"Oh yes; I've done that sort of thing." His broad shoulders went up as he
drew a long breath. "What's your plan?"

"There's a man down the coast, George Balt, who knows more about the
business than any four people in Kalvik. He's been a fisherman all his
life. He discovered the Kalvik River, built the first cannery here, and
was its foreman until he quarrelled with Marsh, who proceeded to
discipline him. Balt isn't the kind of man to be disciplined; so, not
having enough money to build a cannery, he took his scanty capital and
started a saltery on his own account. That suited Marsh exactly; he broke
George in a year, absolutely ruined him, utterly wiped him out, just as he
intends to wipe out insignificant me! Thinking to bide his time and recoup
his fallen fortunes George came back into camp; but he owns a valuable
trap site which Marsh and his colleagues want; and before they would give
him work, they tried to make him assign it to them, and contract never to
go in business on his own account. Naturally George refused, so they
disciplined him some more. He's been starving now for two years. Marsh and
his companions rule this region just as the Hudson's Bay Company used to
govern its concessions: by controlling the natives and preventing
independent white men from gaining a foothold.

"No man dares to furnish food to George Balt; no man dares to give him a
bed, no cannery will let him work. He has to take a dory to Dutch Harbor
to get food. He doesn't dare leave the country and abandon the meagre
thousands he has invested in buildings, so he has stayed on living off the
country like a Siwash. He's a simple, big-hearted sort of fellow, but his
life is centred in this business; it's all he knows. He considers himself
the father of this section; and when he sees others rounding up the task
that he began, it breaks his poor heart. Why, every summer when the run
starts he comes across the marshes and slinks about the Kalvik thickets