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Confederate list of persons to be killed, for the brash arrogance of dining with J.E.B. Stuart on one of their spy missions into the South. So Custer smilingly remarked, "We're happy you're on our side, Major Black."
     
    "Thank you, sir."
     
    "Can we recruit any more where you came from, Major? You're invaluable."
     
    "I'm all they can spare, sir."
     
    "A pity."
     
    "Yes sir," Hazard pleasantly agreed.
     
    But their paths crossed frequently in the months ahead and they came to recognize in each other a reckless contempt for danger, a boundless confidence, and an inherent regard for destiny's calling.
     
    Jennings' Cougars fought from Bull Run to Appo-mattox, taking part in grand charges at Chancellorsville and Gettysburg, at Gaines' Mill and Brandy Station. But they mostly fought as they were needed, mounted or dismounted, with saber, Spencer rifles, or Colt revolvers.
     
    Dismounted, they held in check long lines of the enemy's infantry with Sheridan at Dinwiddie Court House; with Gamble's brigade at Upperville, crouched behind stone walls, they stopped a devastating charge. They helped rout Pickett's charge at Gettysburg and spearheaded the last advances after Petersburg.
     
    Finally, it was nearly over. Lee's trains, heavily escorted, were found moving toward Burkeville in an attempt to escape south. A favorable opportunity for an attack of the long Confederate column occurred at Sailor's Creek, where Custer, with the Third Cavalry Division, including Jennings' Cougars, charged the force guarding the train and routed it, capturing three hundred wagons.
     
    This success, supported by the position of Crook's cavalry division planted squarely across Lee's line of retreat, had the effect of cutting off three of the Confederate's infantry divisions. As the Sixth Corps moved up in the Army of Northern Virginia's rear, nearly the entire force was captured. This included General Ewell and six of his generals, fifteen guns, thirty-one battle flags, and ten thousand prisoners.
     
    Sheridan at this time wrote to Grant. "If the thing is pressed, I think Lee will surrender."
     
    And President Lincoln telegraphed Grant the brief message, "Let the thing be pressed."
     
    It was pressed.
     
    For two days the Federal Army pushed. Sharp fighting ensued, but by the night of April 1865, despair fell on the Army of Northern Virginia. Tired, desperate, and starving, Lee's army of brave, hardy men was finished.
     
    The next day, a flag of truce called for suspension of hostilities, and the war was over.
     
    ON THE day after the surrender at Appomattox, Hazard received news of his parents' death in a long-delayed letter that had been two months in coming. Ramsay had written as he lay sick. Sent along with a fur trader the first distance to Fort Benton, the letter had slowly descended the Missouri and then traveled crosscountry from St. Joe. Printed in large, untutored script on the envelope when Hazard received it was an added message from the fur trader, succinctly blunt: Kent dead Feb. 10. The terrible tidings of his parents' and relatives' deaths enclosed within the letter shook Hazard to the depths of his soul.
     
    A raiding party venturing too close to a wagon train sickened with small-pox had brought the disease back to the Yellowstone. Before the raiding party reached home, the pox had made its appearance, and when they arrived in camp, more than half the party were down with it. The scourge spread like wildfire through the susceptible Ab-sarokee. The camp had broken into small bands, each taking different directions, scattering through the mountains in the hope of running away from the pestilence. All through the winter, the disease had continued its ravages, until it had run its course. Runners were sent through the country from camp to camp and the remnant of the nation assembled near the head of Big Horn River, the ranks of the proud nation terribly thinned.
     
    Hazard had not only lost both his parents, but fully half