Willis Marsh did even better than that the year before, but of course the price of fish was high then. Next season will be another big year." "How is that?"

"Every fourth season the run is large; nobody knows why. Every time there is a Presidential election the fish are shy and very scarce; that lifts prices. Every year in which a President of the United States is inaugurated they are plentiful."

Boyd laughed.

"The Alaska salmon takes more interest in politics than I do. I wonder if he is a Republican or Democrat?" "Inasmuch as he is a red salmon, I dare say you'd call him a Socialist," laughed Cherry.

Emerson rose, and began to pace back and forth. “And you mean to say the history of the other canneries is the same?" "Certainly."

"I had no idea there were such profits in the fisheries up here." "Nobody knows it outside of those interested. The Kalvik River is the most wonderful salmon river in the world, for it has never failed once; that's why the Companies guard it so jealously; that's why they denied you shelter. You see, it is set away off here in one corner of Behring Sea without means of communication or access, and they intend to keep it so."

The main body of salmon struck the Kalvik River on the first day of July. For a week past the run had been slowly growing, while the canneries tested themselves; but on the opening day of the new month the horde issued boldly forth from the depths of the sea, and the battle began in earnest. They came during the hush of the dawn, a mad, crowding throng from No Man's Land, to wake the tide-rips and people the shimmering reaches of the bay, lashing them to sudden life and fury. Outside, the languorous ocean heaved as smiling and serene as ever, but within the harbor a wondrous change occurred.

As if in answer to some deep-sea signal, the tides were quickened by a coursing multitude, steadfast and unafraid, yet foredoomed to die by the hand of man, or else more surely by the serving of their destiny. Clad in their argent mail of blue and green, they worked the bay to madness; they overwhelmed the waters, surging forward in great droves and columns, hesitating only long enough to frolic

with the shifting currents, as if rejoicing in their strength and beauty. At times they swam with cleaving fins exposed; again they churned the placid waters until swift combers raced across the shallow bars like tidal waves, while the deeper channels were shot through with the shadowy forms or pierced by the lightning glint of silvered bellies. They streamed in with the flood tide to retreat again with the ebb, but there was neither haste nor caution in their progress; they had come in answer to the breeding call of the sea, and its exultation was upon them, driving them relentlessly onward. They had no voice against its overmastering spell.

Mustering in the early light like a swarm of giant white-winged moths, the fishing-boats raced forth with the flowing tide, urged by sweep and sail and lusty sinews. Paying out their hundred-fathom nets, they drifted over the banks like flocks of resting sea-gulls, only to come ploughing back again deep laden with their spoils. Grimy tugboats lay beside the traps, shrilling the air with creaking winches as they "brailed" the struggling fish, a half-ton at a time, from the "pounds," now churned to milky foam by the ever-growing throng of prisoners; and all the time the big plants gulped the sea harvest, faster and faster, clanking and gnashing their metal jaws, while the mounds of salmon lay hip-deep to the crews that fed the butchering machines.

The Iron Chink, or mechanical cleaner, is perhaps the most ingenious of the many labor-saving devices used in the salmon fisheries. It is an awkward-looking, yet very effective contrivance of revolving knives and conveyors which seizes the fish whole and delivers it cleaned, clipped, cut, and ready to be washed. With superhuman dexterity it does the work of twenty lightning-like butchers.

The time had come for man to take his toll.

Now dawned a period of feverish activity wherein no one might rest short of actual exhaustion. Haste became the cry, and comfort fled.

Big George, when he had fully grasped the situation, became the boss fisherman on the instant; before the others had reached the cook-house he was busied in laying out his crews and distributing his gear. That night the floors of the fish-dock groaned beneath a weight of silver-sided salmon piled waist-high to a tall man. All through the cool, dim-lit hours the ranks of Chinese butchers hacked and slit and slashed with swift, sure, tireless strokes, while the great build

ing echoed hollowly to the clank of machines and the hissing sighs of the soldering-furnaces. There before him were thousands of salmon. They were strewn in a great mass upon the dock and inside the shed, while from the scow beneath they came in showers as the handlers tossed them upward from their pues. Through the wide doors he saw the backs of the butchers busily at work over their tables, and heard the uproar of the cannery running full for the first time.

"Where did those fish come from?" Emerson asked.

