Sample Pages -- Forever Faithful: the legend of Lewis' dog Seaman
Chapter 5
The Sheepherder
It was a quite a task, but I finally tracked down Dan’s sheepherder. When we had talked earlier Dan could not remember the old guy’s name. All he could remember was everyone called him “Crazy Charlie” but Dan didn’t think that was his real name. He didn’t really know what happened to him either. Some stories said he was still somewhere in Montana while others said he went back to Iowa where he grew up. Others were positive he had died, but his burial location was unknown. The only definite information Dan could give me was that when Crazy Charlie left Meechum’s place he said he was going down to the southern Idaho desert country where it was warmer in the winters.
I started calling retirement homes, but my search efforts were stymied because I didn’t think it would be appropriate to ask for Crazy Charlie, so I limited it to Charlie the sheepherder. Finally, in my frustrations of not getting any answers from anyone that I talked to, I asked for Crazy Charlie. To my surprise this brought an immediate positive response. It seemed like they all knew and liked Crazy Charlie. He had spent time in retirement homes all over the state. He just couldn’t seem to overcome his wanderlust. I finally caught up with him at the Old Soldier’s Home in Columbia Falls. So I made arrangements to go see him.
I timed my meeting with Crazy Charlie to be mid-morning as the nurses at the Old Soldiers home suggested. They said mid-morning was when he was at his best. By noon he would need to eat then take an afternoon nap before having supper. Then it was off to bed for the night.
When I sat down with him he seemed spry and quick-witted. Definitely not the ninety-something year old I envisioned. I introduced myself and, in turn, he confided that although everyone used to call him Crazy Charlie they now just call him Charlie, at least when they thought he could hear them. But that was not his real name. He was Henry Charles Thomas III, but everyone laughed at him for having such a name and said he was crazy if he thought they believed he was a great grandson of a Scottish duke as he claimed.
I listened to him ramble on about his early days for some time. A fiction writer just never knows when they will run into a bit of information that will help develop a character. Besides the stories these old guys tell are extremely fascinating to me.
He had been raised in Iowa and came to central Montana in the mid-1940s after he got out of the Army. As a young infantry private during the D-Day invasion he had been badly wounded and lost a leg. The Army patched him up and fitted him with a wooden leg then gave him a medical discharge and sent him home. He had been the only one in his entire platoon that survived the landing. He thought he would get a job herding sheep in central Montana so he could be alone and have time to work through his recurring nightmares from the war.
When he first came to Montana he just bummed around Lewistown for a while doing what few odd jobs he could find until he landed a job running sheep for George Meechum. George had a big spread up north on the other side of the Missouri River just south of the Belknap Indian Reservation. Charlie’s range was in Coyote Coulee area up to Bull Creek. It was good sheep country except for the coyotes. The coulee came by its name honestly. Even the best herders had to keep a sharp eye out or they would lose a lot a sheep.
During that first year, Charlie admitted, he must have lost half his flock to those cagey coyotes. He just couldn’t seem to be in the right place to chase away those varmits no matter how hard he tried. That fall he was sure old man Meechum was going to fire him for losing so many animals. He probably would have too, but several of the other herders reported large losses that season too. It seemed like the coyotes had been particularly active that year.
Charlie must have finally figured out the best ways to keep most of the coyotes away. He had tried a couple different sheep dogs, but they didn’t help much to keep the coyotes away, although they did help by keeping him good company. Meechum considered him one of his best herders when they finally parted company years later.
These first few years were tough ones for Charlie as he worked through his grief and relived the horrors of those few June days in Normandy when his world turned topsy-turvy several times over. The death and carnage all around him filled his memory, frequently spilling out with no warning to consume him at any time day or night. These episodes gave rise to his name Crazy Charlie.
Charlie fell silent with a distant, wishful look on his face. He didn’t say anything as the minutes dragged by. I watched as Charlie seemed to transform, returning to those earlier days in the sheep camps he had come to love.
At last he spoke, his voice still sounding far away, “It was that dog that saved my life. I didn’t know it then, but I learned the truth after he was gone.”
I was afraid to respond to him. I didn’t want to chance breaking through his train of thought and have the story disappear. But as his silence continued I decided I would try to get more from him. “What dog?” I asked.
“Seaman” was his simple reply.
I remained silent, sensing that he was ready to continue with his story.
He looked over at me with an apologetic smile, “Let me tell you the darnedest story I was ever a part of. Most people thought it was just more silly talk from old Crazy Charlie, but I swear to you this is all as true as night follows day.”
