"They took in my clothes at a glance," said Clark, "and they seemed to suppose that a man with butternut homespun was true-blue; so they didn't ask any questions. I got a free-State ballot from another man and was a-goin' to plump it in; but they were too smart for me, and over I went. No, don't you worry; I ain't a-goin' up there to try it ag'in," he said, angrily, to an insolent horseman, who, riding up, told him not to venture near the polls again if he "did not want to be kicked out like a dog." "Come on, neighbor; let's be goin'," he said to Uncle Aleck. "I've had enough voting for to-day. Let's light out of this town." Then the men, taking up their ox-goads, drove out of town. They had had their first sight of the struggle for freedom. CHAPTER VII. AT THE DIVIDING OF THE WAYS. The military road, of which I have just spoken, was constructed by the United States Government to connect the military posts of the Far West with one another. Beginning at Fort Leavenworth, on the Missouri River, it passed through Fort Riley at the junction of the forks of the Kaw, and then, still keeping up the north side of the Republican Fork, went on to Fort Kearney, still farther west, then to Fort Laramie, which in those days was so far on the frontier of our country that few people ever saw it except military men and the emigrants to California. At the time of which I am writing, there had been a very heavy emigration to California, and companies of emigrants, bound to the Golden Land, still occasionally passed along the great military road. Interlacing this highway were innumerable trails and wagon-tracks, the traces of the great migration to the Eldorado of the Pacific; and here and there were the narrow trails made by Indians on their hunting expeditions and warlike excursions. Roads, such as our emigrants had been accustomed to in Illinois, there were none. First came the faint traces of human feet and of unshod horses and ponies; then the well-defined trail of hunters, trappers, and Indians; then the wagon-track of the military trains, which, in course of time, were smoothed and formed into the military road kept in repair by the United States Government. Following this road, the Dixon emigrants came upon the broad, bright, and shallow stream of the Big Blue. Fording this, they drove into the rough, new settlement of Manhattan, lately built at the junction of the Blue and the Kaw rivers. It was a beautiful May day when the travellers entered Manhattan. It was an active and a promising town. Some attempt at the laying out of streets had been made. A long, low building, occupied as a hotel, was actually painted, and on some of the shanties and rude huts of the newly arrived settlers were signs giving notice of hardware, groceries, and other commodities for sale within. On one structure, partly made of sawed boards and partly of canvas, was painted in sprawling letters, "Counsellor at Law."