"From the trap." George smiled as he had not smiled in many weeks. "They've struck in like I knew they would, and they're running now by the thousands. I've fished these waters for years, but I never seen the likes of it. They'll tear that trap to pieces. They're smothering in the pot, tons and tons of 'em, with millions more milling below the leads because they can't get in. It's a sight you'll not see once in a lifetime."

"That means that we can run the plant-that we'll get all we can use?"

"Yes! We've got fish enough to run two canneries. They've struck their gait I tell you, and they'll never stop now night or day till they're through. We don't need no gill-netters; what we need is butchers and slimers and handlers. There never was a trap site in the North till this one." He flung out a long, hairy arm, bared half to the shoulder, and waved it exultantly. "We built this plant to cook forty thousand salmon a day, but I'll bring you three thousand every hour, and you've got to cook 'em. Do you hear? We've won, my boy! We've won! "

RECLAIMING THE DESERT

BY HAROLD BELL WRIGHT

IN the making of the Desert the canyon carving, delta-building river did not count the centuries of its labor; the rock-hewing, beachforming waves did not number the ages of their toil; the burning, constant sun and the drying, drifting winds were not careful for

the years.

Somewhere in the eternity that lies back of all the yesterdays, the great river found the salt waves of the ocean fathoms deep in what is now the King's Basin and extending a hundred and seventy miles north of the shore that takes their wash to-day. Slowly, through the centuries of that age of all beginnings, the river, cutting canyons and valleys in the north and carrying southward its load of silt, built from the east across the gulf to Lone Mountain a mighty delta dam.

South of this new land the ocean still received the river; to the north the gulf became an inland sea. The upper edge of this newborn sea beat helpless against a line of low, barren hills beyond which lay many miles of a rainless land. Eastward lay yet more miles of desolate waste. And between this sea and the parent ocean on the west, extending southward past the delta dam, the mountains of the Coast Range shut out every moisture-laden cloud and turned back every life-bearing stream. Thus trapped and helpless, the bright waters, with all their life, fell under the constant, fierce, beating rays of the semi-tropical sun and shrank from the wearing sweep of the dry, tireless winds. Uncounted still, the centuries of that age also passed and the bottom of that sea lay bare, dry and lifeless under the burning sky, still beaten by the pitiless sun, still swept by the scorching winds. The place that had held the glad waters with their teeming life came to be an empty basin of blinding sand, of quivering heat, of dreadful death. Unheeding the ruin it had wrought, the river swept on its way.

And so hemmed in by mountain wall, barren hills and rainless plains; forgotten by the ocean; deserted by the river,

that thirsty land lay, the loneliest, most desolate bit of this great Western Continent.

But the river could not work this ruin without contributing to the desert the rich strength it had gathered from its tributary lands. Mingled with the sand of the ancient sea-bed was the silt from faraway mountain and hill and plain. That basin of Death was more than a dusty tomb of a life that had been; it was a sepulchre that held the vast treasure of a life that would be-would be when the ages should have made also the master men, who would dare say to the river: Make restitution! "-men who could, with power, command the rich life within the tomb to come forth.

But master men are not the product of years-scarcely, indeed, of centuries. The master passions, the governing instincts, the leading desires and the driving fears that hew and carve and form and fashion the race are as reckless of the years as are wave and river and sun and wind. Therefore, the forgotten land held its wealth until Time should make the giants that could take it.

In the centuries of those forgotten ages that went into the making of The King's Basin Desert, the families of men grew slowly into tribes, the tribes grew slowly into nations and the nations grew slowly into worlds. New worlds became old; and other new worlds were discovered, explored, developed and made old; war and famine and pestilence and prosperity hewed and formed, carved and built and fashioned, even as wave and river and sun and wind. The kingdoms of earth, air and water yielded up their wealth as men grew strong to take it; the elements bowed their necks to his yoke, to fetch and carry for him as he grew wise to order; the wilderness fled, the mountains lay bare their hearts, the waste places paid tribute as he grew brave to command.

Across the wide continent the tracks of its wild life were trodden out by the broad cattle trails, the paths of the herds were marked by the wheels of immigrant wagons and the roads of the slow-moving teams became swift highways of steel. In the East the great cities that received the hordes from every land were growing ever greater. On the far west coast the crowded multitude was building even as it was building in the East. In the Southwest savage race succeeded savage race, until at last the slow-footed padres overtook the swift-footed Indian and the rude civilization made possible by the priests in turn ran down the priest.