Poor Man's Rock Read online

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  Novels by:

  BERTRAND W. SINCLAIR

  North of Fifty-ThreeBig TimberBurned BridgesPoor Man's Rock

  POOR MAN'S ROCK

  BY

  BERTRAND W. SINCLAIR

  BOSTON

  LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY

  Published September, 1920

  THE UNIVERSITY PRESS, CAMBRIDGE, MASS., U.S.A.

  CONTENTS

  Prologue--Long, Long Ago

  CHAPTER

  I. The House in Cradle Bay

  II. His Own Country

  III. The Flutter of Sable Wings

  IV. Inheritance

  V. From the Bottom Up

  VI. The Springboard

  VII. Sea Boots and Salmon

  VIII. Vested Rights

  IX. The Complexity of Simple Matters

  X. Thrust and Counterthrust

  XI. Peril of the Sea

  XII. Between Sun and Sun

  XIII. An Interlude

  XIV. The Swing of the Pendulum

  XV. Hearts are not Always Trumps

  XVI. En Famille

  XVII. Business as Usual

  XVIII. A Renewal of Hostilities

  XIX. Top Dog

  XX. The Dead and Dusty Past

  XXI. As it was in the Beginning

  POOR MAN'S ROCK

  PROLOGUE

  Long, Long Ago

  The Gulf of Georgia spread away endlessly, an immense, empty stretch ofwater bared to the hot eye of an August sun, its broad face only savedfrom oily smoothness by half-hearted flutterings of a westerly breeze.Those faint airs blowing up along the Vancouver Island shore madetentative efforts to fill and belly out strongly the mainsail and jib ofa small half-decked sloop working out from the weather side of SangsterIsland and laying her snub nose straight for the mouth of the FraserRiver, some sixty sea-miles east by south.

  In the stern sheets a young man stood, resting one hand on the tiller,his navigating a sinecure, for the wind was barely enough to give himsteerageway. He was, one would say, about twenty-five or six, fairlytall, healthily tanned, with clear blue eyes having a touch of steelygray in their blue depths, and he was unmistakably of that fair typewhich runs to sandy hair and freckles. He was dressed in a light-coloredshirt, blue serge trousers, canvas shoes; his shirt sleeves, rolled tothe elbows, bared flat, sinewy forearms.

  He turned his head to look back to where in the distance a white speckshowed far astern, and his eyes narrowed and clouded. But there was nocloud in them when he turned again to his companion, a girl sitting ona box just outside the radius of the tiller. She was an odd-lookingfigure to be sitting in the cockpit of a fishing boat, amid recenttraces of business with salmon, codfish, and the like. The heat wasputting a point on the smell of defunct fish. The dried scales of themstill clung to the small vessel's timbers. In keeping, the girl shouldhave been buxom, red-handed, coarsely healthy. And she was anything butthat. No frail, delicate creature, mind you,--but she did not belong ina fishing boat. She looked the lady, carried herself likeone,--patrician from the top of her russet-crowned head to the tips ofher white kid slippers. Yet her eyes, when she lifted them to the man atthe tiller, glowed with something warm. She stood up and slipped asilk-draped arm through his. He smiled down at her, a tender smiletempered with uneasiness, and then bent his head and kissed her.

  "Do you think they will overtake us, Donald?" she asked at length.

  "That depends on the wind," he answered. "If these light airs hold they_may_ overhaul us, because they can spread so much more cloth. But ifthe westerly freshens--and it nearly always does in the afternoon--I canoutsail the _Gull_. I can drive this old tub full sail in a blow thatwill make the _Gull_ tie in her last reef."

  "I don't like it when it's rough," the girl said wistfully. "But I'llpray for a blow this afternoon."

  If indeed she prayed--and her attitude was scarcely prayerful, for itconsisted of sitting with one hand clasped tight in her lover's--herprayer fell dully on the ears of the wind god. The light airs flutteredgently off the bluish haze of Vancouver Island, wavered across theGulf, kept the sloop moving, but no more. Sixty miles away the mouth ofthe Fraser opened to them what security they desired. But behind thempower and authority crept up apace. In two hours they could distinguishclearly the rig of the pursuing yacht. In another hour she was less thana mile astern, creeping inexorably nearer.

