In the middle of the mountains around the Lötschental is a lonely village that is exposed to the forces of nature. A state of excitement arouses when an international mining company discover a gold vein and acquired mining rights.

Melodrama about a young mountain guide who, as an illegitimate child, becomes an outsider in his village and retreats bitterly into solitude. When he is unjustly blamed for the death of a climber, he sets out on a dangerous first ascent to win recognition and the hand of his beloved bride.

September 1939 in Estavayer: An anti-aircraft battery of the Swiss militia takes up position near a hotel on the border. The daughter of the house is adored by all the soldiers. During a nighttime air battle in which a "foreign" aircraft is shot down, one of the soldiers is killed. Only the girl can comfort the overwhelmed soldiers; it is only an emergency during a storm that brings them together.

The title means "The last postillion (stage-coachman) of the St.Gotthard-pass". A company of select people joins the horse-driven coach for crossing the center of the Alps over the traditional path high on the mountain valley. It is the time of railways as the means of modernization. A tunnel is going to be built. The new fast way would render useless the small transport industry from which local people had made their living. The great mountainous landscape is the background for the conflicts which arise between rich and poor, local traditionalists and foreign modernizers. The daughter of a local, who is opposed against the tunnel, would like to get engaged with a tunnel engineer, but is also coveted by a local favored by her father.