Alaska (114 page)

'Impossible!' Tom said without hesitation. 'Mr. Ross knows that our boats worked overtime, barring the two weeks they fought about their pay.'

Mr. Ross broke in: 'These men have a way to help us escape the tyranny of the fishermen and, as they just said, quadruple our catch.'

'That would be miraculous,' Tom said bluntly, and Ross replied: 'It's only miracles that will save our industry, and we have three of them right here in this room. Study closely, Tom.'

'What we will do,' Professor Starling said, 'is throw this weir across a fair portion of the inlet and completely across the entrance to the Pleiades River,' and onto the middle portion of the table representing the historic waterway he placed a wooden construction which clearly dominated much of the inlet and all the river. When Tom gasped, protesting that no dam of that magnitude could be built in the deep waters of Taku, Starling laughed: 'That's what everybody says. That's what Mr. Ross said in this very room when I put the construction in place for him.' The professor looked at Ross, who smiled and nodded.

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'What we do,' Starling explained, 'is float this entire central section out into the channel, anchor it, and then build these wings on the sides as permanent structures fastened to the bottom. And look what we have!'

Tom Venn, still swimming upstream as a salmon, found himself facing an obstruction in his familiar waterway, and when he came to one of its outreaching arms he naturally followed the slant to the left, and this threw him into the heart of the floating trap, which contained a restricted pen large enough to hold five hundred salmon.

From it the struggling fish could be easily netted for transfer to the cannery.

'What we have,' Starling explained, 'is a three-part masterpiece. These long fingers reach out to guide the salmon our way. We call them jiggers because they jig the fish along in the direction we want. Then the trap itself, with these narrowing chambers into which the salmon can swim but from which they can't retreat. And finally the big holding pen, where the salmon collect until we process them in the cannery.'

When his contraption was fully explained, he stood back admiringly and said: 'Consider the virtues. Cheap to build. Cheap to repair. Guaranteed to catch every salmon heading up the Pleiades and a fair share of those heading for Canada.' Then came Ross's powerful assessment: 'And we can tell the boatmen to go to hell.'

Tom, still trapped in the holding pen into which he had swum exactly as Professor Starling had intended, said quietly: 'It's catching salmon without having to fish for them,' and the three older men applauded, for that was precisely what the weir and its outriding jiggers would make possible.

'We start building this in mid-February,' Ross said. 'The weir, the holding pen and the western jigger

all float. The eastern jigger coming out from our shore, that we'll build permanently.'

And then Tom saw the fallacy of the proposed system: 'But no salmon can get through to spawn in Lake Pleiades. Three years, four years, you'll wipe out all our sockeyes.'

'Aha!' Ross cried. 'We've thought of that. Each Saturday afternoon we'll close down the trap, open the jiggers, and let all the salmon swimming upstream Saturday night and all day Sunday get through. Professor Whitman assures us that that will be enough to ensure ample stocks the following years.' And Whitman nodded.

'Now for the Chinese!' Ross cried as he moved to the second table, his eyes dancing with excitement. 'Look at this, will you?” And on a beautifully constructed model using real tin he demonstrated a clean, simple solution to the problem 695

of making cans: 'A large wagon drawn by four horses comes onto the dock here in Seattle, delivering fifty thousand, a hundred thousand of these for shipment to Totem Cannery.'

And he held in his left hand a small rectangular piece of flattened tin, which Tom could not visualize as a finished can, and said so.

'I couldn't either,' Ross said. 'When Professor Whitman showed it to me, I laughed.

But watch!'

Wedging the piece of tin into position on the complicated machine, he pressed a lever, and slowly a plunger forced its way between what was now revealed as two layers of tin, and when it had made an entrance, another plunger took over, spreading out the welded tin into a perfectly formed can lacking bottom or top. 'Every ten seconds,'

Ross cried triumphantly, 'you have a perfect can, ready for the bottom to be soldered on and the insides filled with salmon.' Handing the finished can to Tom, he said with great force: 'No more Chinese making cans. It will all be done here in Seattle, kept flat to save shipping space, and formed out with one of these machines at the cannery.'

