Showdown at Dead End Canyon

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THE WAR BETWEEN THE STATES WAS THE COSTLIEST war in American history. From Bull Run to Franklin, neighbor fought neighbor and brother fought brother until half a million men lay dead on the bloody battlefields.

For all intents and purposes, it ended when Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox, Virginia, but for many veterans of that terrible war, the surrender was just the beginning of a much more personal conflict. Young men who had lived their lives on the edge for four years found it nearly impossible to return home and take up the plow, or go back to work in a store, repair wagons, or do any of the other things that were the necessary part of becoming whole again.

Others found nothing to come home to. Many of the veterans—especially those who had fought for the South—returned to burned-out homes, farms gone to seed or, worse, taken for taxes. These men became the dispossessed. Unable to settle down, they became wanderers. Many of them went west, where there would be less civilized encroachment upon their chosen way of life.

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