“Could,” Stubby declared.  “Certainly.  But most men in the salmon canning business aren’t like you and me, Jack.  They are used to big returns on a three months’ season.  They simply can’t stand the idea of paying out big gobs of money to a sulky, un-shaven bohunk whose whole equipment isn’t worth a thousand dollars.  They think any man in sea boots ought to be damn well satisfied if he makes a living.  They say high wages, or returns, spoil fishermen.  On top of these new regulations nobody hankers to buy a plant where they might have to indulge in a price war with a couple of crazy young fools like you and me—­that’s what they call us, you know.  That is why no experienced cannery man will touch Folly Bay the way things stand now.  It’s a fairly good plant, too.  I don’t know how Gower has managed to get in a hole.  I don’t believe one poor season could do that to him.  But he sure wants to get rid of Folly Bay.  It is a forty-thousand-dollar plant, including the gas boats.  He has been nibbling at an offer of twenty-five thousand.  I know, because I made it myself.”

“What’ll you do with it if you get it?” MacRae asked curiously.  “It’s no good unless you get the fish.  You’d have to put me out of business.”

“Well, I wasn’t exactly figuring on that,” Stubby grinned.  “In the first place, the machinery and equipment is worth that much in the open market.  And if I get it, we’ll either make a deal for collecting the fish, or you can take a half-interest in the plant at the ground-floor price.  Either way, we can make it a profitable investment for both of us.”

“You really think Gower is in a bad way?” Jack asked reflectively.

“I know it,” Stubby replied emphatically.  “Oh, I don’t mean to say that abject poverty is staring him in the face, or anything like that.  But it looks to me as if he had lost a barrel of money somehow and was anxious to get Folly Bay off his hands before it sets him further in the hole.  You could make Folly Bay pay big dividends.  So could I. But so long as you cover his ground with carriers, every day he operates is a dead loss.  I haven’t much sympathy for him.  He has made a fortune out of that place and those fishermen and spent it making a big splurge in town.  Anyway, his wife has all kinds of kale, so we should worry about old Horace A.”

MacRae lit a cigarette and listened to the flow of Stubby’s talk, with part of his mind mulling over this information about Horace Gower.  He wondered if that was why Robbin-Steele was so keen on getting a contract for those Squitty bluebacks, why Hurley of the Northwest wanted to make a deal for salmon; if they reckoned that Gower had ceased to be a factor and that Jack MacRae held the Squitty Island business in the hollow of his hand.  MacRae smiled to himself.  If that were true it was an advantage he meant to hold for his own good and the good of all those hard-driven men who labored at the fishing.  In a time that was economically awry