'We'll still have to solder the bottoms and the lids,' Tom pointed out, and Ross snapped: 'You'll teach Filipinos how to do it. I've ordered ten of these machines.'

Exulting in his partial victory over Ah Ting and his fractious Chinese, Ross now moved to the final model, by far the most important of the lot: 'We don't have this perfected, yet, but Professor Whitman says we're getting close.'

'Correction!' Whitman interrupted. 'They told me yesterday they've eliminated the problem of adjusting to size.'

'They have?'

'Yes. I haven't actually seen the new version, but if what they told me is true .

. .'

'Let's go see!' Ross cried impulsively, and before they could protest he grabbed his coat, herded the other three out of his office, down the stairs and onto the street, where he hailed two horse-drawn cabs to take the men to a factory at the southern edge of the business district. Here, in a long, low building, two practical-minded wizards were at work on a machine which, if it ever worked, would revolutionize the salmon industry. Nervous with excitement, Ross led the men into the dark work area of the building and to a long table which contained a bewildering array of wires, moving levers and sharp knives.

'What is it?' Tom asked, and Ross pointed to a handlettered sign which some comedian had attached by string to the weird contraption: THE IRON CHINK.

'That's what it is,' Ross said. 'A machine that does every-696

thing a Chinaman does now,' and at his signal the two engineers opened a steam valve, whereupon various belts and levers began to operate, and with much creaking, went through a series of motions calculated to cut off the head of a salmon, cut away the tail, and with a special long blade gut it from gullet to anus and whisk out the entrails. Tom, watching the various movements, could visualize how the intricate invention was supposed to work, but he doubted that it would: 'Salmon don't all come in the same size.'

'That's been our problem,' one of the inventors said. 'But we think we have it solved,'

and while the machine was still going through its clanging motions, he fetched from an icebox three salmon, two of about standard size, the third much shorter. Feeding the first of the standards into the machine as would be done at a cannery, he watched with obvious satisfaction as his machine took the fish, lopped off its head and tail, wasting not an ounce of good meat, then turned it on its side and with deft strokes gutted it, swept away the offal, and sent the beautifully cleaned fish on its way.

'That's wonderful!' Tom cried, and as he spoke the second standard salmon came creeping along, and it, too, was handled perfectly. 'Great! Great!' Tom shouted above the noise of the belts. 'We could sort the fish and send through only those of the same size.'

'But wait!' the second inventor shouted, and with an almost paternal affection he introduced into the machine the third, shorter sockeye. A part of the system which Tom had not noticed before came down, sized the fish and adjusted the knives accordingly, so that now the head and tail were cut off quite differently from before, with Tom cheering at the cleverness of the operation.

But when the salmon was turned on its side, the most important of the knives failed to adjust, and in an unguided flash cut the smaller fish to pieces.

'Oh, hell!' the first inventor cried. 'Oscar, that damn cam doesn't work.'

'It worked last night, didn't it, Professor Whitman?'

'I saw it. Adjusted perfectly.'

The disappointed man hammered at the offending cam, fixed it to his satisfaction, then said: 'Let's try two more fish,' and when the normal-sized one went through, the knives worked perfectly, but when the undersized one came through, the cam once more failed to adjust and once more the big knife shredded the fish.

'What can it be?' the man asked in almost tearful bewilderment, at which the second inventor said with painful honesty: 'We thought we could have it ready for the 1904

campaign.

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I'm sure we can fix it, Mr. Ross, but I can't let you risk it as it stands.'

'He's right,' the other man said. 'I'm positive I can work out a foolproof system, but we don't have it yet,' and his partner said ruefully: 'You'd better sign up your Chinese for one more year. But by 1905 this little beauty will be doing all your work for you.'

'You need any more funds?' Ross asked, and together the two men said: 'Yes,' and one of them added: 'We're very close, Mr. Ross. I have another idea for adjusting to the length of the fish. I preferred it to begin with, but it requires one extra part and I had hoped to keep it simple.'

'Keep it simple. Take time and keep it so simple that even a Filipino can fix it,'

and he snapped at Tom: 'Hire the Chinese. One more time.' Then he added gruffly: 'But do not hire Ah Ting. Won't have him on the place.' And to his own surprise, Tom said firmly: 'We can't handle the Chinese without him,' and that afternoon he arranged for the employment of some ninety Chinese to handle the increased flow of salmon.

