The Captain's Dog: My Journey With the Lewis and Clark Tribe Read online

  The Captain's Dog

  My Journey with the Lewis and Clark Tribe

  Roland Smith

  * * *

  The Captain's Dog

  My Journey with the Lewis and Clark Tribe

  ROLAND SMITH

  Harcourt, Inc.

  Orlando Austin New York San Diego London

  * * *

  Copyright © 1999 by Roland Smith

  Reader's guide copyright © 2008

  by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or

  transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including

  photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system,

  without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Requests for permission to make copies of any part of the work should be

  submitted online at www.harcourt.com/contact or mailed to the following

  address: Permissions Department, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing

  Company, 6277 Sea Harbor Drive, Orlando, Florida 32887-6777.

  www.HarcourtBooks.com

  First Harcourt paperback edition 2000

  The Library of Congress has cataloged the hardcover edition as follows:

  Smith, Roland, 1951–

  The captain's dog: my journey with the Lewis and Clark tribe/Roland Smith

  p. cm.

  Summary: Captain Meriwether Lewis's dog Seaman describes

  his experiences as he accompanies his master on the Lewis and Clark

  Expedition to explore the uncharted western wilderness.

  1. Lewis and Clark Expedition (1804–1806)—Juvenile fiction. [1. Lewis

  and Clark Expedition (1804–1806)—Fiction. 2. Dogs—Fiction. 3. West

  (U.S.)—Discovery and exploration—Fiction. 4. Explorers—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.S657655Cap 1999

  [Fic]—dc21 99-25608

  ISBN 978-0-15-201989-1

  ISBN 978-0-15-202696-7 pb

  Designed by Linda Lockowitz

  Text set in Cloister Old Style

  P R T U S Q

  Printed in the United States of America

  * * *

  For Marie,

  the best partner an explorer ever had

  * * *

  Acknowledgments

  As always I want to thank my first readers—Melanie Gill, Mike Roydon, Marie Smith, Zach Teters, and Pat Washington—for their insightful comments. I would also like to thank my agent, Barbara Kouts, for arranging the lunch, all those years ago, where the seed for this book was first planted. And a very special thanks to my editor, Anne Davies, and her assistant, Nina Hess, for guiding me on this wonderful journey. This book is as much theirs as it is mine.

  SEAMAN'S JOURNEY WEST

  1803 to 1806

  1808

  On a vast prairie east of the Rocky Mountains...

  JOHN COLTER gallops into camp, jumps off his horse, and shouts, "Seaman? Good Lord! Is that really you? We thought you were dead!"

  He falls to his knees in front of me and takes a handful of fur on either side of my face. He looks into my eyes, just like he used to, and makes that silly noise like a bull elk bugling for a cow.

  Colter isn't alone. George Drouillard is with him. He swings off his horse and gives me a solid nod, which is about as emotional a greeting as I have ever seen him give.

  Oh, it's good to see these men again!

  Colter looks at Twisted Hair and grins. "When we rode up, Chief, I thought you had yourself a pet buffalo calf in camp!"

  Twisted Hair doesn't understand a word Colter says, but he smiles at the white man's enthusiasm. Colter is dressed entirely in soiled buckskin except for his feet, which are shod in buffalo-hide moccasins. His face is burned as dark as the chief's and there are a few more creases than the last time I saw him. His brown hair hangs behind his head like a horse's tail, nearly brushing the ground as he kneels in front of me.

  Drouillard is dressed in the same manner, but he hasn't changed much. He still looks like a large black bear dressed up as a deer.

  Each has two horses with him. One to ride and one to carry the furs they've trapped and traded for. By the size of the piles, my old friends have been doing mighty well for themselves.

  I look across the grassy plain beyond their horses, hoping the Captain is with them, wondering if he'll be happy or cross to see me. But he is not there. I am disappointed but not surprised.

  Colter stands and pays his respects to Chief Twisted Hair and they begin speaking in hand-talk. Drouillard was always better at this language, but he lets Colter do the talking, and I see Colter's hand-talk has improved a good deal.

  "We've come a long way to trade with you," Colter says.

  Twisted Hair nods. "I must leave today to visit another camp. When I return we will trade. I will also bring people from the other camp to trade with you."

  "How many days will you be gone?" Colter asks.

  "Two days ... three days at most. can stay here while I'm gone and rest."

  "Lord knows we could use some of that," Colter says to Drouillard.

  Drouillard nods.

  Later that night, after most of the Nez Percé have covered themselves with their robes, I lie near Colter and Drouillard's fire as I have done so many times before, listening to them talk. Their conversation is interrupted by the arrival of Mountain Dog and the old woman, Watkuweis. Mountain Dog is carrying the bag made from otter skin. Colter invites them to sit down.

  "That's one beautiful bag," Colter says to Drouillard.

  "Have you come to trade for your bag?" Drouillard asks Mountain Dog with hand-talk.

  Mountain Dog shakes his head and looks at Watkuweis.

  "We came here to show you something," Watkuweis says in French.

  Drouillard and Colter stare at her in shock. French is Drouillard's boyhood tongue.

