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.