.
During the next fortnight the sailing-ships began to assemble, standing
in under a great spread of canvas to berth close alongside the two
steamships; for, once the ice had moved north, there was no further
obstacle to their coming, and the harbor was soon livened with puffing
tugs, unwieldy lighters, and fleets of smaller vessels. Where, but a
short time before, the brooding silence had been undisturbed save for
the plaint of wolf-dogs and the lazy voices of natives, a noisy army
was now at work. The bustle of a great preparation arose; languid
smoke-wreaths began to unfurl above the stacks of the canneries; the
stamp and clank of tin-machines re-echoed; hammer and saw maintained a
never-ceasing hubbub. Down at the new plant scows were being launched
while yet the pitch was warm on their seams; buildings were rising
rapidly, and a crew had gone up the river to get out a raft of piles.
On the morning after the arrival of the last ship, Emerson and his
companions were treated to a genuine surprise. Cherry had come down to
the site as usual--she could not let a day go by without visiting the
place--and Clyde, after a tardy breakfast, had just come ashore. They
were watching Big George direct the launching of a scow, when all of a
sudden they heard a familiar voice behind them cry, cheerfully:
"Hello, white folks! Here we are, all together again."
They turned to behold a villanous-looking man beaming benignly upon
them. He was dirty, his clothes were in rags, and through a riotous
bristle of beard that hid his thin features a mangy patch showed on
either cheek. It was undeniably "Fingerless" Fraser, but how changed,
how altered from that radiant flower of indolence they had known! He
was pallid, emaciated, and bedraggled; his attitude showed hunger and
abuse, and his bony joints seemed about to pierce through their
tattered covering. As they stood speechless with amazement, he made his
identification complete by protruding his tongue from the corner of his
mouth and gravely closing one eye in a wink of exceeding wisdom.
"Fraser!" they cried in chorus, then fell upon him noisily, shaking his
grimy hands and slapping his back until he coughed weakly. Summoned by
their shouts, Big George broke in upon the incoherent greeting, and at
sight of his late comrade began to laugh hoarsely.
"Glad to see you, old man!" he cried, "but how did you get here?"
Fraser drew himself up with injured dignity, then spoke in dramatic
accents. "I worked my way!" He showed the whites of his eyes,
tragically.
"You look like you'd walked in from Kansas," George declared.
"Yes, sir, I _worked! Me!"_
"How? Where?"
"On that bloody wind-jammer." He stretched a long arm toward the harbor
in a theatrical gesture.
"But the police?" queried Boyd.
"Oh, I squared them easy. It's you they want. Yes, sir, I _worked_."
Again he scanned their faces anxiously. "I'm a scullery-maid."
"What?"
"That's what I said. I've rustled garbage-cans till the smell of food
gives me a cold sweat. I'm as hungry as a starving Cuban, and yet the
sight of a knife and fork turns my stomach." He wheeled suddenly upon
Alton Clyde, whose burst of shrill laughter offended him. "Don't cry.
Your sympathy unmans me."
"Tell us about it," urged Cherry.
"What's the use?" he demanded, with a glare at Clyde. "That bone-head
wouldn't understand."
"Go ahead," Boyd seconded, with twitching lips. "You look as if you had
worked, and worked hard."
"Hard? I'm the only man in the world who knows what hard work is!"
"Start at the beginning--when you were arrested."
"Well, I didn't care nothing about the sneeze," he took up the tale,
"for I figure it out that they can't slough me without clearing you, so
I never take no sleeping-powders, and, sure enough, about third
drink-time the bulls spring me, and I screw down the main stem to the
drink and get Jerry to your fade--"
"Tell it straight," interrupted Cherry. "They don't understand you."
"Well, there ain't any Pullmans running to this resort, so I stow away
on a coal-burner, but somebody flags me. Then I try to hire out as a
fisherman, but I ain't there with the gang talk and my stuff drags, so
I fix it for a hide-away on _The Blessed Isle_--that's her name. Can
you beat that for a monaker? This sailor of mine goes good to grub me,
but he never shows for forty-eight hours--or years, I forget which.
Anyhow, I stand it as long as I can, then I dig my way up to a hatch
and mew like a house-cat. It seems they were hep from the start, and
battened me down on purpose, then made book on how long I'd stay hid.
Oh, it's a funny joke, and they all get a stomach laugh when I show.
