The Spoilers by Rex Beach

First published: 1906

Type of work: Novel

Type of plot: Adventure romance

Time of work: The Alaska gold rush

Locale: The Yukon

Principal Characters:

• Roy Glenister, the owner of the Midas gold mine
• Bill Dextry, Glenister’s partner
• Mr. Mcnamara, a politician
• Helen Chester, the girl with whom Glenister is in love
• Judge Stillman, her uncle
• Cherry Malotte, a notorious woman in love with Glenister
• Mr. Struve, a dishonest lawyer

The Story

Trouble began for Glenister and Dextry, the owners of the Midas mine, the moment they started from Seattle back to the frozen North. First of all, a young woman, Helen Chester, enlisted their aid in stowing away aboard their ship. Then Roy Glenister fell in love with her. After they were aboard, Dextry told Glenister that the government was sending a court to institute law and order in the gold country and warned him that they would have to be careful lest they lose their claim to the Midas mine.

In Nome, Helen delivered a packet of documents to the law firm of Struve and Dunham and then went with the two partners up to the Midas mine. There was no place else for her to go for the time being.

Two weeks later her uncle, Judge Stillman, arrived in Nome with a politician named McNamara. Stillman had been appointed the first Federal judge in Nome, Alaska. Trouble soon brewed for the owners of the mines on Anvil Creek, including Glenister and Dextry. Their claims were relocated, and possession of the mines was given to McNamara as a receiver appointed by the court until the claims could legally be cleared. Convinced that the receivership was dishonest, Glenister and Dextry robbed their mine of ten thousand dollars in gold with which to send their attorney to San Francisco. By the time the attorney had made the trip and returned, all the mine owners on Anvil Creek realized that there was collusion between Judge Stillman and McNamara. When the attorney tried to serve an injunction which would force the judge to return the mines to the owners, Stillman refused to recognize the writ from the San Francisco court. Glenister and Dextry immediately smuggled their attorney aboard a ship bound for San Francisco, with a request that United States marshals be sent to Nome to serve the writ and arrest Stillman for contempt of court.

Meanwhile, Glenister and Dextry spied on McNamara and discovered the part Helen Chester had played in bringing in the documents which had made possible the theft of the mines by McNamara. Cherry Malotte also told Glenister that Helen had informed McNamara of the money Glenister and Dextry had at their camp. The last straw for Glenister was the announcement that McNamara and Helen were to be married.

Deciding to repossess their mines by violence, the owners on Anvil Creek formed a vigilante committee with the intention of lynching McNamara and tarring and feathering the judge.

After spreading the word that troops were going to guard the mines, McNamara laid a trap for the vigilantes at his office in Nome. He thought that the mine owners, not daring to attack the troops, would attack his own office. To his surprise, the owners attacked the mines and seized them after a short, sharp battle. They discovered that the defending force had been only a few guards posted by McNamara.

In the meantime, Helen Chester had gone to Struve to discover what she could about the dealings of her uncle and McNamara. At a deserted hotel outside Nome, he tried to bargain with the girl for the documents he had, papers that would incriminate himself, the judge, and McNamara of collusion to rob the mines. After Helen had read the papers, he tried to attack her. As he was about to overpower her, a gambler—Helen’s long-lost brother—appeared on the scene and shot Struve. Helen and her rescuer set out through a terrific storm to return to Nome and turn over the incriminating documents to Glenister and other mine owners.

A few hours after they had left, Glenister came to the hotel and discovered the wounded man. Struve told Glenister that Helen had left the hotel with a cheap gambler. Furious, Glenister rode back to Nome. He resolved to hunt down McNamara and the gambler and to kill them both.

When Glenister arrived in Nome early the following morning, he found McNamara alone in his office. Glenister laid aside his coat and gun to fight the man hand-to-hand. In their struggle, they demolished the office. A crowd gathered to watch them. Feeling himself slipping, McNamara tried to reach for a pistol. As he did so, Glenister seized him in a hammerlock and slowly broke his arm. At that moment, Judge Stillman arrived at the office with several soldiers and put Glenister under arrest.

As he was being led away to jail, a ship sailed into the harbor. Shortly afterward, Glenister’s attorney came ashore with several United States marshals and the court orders from San Francisco. With Stillman’s power broken, Glenister was quickly released. When he returned to his cabin to rest, Dextry told him that his fight with McNamara was the talk of the town, for no one had ever seen a combat like it in all the rugged North country. Glenister, too tired to care, stumbled into his bunk and fell asleep.

He was finally awakened when Helen and her gambler brother entered his cabin. Helen told Glenister of the gambler’s real identity and tried to prove to him that she had not willingly been a partner in the plot to rob the mine owners of Anvil Creek. What she told him convinced Glenister that she was telling the truth. She also told him that she had seen his fight with McNamara and that she could never marry a man who was more of a brute animal than a civilized human being.

The next day, all was again peaceful in Nome. Glenister planned to return to his mine and resume operations there. While he was preparing to leave, Dextry walked into his cabin. Dextry told him that he was going to sell his share of the Midas mine and leave Nome. His excuse was that law and order had finally come to Alaska, because the country was growing too civilized for an old frontiersman like himself.

After Dextry left, Glenister wandered down toward the beach, too downhearted to finish his preparations for going to the mine. Helen Chester saw him on the beach. Calling him to her, she told him that she finally understood why he could be as brutal as he was, for her own battle with Struve had shown her how thin the veneer of civilization was in the far North, where life had to be defended against both men and the elements. Glenister pretended not to understand what she meant and asked her when she was leaving. Her reply to him was that she did not intend to leave, unless he sent her away.

Critical Evaluation:

THE SPOILERS is a lusty book about a raw new land filled with adventurers and gamblers of all kinds. Blood and thunder leap forth from every page. The real fault of the novel is the number of coincidences. In his scenes of action, Rex Beach is at his best. His descriptions and dramatic incidents, like the battle at the mines or the epic bare-handed duel between the hero and the villain, are his best work. The merit of the book lies in such, not in the loosely planned plot or the love story.

Pure and simple, Beach is a master of physical violence. His novel abounds in terrifying fights, made doubly realistic by allusion in closest detail to crunching bones and tearing clothes. In the titanic duel that ends the novel—the final confrontation between Glenister and McNamara—both men turn into wild beasts. After the hero loses the use of his hand (“A sudden darting agony paralyzed Roy’s hand, and he realized that he had broken the metacarpal bones”), boxing is discarded for brutal wrestling. Roy subdues the villain with a hammerlock and breaks his arm. The climax of the novel, this event gives the title to the penultimate chapter: “The Hammer-Lock.”

Beach blends a vulgarized naturalism with adventure and romance. His hero’s brutishness, though at first odious to Helen Chester, finally enthralls her because of its directness and honesty. “My pagan,” she murmurs at the final embrace, somewhat cowed by the realization that all human beings have brutal instincts: “You told me once that the wilderness had made you a savage, and I laughed ... when you said ... that we’re all alike, and that those motives are in us all. I see now that you were right and I was very simple.”

It is Beach’s context for this cardinal principle of Naturalism—the primitive streak in all human existence—that is simple. Naturalists like Norris and Dreiser demonstrate in such powerful works as MCTEAGUE and SISTER CARRIE that brutality and corruption are very near the surface in all people; what they do not do is suggest that the release of these forces can lead to adventure and romance. Quite the contrary. Naturalism often approaches tragedy by revealing the dark limitations of man, the obstacles that heredity and environment present to his happiness and moral health.