Susan Johnson

  Jennings face broke into a wide smile and his hand shot out to vigorously take Hazard’s. “Anytime. Anytime at all,” he agreed, gripping Hazard’s hand like a sincerely pleased man. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this. How much the company appreciates it. We’re unofficially attached to the First Regiment, but we’ll be moving out before them. When can you be ready?” he asked in the next breath.

  Sliding his hand free, always slightly uneasy with the American practice of touching strangers in public, Hazard replied, “Two weeks. I’ve a last paper to prepare.”

  “Could I find you help with that?”

  “I prefer doing it myself.”

  “Of course,” the major quickly assented, having been warned of Hazard’s peculiar notions about scholarship. “Two weeks it is. All your friends will be pleased. They were going to be the second assault wave if mine failed.”

  “You’re persuasive, Major,” Hazard politely answered, his smile gracious.

  But Tyler Jennings hadn’t tripled his father’s fortune without a keen intelligence and he knew it hadn’t been any of his arguments that had won the day. He had a strange feeling Hazard’s mind had been made up prior to their discussion. “I’m damned lucky you’re riding with us, Jon,” he said, rising and holding out his hand once again. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome,” Hazard replied, courteously relinquishing his hand to the American ritual once again. “Do you think we’ll really free the slaves, Major, or do you think it’s simply another money war?”

  So that was why he was doing it. A genuine idealism under that practical exterior. “We’ll free ’em, all right. Damned if we won’t. Starting in two weeks.”

  Hazard smiled at the ready assurance. “Good night, Major.”

  “Evening, Jon,” Jennings said and started for the door. He turned back after three steps. “Send your measurements to my tailor—Walton.”

  “He has them.”

  “Ah … I thought that coat was his cut. Good. I’ll have him start on your uniform tomorrow. Any preferences?”

  Hazard shook his head, then reconsidered. “A patch on the left shoulder; a black cougar.”

  Jennings eyebrows lifted a fraction. “Your name?”

  “Yes.”

  “Done.”

  FROM the 13th of April when Fort Sumter fell to the 20th of May, one hundred fifty-nine applications were granted to responsible parties for leave to raise companies in Massachusetts and they all left Boston with cheers and wishes of Godspeed from the enthusiastic multitudes.

  After sending a note to his parents via Ramsay Kent, Hazard set off for what the politicians and northern papers considered a “brief summer war.” The Sixth Cavalry Corps arrived at Annapolis on the morning of May third and landed in the afternoon. A week later they were camped in Virginia. The rout at Bull Run in July, where nearly 18,000 men in blue fled for their lives, put illusionary dreams of a three-month war to rest.

  Jennings’ was one of only seven companies of cavalry taking part in the Battle of Bull Run, but the firm front they displayed while covering the precipitate retreat probably saved a large proportion of the army from annihilation by Stuart’s cavalry. The North had confidently expected to crush the Rebellion at once. Cavalry was an expensive arm and federal authorities had not encouraged volunteer cavalry. Owing to the broken and wooded character of the field of operations and the improvements in rifled firearm, veteran opinion had decided the role of the cavalry would be unimportant and secondary.

  Bull Run changed that opinion. It also ignominiously altered northern assumptions of a speedy crushing of the Rebellion.

  Jennings’ Light was well suited to operate as a raiding expedition, depending on the country for sustenance, destroying railway lines, bridges, depots, provisions, and telegraph lines. Raiding was a way of life for Hazard, honed to perfection by years of training. Soon their company was unofficially known as the Cougars and their reputation preceded them.

  As a moral factor and an engine of destruction, the cavalry raids were a great success. They destroyed millions of dollars’ worth of Confederate supplies (increasingly difficult to replace as the war progressed) and cut communications, and often, due to their extreme mobility, the complete surprise of their attacks deep within enemy territory resulted in demoralizing and panicstricken retreats.

  Hazard met Custer early on when Custer rode into Abbottstown to take over his first command as brigadier general. The youngest general in the U.S. Army wore a black velvet uniform trimmed in gold lace and his blond mustache and mass of blond curling hair attracted instant attention. Hazard was one of the numerous field officers introduced to the new general.