At dusk, exhausted by the long day's work, Tom asked: 'Where am I to stay?' and Ross replied: 'I've told the men to deliver your things to our house. You'll be staying with us,' and in the dark, wintry evening the two men rode behind R&R horses to the Ross mansion at the top of a modest rise from which could be seen the grandeur of the Seattle waterfront with its myriad bays and channels, islands and promontories.

It was a marine wonderland made even more attractive by the height from which Tom saw it; he wanted to express how much it enchanted him, but prudence told him to remain silent lest Mr. Ross interpret his enthusiasm as a strategy for angling an assignment in the city. However, Ross spoke for him: 'Isn't this a grand view of a great city, Tom? I never tire of it,' and the two admired it for some moments before turning to face the mansion.

It was a nineteenth-century Gothic castle, not overly pretentious or grandiose in size but very definitely modeled on some forgotten Rhine structure, featuring small turrets, battlements and gargoyles. Had other less flamboyant buildings encroached, it would have seemed out of place, but since it stood alone among tall pines, it maintained a quiet grandeur. 'Highlands' he had named his castle in memory of that noble part of Scotland from which his father had been evicted in the mournful Clearances of 1830, and his neighbors in Seattle, who knew nothing of the past history of the Rosses, supposed that the name referred only to the height on which the castle stood and deemed it appropriate.

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As with the office building in town, the castle was guarded by two heavy oak doors, and Tom said approvingly: 'You seem to like oak, Mr. Ross,' and the Scotsman replied: 'I certainly don't like white pine.'

Mrs. Ross, some years younger than her husband, was a gracious lady who wore simple clothes and ran the mansion with the help of only two servants. She exhibited no airs as she moved forward to greet the young workman who had been invited into her home with little consultation on her part. Having been informed of his excellent record on the Klondike, at Nome and now at the cannery, she was surprised at his youthfulness and said so: 'How could you have crammed so much into so few years?'

'A lot happens in a gold rush. I was there each time,' and she said: 'But salmon isn't gold,' and he said: 'It's Alaska's new gold. And bound to be much more important than the metal kind.' She smiled approvingly at the way he expressed himself.

For three happy days Tom Venn stayed at Highlands, working with Mr. Ross on schemes relating to Alaska and pointing out on large maps, often inaccurately drawn, where additional R&R canneries might profitably be placed. At the conclusion of their work, southeastern Alaska, the only part that mattered, was peppered with half a dozen proposed sites, and Ross said, as he looked down at the island world: 'Unlimited wealth in those cold waters, Tom. You're to build one new cannery a year as fast as we can get title to the sites. And the man is arriving tomorrow who will make it possible.'

He identified the stranger no further, but on Friday noon he and Tom went to the railway station, and were waiting there when the train from Chicago deposited the man on whom R&R would rely for the allocation of vital leases to land for its canneries and, what was much more important, exclusive rights to the salmon-bearing rivers.

Mr. Ross was delighted to see the newcomer descending the steps from the Pullman, but Tom was astounded. It was Marvin Hoxey, forty-nine years old, ten pounds heavier than he had been at Nome, and more ebullient and conniving than ever. On the ride from the station to the R&R offices he expounded grandiloquently on how he had lined up support throughout Congress for the new regulations which Seattle businessmen felt they needed in order to manage affairs in Alaska. And not once in his volcanic explanations of how the new laws would operate did he acknowledge that he had ever seen Tom Venn before, but as they stepped from the carriage

to enter the R&R building, Mr. Ross said: 'This is Tom Venn, who'll be in charge of our canneries project,' and Hoxey said 699

with a kind of noble condescension: 'Of course. Mr. Venn and I shared those unpleasant experiences in Nome, dreadful city, frozen tight most of the year.'

Later, when Hoxey had moved into the main guest room at Highlands, Tom said tentatively to Mr. Ross: 'You know, that man in there ... he was put in jail, for what he did in Nome,' and Ross said with an almost icy formality: 'And McKinley pardoned him.