At times he felt a wild yearning to follow this frontier--to follow till the West sunk into the sea, and even then to follow, until he came to some Fortunate Islands where such glorious days should die no more.

He recalled the wild animals and the wild men he had known, and saw again the mocking face of the old wide plains, shifting and evading, even as the spirit of his own life evaded him, answering no questions directly, always beckoning, yet always with finger upon lip, forbidding speech.
Almost with exultation he joined in the savage resentment of this land laid under tribute, he joined in the pitiless scorn of the savage winter, he almost justified in his own soul the frosted pane and the hearth made cold, and the settlers' homes forever desolated.
Yet ever a chill struck Franklin's soul as he thought of the lost battle at the Halfway House.

There was now grass grown upon the dusty trail that once led up to the low-eaved house.

The green and gray of Nature were shrouding busily the two lonely graves of those who had fought the, frontier and been vanquished in that night of terror, when the old West claimed its own.

The Halfway House of old was but a memory.