He did not try to pin Stubby to a more definite statement.  A hint was enough for MacRae.  Stubby Abbott could also be depended upon to see things beyond the horizon.  If a storm broke Stubby was the most vulnerable, because in a sense he was involved with the cannery interests in general, and they would consider him an apostate and knife him without mercy,—­if they could.  If the Abbott estate had debts, obligations which could be manipulated, if through the financial convolutions of marketing the Crow Harbor pack Stubby could be reached, the Abbott family had property, a standard of living that stood for comfort, appearance, luxury almost.  There are always plenty of roads open to a flank attack on people like that; many levers, financial and otherwise, can be pulled for or against them.

So MacRae, knowing that Stubby must protect himself in a showdown, set about fortifying his own approaches.

For a first move he hired an engineer, put Steve Ferrara in charge of the Blackbird, and started him back to Squitty.  Then MacRae took the next train to Bellingham, a cannery town which looks out on the southern end of the Gulf of Georgia from the American side of the boundary.  He extended his journey to Seattle.  Altogether, he was gone three days.

When he came back he made a series of calls,—­at the Vancouver offices of three different canneries and one of the biggest cold-storage concerns on the Pacific Coast.  He got a courteous but unsatisfactory reception from the cannery men.  He fared a little better with the manager of the cold-storage plant.  This gentleman was tentatively agreeable in the matter of purchasing salmon, but rather vague in the way of terms.

“Beginning with May next I can deliver any quantity up to two thousand a day, perhaps more, for a period of about four months,” MacRae stated.  “What I should like to know is the percentage over the up-coast price you would pay.”

But he could not pin the man down to anything definite.  He would only speak pleasantly of the market and possible arrangements, utter vague commonplaces in business terminology.  MacRae rose.

“I’m wasting your time and my own,” he said.  “You don’t want my fish.  Why not say so?”

“We always want fish,” the man declared, bending a shrewdly appraising eye on MacRae.  “Bring in the salmon and we will do business.”

“On your own terms when my carriers are tied to your dock with a capacity load which I must sell or throw overboard within forty-eight hours,” MacRae smiled.  “No, I don’t intend to go up against any take-it-or-leave proposition like that.  I don’t have to.”

“Well, we might allow you five per cent.  That’s about the usual thing on salmon.  And we would rather have salmon now than a promise of them next season.”

“Oh, rats!” MacRae snorted.  “I’m in the business to make money—­not simply to create dividends for your Eastern stockholders while I eke out a living and take all the risks.  Come again.”