With that Charlie launched into his story he said he could still remember as clearly as if it had all happened yesterday instead of sixty years ago.
He had been having a particularly bad day since early that morning when he found several dead sheep. He had been just a few minutes too late to prevent some coyotes from senselessly killing some of his sheep, apparently just for the joy of killing since there was no evidence of anything having fed on any of the dead carcasses. The freshly killed sheep were still warm.
This scene of wanton destruction had set him off. He watched as it turned into his re-occurring nightmare of his D-Day Normandy landing. The dead sheep became his platoon, all dead except him. Guns firing, shells exploding, men screaming in agony completed the chaos. In the midst of this terror he looked up the hill trying to find where the guns were in hopes he could figure out a way to stop them and their destruction. His leg was shattered, but he had to find a way to stop the guns or he would perish too. As he scanned the hill he spied a large black animal that he was sure was a wolf. Quietly raising his rifle he aimed and fired. The wolf stoically sat where he was. Charlie fired a second and a third shot, each one carefully aimed. At length the wolf calmly stood up and slowly trotted off over the crest of the hill.
Charlie interrupted his narrative, “I was an expert marksman in the Army and I had shot my share of coyotes and wolves while protecting my sheep, but this big black wolf acted as if I was shooting blanks at him.”
After the wolf disappeared over the hill, Charlie surveyed the scene of his dead sheep. He cleaned up the mess and buried everything so those damned coyotes would have no free food this time. When that chore was done he walked up the hill to where he had seen the wolf. He knew he had been re-living his nightmare of D-Day so he wasn’t sure if the wolf he had seen was real or not. Sure enough the tracks were there, visible in several places on patches of bare ground amidst clumps of grass and rock outcroppings. Mixed in with his tracks were several smaller coyote tracks.
Charlie’s little sheep dog had disappeared sometime during the events of the morning so the small tracks were not his. Charlie searched the area thoroughly for further tracks to try to determine where the coyotes had headed for. Not that it mattered much since he couldn’t leave his sheep to follow the coyotes and hopefully get a shot at some. His search took him over the low, rolling hills backs to his camp where most of the sheep were calmly grazing. Charlie also found his dog fearfully hiding under the sheep wagon. When the dog saw Charlie he eagerly clambered out from under the wagon for a friendly greeting. He seemed to know all danger from those coyotes and that big black wolf were gone.
“That next morning just as it was starting to get light I heard the strangest howling that I had ever heard. I wasn’t sure what it really was, but it didn’t sound like a wolf or a coyote or anything else I know of. It was kind of a yapping like a coyote but not nearly high enough pitched. It was low like a wolf but wolves don’t make any yapping sounds.”
Charlie’s voice trailed off for a moment so I could barely hear him then he continued, “It started almost like the bark of a dog; several high pitched barks then it seemed to transform to a long mournful howl ending in a kind of menacing growl.”
“Are you absolutely positive that was the sound you heard?” I interrogated him. He had just described the same bark-howl sound I had heard in the river breaks a short few weeks earlier.
“Just as sure as night follows day” came his reply. “I heard that same bark-howl every morning for the next week and always just as it was starting to get light. It always seemed to come from that hill where I saw that big black wolf.”
Charlie continued with his story. After that first day he saw the black wolf he kept a sharper watch for coyotes. He saw that his sheep losses dropped to none. A few days later one morning while Charlie and his dog were making their tour of the sheep he saw the black wolf again. He was calmly sitting on a hillside watching Charlie and his sheep. The wolf made no effort to move when he heard Charlie’s dog give a few tentative barks. The dog knew he was no match for that large, shaggy animal so he stayed real close to Charlie as he gave his barks that were a mixture of “hello” and “this is my territory.” The wolf turned and gave the dog a look of acknowledgement then resumed his unflinching, far-away gaze.
That same scene was repeated for the next three days as dog and wolf seemingly came to terms. They weren’t best buddies, but they weren’t afraid or fighting each other.
“It was Sunday morning and the sun was well up in the sky when a dog barking interrupted my thoughts as I lay in the shade of my wagon,” Charlie seemed to be thinking out loud.
“In fact it was so unexpected and so close it startled me. It was much deeper than my dog’s bark, besides he was asleep under the wagon. When I looked off to my left where the bark had come from that big black wolf was sitting on his haunches not fifty feet from me. It was crazy, but when he saw I had seen him he got up and trotted across the little valley about a quarter of a mile then set back down on his haunches as if he was waiting for me to follow him.”