  "I didn't know you spoke French," Drouillard says.

  "Long ago I had a Frenchman for a husband and learned to speak his words."

  "But you never told us this when—"

  Watkuweis laughs. "Your chiefs never asked me. They just assumed none of us understood your words. I can read some of the French words, too." She takes the otter bag from Mountain Dog and opens it carefully, with the respect big medicine deserves. Inside is a small book with a red-leather cover and a brass clasp holding the book closed. "These words are not French. I believe they are in Colter's tongue."

  She hands the book to Colter.

  "Open it," Drouillard says.

  Colter unhooks the clasp. He stares down at the first page, then looks up Watkuweis. "Lord Almighty! This belongs to Captain Lewis. It says right here it's his personal diary."

  Watkuweis looks at Drouillard. "I want Colter to read the book to us."

  "Where did Mountain Dog get this book?"

  "I will tell you when the reading is finished. Colter will read the English, you will tell me the words in French, and I will pass the words to Mountain Dog in our language."

  "What are you all jabbering about?" Colter asks.

  "She wants you to read it."

  "Out loud?"

  "Yep. You read and I'll translate it into French as best I can."

  Colter looks at Drouillard, nods, then scoots a little closer to the fire to better see the words in the flickering light He begins to read....

  May 23, 1804

  At last we are all together and on our way with the immediate goal of following the Missouri River to the Mandan Indian village where we will spend the
winter.

  Our mission, given to us by President Jefferson, is to find and map the most direct navigable route to the Pacific Ocean—the long-sought-after Northwest Passage; make contact with the Indians along the way, with an eye toward setting up friendly trade between our nations; and observe and record the flora and fauna, terrain, Indian customs, and anything else that might help secure the future of our country. To this end, I, Captain Clark, and some of the other men are keeping official journals of our expedition, but this little red journal I start today will not be part of the official record.

  As I make this first entry I am sitting on a high bluff above the Missouri with my dog, Seaman. It seems as if I have spent my entire life preparing for this journey. I feel ready for whatever we might encounter....

  As John Colter speaks from the red book, my mind wanders back to that very day with Captain Lewis.

  I see him bend down to look at a delicate flower growing at the base of a hickory tree—

  CAPTAIN LEWIS snipped the stem with his thumbnail, smelled it, held it up to the sunlight, then tasted one of the leaves. "Never seen anything like it," he said, carefully putting it into his plant press.

  I sniffed the ground around the flower. A mouse had passed by early that morning. It was a female mouse with milk. I wanted to find her nest, but I didn't get the chance.

  "Let's go, Sea," the Captain said, and he continued up the steep deer trail. Before leaving I lifted my hind leg and marked the hickory so other animals would know we had been there.

  I caught up with the Captain and bounded ahead, stopping at a rocky bluff hundreds of feet above the Missouri River. As I sat waiting the sun came out from behind a cloud and warmed my thick black fur. I began panting to cool myself off.

  The Captain walked up with long purposeful strides and stood beside me. "I see you found us a good spot, Sea." He scratched my head, the top of which just about came to his elbow when I sat.

  We could see downriver for several miles. The muddy Missouri meandered back and forth like an endless brown snake. We didn't know it at the time, but it would take us more than a year to reach the serpent's head.

  We were less than two weeks into our journey, and the snake had already tried to kill us on several occasions. Captain Lewis predicted it would strike many more times before our exploring was over.

  We were traveling against the current, and it was painfully slow going. Presently our tribe was made up of nearly fifty men, hand-picked and trained by Captains Lewis and Clark over the winter; two horses; and one Newfoundland dog—me.

  Some of the men walked alongshore hunting, a couple rode the horses scouting ahead, and the rest pushed, yanked, and rowed the three boats carrying our supplies up that roaring river. I was thankful I was a dog, able to travel freely without a burden.

  The two smaller canoe-like boats, called pirogues, rode high on the water and rowed reasonably well, even against the powerful spring current. The long keelboat was a different beast altogether. It drifted wildly in the current, smashing into hidden sandbars and submerged snags. The men swore it had a pact with the Missouri to cause their destruction. On good days we made ten miles in as many hours, but on many a day the keelboat's progress was measured only in yards.

  "Like leading a dead draft horse," York described it.

  The Keelboat's twenty-two oars were pretty near useless in the torrential current, and so was the sail, as the wind seemed to blow in the wrong direction on most days. Because of this the men had to pull her upriver, walking along the shore, felling to their knees under the weight of the slippery tow ropes, hands sliced and shoulders rubbed raw by the rough hemp.

  "It's like pushing a square boulder up a mountainside!" Private John Colter said one evening as the men tended their wounds and dried their clothes around the fire.

  It was the keelboat that had brought Captain Lewis and me together. At the time we met, I was living with a man named Brady on a dilapidated barge moored at the Pittsburgh wharf.

  My mother had whelped on a ship in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean during a terrible storm, the motion of which hastened our birth according to the ship's physician, who seemed to know more about canine ailments than the human kind. For helping my mother whelp, the doctor was given the pick of the litter. He did not pick me.

