The Captain's Dog

by Roland Smith

  I moved freely among all these clusters of men, but there was one man I treaded lightly around. His name was Private Moses Reed. Some of the men called him a weasel, but to me that was an insult to the sleek beauty of the real animal. Moses Reed was slippery and mean-spirited. More like an eel than a weasel.

  He was constantly shirking his duties and saying bad things about the captains and sergeants when they were out of earshot. One day when no one was looking he kicked me in the ribs as hard as he could, and said, "I'll be eating you one day soon, you dumb mongrel! Mark my words."

  There were other kicks, and sometimes Reed would seek me out, step on my toes, then curse me in front of the other men.

  "The mongrel is always underfoot! He's a hazard to the entire expedition. What kind of captain would bring a giant dog along with him? He'll get all the food and we'll starve. Mark my words!"

  Everyone had learned to ignore Reed's braying, except for Private John Newman, who followed Reed around like York followed Captain Clark. At night Reed and Newman slept a little off from the others so they could talk without anyone hearing them. One night as I patrolled the camp I heard them whispering.

  "I been thinkin' about Dorion and those other trappers we've seen coming downriver," Reed said. "They must've had a thousand dollars' worth of skins in their dugouts. A thousand dollars' worth! One of them told me it only took them about two weeks to trap and trade for all them skins. He said the Indians have no idea what the furs are worth. You give them a couple worthless beads and they hand over a pile of beaver skins worth a fortune. Imagine making a thousand dollars in two weeks!"

  "That's a lot of money, all right," Newman admitted.

  "Instead of breaking our backs getting these boats upriver, we could be out trapping, just like them. In a year we'd be rich!"

  "But we wouldn't get the land grant the army promised us for volunteering for the Corps. Four hundred acres is a lot of property."

  "Yeah, if you want to be a farmer!" Reed snorted. "That's not for me, I tell you. Besides, we'll never see one acre of that land."

  "What are you talking about?"

  "The land deal was just a carrot they put out in front of us so we would agree to go."

  "Not true!"

  Reed laughed. "You're about as green as they come, Newman! I been in this army a lot longer than you and I know how it works. Mark my words."

  Newman thought about this for a few moments. "If you knew they weren't going to give you the land, why did you volunteer?"

  "Free trip into the interior," Reed said. "All paid for by the army. How else would I get a chance to see what's here? And now that I've seen it I can tell you I'm not going to wait two or three years to get at it."

  "Desertion?"

  "I didn't say that," Reed whispered quickly, and changed the subject. "What about the girl you got waiting back home for you?"

  "What about her?"

  "Think she'll wait two years for you to come back?"

  "I hope so. Said she would."

  "Any other young men back home she might be interested in?"

  Newman didn't answer.

  "I thought so! How do you think she'd feel if you came back a lot sooner, with your pouch filled with money?"

  "She'd be mighty happy," Newman said.

  At that moment I wanted to drag Newman away from Reed and shake him, like my mother used to do to me when I was about to get myself into trouble. I took a step toward them.

  "What's that?" Newman sat up suddenly.

  "The Captain's dog. I'll fix him." Reed picked up a rock and threw it at me. He missed.

  August 1, 1804

  We came across an Oto Indian a few days ago. He told us that most of the Otos were out on the prairie, hunting buffalo, but claimed some others were not far from here. We sent a man with the Indian to invite them to parley with us.

  We continue to be plagued by various ailments. Last night Captain Clark lanced a boil on one of the men and a pint of pus was taken from the wound. Private Whitehouse cut his knee with his knife and lost a great deal of blood, but we managed to stem the flow. Sergeant Floyd has had a bad cold for several days and some stomach problems, which I am treating.

  I have been virtually free of dark moods, and my strength and health have been good as have Captain Clark's. He is 34 years old today. For his birthday dinner he has requested a saddle of fat venison, roasted beaver tail, and elk steak, and for dessert some of the berries growing so profusely around here.