After another pause, “So I got up and followed him, walking leisurely until a got about a hundred feet away from him. Again he stood up and trotted away for about a quarter mile then set back down and waited for me to catch up. We repeated this a few more times until I realized he had taken me to the place I had found all those dead sheep a week earlier.”
Charlie was quiet as if reliving the events he was telling me about, “One more time he stood and trotted up the hill I had first seen him on last week then he sat down to wait. This time I approached within a dozen feet of him before I stopped and sat on a large rock to wait for his next move. We remained in our spots for some time until he stood and walked a few feet to the edge of a small rock cliff face. I walked over to see what it was he had directed me to. Below us were the remains of at least eight coyotes, probably more. As I looked down in amazement the wolf turned and disappeared over the hilltop. I stood there a few minutes then I too departed, retracing my route back down the hill to my camp.”
The rest of the day was taken up by the weekly visit to Charlie’s camp by Meechum’s foreman bringing him a fresh supply of grub. They also discussed the status of the sheep and how the pasture was holding up. Fall was still some time off so the summer range would have to do for a while longer. The foreman left with his usual gruff admonition to keep a sharp lookout for coyotes so there would be some sheep left to drive down to the home place come fall. He told Charlie he was doing better and it looked like he hadn’t lost very many sheep for the season.
When Charlie woke up the next morning the sun was already starting its arc across the sky. He was surprised he had slept so late. Then he realized there had been no wolf howling to wake him. A sudden fear gripped him as he hurriedly dressed and grabbed his rifle as he ran down the few steps from his wagon to the ground below. He had to see if his sheep were okay. If the wolf was gone had the coyotes returned?
To his relief all the sheep were scattered across the little valley in their little groups peacefully grazing. He could find no evidence of anything having been prowling around or any dead sheep. After satisfying himself that everything was as it should be Charlie returned to camp and fixed a late breakfast.
Since his sheep were all okay and he had found nothing that looked like coming trouble, he allowed himself the luxury to stay in camp and try to understand the events of the last week. A strange feeling of contentment pervaded Charlie. A feeling he hadn’t had for years. He knew he had been witness to something very unusual. Something he would never completely understand.
As he pondered the events he had witnessed, he knew that big black wolf was definitely not a wolf. He had been within a few feet of the animal and recognized it as being some kind of a large black dog. He couldn’t tell for sure because of its thick fur, but that dog must have weighed 150 pounds. It could run as effortlessly as the wind, disappearing from sight after only a few seconds. Charlie finally gave up trying to understand things he knew were beyond him. He had a large flock of sheep that needed his full attention and protection.
The days became shorter with the coming of fall and time to move the sheep down to the home ranch. With that done Charlie had no sheep to watch so he decided he would do some traveling. He had a friend down in Idaho Falls that he hadn’t seen in years.
“I ended up spending all that winter in Idaho, mostly swapping stories with some other sheepherders I holed up with. One of the stories that I heard was an old Indian tale from the Nez Perces about a large black wolf/dog they could not kill. They shot it several times, but the arrows just went clear through that animal without doing it any harm. It was powerful medicine for them.”
“That story made me think back on my experience earlier in the summer. I decided maybe I met that same wolf/dog because my bullets had just gone through it without doing it any harm.”
Charlie looked over at me and mumbled in a low voice, “That wolf/dog was powerful medicine for me too. Old Crazy Charlie is tired now and needs to sleep.”
He leaned back in his recliner and was soon softly snoring in peaceful sleep. I got up and quietly left. A glance at my watch showed 3:15 pm. We had talked for just over five hours. Charlie had earned his nap.
The Sheepherder
It was a quite a task, but I finally tracked down Dan’s sheepherder. When we had talked earlier Dan could not remember the old guy’s name. All he could remember was everyone called him “Crazy Charlie” but Dan didn’t think that was his real name. He didn’t really know what happened to him either. Some stories said he was still somewhere in Montana while others said he went back to Iowa where he grew up. Others were positive he had died, but his burial location was unknown. The only definite information Dan could give me was that when Crazy Charlie left Meechum’s place he said he was going down to the southern Idaho desert country where it was warmer in the winters.
