now thrust upon them, and seeing no way of retrieving their fortunes in the country which had borne them, broke away entirely from old associations and started on in the strange, vague American fashion of that day, in a hope of finding a newer and perhaps a better country.  They moved by rail, by boat, by wagon, in such way as they could.  The old Mountain Road from Virginia was trodden by many a 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 natural aristocracy of the earth.  When Colonel Battersleigh had occasion to sign his name it was worth a dinner to see the process, so seriously did he himself regard it.  “Battersleigh”—­so stood the name alone, unsupported and self-sufficient.  Seeing which inscription in heavy black lines, many a man wondered, considering that he had discovered an Old-World custom, and joining in the belief of the owner of the name that all the world must know the identity of Battersleigh.