  The fantastic clothes didn’t disturb Hazard. The Absarokee were far more resplendent in their dress. And unlike many of the other officers who resented Custer’s promotion and romantic style, Hazard knew in the long run it was victories that made generals, not clothes. He had seen more than his share of fine dressers fired for poor fighting, and Custer’s reputation for success was growing.

  So when they met, they took note of each other, for Hazard’s hybrid uniform of fringed buckskin and Walton-tailored tunic caught the interest of George Armstrong Custer. Their hair, too, shared a common length, and they had their youth in common.

  “You’re with Jennings’ Cougars,” Custer said, but there was curiosity in his glance and inquiry in his voice.

  “Yes sir,” Hazard laconically replied.

  “But not a Boston native, I take it,” Custer pressed.

  “No sir.”

  Custer smiled at the cryptic answer. He’d heard tales of Hazard’s escapades, of Jennings’ Indian scout whose handling of explosives was magical. He could set a mine with unearthly precision and timing. He was also, it was said, the first man in and the last man out on forays to blow up railway bridges. And on the many occasions when escape seemed impossible, Hazard always found a way out. There was the time when pursuit wouldn’t allow their raiding party the opportunity to blow up the locomotive, so they fired it up and headed home, tearing up track and blowing up the bridges behind them. They brought in eighty cars of rolling stock that raid and received personal recommendations from President Lincoln. Jennings made lieutenant colonel for that, and Hazard was awarded oak-leaf clusters for major.

  It was also rumored Hazard was an important link in an underground railroad bringing out slaves from as far south as Georgia. And he and Parker had the dubious honor of being featured on a 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 Appomattox, 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 gua
rding 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 cross-country 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 Absarokee. 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 his clan.

  He cried when he received the news. Then he cut his hair … and immediately after, packed his saddle bags. The ritual slashing of his body must wait until he returned home. He’d need his strength for the long trail ahead. The war was over, and in many ways, in the mournful days to come, it seemed as though his life were over too.

  His father had been his ideal. Brave, honest, gentle, everything a son could look up to. As head chief, he could have been a prideful man, but never was. He listened to everyone with kindness and as Hazard grew up, he tried to be like him. His mother had been a tall, handsome woman and his father’s only wife. She could make the day bright with her smile, and her unconditional love had always nurtured and sustained Hazard.

  It was a sad, bleak homecoming to the hundreds of graves and grieving clansmen when Hazard rode into his village three weeks later. After he’d seen to his parents’ burial sites, he slashed his forearms and chest and legs, and with the blood slowly seeping from his wounds mingled a deep and terrible sense of loss.

  THE young girl who once sighed at her bedroom windows on rainy nights in Boston had been transmuted into a slender, voluptuous woman, strikingly beautiful. The wide-set azure eyes, full of radiant curiosity, held within them a new maturity. She’d seen much of the ways of polite society and proper manners in those years. Her flame-red mane of hair was unchanged, the spoiled alluring mouth had only become more tempting, while the untamed temper and tendency to release frustration explosively were whispered by some to be a shade less than genteel. Many thought she addressed herself to life with a bit more independence than considered wholly respectable. These unfortunate attributes were laid at the door of her father’s doting regard and enormous wealth.

  Regardless of the gossip, Venetia “Blaze” Braddock, with her precocious, high-spirited beauty, was never without a score of ardent suitors. While she flirted, teased, intimidated, or spurned in her own scandalous fashion, she had not, in the parade of lovesick swains, found a man she cared to marry. Blaze was nineteen, and the more vindictive and uncharitable of society matrons remarked with snide satisfaction that she would soon be on the shelf. The untamed beauty had made her own bed, the slightly envious matrons whispered. She had snapped her fingers at every eligible party from Baltimore to Bar Harbor; it would serve her right if she turned into an old maid. Blaze would have laughed derisively had she known what was being said. Blaze Braddock had no intention of ever merely settling for someone to marry.

  And her indulgent father agreed. “When you find him, honey, you’ll know,” he told her. He didn’t confide that he’d discovered the truth of this adage outside his own marriage, empty now of everything but malice. He was hoping for better luck for his cherished daughter. “Until then,” he generously admonished, “enjoy yourself, with my blessing.”

