Poor Man's Rock

xity of Si

was not precisely aware of it, but those four years had saved him from being a firebrand of sorts in his present situation, because there resided in him a fiery temper and a capacity for passionate extreme

y, ignoble. Perhaps the Air Service was unique in that it was at once the most dangerous and the most democratic and the most individual of all the organizations that fought the Germans. It had high standards. The airmen were

lie or cheat or steal. An honest man may respect an honest enem

he first time in his fish-running venture. The trollers had promised to

hed in the lee off the top end. But we might as

ould slough them on the ca

ne did. The

ur fish went ba

enty-five

isherman heaved up on the deck. He made o

you to hold them for me. I want you to hold them. I

at the money in his h

irst buyer I ever seen do that

ad sold their fish. Others had held on. These, who were all men MacRae knew, he paid according to their own estimate of loss. He did not argue. He

e of one salmon or forty. When the Arrow drew abreast and stopped, a boat had pushed in beside t

hirty besides the

?" MacRae a

o the cannery because he was always in debt to the cannery,-and a quarrelsome indiv

He knew instantly what was in Kaye's mind; it had flitted from one boat to another that MacRae was making goo

ling, acrimonious dispute. He was loth to a common row at that moment, because he was acutely conscious of the two girls wat

he fishermen knew it,-and he had a suspicion that Folly Bay might not be unaware, or av

id quietly. "I know your game. Get off

d raw-boned, and he rather fancied himself in a rough and tumble. He was quite blissfully ignorant that Jack M

n down. There was a deceptive power in MacRae's slenderness, which was not so much slenderness as perfect bodily symmetry. He weighed within ten pounds as much as Sam Kaye, altho

lence with ribald laughter

dn't care to stand out as a bruiser. Still, he asked himself irritably, why should he care because Nelly Abbott and Betty Gower had seen him using his fists? He was perfectly justified. Indeed,

"It's hell to wheeze your breath in and out. By jiminy, you

the fellows in our squadron were pretty

, the gas has cooked my goose. I'd have to bat Kaye o

he rose out of his own fish hold-bewildered as

ship, and the two boats made one load for the Blackbird. She headed south. With high noon, t

same, a breeze rising at ten o'clock, stiffening to a healthy blow, a mere sigh at sundown.

g through a following sea, and turned into Squitty C

k. Squitty Cove always stirred him to introspection. His mind leaped always to the manifold suggestions of any well-remembered place. He could shut his eyes and see the old log house behind its leafy screen of alder and maple at the Cove's head. The rosebushes before it were laden with bloom now. At his hand were t

ther, pouring out the tale of those troubled yea

de lean-tos. He walked over the low ridge behind which stood Peter Ferrara's house. It was hot, the wooded heights of the island shutting off t

hick-set, young, quite fair, inclined already to floridness of skin. MacRae knew him at once for Norman Gower. He was a typica

cRae had an impulse to stride after him, to forbid harshly any such trespass on MacRae ground. But he smiled at that childishness. It was childish, MacRae knew. But he felt that way about it, just as he often felt that he himself had

s sitting beside a little table, her chin in her palms. There was a droop to her body that disturbed MacRae. She had sat for hours like that the night his father d

Jack," s

r, put his hands

Norman Gower leaving as I came up. A

was imp

ng, Jo

at kind," MacRae replied. "That chunky lo

eyes f

lared. "It isn't nice. And-and what busine

ith her remarkable beauty every time he saw her. She was altogether too beautif

nts in Eden. Because anything that hurts you hurts me. I don't like anything to make you cry, mia Dolores. I'd wr

her eyes with

know, Jack MacRae," she murmured. "B

out his han

of course," he adm

to anything Gower,-and Dolly knew no basis for that save the fact that Horace Gower had acquired his father's ranch. Tha

e said slowly. "Except that I can't help being conce

y when she had hurt herself, because he had teased her, because she was angry or disappointed. He had never seen any woman cry as she did now. It

clung there, trembling like some hunted thing seeking refuge, mysteriously stirring MacRae with t

Dolly's sobbing ceased. She rested passively in his arms for a minute. Then

ike that so suddenly?" she muttered. "And

ou if I knew why you went off like that. You poor

ke it ever comes to you, Jack. I'm blee

against him and

," he wh

wasn't much wonder they called you Silent John. Do you know I never really grasped The Anci

" MacRae e

ntly, and stopped. She was not looking at MacRae now. She stare

tell me that he married in England two years ago. Married in the madness of a drunken hour-that is h

in luck," MacR

out loud. "He says he loves me, that he has loved me all the time, that he feels as if he had bee

he's got in that kind of a hole, let him stay the

that way. I can't let a thing become a vital

can do," MacRae observed. "

dently she had no scruples about getting what she wanted, nor how. She went away with another man. Nor

ll

eet MacRae's wonderi

e-plated fool,"

Norman certainly has been. Perhaps I am too

s in her voic

have loved me," h

. You have never tho

, quite

idered thi

n together in spite of themselves, in spite of things they can see in each other that they don't quite like, I dare say you'd understand. I don't think I do. Norman Gower has made me dreadfully unhappy. But I loved him before he went away, and I love him yet. I want him just the same. And he says-he says-

y him eventuall

y no

rmured. "Oh, I shouldn't say ugly thing

out passionately. "I can forgive him, because I can see

ps parted over white teeth that were clenched together. He

, as he himself always wanted to fight a grief or a hurt alone and in silence, walke

own on the top step, and cursed the Gowers, root and branch. He hated them, eve

ople. They sat in the seats of the mighty, and for their pleasure or

the roses and the balsamy odors from the woods behind. But the rooms depressed him when he went in. They were dusty and silent, abandoned to th

grassy place in the shade of an arbutus, and lay down to rest and watch. Sunset would bring calm, a dying wind, new colors to s

d tree. He was moody. It seemed a struggle without mercy or justice, almost without reason, a blind obedience to the will-to-live. A tooth-and-toenail contest. He surveyed his own part in it with cynical detachment. So long as salmon ran in the s

achieved three meals a day and a squalid place to sleep. Sometimes, when they were pluming themselves on having beaten the game, Destiny was laughing in her sleeve and s

if that were