Another generation and there
would be no last frontier. Twenty-five years more and the world would
lie utterly in the shackles of science and invention and what the human
race called progress.
So God had been good to him. He was helping to write the last page in
that history which would go down through the eons of time, written in
the red blood of men who had cut the first trails into the unknown.
After him, there would be no more frontiers. No more mysteries of
unknown lands to solve. No more pioneering hazards to make. The earth
would be tamed. And suddenly he thought of Mary Standish and of what
she had said to him in the dusk of evening. Strange that it had been
_her_ thought, too--that she would always love tents and old trails and
nature's barriers, and hated to see cities and railroads and automobiles
come to Alaska. He shrugged his shoulders. Probably she had guessed what
was in his own mind, for she was clever, very clever.
A tap at his door drew his eyes from the open watch in his hand. It was
a quarter after twelve o'clock, an unusual hour for someone to be
tapping at his door.
It was repeated--a bit hesitatingly, he thought. Then it came again,
quick and decisive. Replacing his watch in his pocket, he opened
the door.
It was Mary Standish who stood facing him.
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