Читать книгу Spawn of the North - Barrett Willoughby - Страница 19

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Dian plunged whole-heartedly into the merry-making. She found that her encounter with Jim Kemerlee had set her spirits soaring. Her blood leaped and sang. Everything was now as it should be. She was at rest even about Ivor, for, though she could see him nowhere in the close-packed crowd, Eve was just moving out on the floor with an entranced partner bent like a half-hoop over her.

The dance-floor was seething like a human anthill. Men and women were becoming gayer, more informal. Spectators at the tables laughingly cheered couples gyrating and singing and stamping through individualistic steps. Sockeye, all by himself, went through a comically solemn measure called 'the Bear Paw.'

Presently Ivor returned to his seat at the piano and the deep boom of the drum throbbing through his rippling notes called forth all that was untamed and reckless in Dian. Her years of careful schooling in the States dropped away from her. She became thoroughly Alaskan again. She was one with the fish people, at home, satisfied. She danced with Tyler almost continually, something in her responding to the diablerie she felt growing in him.

Jim had joined the non-dancing crowd in the corner—several packers, cannery officials, Sockeye, and Hanley of the Pirate Patrol. Dian, circling the room in Tyler's arms, caught snatches of their talk as she went by. They were discussing fish pirates.

After another round of the dance-floor Dian saw that Sockeye was holding forth: 'Aw, whale-oil!' came his scoffing tones. 'Pirates are like cooties—strictly a personal matter. If a man can't protect his traps from them he deserves to lose his fish.'

Dian felt Tyler slowing his steps and in another minute both of them were standing beside the seated group joining in the laughter that was greeting Sockeye's remarks.

Jim Kemerlee, who had been listening and watching, suddenly leaned forward in his chair and joined the conversation: 'There'd be no pirates if salmon packers didn't encourage them,' he said slowly.

'How come?' belligerently demanded one of the cannery men.

'Well, you hire watchmen to protect your traps. Then you hire additional men—the Pirate Patrol—to see that the watchmen don't sell out to the pirates. On top of that you hire scouts to keep tabs on the Pirate Patrol to be sure they don't go in with the trap watchmen and both sell out to the pirates.'

'Cease!' yelped Sockeye, clapping both hands to his head and swaying after the manner of a comedian hit with a custard pie. 'You make me swoon!'

'But there's truth in what he says so far!' admitted the packer.

'Yes, and that's only half the farce,' continued Jim, laughing. 'Pirates steal fish from your traps. They come to your cannery to sell you those fish. You know they're offering you your own salmon, yet you're so darned afraid you won't put up a big pack you buy—pay out your own money for your own fish. Talk about comic opera! The situation has Gilbert and Sullivan backed off the boards. Yet the remedy is simple: if we'd all stick to the cannerymen's agreement and refuse to buy stolen fish, we'd have no pirates.'

'Oh, I say. Jimmy! Don't be an ass!' Tyler spoke with his slow, sardonic smile. 'Would you do away with the pirates of Ketchikan and thus deprive our charming feminine tourists of their greatest thrill?'

'Now you're talking!' cried the young captain of a Turlon tender. 'Ever since Queen Bess knighted Drake for his plunderings, ladies have loved pirates.'

'It's not only ladies who are susceptible!' another voice broke in. 'You can't get a jury in this town to convict a pirate even after he's caught red-handed!'

'Certainly not!' agreed Tyler, laughing. 'Big oaks from little acorns grow. And in the majority of cases the fish pirate bears the same relation to the big fish packer that the salmon egg bears to the grown salmon. No cannery-man ever takes a pirate seriously.'

'That's right,' interposed Sockeye proudly. 'We fish people may rob each other, and fight each other, but by the Holy Jumped-up, when one of us runs against the law, you'll find all the rest of us standing by him.'

Dian was beginning to be bored with this somewhat complex question when Tyler put an end to all seriousness by breaking into a pirate song:

Old Captain Kidd went after gold! Yo ho, till I heave this line! But we want fish to fill the hold! Yo ho, till I heave this line!

Couples crowded about to listen during the intermission. Dian watched Tyler's mocking gaze move from Jim Kemerlee to Hanley of the Pirate Patrol. There was a lilt and a swing and a fine lawless glamour to the words the way he sang them, and Dian's mind sang with him those lines she had learned from Eagle Turlon:

We sail beneath the high North Star; We know where the sleepy watchmen are: We lift a trap—and we travel far! Yo ho, while I heave this line!

Then, quite to her own surprise, she found herself joining audibly in the next verse, her husky alto turning the performance into a rollicking two-part duet:

Let lazy Bohunks guard the traps; Yo ho, till I heave this line! Their boss may can the fish—perhaps! Yo ho, till I heave this line!

There was a whispering and nudging among the spectators. Some of the older women surveyed the handsome young couple with growing disapproval. Jim Kemerlee, with elaborate unconcern, lighted a cigarette and enveloped himself in a cloud of smoke. Dian caught his eye, and, with defiance in her manner, slipped her arm inside Tyler's and swayed with him, pirate-like, as they sang the last verse:

We're fishermen of a different kind, We lift whatever traps we find. And the Devil can can—what we leave behind! Yo ho, while I heave this line!

Red Skain leaned toward the man next to him. 'Chip off the old block—that girl,' he said, closing one eye meaningly. 'She ought to team up permanent with Tyler.'