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Read Ebook: The Spoilers by Beach Rex Underwood Clarence F Illustrator
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Ebook has 1853 lines and 87874 words, and 38 pages
CHAP. PAGE
THE SPOILERS
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.
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.'
"'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?'
"'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.
"'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."
"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--"
"Shut up!" broke in another. "Do you want to advertise it? Get out of the way, there, ye damn fool! Climb up, Thorsen." He spoke like a bucko mate, and his words stirred the bile of Dextry.
Thorsen grasped the dock floor, trying to climb up, but the old miner stamped on his fingers and the sailor loosened his hold with a yell, carrying the under men with him to the beach in his fall.
"This way! Follow me!" shouted the mate, making up the bank for the shore end of the wharf.
"You'd better pull your freight, miss," Dextry remarked; "they'll be here in a minute."
Glenister laughed, as though there were a humorous touch in her remark, but did not stir.
"I'm gettin' awful old an' stiff to run," said Dextry, removing his mackinaw, "but I allow I ain't too old for a little diversion in the way of a rough-house when it comes nosin' around." He moved lightly, though the girl could see in the half-darkness that his hair was silvery.
"What do you mean?" she questioned, sharply.
"You hurry along, miss; we'll toy with 'em till you're aboard." They stepped across to the dock-house, backing against it. The girl followed.
Again came the warning blast from the steamer, and the voice of an officer:
"Clear away that stern line!"
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