  The man in the sloop could only stand on, hoping for the usual afternoonwesterly to show its teeth.

  In the end, when the afternoon was waxing late, the sternward vesselstood up so that every detail of her loomed plain. She was fullcutter-rigged, spreading hundreds of feet of canvas. Every working sailwas set, and every light air cloth that could catch a puff of air. Theslanting sun rays glittered on her white paint and glossy varnish,struck flashing on bits of polished brass. She looked her name, the_Gull_, a thing of exceeding grace and beauty, gliding soundlesslyacross a sun-shimmering sea. But she represented only a menace to theman and woman in the fish-soiled sloop.

  The man's face darkened as he watched the distance lessen between thetwo craft. He reached under a locker and drew out a rifle. The girl'shigh pinkish color fled. She caught him by the arm.

  "Donald, Donald," she said breathlessly, "there's not to be anyfighting."

  "Am I to let them lay alongside, hand you aboard, and then sail back toMaple Point, laughing at us for soft and simple fools?" he said quietly."They can't take you from me so easily as that. There are only three ofthem aboard. I won't hurt them unless they force me to it, but I'm notso chicken-hearted as to let them have things all their own way.Sometimes a man _must_ fight, Bessie."

  "You don't know my father," the girl whimpered. "Nor grandpa. He'sthere. I can see his white beard. They'll kill you, Donald, if youoppose them. You mustn't do that. It is better that I should go backquietly than that there should be blood spilled over me."

  "But I'm not intending to slaughter them," the man said soberly. "If Iwarn them off and they board me like a bunch of pirates, then--then itwill be their lookout. Do you want to go back, Bessie? Are you doubtfulabout your bargain already?"

  The tears started in her eyes.

  "For shame to say that," she whispered. "Lord knows I don't want to turnback from anything that includes you, Don. But my father and grandpawill be furious. They won't hesitate to vent their temper on you if youoppose them. They are accustomed to respect. To have their authorityflouted rouses them to fury. And they're three to one. Put away yourgun, Donald. If we can't outsail the _Gull_ I shall have to go backwithout a struggle. There will be another time. They can't change myheart."

  "They can break your spirit though--and they will, for this," hemuttered.

  But he laid the rifle down on the locker. The girl snuggled her handinto his.

  "You will not quarrel with them, Donald--please, no matter what theysay? Promise me that," she pleaded. "If we can't outrun them, if theycome alongside, you will not fight? I shall go back obediently. You cansend word to me by Andrew Murdock. Next time we shall not fail."

  "There will be no next time, Bessie," he said slowly. "You will neverget another chance. I know the Gowers and Mortons better than you do,for all you're one of them. They'll make you wish you had never beenborn, that you'd never seen me. I'd rather fight it out now. Isn't ourown happiness worth a blow or two?"

  "I can't bear to think what might happen if you defied them out here onthis lonely sea," she shuddered. "You must promise me, Donald."

  "I promise, then," he said with a sigh. "Only I know it's the end of ourdream, my dear. And I'm disappointed, too. I thought you had a stouterheart, that wouldn't quail before two angry old me
n--and a jealous youngone. You can see, I suppose, that Horace is there, too.

  "Damn them!" he broke out passionately after a minute's silence. "It's afree country, and you and I are not children. They chase us as if wewere pirates. For two pins I'd give them a pirate's welcome. I tell you,Bessie, my promise to be meek and mild is not worth much if they take ahigh hand with me. I can take their measure, all three of them."

  "But you must not," the girl insisted. "You've promised. We can't helpourselves by violence. It would break my heart."

  "They'll do that fast enough, once they get you home," he answeredgloomily.

  The girl's lips quivered. She sat looking back at the cutter half acable astern. The westerly had failed them. The spreading canvas of theyacht was already blanketing the little sloop, stealing what little windfilled her sail. And as the sloop's way slackened the other slid downupon her, a purl of water at her forefoot, her wide mainsail bellyingout in a snowy curve.

