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 BOOKIS LOVINGLY DEDICATED TO MY MOTHER

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 anchoredships, then up at the crenelated mountains, black against the sky. Hedrank the cool air burdened with its taints of the sea, while the bloodof his boyhood leaped within him.

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

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

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

"I'd ruther smell like a man than talk like a kid. You desecrate thehour of meditation with rhapsodies on nature when your aesthetics ain'thoned up to the beauties of good tobacco."

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

They were lounging upon the dock, while before them lay the Santa Mariaready 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, nowa frenzied horde of gold-seekers paused in their rush to the new ElDorado. They had come like a locust cloud, thousands strong, settlingon the edge of the Smoky Sea, waiting the going of the ice that barredthem from their Golden Fleece—from Nome the new, where men foundfortune in a night.

The mossy hills back of the village were ridged with graves of thosewho had died on the out-trip the fall before, when a plague had grippedthe land—but what of that? Gold glittered in the sands, so said thesurvivors; therefore men came in armies. Glenister and Dextry had leftNome

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