I started calling retirement homes, but my search efforts were stymied because I didn’t think it would be appropriate to ask for Crazy Charlie, so I limited it to Charlie the sheepherder. Finally, in my frustrations of not getting any answers from anyone that I talked to, I asked for Crazy Charlie. To my surprise this brought an immediate positive response. It seemed like they all knew and liked Crazy Charlie. He had spent time in retirement homes all over the state. He just couldn’t seem to overcome his wanderlust. I finally caught up with him at the Old Soldier’s Home in Columbia Falls. So I made arrangements to go see him.
I timed my meeting with Crazy Charlie to be mid-morning as the nurses at the Old Soldiers home suggested. They said mid-morning was when he was at his best. By noon he would need to eat then take an afternoon nap before having supper. Then it was off to bed for the night.
When I sat down with him he seemed spry and quick-witted. Definitely not the ninety-something year old I envisioned. I introduced myself and, in turn, he confided that although everyone used to call him Crazy Charlie they now just call him Charlie, at least when they thought he could hear them. But that was not his real name. He was Henry Charles Thomas III, but everyone laughed at him for having such a name and said he was crazy if he thought they believed he was a great grandson of a Scottish duke as he claimed.
I listened to him ramble on about his early days for some time. A fiction writer just never knows when they will run into a bit of information that will help develop a character. Besides the stories these old guys tell are extremely fascinating to me.
He had been raised in Iowa and came to central Montana in the mid-1940s after he got out of the Army. As a young infantry private during the D-Day invasion he had been badly wounded and lost a leg. The Army patched him up and fitted him with a wooden leg then gave him a medical discharge and sent him home. He had been the only one in his entire platoon that survived the landing. He thought he would get a job herding sheep in central Montana so he could be alone and have time to work through his recurring nightmares from the war.
When he first came to Montana he just bummed around Lewistown for a while doing what few odd jobs he could find until he landed a job running sheep for George Meechum. George had a big spread up north on the other side of the Missouri River just south of the Belknap Indian Reservation. Charlie’s range was in Coyote Coulee area up to Bull Creek. It was good sheep country except for the coyotes. The coulee came by its name honestly. Even the best herders had to keep a sharp eye out or they would lose a lot a sheep.
During that first year, Charlie admitted, he must have lost half his flock to those cagey coyotes. He just couldn’t seem to be in the right place to chase away those varmits no matter how hard he tried. That fall he was sure old man Meechum was going to fire him for losing so many animals. He probably would have too, but several of the other herders reported large losses that season too. It seemed like the coyotes had been particularly active that year.
Charlie must have finally figured out the best ways to keep most of the coyotes away. He had tried a couple different sheep dogs, but they didn’t help much to keep the coyotes away, although they did help by keeping him good company. Meechum considered him one of his best herders when they finally parted company years later.
These first few years were tough ones for Charlie as he worked through his grief and relived the horrors of those few June days in Normandy when his world turned topsy-turvy several times over. The death and carnage all around him filled his memory, frequently spilling out with no warning to consume him at any time day or night. These episodes gave rise to his name Crazy Charlie.
Charlie fell silent with a distant, wishful look on his face. He didn’t say anything as the minutes dragged by. I watched as Charlie seemed to transform, returning to those earlier days in the sheep camps he had come to love.
At last he spoke, his voice still sounding far away, “It was that dog that saved my life. I didn’t know it then, but I learned the truth after he was gone.”
I was afraid to respond to him. I didn’t want to chance breaking through his train of thought and have the story disappear. But as his silence continued I decided I would try to get more from him. “What dog?” I asked.
“Seaman” was his simple reply.
I remained silent, sensing that he was ready to continue with his story.
He looked over at me with an apologetic smile, “Let me tell you the darnedest story I was ever a part of. Most people thought it was just more silly talk from old Crazy Charlie, but I swear to you this is all as true as night follows day.”
With that Charlie launched into his story he said he could still remember as clearly as if it had all happened yesterday instead of sixty years ago.
He had been having a particularly bad day since early that morning when he found several dead sheep. He had been just a few minutes too late to prevent some coyotes from senselessly killing some of his sheep, apparently just for the joy of killing since there was no evidence of anything having fed on any of the dead carcasses. The freshly killed sheep were still warm.
This scene of wanton destruction had set him off. He watched as it turned into his re-occurring nightmare of his D-Day Normandy landing. The dead sheep became his platoon, all dead except him. Guns firing, shells exploding, men screaming in agony completed the chaos. In the midst of this terror he looked up the hill trying to find where the guns were in hopes he could figure out a way to stop them and their destruction. His leg was shattered, but he had to find a way to stop the guns or he would perish too. As he scanned the hill he spied a large black animal that he was sure was a wolf. Quietly raising his rifle he aimed and fired. The wolf stoically sat where he was. Charlie fired a second and a third shot, each one carefully aimed. At length the wolf calmly stood up and slowly trotted off over the crest of the hill.