  There were three men in her. The helmsman was a patriarch, his headshowing white, a full white beard descending from his chin, afierce-visaged, vigorous old man. Near him stood a man of middle age, aruddy-faced man in whose dark blue eyes a flame burned as he eyed thetwo in the sloop. The third was younger still,--a short, sturdy fellowin flannels, tending the mainsheet with a frowning glance.

  The man in the sloop held his course.

  "Damn you, MacRae; lay to, or I'll run you down," the patriarch at thecutter's wheel shouted, when a boat's length separated the two craft.

  MacRae's lips moved slightly, but no sound issued therefrom. Leaning onthe tiller, he let the sloop run. So for a minute the boats sailed, thewhite yacht edging up on the sloop until it seemed as if her broaded-offboom would rake and foul the other. But when at last she drew fullyabreast the two men sheeted mainsail and jib flat while the white-headedhelmsman threw her over so that the yacht drove in on the sloop and thetwo younger men grappled MacRae's coaming with boat hooks, and side byside they came slowly up into the wind.

  MacRae made no move, said nothing, only regarded the three with soberintensity. They, for their part, wasted no breath on him.

  "Elizabeth, get in here," the girl's father commanded.

  It was only a matter of stepping over the rubbing gunwales. The girlrose. She cast an appealing glance at MacRae. His face did not alter.She stepped up on the guard, disdaining the hand young Gower extended tohelp her, and sprang lightly into the cockpit of the _Gull_.

  "As for you, you calculating blackguard," her father addressed MacRae,"if you ever set foot on Maple Point again, I'll have you horsewhippedfirst and jailed for trespass after."

  For a second MacRae made no answer. His nostrils dilated; his blue-grayeyes darkened till they seemed black. Then he said with a curioushoarseness, and in a voice pitched so low it was scarcely audible:

  "Take your boat hooks out of me and be on your way."

  The older man withdrew his hook. Young Gower held on a second longer,matching the undisguised hatred in Donald MacRae's eyes with a fury inhis own. His round, boyish face purpled. And when he withdrew the boathook he swung the inch-thick iron-shod pole with a swift twist of hisbody and struck MacRae fairly across the face.

  MacRae went down in a heap as the _Gull_ swung away. The faint breezeout of the west filled the cutter's sails. She stood away on a long tacksouth by west, with a frightened girl cowering down in her cabin,sobbing in grief and fear, and three men in the _Gull's_ cockpit castingdubious glances at one another and back to the fishing sloop sailingwith no hand on her tiller.

  In an hour the _Gull_ was four miles to windward of the sloop. Thebreeze had taken a sudden shift full half the compass. A southeast windcame backing up against the westerly. There was in its breath a hint ofsomething stronger.

  Masterless, the sloop sailed, laid to, started off again erratically,and after many shifts ran off before this stiffer wind. Unhelmed, shelaid her blunt bows straight for the opening between Sangster andSquitty islands. On the cockpit floor Donald MacRae sprawled unheeding.Blood from his broken face oozed over the boards.

  Above him the boom swung creaking and he did not hear. Out of thesoutheast a bank of cloud crept up to obscure the sun. Far southward theGulf was darkened, and across that darkened area specks and splashes ofwhite began to show and disappear. The hot air grew strangely cool. Theswell that runs far before a Gulf southeaster began to roll the sloop,abandoned to all the aimless movements of a vessel uncontrolled. Shecame up into the wind and went off before it again, her sails bellyingstrongly, racing as if to outrun the swells which now here and therelifted and broke. She dropped into a hollow, a following sea slewed herstern sharply, and she jibed,--that is, the wind caught the mainsail andflung it violently from port to starboard. The boom swept an arc of ahundred degrees and put her rail under when it brought up with a jerk onthe sheet.

  Ten minutes later she jibed again. This time the mainsheet parted. Onlystout, heavily ironed backstays kept mainsail and boom from being blownstraight ahead. The boom end swung outboard till it dragged in the seasas she rolled. Only by a miracle and the stoutest of standing gear hadshe escaped dismasting. Now, with the mainsail broaded off to starboard,and the jib by some freak of wind and sea winged out to port, the sloopdrove straight before the wind, holding as true a course as if the limpbody on the cockpit floor laid an invisible, controlling hand on sheetand tiller.