  The men are clearly feeling the effects of their labors. We will rest here a few days and wait for the Otos. We hope this will give the men a chance to recover their strength....

  CAPTAIN LEWIS calculated that each man was eating nine pounds of meat a day, and yet some of them were still going to sleep hungry. One night Drouillard came back to camp with an elk, Private Reubin Field came in with two deer, and John Colter brought in two beavers with fat tails, but this was barely enough food to feed the camp for one day.

  This dearth of meat did not affect me, because there were certain parts of the animals the men refused to eat They threw out piles of perfectly good food, entrails mostly, that were more than enough to slake my appetite. But the meat I was really looking forward to getting my teeth into was that buffalo animal's. The men were constantly talking about this beast, but only a handful of them had actually seen one. Every time I heard the word buffalo, drool spilled out of my mouth.

  "Ready to ramble to the top of the bluff?" Captain Clark asked.

  "I am." Captain Lewis put his pen down and closed the red book. "Let's go, Sea."

  I ran ahead of them. As I neared the top I scented something unfamiliar. I stopped and tried to get a sense of what this new smell meant, but no picture came to mind. The captains caught up with me and we stepped through an opening in the brush.

  We were stunned by what we saw. I managed a low growl, but the captains were speechless for a moment or two. I hadn't seen an open area this big since I was a pup aboard ship. Before us was an ocean of golden grass stretching as far as we could see. The wind moved the long grass back and forth across the endless flat plain in long rolling waves.

  "Prairie," Captain Clark said. "I had no idea it was so..." He couldn't seem to find the right word.

  "Vast," Captain Lewis said.

  For several minutes we just stood there staring at the stark, lonely beauty of it. All day long we had fought the river, not knowing this lay just above us. We walked about a mile across the grassy plain to a small stand of trees.

  "Caw! Caw! Caw!"

  A crow scolded us from the branch of one of the trees. I had seen hundreds of crows and ravens, but never one like this. On his left wing was a patch of feathers as white as a scrubbed mainsail.

  "Caw! Caw! Caw!"

  The captains were so used to hearing crows they didn't even bother to look up at it. I barked, trying to get their attention on the bird. If Captain Lewis saw it, he would certainly want to add it to his animal collection. He glanced up at the tree, then back across the prairie. I barked again.

  "Quiet, Sea!" Captain Lewis said. "What's gotten into you?"

  I guessed he had seen crows with white feathers on their wings before and was not interested in collecting this one. He would not have been able to shoot it anyway, because the next time I looked, the crow had vanished.

  On our way back across the prairie I came across several new scents I was eager to investigate, but they had to wait because Captain Clark wanted to get back to camp and see how the men were doing with his birthday feast.

  When we arrived Private Joseph Fields ran up to us. He was carrying a brownish gray animal about the size of a cat. Joseph and his older brother, Reubin, were both good hunters. Because of his excitement, I wondered if the animal he was holding was one of the buffalo we were all so eager to see, but one sniff of its musky carcass told me it wasn't.

  "I shot it near a stream that runs into the river up ahead," Joseph explained. "It put up quite a ruckus-growling
and carrying on. It had no idea what a rifle was. Didn't back off an inch when I pointed the barrel at it. What do you think it is, Captain Lewis?"

  "I don't know." Captain Lewis laid the animal on the ground and examined it closely.

  One of the French boatmen came over. "It's what we call a badger."

  The creature seemed to make Captain Lewis happy, which did not go unnoticed by the men. From that day on all of them were on the lookout for new animals and plants to bring the Captain.

  After Captain Lewis had eaten and participated in the birthday festivities, he quietly slipped away to the keelboat. In the dim lantern light he measured, skinned, and tanned the badger, writing down notes-like how many teeth it had—in the official journal he and Captain Clark were keeping. He offered me some of the meat from the carcass, but I didn't like it. It tasted sour. He threw the meat into the river but kept some of the badger's bones and its skull. He then took the still-wet skin and sewed it back together again, stuffing the body with cotton. I was to see him do this many times with different animals during the course of our journey, but I never understood the purpose. The results were much less satisfactory than the original animal had been.

