Free The Captain's Dog by Roland Smith

battle-ax at the forge. He asked permission to raid the Sioux and Arikaras when the weather broke in spring. He got the ax but was told not to use it, which I could see made no sense to him.

February 11, 1805
Sacagawea began her labor today. Captain Clark and I are tending her, but the birth is taking an inordinate amount of time. I have grown very fond of her since she and her husband moved into the fort with us....
    THE CAPTAIN wasn't alone in his feelings for Bird Woman. Soon after she and Charbonneau moved into the fort, she announced that she was pregnant. There was some heated debate among the men over the wisdom of her joining our tribe. They thought a woman with a child would be too much of a burden. But as they got to know her, the subject began to fade. There was something about her quiet shyness that appealed to all the men. And by the time she gave birth, they were looking forward to having a human pup on the journey.
    Bird Woman spent many evenings picking burrs out of my fur. And from time to time she slipped me a dead
mouse, because she knew I was partial to them. These two acts of kindness were more than enough to endear her to me forever.
    Bird Woman's labor was long. The captains fretted over her as if
they
were the expectant fathers, not Charbonneau. After a time René Jessaume, one of the French traders living with the Mandans, suggested to Captain Lewis that he feed her a bit of rattlesnake rattle to hurry the labor along. "It works every time," René insisted.
    Captain Lewis was doubtful, but he was getting desperate. He broke up a bit of rattlesnake rattle, put it into a cup of water, and offered it to her.
    Sure enough, a few minutes after she drank the mixture down, our tribe had a new member. They named the pup Jean Baptiste Charbonneau, but Captain Clark called him Pomp, which is the name that seemed to stick.

    About a month after Pomp was born Charbonneau and his family got kicked out of the fort. The problem began when the captains sat down with Charbonneau to go over his contract and he became uppity with them. He told the captains he would not perform any camp duties, carry any loads, or stand guard duty. He also informed them that he expected to be free to leave the party at any time and that they would have to supply him with provisions if he did. This of course
was unacceptable and be was asked to leave that very day.
    The captains were very disappointed at this turn of events and so were the men. The fort just wasn't the same without Bird Woman and Pomp. The men missed making faces and uttering odd guttural sounds at her pup. I missed them, too.
    A few days after their departure I crossed the frozen river to the Mandan village where they were staying, to see how they were doing in their new circumstances.
    Long before I reached the village I heard Bird Woman's voice, but she sounded more like an angry bear than a bird. She was calling her husband every bad name she could think of in Shoshone and Hidatsa. As best I could figure out between curses, Bird Woman wanted to go home to her family below the big mountains and could not believe Charbonneau's arrogance had ruined this prospect.
    I did not hear Charbonneau utter a single word all during this harangue. The conversation was so one-sided, I thought she must have killed him and she was shouting at his corpse; but I was wrong. The buffalo-hide door of the lodge flew open and he stumbled outside in a daze, with Bird Woman still shouting at him.
    Charbonneau found Tabeau and begged him to go over to the fort and intercede with the captains on his behalf. He told Tabeau that he would do anything the
captains asked if they would just allow him and Bird Woman to go with them.
    Tabeau crossed over to the fort and argued the case. The captains let Charbonneau stew for a few more days in Bird Woman's wrath, but they finally gave in and hired him back.

March 30, 1805
Our preparations for departure are nearly complete and within a week we will