  And he, while that fair wind grew to a yachtsman's gale and lashed theGulf of Georgia into petty convulsions, lay where he had fallen, hishead rolling as his vessel rolled, heedless when she rose and raced on awave-crest or fell laboring in the trough when a wave slid out fromunder her.

  The sloop had all but doubled on her course,--nearly but notquite,--and the few points north of west that she shifted bore herstraight to destruction.

  MacRae opened his eyes at last. He was bewildered and sick. His headswam. There was a series of stabbing pains in his lacerated face. But hewas of the sea, of that breed which survives by dint of fortitude,endurance, stoutness of arm and quickness of wit. He clawed to his feet.Almost before him lifted the bleak southern face of Squitty Island.Point Old jutted out like a barrier. MacRae swung on the tiller. But thewind had the mainsail in its teeth. Without control of that boom hisrudder could not serve him.

  And as he crawled forward to try to lower sail, or get a rope's end onthe boom, whichever would do, the sloop struck on a rock that standsawash at half-tide, a brown hummock of granite lifting out of the seatwo hundred feet off the tip of Point Old.

  She struck with a shock that sent MacRae sprawling, arrested full in aneight-knot stride. As she hung shuddering on the rock, impaled by ajagged tooth, a sea lifted over her stern and swept her like a waterybroom that washed MacRae off the cabin top, off the rock itself intodeep water beyond.

  He came up gasping. The cool immersion had astonishingly revived him. Hefelt a renewal of his strength, and he had been cast by luck into aplace from which it took no more than the moderate effort of an ableswimmer to reach shore. Point Old stood at an angle to the smashingseas, making a sheltered bight behind it, and into this bight theflooding tide set in a slow eddy. MacRae had only to keep himselfafloat.

  In five minutes his feet touched on a gravel beach. He walked drippingout of the languid swell that ran from the turbulence outside and turnedto look back. The sloop had lodged on the rock, bilged by the raggedgranite. The mast was down, mast and sodden sails swinging at the end ofa stay as each sea swept over the rock with a hissing roar.

  MacRae climbed to higher ground. He sat down beside a stunted, leaningfir and watched his boat go. It was soon done. A bigger sea than mosttore the battered hull loose, lifted it high, let it drop. The crack ofbreaking timbers cut through the boom of the surf. The next sea sweptthe rock clear, and the broken, twisted hull floated awash. Caught inthe tidal eddy it began its slow journey to join the vast accumulationof driftwood on the beach.

  MacRae glanced along the island shore. He knew that shore slightly,--abald, cliffy stret
ch notched with rocky pockets in which the surf beatitself into dirty foam. If he had grounded anywhere in that mile ofheadland north of Point Old, his bones would have been broken like thetimbers of his sloop.

  But his eyes did not linger there nor his thoughts upon shipwreck andsudden death. His gaze turned across the Gulf to a tongue of landoutthrusting from the long purple reach of Vancouver Island. Behind thatpoint lay the Morton estate, and beside the Morton boundaries, matchingthem mile for mile in wealth of virgin timber and fertile meadow, spreadthe Gower lands.

  His face, streaked and blotched with drying bloodstains, scarred with ared gash that split his cheek from the hair above one ear to a corner ofhis mouth, hardened into ugly lines. His eyes burned again.

  This happened many years ago, long before a harassed world had toreckon with bourgeois and Bolshevik, when profiteer and pacifist had notyet become words to fill the mouths of men, and not even the politicianshad thought of saving the world for democracy. Yet men and women werestrangely as they are now. A generation may change its manners, itsoutward seeming; it does not change in its loving and hating, in itsfundamental passions, its inherent reactions.

  MacRae's face worked. His lips quivered as he stared across the troubledsea. He lifted his hands in a swift gesture of appeal.

  "O God," he cried, "curse and blast them in all their ways andenterprises if they deal with her as they have dealt with me."