Showing results by author "Rex Beach" in All Categories

Young Pierce Phillips, green, naïve, self-assured and with little money, finds himself in Dyea, Alaska. He is soon parted from his money by smooth-talking gamblers. Now, penniless, hungry and with no means to reach the Klondike, he is forced to accept a job hauling supplies for other would-be prospectors over the perilous Chilkoot Pass. During one such expedition he meets Countess Courteau, who plays a major role in his future.

She was a young woman of courage, desert-born, alone, afoot and lost in the stifling heat of the South Texas desert, her throat aching with drought. Alaire Austin staggered on to reach a water-hole she knew existed. Where it existed was a calculated guess, and along with it, she would find Texas Ranger David Law. He was a strong man, masterful and ruthless. She had no idea that this chance meeting at the only water-hole in fifty square miles of parched desert would be the beginning of her life’s greatest adventures.

Nome, where gold glitters in the sand and armies of men come to scoop it out. For the lucky ones, fortunes are made overnight. But fortunes can be lost just as fast. Claim jumpers are as thick as fleas. With the backing of a greedy judge, big-city interests are moving in and seizing small claims through smart, corrupt, legal manipulations. Tricked by the city slickers and frustrated by the corrupt court, the hardy miners take matters into their own hands.

Roy Glenister and Dextry are gold miners who strike it rich in Nome, Alaska until their claim is “jumped", seemingly by legal means and by powerful politicians, crooked lawyers, and a judge. The political establishment seems too powerful to fight. How can they get their claim (and money) back from a mafia-like organization in frontier Alaska? Roy is an honest man driven by frustration, despair, and disappointment, and loves to do things he never thought he would. How can he fight an organization that has the law in its pocket? There is “law” and then there is “frontier law.”

This is a rollicking, fast-paced Western setting double-crossing mayhem set against the colorful background of the Yukon gold rush.