Читать книгу Spawn of the North - Barrett Willoughby - Страница 10

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Briny, in a fresh burst of spirit, was referring to this distressing chapter of Blossom's past when the nearing sounds of an unmuffled exhaust smote the air like reports of a pistol. Hostilities ceased. The pair hurried to the small window that commanded a view of the float built for the accommodation of guests arriving by water.

Blossom said: 'It's Sockeye Jones, in his Gas Gulper from Sunny Cove. I wonder what's the matter.'

A few minutes later they greeted the plant foreman of Eagle Turlon's cannery. He came into the big kitchen with a seaman's gait, one arm swinging and the other inert. He was a short man, about fifty, with wide, powerful shoulders and a cheerful, tanned face surmounted by a mane of silvery-gold hair. On his large head a clean little 'gob' hat rode at a precarious angle that gave him, even in his most serious moments, a what-the-hell look.

Sockeye sank into Briny's vacated chair. 'Prrrrrrrrrr!' He puffed out his cheeks and expelled his breath through his mouth with such violence that his lips flapped noisily over a perfect set of false teeth. 'Blossom, my lily! Make a smudge in that firebox and stick on some grub. Half a dozen eggs on a raft of buttered toast. Briny, me lad! Grab the cocktail-shaker immejit—a shot of moose-milk, and make her plenty potent. I got a blow this morning that left me with no more vitality than a cold boiled potato!'

'Wot's up?' asked Briny anxiously, as he dragged an imperial quart of Hudson's Bay rum out from under the woodbox. 'Anything wrong at Sunny Cove?'

'Everything shot to blazes!' Sockeye stuffed a cold hotcake into his mouth and spoke through it. 'Where's that kid, Ivor? I thought he was bunking here with you since he and his dad had the big row.'

Blossom was immediately on the defensive. 'He is. He's just gone out for a walk.'

'Oh-h-h-h! A walk!' Sockeye raised his eyebrows with elaborate sarcasm. 'But of course us girls has to have our exercise!' He shoved his little hat over to the other side of his head and thrust a cigarette into his mouth, where it waggled an accompaniment to his words. 'My God! To think that Eagle'd spawn a young one like that! Why, when Eagle was nineteen he was bossing a gill-net crew of the toughest hombres in Karluk. Could lick any Swede or Hunkie in the outfit, too. A walk!—Gimme that moose-milk, Briny, I——'

'You lay off panning that boy, Sockeye!' Blossom eyed him belligerently while she slapped butter on a slab of toast with a butcher knife. 'What do you want with him?'

'I merely wanted to ascertain his reactions, as we say in refined business circles, when he learns what a hell of a hole Sunny Cove is in. Know what?' Sockeye was suddenly serious. He leveled a middle finger at his listeners. 'I brought the superintendent in this morning and planted him in the hospital where he'll be growing little pneumonia germs for the next three months—if he don't cash in. Double pneumonia, what's more. Got it falling off a fish-trap on the Cape Fox shore. Here we are with the opening of the season only a week off, no superintendent on the job, none to be had for love nor money, and to cap it all, the Old Man galloping off to Siberia to grab more fish. There's no one here to represent the family but me and that piano-pawing sissy of a son who——'

''Old a minute, Sockeye! 'Aven't you 'eard about Miss Dian arriving unexpected on larst night's steamer?'

'Dian!' exploded Sockeye. 'O-mi-god!' He threw up both hands. 'As if I didn't have enough grief without that devil of a girl slipping back here to raise hell when her dad's gone!'

'I say, Sockeye! You're fair off your top talking like that about Miss Dian. Wot's she ever done to——'

'Listen, Briny!' The foreman pecked the little man on the chest with his forefinger. 'We've both known that girl since her mud-pie days. She's a good kid and we think a heap of her, but we got to face facts. Women and fish don't mix.'

'Bahhhh!' derided Blossom.

