Rex Beach

The Barrier Rex Beach

Book Excerpt: r's food, how he eked out his scantystock, dealing to each and every one his portion, month by month. They remembered well the bitter winter that followed, when thespectre of famine haunted their cabins, and when for endless periodsthey cinched their belts, and cursed and went hungry to sleep, accepting, day by day, the rations doled out to them by the grim, gray man at the log store. Some of them had money-belts weighted lowwith gold washed from the bars at Forty Mile, and there were otherswho had wandered in from the Koyukuk with the first frosts, foot-sore and dragging, the legs of their skin boots eaten to the ankle, and the taste of dog meat still in their mouths. Broken anddispirited, these had fared as well through that desperate winter astheir brothers from up-river, and received pound for pound of mustyflour, strip for strip of rusty bacon, lump for lump of precioussugar. Moreover, the price of no single thing had risen throughoutthe famine. Some of them, to this day, owed bills at OldRead M