When the American civil war began he drifted to the newest scene of activity as metal to a magnet.
Chance sent him with the Union army, and there he found opportunity for a cavalry command.

"A gintleman like Battersleigh of the Rile Irish always rides," he said, and natural horseman as well as trained cavalryman was Battersleigh, tall, lean, flat-backed, and martial even under his sixty admitted years.

It was his claim that no Sudanese spearsman or waddling assegai-thrower could harm him so long as he was mounted and armed, and he boasted that no horse on earth could unseat him.

Perhaps none ever had--until he came to the Plains.
For this was on the Plains.

When the bitter tide of war had ebbed, Battersleigh had found himself again without a home.