The Captain's Dog by Roland Smith Read Free Book Online Page B

when I heard a strange whistling noise in the distance. I ran ahead to see what it was and I came across a whole town of rats. There were thousands of them popping in and out of these holes in the ground, warbling like a flock of songbirds. I tried to catch one to bring back to the Captain, but they dived down their hatches faster than I could snap my jaw closed.
    The Captain came along and watched me for a time, then said, "I think we'll need some help with this, Sea. Let's go."
    We went back to camp and enlisted a few of the men to help us conquer the rat town.
    "Our mission is to capture one alive," the Captain informed them.
    A French boatman accompanying us said the animals were not rats, but prairie dogs. He must have been mistaken, because they didn't look or act anything like dogs.
    The men tried to dig one out of the ground but gave up after going down six feet without so much as seeing one of the little rat-dogs.
    "Any other ideas?" the Captain asked.
    "Maybe we could use water to flush them out," Sergeant Gass suggested.
    "It's worth a try."
    With great difficulty they hauled two barrels of river water up to the rat town and poured the contents down a hole. After a time, one of the soggy animals crawled out into the open and a man grabbed it. We had our live prairie dog. Captain Lewis was delighted with the homely creature. He put it in a box and said he planned to send it back to President Jefferson when the keelboat returned in the spring.

    It was a few days after this that we made our best discovery. We came around a sharp bend in the river and Labiche shouted out from the bow, "By god, it's Shannon!"
    Sure enough, Private George Shannon was sitting on the bank, grinning from ear to ear despite his pitiful condition. But I don't know who was happier to see whom—the captains and the men nearly wept with joy when they laid eyes on him. He was the youngest of the men and a favorite with everyone.
    He said he'd had nothing to eat for the past twelve days but a handful of grapes and a rabbit. "I sat down this morning figuring I was done for. I knew I would never catch up with you, starving like I was. I was just waiting for the Grim Reaper to come along and take me away."
    Shannon went on to explain that a few days after he
left us he ran out of balls for his rifle. "I managed to kill the rabbit by whittling down a hunk of wood into a musketball for my gun. Thank god it worked! If it hadn't been for that bit of luck, you'd be burying me right now, boys."

September 24, 1804
I am fearful that our meeting with the Teton Sioux will not go as well as our meeting with the Yanktons. Earlier this afternoon Private Colter informed us that a group of Indians had stolen his horse. A few minutes after we received this information, five young Tetons hailed us from shore, asking if they could ride in the boat. We told them that we would not even talk to any of their people, including the chief, until our horse was returned...
    I MISSED THE initial meeting with the Teton Sioux because I caught a glimpse of White Feather and had run off into the forest looking for him. When I got back to the men, Captain Lewis had completed his speech and demonstration, and Captain Clark was handing out gifts to the three chiefs. The captains had anchored the keelboat in the middle of the river with men manning the blunderbusses and swivel gun. Along shore were at
least two hundred Teton warriors armed with bows and arrows. The air was saturated with the scent of fear and anger. My hackles came to attention.
    The three main chiefs—Black Buffalo, the Partisan, and Buffalo Medicine—stared with surly indifference at the gifts they had been given. The Partisan began yowling about his pitiful gift, loud enough for everyone to hear. Buffalo Medicine and Black Buffalo were not about to be outdone by the Partisan, so they started yowling, too.
    The captains were dismayed by this turn of events and tried to make it up by inviting all three