When I offer to pay my way they're insulted. Nix! that ain't their
graft. They wouldn't take money from a stranger. Oh, no! They permit me
to _work_ my way. The scullion has quit, see? So they promote me to his
job. It's the only job I ever held, and I held it because it wouldn't
let go of me, savvy? There's only three hundred men aboard _The Blessed
Isle_, so all I have to do, regular, is to understudy the cooks, carry
the grub, wait on table, wash the dishes, mop the floors, make the
officers' beds, peel six bushels of potatoes a day, and do the laundry.
Then, of course, there's some odd tasks. Oh, it was a swell job--more
like a pastime. When a mop sees me coming now it dances a hornpipe, and
I can't look a dish-rag in the face. All I see in my dreams is
potato-parings and meat-rinds. I've got dish-water in my veins, and the
whole universe looks greasy to me. Naturally it was my luck to pick the
slowest ship in the harbor. We lay three weeks in the ice, that's all,
and nobody worked but me and the sea-gulls."
"You deserted this morning, eh?"
"I did. I beat the barrier, and now I want a bath and some clean
clothes and a whole lot of sleep. You don't need to disturb me till
fall."
He showed no interest whatever in the new plant, refusing even to look
it over or to express an opinion upon the progress of the work; so they
sent him out to the ship, where for days he remained in a toad-like
lethargy, basking in the sun, sleeping three-fourths of the time and
spending his waking hours in repeating the awful tale of his
disgraceful peonage.
To unload the machinery, particularly the heavier pieces, was by no
means a simple matter, owing to the furious tides that set in and out
of the Kalvik River. The first mishap occurred during the trip on which
the boilers were towed in, and it looked to Boyd less like an accident
than a carefully planned move to cripple him at one stroke. The other
ships were busily discharging and the roadstead was alive with small
craft of various kinds, when the huge boilers were swung over the side
of _The Bedford Castle_ and blocked into position for the journey to
the shore. George and a half-dozen of his men went along with the load
while Emerson remained on the ship. They were just well under way when,
either by the merest chance or by malicious design, several of the
rival Company's towboats moored to the neighboring ships cast off. The
anchorage was crowded and a boiling six-mile tide made it difficult at
best to avoid collision.
Hearing a confused shouting to shoreward, Boyd ran to the rail in time
to see one of the Company tugs at the head of a string of towboats
bearing down ahead of the current directly upon his own slow-moving
lighter. Already it was so close at hand as to make disaster seem
inevitable. He saw Balt wave his arms furiously and heard him bellow
profane warnings while the fishermen scurried about excitedly, but
still the tug held to its course. Boyd raised his voice in a wild
alarm, but had they heard him there was nothing they could have done.
Then suddenly the affair altered its complexion.
The oncoming tug was barely twice its length from the scow when Boyd
saw Big George cease his violent antics and level a revolver directly
at the wheel-house of the opposing craft. Two puffs of smoke issued
from weapon, then out from the glass-encased structure the steersman
plunged, scrambled down the deck and into the shelter of the house.
Instantly the bow of the tug swung off, and she came on sidewise,
striking Balt's scow a glancing blow, the sound of which rose above the
shouts, while its force threw the big fellow and his companions to
their knees and shattered the glass in the pilot-house windows. The
boats behind fouled each other, then drifted down upon the scow, and
the tide, seizing the whole flotilla, began to spin it slowly. Rushing
to the ladder, Emerson leaped into another launch which fortunately was
at hand, and the next instant as the little craft sped out from the
side of _The Bedford Castle_, he saw that a fight was in progress on
the lighter. It was over quickly, and before he reached the scene the
current had drifted the tows apart. George, it seemed, had boarded the
tug, dragged the captain off, and beaten him half insensible before the
man's companions had come to his rescue.
"Is the scow damaged?" Emerson cried, as he came alongside.
"She's leaking, but I guess we can make it," George reassured him.
They directed the second launch to make fast, and, towed by both tugs,
they succeeded in beaching their cargo a mile below the landing.
"We'll calk her at low tide," George declared, well satisfied at this
outcome of the misadventure. Then he fell to reviling the men who had
caused it.
"Don't waste your breath on them," Boyd advised. "We're lucky enough as
it is. If that tug hadn't sheered off she would have cut us down, sure."
"That fellow done it a-purpose," George swore. "Seamen ain't that
careless. He tried to tell me he was rattled, but I rattled _him_."
"If that's the case they may try it again," said the younger man.
"Huh! I'll pack a 'thirty-thirty' from now on, and I bet they don't get
within hailing distance without an iron-clad."