  For two days we stayed at this camp, which the captains named Council Bluff in anticipation of the parley we were to have with the Otos there. I used the time to take several rambles across the prairie to investigate the grass sea. My most interesting discovery was a small wild dog. I found the den where she had whelped, and a mile later I found her—a sleek, buff-colored beauty with long pointed ears and a bushy tail—and her two young ones. She caught wind of me as I approached, and she and her pups disappeared into the tall grass, which matched the color of their fur. I gave chase, but they were too quick, and I soon lost sight of them. I would not have done her any harm. I wished she had stayed around long enough to learn my intentions.

  August 2, 1804

  This evening we were visited by a group of natives and a French trapper who is living with them. They said they are part of a band of about 250 Oto and Missouri Indians. Their main chief, a man called Little Thief, is away hunting buffalo, but they said that several lesser chiefs are in the area. We have invited them to parley with us tomorrow morning....

  THE MEN WERE excited at the prospect of meeting their first large group of Indians. They were also nervous and made sure all the guns were loaded and ready in case there was trouble. That night extra sentries were posted around camp, but we didn't need them, as most of the men were too anxious to sleep.

  In the morning the men were up before the sun rose, donning their best uniforms and getting ready for the parley.

  Captain Lewis spent most of the morning writing down what he was going to say to the Otos. A "speech," he called it. After he had scratched the words down he sat by himself and said them out loud, even though there was no one to hear him but me.

  Captain Clark broke out a bundle filled with gifts for the Otos. Inside the bundle were red leggings, fancy dress coats, blue blankets, flags, beads, small looking glasses, and medals with President Thomas Jefferson's likeness stamped on them.

  Not long after the sun melted the morning fog, about a hundred Otos walked into camp, led by a half dozen chiefs. It looked like they had gotten dressed up for the occasion as well. Our men fixed up the mainsail of the keelboat as an awning to protect the delegation from the hot sun.

  When everyone was settled in, the sergeants had the men march with their rifles. It was an impressive display, with all their legs moving in unison like a centipede's, turning right and left at the sound of Sergeant Ordway's booming voice.

  "Company, halt!" Ordway shouted. "Present arms!" The rifles were raised to their shoulders. "Fire!"

  This got a jump out of the Otos. Next Captain Lewis fired his air rifle, which astonished them even more.

  "And this," he said, "makes things appear closer." He handed one of the chiefs a brass tube. I had seen similar instruments when I was aboard the ship. "Hold it up to your eye."

  The chief peered through the tube and let out a startled cry. "It turns my sight into eagle eyes," he said to Dorion, who was translating.

  "Yes," Captain Lewis said. "And we have even greater magic than this."

  He gathered the Otos around him and began reading his speech.

  "Children ... we have been sent by the great Chief of the seventeen nations of America to inform you that a great council was held between your old fathers, the French and Spaniards..."

  He went on to tell them that the French and Spaniards, with whom the Otos had traded for many years, had returned to their homes across the sea and would never come back, and that President Thomas Jefferson was now their new father. I wasn't quite sure what Captain Lewis meant by all of this. It seemed important and I tried to pay close attention, but all I could think was that I wished the mosquitoes, who were out in great numbers, would return to their homes and never come back.

  "The president is your only father; he is the only friend to whom you can now look for protection, or from whom you can ask favors, or receive good counsel, and he will take care to serve you, and not deceive you..."

  Drouillard and Dorion did the best they could to try to translate these words with hand-talk, but I could see it was somewhat difficult for them.

  "Children, our great Chief has sent us out here to clear the road, remove every obstruction, and make it the road of peace between himself and his red children who live here. He wants to know what you want. When we return we will tell him your desires, and they will be satisfied..."

