disheartened family who found
Kentucky also smitten, Missouri and Arkansas no better. The West, the
then unknown and fascinating West, still remained beyond, a land of
hope, perhaps a land of refuge. The men of the lower South, also
stirred and unsettled, moved in long columns to the West and Southwest,
following the ancient immigration into Texas. The men of Texas,
citizens of a crude empire of unproved resources, likewise cast about
them restlessly. Their cattle must some day find a market. To the
north of them, still unknown and alluring, lay the new upper country
known as the West.

In the North the story was the same. The young men, taken from the
fields and marts to the camps and marches of the war, could not easily
return to the staid ways of their earlier life. From New England to
Michigan, from Michigan to Minnesota, many Northern families began to
move also toward that West which offered at least opportunity for
change. Thus there poured into the West from many different
directions, but chiefly from two right-angling directions which
intersected on the Plains, a diverse population whose integers were
later with phenomenal swiftness to merge and blend. As in the war the
boldest fought, so in emigration the boldest travelled, and the West
had the pick of the land. In Illinois and Iowa, after the war had
ended, you might have seen a man in flapping blue army overcoat hewing
timber for fences on the forgotten farms, or guiding the plough across
the black reeking sod; but presently you must have also seen the
streams of white-topped wagons, sequel to the white tented fields,
moving on, pushing toward the West, the land of action and adventure,
the land of hope and promise.

As all America was under canvas, it was not strange that Colonel
Battersleigh should find his home in a tent, and that this tent should
be pitched upon the Western Plains. Not that he had gone directly to
the West after the mustering out of his regiment. To the contrary, his
first abode had been in the city of New York, where during his brief
stay he acquired a certain acquaintance. Colonel Battersleigh was
always a striking figure, the more so by reason of his costume, which
was invariably the same. His broad cavalry hat, his shapely varnished
boots, his gauntlets, his sweeping cloak, made him fairly historic
about the clubs. His air, lofty, assured, yet ever suave, showed that
he classified himself cheerfully as being of the n