



Produced by Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.









THE SPOILERS

By REX BEACH

Author of "THE AUCTION BLOCK" "RAINBOW'S END" "THE IRON TRAIL" Etc.


Illustrated




       THIS BOOK
IS LOVINGLY DEDICATED TO
       MY MOTHER




CONTENTS

CHAPTER

    I. THE ENCOUNTER

   II. THE STOWAWAY

  III. IN WHICH GLENISTER ERRS

   IV. THE KILLING

    V. WHEREIN A MAN APPEARS

   VI. AND A MINE IS JUMPED

  VII. THE "BRONCO KID'S" EAVESDROPPING

 VIII. DEXTRY MAKES A CALL

   IX. SLUICE ROBBERS

    X. THE WIT OF AN ADVENTURESS

   XI. WHEREIN A WRIT AND A RIOT FAIL

  XII. COUNTERPLOTS

 XIII. IN WHICH A MAN IS POSSESSED OF A DEVIL

  XIV. A MIDNIGHT MESSENGER

   XV. VIGILANTES

  XVI. IN WHICH THE TRUTH BEGINS TO BARE ITSELF

 XVII. THE DRIP OF WATER IN THE DARK

XVIII. WHEREIN A TRAP IS BAITED

  XIX. DYNAMITE

   XX. IN WHICH THREE GO TO THE SIGN OF THE SLED AND BUT TWO RETURN

  XXI. THE HAMMER-LOCK

 XXII. THE PROMISE OF DREAMS




CHAPTER I

THE ENCOUNTER


Glenister gazed out over the harbor, agleam with the lights of anchored
ships, then up at the crenelated mountains, black against the sky. He
drank the cool air burdened with its taints of the sea, while the blood
of his boyhood leaped within him.

"Oh, it's fine--fine," he murmured, "and this is my country--my
country, after all, Dex. It's in my veins, this hunger for the North. I
grow. I expand."

"Careful you don't bust," warned Dextry. "I've seen men get plumb drunk
on mountain air. Don't expand too strong in one spot." He went back
abruptly to his pipe, its villanous fumes promptly averting any danger
of the air's too tonic quality.

"Gad! What a smudge!" sniffed the younger man. "You ought to be in
quarantine."

"I'd ruther smell like a man than talk like a kid. You desecrate the
hour of meditation with rhapsodies on nature when your aesthetics ain't
honed up to the beauties of good tobacco."

The other laughed, inflating his deep chest. In the gloom he stretched
his muscles restlessly, as though an excess of vigor filled him.

They were lounging upon the dock, while before them lay the Santa Maria
ready for her midnight sailing. Behind slept Unalaska, quaint, antique,
and Russian, rusting amid the fogs of Bering Sea. Where, a week before,
mild-eyed natives had dried their cod among the old bronze cannon, now
a frenzied horde of gold-seekers paused in their rush to the new El
Dorado. They had come like a locust cloud, thousands strong, settling
on the edge of the Smoky Sea, waiting the going of the ice that barred
them from their Golden Fleece--from Nome the new, where men found
fortune in a night.

The mossy hills back of the village were ridged with graves of those
who had died on the out-trip the fall before, when a plague had gripped
the land--but what of that? Gold glittered in the sands, so said the
survivors; therefore men came in armies. Glenister and Dextry had left
Nome the autumn previous, the young man raving with fever. Now they
returned to their own land.

"This air whets every animal instinct in me," Glenister broke out
again. "Away from the cities I turn savage. I feel the old primitive
passions--the fret for fighting."

"Mebbe you'll have a chance."

"How so?"

"Well, it's this way. I met Mexico Mullins this mornin'. You mind old
Mexico, don't you? The feller that relocated Discovery Claim on Anvil
Creek last summer?"

"You don't mean that 'tin-horn' the boys were going to lynch for
claim-jumping?"

"Identical! Remember me tellin' you about a good turn I done him once
down Guadalupe way?"

"Greaser shooting-scrape, wasn't it?"

"Yep! Well, I noticed first off that he's gettin fat; high-livin' fat,
too, all in one spot, like he was playin' both ends ag'in the centre.
Also he wore di'mon's fit to handle with ice-tongs.

"Says I, lookin' at his side elevation, 'What's accented your middle
syllable so strong, Mexico?'

"'Prosperity, politics, an' the Waldorf-Astorier,' says he. It seems
Mex hadn't forgot old days. He claws me into a corner an' says, 'Bill,
I'm goin' to pay you back for that Moralez deal.'

"'It ain't comin' to me,' says I. 'That's a bygone!'

"'Listen here,' says he, an', seein' he was in earnest, I let him run
on.

"'How much do you value that claim o' yourn at?'

"'Hard tellin',' says I. 'If she holds out like she run last fall,
there'd ought to be a million clear in her."

"'How much'll you clean up this summer?'

"''Bout four hundred thousand, with luck.'

"'Bill,' says he, 'there's hell a-poppin' an' you've got to watch that
ground like you'd watch a rattle-snake. Don't never leave 'em get a
grip on it or you're down an' out.'

"He was so plumb in earnest it scared me up, 'cause Mexico ain't a
gabby man.

"'What do you mean?' says I.

"'I can't tell you nothin' more. I'm puttin' a string on my own neck,
sayin' THIS much. You're a square man, Bill, an' I'm a gambler, but you
saved my life oncet, an' I wouldn't steer you wrong. For God's sake,
don't let 'em jump your ground, that's all.'

"'Let who jump it? Congress has give us judges an' courts an'
marshals--' I begins.

"'That's just it. How you goin' to buck that hand? Them's the best
cards in the deck. There's a man comin' by the name of McNamara. Watch
him clost. I can't tell you no more. But don't never let 'em get a grip
on your ground.' That's all he'd say."

"Bah! He's crazy! I wish somebody would try to jump the Midas; we'd
enjoy the exercise."

The siren of the Santa Maria interrupted, its hoarse warning throbbing
up the mountain.

"We'll have to get aboard," said Dextry.

"Sh-h! What's that?" the other whispered.

At first the only sound they heard was a stir from the deck of the
steamer. Then from the water below them came the rattle of rowlocks and
a voice cautiously muffled.

"Stop! Stop there!"

A skiff burst from the darkness, grounding on the beach beneath. A
figure scrambled out and up the ladder leading to the wharf.
Immediately a second boat, plainly in pursuit of the first one, struck
on the beach behind it.

As the escaping figure mounted to their level the watchers perceived
with amazement that it was a young woman. Breath sobbed from her lungs,
and, stumbling, she would have fallen but for Glenister, who ran
forward and helped her to her feet.

"Don't let them get me," she panted.

He turned to his partner in puzzled inquiry, but found that the old man
had crossed to the head of the landing ladder up which the pursuers
were climbing.

"Just a minute--you there! Back up or I'll kick your face in." Dextry's
voice was sharp and unexpected, and in the darkness he loomed tall and
menacing to those below.

"Get out of the way. That woman's a runaway," came from the one highest
on the ladder.

"So I jedge."

"She broke qu--"

"