  He told them to stop warring among themselves and not to make war on the white tribe when they came to trade.

  "If you make war on our people, you will bring upon yourselves the displeasure of your great father, who has the power to consume you as the fire consumes the grass of the plains. If you displease him, he will also stop all traders from coming up the river..."

  The speech went on for some time, but at last Captain Lewis concluded and with Captain Clark began to hand out gifts to the chiefs. I could tell the chiefs were a little disappointed at the gifts, but they were too polite to complain. They got together and delivered a speech of their own, saying that they wanted to be friendly and that they could also use some gunpowder and whiskey. Captain Lewis obliged them by giving them a casket of powder, fifty balls, and a bottle of whiskey, and the chiefs left with a promise to send Little Thief to the captains as soon as he returned from hunting.

  Overall the captains seemed quite pleased with how the parley went. After the Otos departed, Captain Lewis gathered the men and complimented them on their conduct. "I venture to say that if all of our councils go like this, President Jefferson will be well pleased with our success."

  Then, as the captains were fond of saying, we proceeded on.

  That evening at our new camp I was lying at Captain Lewis's feet as he scratched in the red book, and I was just about to doze off when I smelled Private Moses Reed approaching. My eyes snapped open and I stifled a growl before it left my throat. Captain Lewis did not tolerate my growling at the men, even men like Private Reed.

  "Captain Lewis, sir?"

  The Captain was so engrossed in the red book he had not seen Reed walk up, and was startled at the sound of Reed's voice. He looked up angrily. "What is it, Reed?"

  "I left my knife at Council Bluff. I'd like to go back and fetch it."

  Captain Lewis took a deep breath. "Yes, go ahead, but in the future be more careful. We can't be leaving our tools strewn all over the countryside."

  "Yes, sir."

  "And don't dawdle. I want you back before we leave tomorrow morning."

  "Yes, sir. I'll be back bright and early."

  I knew Private Moses Reed had not left his knife at Council Bluff. An hour earlier I had seen him carve his initials in a tree trunk with his knife.

  August 11, 1804

  Private Moses Reed has not returned from Council Bluff. Captain Clark and I are certain that he has deserted—one of
our worst fears. We have sent Drouillard, Reubin Fields, and several other men to apprehend him, with orders to put him to death if he resists.

  The search party will also make contact with the Otos again and see if Little Thief has returned from hunting buffalo.

  This afternoon we walked up to an abandoned Omaha village above the river. Dorion told us that smallpox killed all the inhabitants....

  "THE OMAHA were once a thriving nation," Dorion said to Captain Lewis as they surveyed the village. "Along with our trinkets we carried disease. Didn't turn out to be a very good trade for them, did it?"

  The men poked around the ruins. Scattered inside the crumbling earth-mound lodges were woven baskets, grinding stones, arrowheads, and old skins stiffened by weather and neglect. Dorion pointed out a large mound with an eight-foot pole in the middle of it. He said an Omaha chief called Black Bird was buried there, mounted on his horse. The men attached an American flag to the pole.

  On the outskirts of the village I picked up the scent of the skittish canine from Council Bluff. Her trail led me all the way back to our previous camp, where I discovered she and her pups had been feeding on our leftover food scraps. This time, though she didn't let me too near, she did not run away. I settled down to eat some scraps myself and to enjoy her company.

  The following afternoon, as I rode with the Captain in the keelboat, the wild dog appeared on the bank and barked at us. The little fool!

  "What is it?" Captain Clark asked.

  "Too small for a gray wolf," Captain Lewis said. "Must be a prairie wolf—the gray's little cousin. Are those pups with her? Row the boat over so we can take a closer look."

  The two pups were about twenty yards in back of her, huddled near some bushes. As we approached she turned and made a noise at them. They skedaddled, but she stayed right where she was.