Unnoting, Sockeye went on: 'Remember—Noel Thomas was one of the best superintendents Eagle ever had at Sunny Cove until Dian went over there three seasons ago and he got sweet on her. Then he didn't know whether he was going on fins or feet. Remember also what she did the minute her paw went up to Juneau to see the Governor that year: got up that durned camping party for the bunch of sorority sisters that was visiting her. Right smack in the middle of the salmon run, too. And just because they wanted a man along, Noel goes. He thinks they're only going off on a picnic—but instead they stayed away three days. My God! Keeping a superintendent away from his work three days in the middle of the run! And while he's gone, one of the traps goes out!'

'Aw-w-w-w, you prejudiced old barnacle, Noel insisted on going——'

'No wonder Eagle packed her off to the States,' Sockeye ignored Blossom's interruption. 'And kept her there for two years straight. But it's poor Noel I'm sorry for. Eagle fired him and made it so hot for him he hasn't been able to get a job on the coast since. That,' finished Sockeye, cleaving the air with his finger, 'is what comes of Dian's monkeying around the cannery.'

'Aw-w-w-w, you give me a pain in the neck!' Blossom bulged with contempt. 'Blaming that on Dian! I suppose if you don't put up the pack this year you'll blame that on her too. Can't say a good word for them Turlon kids, can you? And you working for their dad this past ten years. I know what's eating you. You can't forget you was foreman for John Kemerlee when he built Sunny Cove. You still——'

'I say, Sockeye!' Briny at last succeeded in making himself heard above Blossom's flow of words. 'Jimmy Kemerlee's in town visiting his brother Tyler for a few days. Wy not get 'im to take over Sunny Cove? 'E seems to be out of a job this summer.'

'Brilliant brains!' ejaculated Sockeye. 'You know as well as I do that Jimmy would rather work for the Devil than become superintendent for Eagle Turlon. Especially at Sunny Cove, his dad's old cannery. Oh, you don't have to tell me that Eagle got the plant away from old John Kemerlee square and legitimate. I know!' And as Sockeye attacked his fourth egg, the three old friends discussed the break that had separated the Turlons and the Kemerlees ten years previously.

It had happened during the fish panic that hit Alaska just after the Armistice, when nine out of ten packers went into bankruptcy. John Kemerlee, lifelong friend of Eagle Turlon, was among the unfortunates. Turlon, because of his banking connections, not only weathered the financial storm, but prospered. He might have helped John Kemerlee save the Sunny Cove Cannery; but, rumor stated, Turlon had long coveted that plant, the largest and most modern on the coast; and he made no effort to help Kemerlee.

Eventually, and legally, he acquired Sunny Cove, as he acquired everything he set his mind on.

But those nearest him during that period knew that it was not easy for Eagle Turlon to stand by and watch the waters of financial disaster close above the white head of John Kemerlee. John had shared with Eagle those glorious fighting days of lawless fishing when the two, reckless young gill-netters at Karluk, had gone into battle side by side to 'clean out' gangs of Italian fishermen who were invading their grounds. They had reversed the process more than once and successfully raided the fishing territory of others.

After Turlon took over Sunny Cove, John Kemerlee never spoke to him again. Kemerlee died soon after. He had nothing to leave his two sons, Tyler and Jim, but the big Kemerlee home on Tyee Hill. Both young men left the University of Washington without finishing their courses, and came back to Ketchikan. They rented their home to strangers and began where their father had begun, as fishermen.

Turlon had tried to do something for the sons of his old friend, especially for Tyler, the elder, who, despite the fact that he was under age, had enlisted when America entered the World War. Tyler had a year on the Italian front before the Armistice. When he returned from overseas and reëntered the University, he had a war record for reckless courage and a decoration from Italy's king.

After John Kemerlee's financial crash, his sons ignored the advances of Eagle Turlon. Tyler, craving excitement, loving uncertainty and change, kept on as a seiner. Now, at thirty-two, he was the owner of two boats and had the reputation of being the most daring navigator of small craft on the coast. Jim, three years younger, had become first a cannery bookkeeper, then a superintendent for a packing company at Memory Inlet, several hundred miles northwest of Ketchikan, from which city he had absented himself since university days.

'There's a heap of difference between those boys,' commented Sockeye.