  “I’m trying, Papa, but most men are incredibly dull.”

  “They’ve been taught their manners, is all, darling.”

  “I’m not talking about manners. I mean their interests are so … so … worthless,” she petulantly finished. “Do you know how shallow most of their brains are, Papa? A nail scratch would touch bottom. And when I bring up some topic of conversation that might be the teeniest bit interesting, they look at me blankly and then change the subject by telling me how beautiful I am.”

  “Well, you are, baby girl of mine; you turn their heads.” Billy Braddock’s look was that of every proud and doting father.

  “I know I’m beautiful,” Blaze calmly replied, impatience hurrying the last words, “but my God, Daddy, what the hell good is that going to do me if I die of boredom in the meantime with all these dull men I know?”

  “Don’t let your mother hear you swear, baby. You know how she feels about that.”

  Blaze shrugged lightly, that admonition so familiar it didn’t require an answer. Then suddenly she giggled and, bringing her twinkling blue-eyed glance up to her father’s, she said, “It would be fun, Daddy, just once to swear a blue streak in front of her and watch the smoke come out of her ears.”

  Billy Braddock tried not to smile. He’d always politely avoided overt discussions of his and his wife’s differences.

  “I’d say foot-high flames from her nostrils,” Blaze cheerfully remarked and giggled again.

  “Now, darling,” the Colonel began, but a sudden image of Millicent’s face after a “blue streak” struck his mind and a chuckle rumbled low in his throat. “It would be a sight,” he laughingly agreed, “but promise me now—”

  “I know, Papa,” Blaze reluctantly acknowledged, her smile diminishing, “I never would. But the temptation’s grand at those stupid teas of hers. Do you love me, Papa?” she suddenly asked, thoughts of her mother always causing unease and a sense of loss. Her eyes were large with childlike need.

  The Colonel’s arms opened wide and Blaze entered the familiar comfort of his loving embrace. “I love you, darling, more than anything,” he quietly murmured.

  Blaze’s southern belle mother, never having taken an interest in family anyway, ignored the emancipated life of her only child. On the rare occasions when she spoke to her husband and their daughter was mentioned, Millicent Braddock would tersely remark, “She’s very like you, William.” It was not a compliment.

  “Thank you,” he’d always say, as though the underlying malice had escaped his notice. “Do you think Blaze needs new riding boots or a new fur coat?” he’d ask then in an effort to reach some common ground where civil conversation was possible. Millicent had excellent taste; he couldn’t fault her on that, and he relied on her judgment, at least in Blaze’s younger years, in selecting a suitable wardrobe for his daughter. In later years
, he and Blaze had gone alone on their shopping sprees, for by then Blaze had her own sure sense of style.

  If he’d believed in divorce, the marriage could have been ended years ago, but it was a rarely elected choice in their social milieu. With wealth, separate lives were a civilized option.

  So in the spring of 1865, the William Braddock family, in company with other wealthy investors from Boston and New York, rode west leisurely on a private train of elegantly appointed cars. The trip was an unhurried holiday and an opportunity to check their newly acquired land and mining camps. The weather cooperated with springtime splendor and while the men talked business and the ladies gossiped, Blaze daydreamed about the rugged, wild land of Montana. For a young woman who found life in society positively dull, and was uninterested in the antidotal outlets to female ennui—shopping and adultery—the summer in Montana offered a promise of challenge. A flare of unfamiliar excitement accompanied her on the journey west. She was swept by an unknown, inexplicable wind of freedom.

  Hazard spent a month with his people, then moved up to Diamond City where the newest mining claims were being staked.

  The eastern investors arrived overland from the railhead outside of Omaha, in twenty leisurely days aboard specially equipped carriages, and settled into Virginia City’s finest hotel. The ladies kept to their elegant sitting rooms, rarely venturing among Virginia City’s eight hotels, seventeen eating places, two churches, two theaters, eight billiard halls, five elegant gambling houses, three hurdy-gurdies, several bawdy houses, and seventy-three saloons, on its mile length of Main Street—the quagmires of mud from the spring rains made leisurely strolls impractical. The ladies had also been warned of the occasional violence, murder, and drunkenness abroad in this large and rough community.