The more calmly Emerson regarded the incident, the more he marvelled at
the good-fortune that had saved him. "We had better wake up," he said.
"We have been asleep so far. If Marsh planned this, he will plan
something more."
"Yes, and if he puts one wallop over we're done for," George agreed,
pessimistically. "I'll keep a watchman aboard the scows hereafter.
That's our vital spot."
But the days sped past without further interference, and the
construction of the plant progressed by leaps and bounds, while _The
Bedford Castle_, having discharged her cargo, steamed away to return in
August.
The middle of June brought the first king salmon, scouts sent on ahead
of the "sockeyes;" but Boyd made no effort to take advantage of this
run, laboring manfully to prepare for the advance of the main army,
that terrific horde that was soon to come from the mysterious depths,
either to make or ruin him. Once the run proper started, there would be
no more opportunity for building or for setting up machinery. He must
be ready and waiting by the first of July.
For some time his tin-machines had been busy, night and day, turning
out great heaps of gleaming cans, while the carpenters and machinists
completed their tasks. The gill-netters were overhauling their gear,
the beach was lined with fishing-boats. On the dock great piles of
seines and drift-nets were being inspected. Three miles below, Big
George, with a picked crew and a pile-driver, was building the
fish-trap. It consisted of half-mile "leads," or rows of piling, capped
with stringers, upon which netting was hung, and terminated in
"hearts," "corrals," and "spillers," the intricate arrangements of
webbing and timbers out of which the fish were to be taken.
It was for the title to the ground where his present operations were
going forward that George had been so cruelly disciplined by the
"interests;" and while he had held stubbornly to his rights for years
in spite of the bitterest persecution, he was now for the first time
able to utilize his site. Accordingly his exultation was tremendous.
As for Boyd, the fever in his veins mounted daily as he saw his dream
assuming concrete form. The many problems arising as the work advanced
afforded him unceasing activity; the unforeseen obstacles which were
encountered hourly required swift and certain judgment, taxing his
ingenuity to the utmost. He became so filled with it all, so steeped
with the spirit of his surroundings, that he had thought for nothing
else. Every dawn marked the beginning of a new battle, every twilight
heralded another council. His duties swamped him; he was worried,
exultant, happy. Always he found Cherry at his shoulder, unobtrusive
and silent for the most part, yet intensely observant and keenly alive
to every action. She seemed to have the faculty of divination, knowing
when to be silent and when to join her mood with his, and she gave him
valuable help; for she possessed a practical mind and a masculine
aptitude for details that surprised both him and George. But, rapidly
as the work progressed, it seemed that good-fortune would never smile
upon them for long. One day, when their preparations were nearly
completed, a foreman came to Boyd, and said excitedly:
"Boss, I'd like you to look at the Iron Chinks right away."
"What's up?"
"I don't know, but something is wrong." A hurried examination showed
the machines to be cunningly crippled; certain parts were entirely
missing, while others were broken.
"They were all right when we brought them ashore," the man declared.
"Somebody's been at them lately."
"When? How?" questioned Boyd. "We have had watchmen on guard all the
time. Have any strangers been about?"
"Nobody seems to know. When we got ready to set 'em just now, I saw
this."
The Iron Chink, or mechanical cleaner, is perhaps the most ingenious of
the many labor-saving devices used in the salmon fisheries. It is an
awkward-looking, yet very effective contrivance of revolving knives and
conveyors which seizes the fish whole and delivers it cleaned, clipped,
cut, and ready to be washed. With superhuman dexterity it does the work
of twenty lightning-like butchers. Without the aid of these Iron
Chinks, Boyd knew that his fish would spoil before they could be
handled. In a panic, he pursued his investigation far enough to realize
that the machines were beyond repair; that what had seemed at first a
trivial mishap was in fact an appalling disaster. Then, since his own
experience left him without resource, he hastened straightway to George
Balt. A half-hour's run down the bay and he clambered from his launch
to the pile-driver, where, amid the confusion and noise, he made known
his tidings. The big fellow's calmness amazed him.
"What are you going to do now?"
"Butcher by hand," said the fisherman.
"But how? That takes skilled labor--lots of it."
George grinned. "I'm too old a bird to be caught like this. I figured
on accidents from the start, and when I hired my Chinamen I included a
crew of cutters."
"By Jove, you never told me!"
"There wasn't no use. We ain't licked yet, not by a damned sight.
Willis Marsh will have to try again."