Children of the rich -- Fiction; Love stories; Lumber trade -- Fiction; Washington (State) -- Fiction
"Then look for her," old Hector ordered. "I have no doubt that, when
you find her, she'll be worthy of you. I'm at an age now when a man
looks no longer into the future but dwells in the past, and it's hard
for me to think of you, big man that you are, as anything save a wee
laddie trotting at my side. Now, if I had a grandson--"
When, presently, Donald bade him good-night, Hector McKaye turned off
the lights and sat in the dark, gazing down across the moonlit Bight
of Tyee to the sparks that flew upward from the stacks of his sawmill
in Port Agnew, for they were running a night shift. And, as he gazed,
he thrilled, with a fierce pride and a joy that was almost pain, in
the knowledge that he had reared a merchant prince for this, his
principality of Tyee.
V
Hector McKaye had always leaned toward the notion that he could run
Port Agnew better than a mayor and a town council, in addition to
deriving some fun out of it; consequently, Port Agnew had never been
incorporated. And this was an issue it was not deemed wise to press,
for The Tyee Lumber Company owned every house and lot in town, and
Hector McKaye owned every share of stock in the Tyee Lumber Company.
If he was a sort of feudal baron, he was a gentle and kindly one;
large building-plots, pretty little bungalows, cheap rentals, and no
taxation constituted a social condition that few desired to change. As
these few developed and The Laird discovered them, their positions in
his employ, were forfeited, their rents raised, or their leases
canceled, and presently Port Agnew knew them no more. He paid fair
wages, worked his men nine hours, and employed none but naturalized
Americans, with a noticeable predilection for those of Scotch nativity
or ancestry.
Strikes or lockouts were unknown in Port Agnew--likewise saloons.
Unlike most sawmill towns of that period, Port Agnew had no street in
which children were forbidden to play or which mothers taught their
daughters to avoid. Once an I.W.W. organizer came to town, and upon
being ordered out and refusing to go, The Laird, then past fifty, had
ducked him in the Skookum until he changed his mind.
The Tyee Lumber Company owned and operated the local telephone company,
the butcher shop, the general store, the hotel, a motion-picture
theater, a town hall, the bank, and the electric-light-and-power plant,
and with the profits from these enterprises, Port Agnew had paved
streets, sidewalks lined with handsome electroliers, and a sewer
system. It was an admirable little sawmill town, and if the expenses
of maintaining it exceeded the income, The Laird met the deficit and
assumed all the worry, for he wanted his people to be happy and
prosperous beyond all others.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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