"And so there is, the biggest and most unusual scrap of its kind
you ever heard of, Greggy. It's going to be a queer kind of fight
--and queer fighting. And it's possible--very probable--that you
and I will get lost in the shuffle somewhere. We're two, no more.
And we're going up against forces which would make a dozen South
American revolutions look like thirty cents. More than that, it's
likely we'll be in the wrong locality when certain people rise in
a wrath which a Helen of Troy aroused in another people some
centuries ago. See here--"

He turned the map to Gregson, pointing with his finger.

"See that red line? That's the new railroad to Hudson's Bay. It is
well above Le Pas now, and its builders plan to complete it by
next spring. It is the most wonderful piece of railroad building
on the American continent, Greggy--wonderful because it has been
neglected so long. Something like a hundred million people have
been asleep to its enormous value, and they're just waking up now.
That road, cutting across four hundred miles of wilderness, is
opening up a country half as big as the United States, in which
more mineral wealth will be dug during the next fifty years than
will ever be taken from Yukon or Alaska. It is shortening the
route from Montreal, Duluth, Chicago, and the Middle West to
Liverpool and other European ports by a thousand miles. It means
the making of a navigable sea out of Hudson's Bay, cities on its
shores, and great steel-foundries close to the Arctic Circle--
where there is coal and iron enough to supply the world for
hundreds of years. That's only a small part of what this road
means, Greggy. Two years ago--you remember I asked you to join me