'I'll say!' agreed Briny. 'Tyler got some God-awful notions wen 'e was runnin' round wiv them dagoes across the pond. He gave me a turn the other day, 'e did. We'd climbed the steps together to the top of Tyee Hill wen 'e stops short and crouches there at the edge of the cliff looking down on all the people going along Front Street. "Look 'ere, Briny!" 'e says to me, grinning his lazy grin. "If a chap had a single machine gun just 'ere, 'e could wipe out the whole town of Ketchikan!" 'e says. And wiv that 'e makes out 'e's training a gun on them innocernt folks down below and popping 'em off. He fair gives me the pip!'

'Oh, he was just spoofing you, Briny. Tyler is full of the devil. Jimmy's the serious one. You remember, as a kid he was always reading old books of travel, especially Alaskan travel, and figuring on the future of the country. Jim's a born ancestor. But Tyler! Gosh! Nothing but death will cool his philandering blood!' Sockeye swung his big head from side to side. 'Why, when he was only a high-school kid on the Ketchikan basket-ball team, one of the girls on the Red Line gave him that nugget belt-buckle he wears. His maw was alive then and she used to worry a lot about him. She'd give parties for the high-school gang up at the big house, trying to keep Tyler at home. The school-girls were crazy to know where Ty got that buckle. But when they asked him he'd laugh and say: "I mined it." Ty's careless when he talks to women. Tells 'em only half a thing, or gives them half an answer to a question. But darned if they all don't fall for him.'

'And 'ow 'e can dance!' put in Briny with an upward roll of his pale eyes. 'One night——'

'He can dance, yes,' admitted Blossom, with the bitter wisdom of her kind. 'But the way he holds a woman gives the idea that he stayed with her last night. He's the kind of guy the young husband warns his wife about on the way home from the dance, and she knows he's right about the fellow, but she makes excuses for him—and begins planning ways of seeing him again. But Jimmy——'

'Aw, now, don't get the idea that Jimmy's so slow!' Sockeye nodded with an air of deep sagacity. 'He's just quieter, that's all. Believe me, he's looked 'em all over and tried 'em all out, but I reckon he decided they're all the bunk. Why, say! If a girl on the Red Line tried to give Jim a nugget buckle he'd wrap it in a hundred-dollar bill, press it back into her hand, and say in that smooth, deep voice of his: "And still I'm your debtor, darling!" No, sir—ee! No woman's ever put her sign on Jimmy Kemerlee. When one does—well, I want to see her, that's all.'

'I carn't figure out wy Jim's not on his cannery job this season,' said Briny.

'That does seem queer,' admitted Sockeye, holding out his cup for more coffee. 'Surely he wasn't fired. You know he built that measly plant up till it was holding the record for a one-line cannery. And him operating in a nest of fish pirates, too.'

Blossom stood, coffee-pot in hand. 'I hear all the fishmen round here are going to sign an agreement again this year that they won't buy pirated fish.'

'Oh, you know how much good that'll do!' Sockeye dismissed the idea with a laugh. 'Cannerymen's agreement! Poof! No one expects to keep it. But speaking of pirates, I nosed into Pirate Cove the other day and found Red Skain prettying up the Fort Tongass for the season.' Sockeye laughed again. 'He was busier than a dog with fleas shoving putty into the bullet-holes in his pilot-house—you mind the time the Pirate Patrol potted him last year.' Replete with food and drink, Sockeye cocked his hat at a jaunty angle and leaned back in his chair to light a cigarette. Then he continued confidently: 'Well, that's one thing we needn't fear at the Turlon traps. Eagle knows too much about pirating ever to let any of these Ketchikan lads get away with his fish.'

'Oh, yeah!' Blossom slanted a look from cryptic black eyes. 'But Eagle's in Siberia this summer.'

'Hell, yes!' Sockeye suddenly remembered his troubles. 'And I got to rustle a superintendent for the works.' He inserted a finger under his hat and scratched his head reflectively. 'I wonder, now, if I couldn't give Jimmy Kemerlee a hard-luck story that'd make him consider taking over the job.'