LITMIR.BIZ

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      In the living-room of The Dreamerie, his home on Tyee Head, Hector McKaye, owner of the Tyee Lumber Company and familiarly known as "The Laird," was wont to sit in his hours of leisure, smoking and building castles in Spain—for his son Donald. Here he planned the acquisition of more timber and the installation of an electric-light plant to furnish light, heat, and power to his own town of Port Agnew; ever and anon he would gaze through the plate-glass windows out to sea and watch for his ships to come home. Whenever The Laird put his dreams behind him, he always looked seaward. In the course of time, his home-bound skippers, sighting the white house on the headland and knowing that The Laird was apt to be up there watching, formed the habit of doing something that pleased their owner mightily. When the northwest trades held steady and true, and while the tide was still at the flood, they would scorn the services of the tug that went out to meet them and come ramping into the bight, all their white sails set and the glory of the sun upon them; as they swept past, far below The Laird, they would dip his house-flag—a burgee, scarlet-edged, with a fir tree embroidered in green on a field of white—the symbol to the world that here was a McKaye ship. And when the house-flag fluttered half-way to the deck and climbed again to the masthead, the soul of Hector McKaye would thrill.

      "Guid lads! My bonny brave lads!" he would murmur aloud, with just a touch of his parents' accent, and press a button which discharged an ancient brass cannon mounted at the edge of the cliff. Whenever he saw one of his ships in the offing—and he could identify his ships as far as he could see them—he ordered the gardener to load this cannon.

      Presently the masters began to dip the house-flag when outward bound, and discovered that, whether The Laird sat at his desk in the mill office or watched from the cliff, they drew an answering salute.

      This was their hail and farewell.

      One morning, the barkentine Hathor, towing out for Delagoa Bay, dipped her house-flag, and the watch at their stations bent their gaze upon the house on the cliff. Long they waited but no answering salute greeted the acknowledgment of their affectionate and willing service.

      The mate's glance met the master's.

      "The old laird must be unwell, sir," he opined.

      But the master shook his head.

      "He was to have had dinner aboard with us last night, but early in the afternoon he sent over word that he'd like to be excused. He's sick at heart, poor man! Daney tells me he's heard the town gossip about young Donald."

      "The lad's a gentleman, sir," the mate defended. "He'll not disgrace his people."

      "He's young—and youth must be served. Man, I was young myself once—and Nan of the Sawdust Pile is not a woman a young man would look at once and go his way."

      In the southwestern corner of the state of Washington, nestled in the Bight of Tyee and straddling the Skookum River, lies the little sawmill town of Port Agnew. It is a community somewhat difficult to locate, for the Bight of Tyee is not of sufficient importance as a harbor to have won consideration by the cartographers of the Coast and Geodetic Survey, and Port Agnew is not quite forty years old. Consequently, it appears only on the very latest state maps and in the smallest possible type.

      When Hector McKaye first gazed upon the bight, the transcontinental lines had not yet begun to consider the thrusting of their tentacles into southwestern Washington, and, with the exception of those regions where good harbors had partially solved the problem of transportation, timber in Washington was very cheap. Consequently, since Hector McKaye was one of those hardy men who never hesitate to take that which no man denies them, he reached forth and acquired timber.

      A strip of land a quarter of a mile wide and fronting the beach was barren of commercial timber. As grazing-land, Hector McKaye was enabled to file on a full section of this, and, with its acquisition, he owned the key to the outlet. While "proving up" his claim, he operated a general store for trading with the Indians and trappers, and at this he prospered. From time to time he purchased timber-claims from the trappers as fast as they "proved up," paying for these stumpage-prices varying from twenty-five to fifty cents per thousand.

      On his frequent trips to the outer world, McKaye extolled the opportunities for acquiring good timber-claims down on the Skookum; he advertised them in letters and in discreet interviews with the editors of little newspapers in the sawmill towns on Puget Sound and Grays Harhor; he let it be known that an honest fellow could secure credit for a winter's provisions from him, and pay for it with pelts in the spring.

      The influx of homesteaders increased—single men, for the most part, and poor—men who labored six months of the year elsewhere and lived the remaining six months in rude log huts on their claims down on the Skookum. And when the requirements of the homestead laws had been complied with and a patent to their quarter-section obtained from the Land Office in Washington, the homesteaders were ready to sell and move on to other and greener pastures. So they sold to the only possible purchaser, Hector McKaye, and departed, quite satisfied with a profit which they flattered themselves had been the result of their own prudence and foresight.

      Thus, in the course of ten years, Hector McKaye' acquired ten thousand acres of splendid Douglas fir and white cedar. But he had not been successful in acquiring claims along the south bank of the Skookum. For some mysterious reason, he soon found claims on the north bank cheaper and easier to secure, albeit the timber showed no variance in quantity or quality. Discreet investigations brought to light the fact that he had a competitor—one Martin Darrow, who dwelt in St. Paul, Minnesota. To St. Paul, therefore, journeyed Hector McKaye, and sought an audience with Martin Darrow.

      "I'm McKaye, from the Skookum River, Washington," he announced, without preamble.

      "I've been expecting you, Mr. McKaye," Darrow replied. "Got a proposition to submit?"

      "Naturally, or I wouldn't have come to St. Paul. I notice you have a weakness for the timber on the south bank of the Skookum. You've opposed me there half a dozen times and won. I have also observed that I have a free hand with claims north of the river. That's fair—and there's timber enough for two. Hereafter, I'll keep to my own side of the river."

      "I see we're going to come to an understanding, Mr. McKaye. What will you give me to stick to my side of the river?"

      "An outlet through the bight for your product when you commence manufacturing. I control the lower half-mile of the river and the only available mill-sites. I'll give you a mill-site if you'll pay half the expense of digging a new channel for the Skookum, and changing its course so it will emerge into the still, deep water under the lee of Tyee Head."

      "We'll do business," said Martin Darrow—and they did, although it was many years after Hector McKaye had incorporated the Tyee Lumber Company and founded his town of Port Agnew before Darrow began operations.

      True to his promise, McKaye deeded him a mill-and town-site, and he founded a settlement on the eastern edge of Port Agnew, but quite distinct from it, and called it Darrow, after himself. It was not a community that Hector McKaye approved of, for it was squalid and unsanitary, and its untidy, unpainted shacks of rough lumber harbored southern European labor, of which Hector McKaye would have none. In Darrow, also, there were three groggeries and a gambling-house, with the usual concomitant of women whose profession is the oldest and the saddest in the world.

      Following his discovery of the Bight of Tyee, a quarter of a century passed. A man may prosper much in twenty-five years, and Hector McKaye, albeit American born, was bred of an acquisitive race. When his Gethsemane came upon him, he was rated the richest lumberman in the state of Washington; his twenty-thousand board-feet capacity per day sawmill had grown to five hundred thousand, his ten thousand acres to a hundred thousand. Two thousand persons looked to him and his enterprise for their bread and butter; he owned a fleet of half a dozen steam-schooners and sixteen big wind-jammers; he owned a town which he had called Port Agnew, and he had married and been blessed with children. And because his ambition no longer demanded it, he was no longer a miser.

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