Kindred of the Dust

Kindred of the Dust

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Title: Kindred of the Dust
Author: Peter B. Kyne
Release Date: September 26, 2004 [eBook #13532]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK KINDRED
OF THE DUST***
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KINDRED OF THE DUST
by
PETER B. KYNE
Author of Cappy Ricks, The Valley of the Giants, _Webster--Man's
Man_, etc.
Illustrated by Dean Cornwell
1920

TO IRENE
MY DEAR, TYRANNICAL, PRACTICAL LITTLE
FOSTER-SISTER
WITHOUT WHOSE AID AND COMFORT, HOOTS, CHEERS AND
UNAUTHORIZED STRIKES, THE QUANTITY AND QUALITY OF
MY ALLEGED LITERARY OUTPUT WOULD BE APPRECIABLY

DIMINISHED, THIS BOOK IS AFFECTIONATELY
DEDICATED

THE ILLUSTRATIONS
Hector McKaye was bred of an acquisitive race
She stole to the old square piano and sang for him
Donald bowed his head, "I can't give her up, father"
"I'm a man without a home and you've just got to take me in, Nan"

I
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