  So my life began on the sea, and for the longest time I thought the world was made of bad-tasting water that men floated upon in wooden ships. It wasn't until I was four months old that I learned humans made their permanent homes on something they called land.

  Our owner was a sailor named O'Malley. When the ship docked at the New York harbor, O'Malley stuffed us into a gunnysack and walked down the gangplank with my mother following him. As usual, being the runt of the litter, I was at the bottom of the pile, but this time my size worked to my advantage. There was a small tear in the corner of the sack, which allowed me to glimpse this new land-world before my squirming sisters and brothers.

  We bounced by shouting men unloading cargo from ships, and passed wooden buildings with people pouring in and out the doors—some dressed in fine clothes, some dressed in rags, all of them in a great hurry, as if their captain had just called them to quarters. There were also tall four-legged creatures hooked to wheeled boxes guided by humans who were holding strings attached to the creatures' mouths. I caught snatches of conversations in English and French, heard other human languages I did not yet understand, and learned we were in a place called the United States of America.

  Before we left the harbor O'Malley stopped. "Newfoundlands!" he said proudly, and dumped us out of the sack. "Best darn water dogs in the world. Just look at the size of their mother!"

  A man held us up in the air and poked us with his dirty fingers.

  "How much?"

  "Five dollars."

  "Ha! And for this one?" He pinched my ear. "He's half the size of the others."

  "Five dollars," O'Malley insisted. "He's small, but smarter than all the other pups put together. I swear he sometimes knows exactly what I'm saying."

  I knew what he was saying all the time. Dogs know humans better than they will ever know us. We are skilled watchers, and watching a human's face, posture, and hands is more than enough to pick up the gist of their meaning. Combining these signals with a human's tone of voice and the scents they send out makes any language perfectly understandable. After a couple days of watching and listening, a dog could talk the language back to them if our mouths worked that way. And it is a shame they don't, because we could teach humans a thing or two.

  "I'll take both his brothers," the man said.

  And back in the bag I went with my two sisters.

  Later that night, after O'Malley had spent the ten dollars in a pub, he sold my two sisters to the barmaid for a bottle of whiskey and a handful of coins she had in her apron pocket. Having drunk the bottle of whiskey, O'Malley began to feel exceedingly lucky and got into a dice game with a group of men. On his first throw he ost the coins. On the second throw he lost my mother and me to an American riverman named Brady.

  Brady sold my mother but kept me. "You'll be an easy keeper 'cause you're a runt. In fact, that's what I'm going to call you. Come on, Runt." It wasn't long before I outgrew this name.

  When I met the Captain I had been with Brady for nearly a year as he hauled goods up and down rivers on his small barge. We had been docked in Pittsburgh for two weeks, waiting for a load, the afternoon Captain Meriwether Lewis arrived to check on the men building his keelboat. I liked the cut of his jib, as the sailors said. There was a ruggedness beneath his gentlemanly clothes. He was a tall handsome man with brown hair. His eyes were sharp and intelligent, with a hint of sadness he could not quite disguise.

  I wanted to do something to cheer him up, so I dropped the big rat I had just killed at his feet. This must have left a good impression, because Captain Lewis marched right over to Brady's boat and said, "I want to buy this Newfoundland pup."

  I was hardly a pup, being at the time four
teen months old, but I was impressed with his knowing an outstanding canine when he saw one. A skill Brady did not have.

  "He's not for sale," Brady said, scratching his scraggly tobacco-stained beard. Just a week earlier, Brady had been complaining to his pals about the cost of feeding me and asked if any of them wanted to take me off his hands for free.

  "I've been looking for a dog," Captain Lewis said. "Are you sure I can't convince you to sell him?"

  "He's an awful good ratter. I'm going to keep him around."

  Brady had no idea how good I was at catching rats, as he only let me off my rope a few minutes each day so I didn't foul his deck. I despised being tied up, but I always returned to the barge when Brady whistled. Not because I was fond of the man, but because I was afraid of the consequences if I didn't return. Brady had a terrible temper and was quick and accurate with the horse quirt he always carried—"to keep you obedient, Runt," as he so prettily put it.

  "I'll give you five dollars for him," Captain Lewis said.

  Brady laughed. "Even if he were for sale, I wouldn't part with him for such a paltry sum. A fine Newf like this ... And smart? He does whatever I say."

  "Ten dollars."

  "Sir, you insult me."

  "Fifteen."

  Brady did not agree to the price, but he looked much less insulted. He told the Captain how he had traveled to Newfoundland personally, at great risk and expense, to pick me out of the litter. "Can't trust nobody for an important decision like that. Champion here cost me a fortune, but he was worth every penny."

  So now my name was Champion. I liked it, but the name was not destined to last long.

  "He saved me from drowning three times," Brady continued. "How can you put a price on that?"

  I had not saved him once and I wasn't sure that I would if the opportunity arose.

  It was clear that the Captain did not believe Brady for a second, but he reached into his purse and pulled out two ten-dollar gold pieces and bounced them in the palm of his hand, saying, "My absolute final offer is twenty dollars."