The Captain's Dog (2 page)

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 fourteen 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."

"Done!" Brady snatched the coins from the Captain's hand like a hungry gull after a minnow.

Captain Lewis got down on one knee and scratched me behind my ears. He seemed well pleased with the bargain. I hoped he remained that way.

"Now that he's yours, what do you plan to do with him?" Brady asked, more out of curiosity than concern.

"He'll be going to the Pacific Ocean with me and back."

Brady looked across the yard at the half-completed keelboat. "In that?"

The Captain nodded.

"With all due respect, sir, the craft you're building is not seaworthy. Not by a long shot. It will never round the Cape. You'll be lucky if it doesn't founder when the first ocean swell strikes it."

"I'm not going by sea," Captain Lewis said. "I'm
going down the Ohio, up the Mississippi and the Missouri, and from there—"

"Ah ... so it's the Northwest Passage you're looking for."

The Captain nodded. "Among other things."

"They say there's nothing out in that wilderness but red savages, monstrous animals, and disease," Brady said, warming to his subject. "No one has ever—"

Captain Lewis ignored Brady and turned his full attention to me. "I'll call you Seaman," he said. "Before this is over you will have seen both the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans."

So I went from Runt to Champion to Seaman in the span of a few minutes.

"You'll be needing a rope to tie him up with," Brady said. "I have one on the barge."

"I will not need a rope. Let's go, Seaman."

After the keelboat was completed, we took it down the Ohio River to Clarksville in the Indiana Territory, where Captain William Clark joined us. Captain Clark was a red-headed man cut from the same sturdy material as Captain Lewis. Both men were hard muscled and six feet tall. They complemented each other in just about everything. Captain Clark was a better boatman than Captain Lewis. Captain Lewis was a better navigator. Captain Clark was a better mapmaker. Captain Lewis was a better botanist and biologist. Captain Clark took comfort in the company of men, talked easily with them, and enjoyed a good laugh. Captain Lewis was partial to solitude—a man of few words—but there was strength in those long silences. What one lacked the other had. Our tribe would have two chiefs, but they would lead as one.

From Clarksville we traveled up the Mississippi to Saint Louis and from there to Wood River, where we wintered with the men the captains had recruited along the way. In those days and the many that followed, the only rope the Captain needed was my devotion, and by the time we started up the Missouri he certainly had that.

That day sitting on the bluff was the first time I saw the red book. He pulled it out of his knapsack and started scratching words on the first page with that little spear he dipped in the black water he called ink. Sometimes he stopped scratching and looked down at the muddy river with a look of contentment After an hour or so he closed the book and put it back in his knapsack.

"We better go and check on the men," he said, starting back down the trail to the river.

The winding trail was more like a ledge than a trail, not much wider than I was long. Below the ledge was a sheer drop of nearly two hundred feet I ran ahead of the Captain, thinking that if I hurried I would have time to sniff around for that mouse near the hickory.

As I rounded the first bend I glanced back to see how far the Captain was behind me and saw the ledge he was walking on suddenly give way.

He disappeared from view. I was so stunned that for a moment I just stood there staring at the spot. When my wits returned I hurried over to the edge, expecting to see his broken body on the rocks below.

But Captain Lewis was alive! Somehow he had managed to pull the knife from his scabbard and stick the long blade into the cliff face to stop his fall. He was hanging about twenty feet below me, in a very precarious position. Gingerly he squirmed around until he found an outcrop with his moccasins and got his legs under him. He looked up and must have noticed the worry on my face, because he gave me a reassuring grin and said, "Everything's fine, Sea. With a little luck I'll be with you presently."

Using his knife, he clawed his way back and pulled himself up over the edge. He sat there for a few seconds, gathering himself. When he caught his breath, he said, "And that, my dear Sea, is why we have two captains on this journey."

June 12, 1804

The past few evenings we have been serenaded by nightingales. Their song reminds me of my father. They were singing that morning so many years ago when my father came home on leave from the army and paid his final visit to us. I remember feeling so intimidated and shy I could barely utter a word in his presence. He was more than a man. It was almost as if some god had entered our home.

The two days he stayed with us were wonderful, and then he was off to his command. None of us could have imagined that on his way there he and his horse would be swept away crossing the Rivanna River. That his horse would drown and that Father would return to us in a terrible condition, drenched from the river and a downpour of cold rain. I remember Mother stripping off his clothes, putting him into bed, and making him drink hot herbal tea. Despite her efforts, he contracted pneumonia. I watched him shiver and sweat for two days. And when he passed from us, I learned that gods can die, too.

We have taken on a man by the name of Pierre Dorion, a trader who has lived among the Yankton Sioux for many years. We were lucky to run across him....