Soldiers, warriors, prizefighters, cattle barons, prospectors, homesteaders, prostitutes, land pirates, preachers and belles of enchantment have all taken places in popular imaginings of the westering movement. Josiah Hawken encounters a panoply of characters in a two-year odyssey through the young and turbulent land that would become Colorado. His journey of discovery is flavored with adventure and danger. Like many Americans after the close of the Civil War, he had a yearning, an itch that was hard to scratch. The vast looming of the land ocean beyond fences and rivers was a possibility that scratched many itches. The amain chancea men and women who dared the untamed were the fuel and fodder that changed the land. Those hardy souls carved out new states, created economic empires and wrote the story of those challenging years.