Charlie interrupted his narrative, “I was an expert marksman in the Army and I had shot my share of coyotes and wolves while protecting my sheep, but this big black wolf acted as if I was shooting blanks at him.”
After the wolf disappeared over the hill, Charlie surveyed the scene of his dead sheep. He cleaned up the mess and buried everything so those damned coyotes would have no free food this time. When that chore was done he walked up the hill to where he had seen the wolf. He knew he had been re-living his nightmare of D-Day so he wasn’t sure if the wolf he had seen was real or not. Sure enough the tracks were there, visible in several places on patches of bare ground amidst clumps of grass and rock outcroppings. Mixed in with his tracks were several smaller coyote tracks.
Charlie’s little sheep dog had disappeared sometime during the events of the morning so the small tracks were not his. Charlie searched the area thoroughly for further tracks to try to determine where the coyotes had headed for. Not that it mattered much since he couldn’t leave his sheep to follow the coyotes and hopefully get a shot at some. His search took him over the low, rolling hills backs to his camp where most of the sheep were calmly grazing. Charlie also found his dog fearfully hiding under the sheep wagon. When the dog saw Charlie he eagerly clambered out from under the wagon for a friendly greeting. He seemed to know all danger from those coyotes and that big black wolf were gone.
“That next morning just as it was starting to get light I heard the strangest howling that I had ever heard. I wasn’t sure what it really was, but it didn’t sound like a wolf or a coyote or anything else I know of. It was kind of a yapping like a coyote but not nearly high enough pitched. It was low like a wolf but wolves don’t make any yapping sounds.”
Charlie’s voice trailed off for a moment so I could barely hear him then he continued, “It started almost like the bark of a dog; several high pitched barks then it seemed to transform to a long mournful howl ending in a kind of menacing growl.”
“Are you absolutely positive that was the sound you heard?” I interrogated him. He had just described the same bark-howl sound I had heard in the river breaks a short few weeks earlier.
“Just as sure as night follows day” came his reply. “I heard that same bark-howl every morning for the next week and always just as it was starting to get light. It always seemed to come from that hill where I saw that big black wolf.”
Charlie continued with his story. After that first day he saw the black wolf he kept a sharper watch for coyotes. He saw that his sheep losses dropped to none. A few days later one morning while Charlie and his dog were making their tour of the sheep he saw the black wolf again. He was calmly sitting on a hillside watching Charlie and his sheep. The wolf made no effort to move when he heard Charlie’s dog give a few tentative barks. The dog knew he was no match for that large, shaggy animal so he stayed real close to Charlie as he gave his barks that were a mixture of “hello” and “this is my territory.” The wolf turned and gave the dog a look of acknowledgement then resumed his unflinching, far-away gaze.
That same scene was repeated for the next three days as dog and wolf seemingly came to terms. They weren’t best buddies, but they weren’t afraid or fighting each other.
“It was Sunday morning and the sun was well up in the sky when a dog barking interrupted my thoughts as I lay in the shade of my wagon,” Charlie seemed to be thinking out loud.
“In fact it was so unexpected and so close it startled me. It was much deeper than my dog’s bark, besides he was asleep under the wagon. When I looked off to my left where the bark had come from that big black wolf was sitting on his haunches not fifty feet from me. It was crazy, but when he saw I had seen him he got up and trotted across the little valley about a quarter of a mile then set back down on his haunches as if he was waiting for me to follow him.”
After another pause, “So I got up and followed him, walking leisurely until a got about a hundred feet away from him. Again he stood up and trotted away for about a quarter mile then set back down and waited for me to catch up. We repeated this a few more times until I realized he had taken me to the place I had found all those dead sheep a week earlier.”
Charlie was quiet as if reliving the events he was telling me about, “One more time he stood and trotted up the hill I had first seen him on last week then he sat down to wait. This time I approached within a dozen feet of him before I stopped and sat on a large rock to wait for his next move. We remained in our spots for some time until he stood and walked a few feet to the edge of a small rock cliff face. I walked over to see what it was he had directed me to. Below us were the remains of at least eight coyotes, probably more. As I looked down in amazement the wolf turned and disappeared over the hilltop. I stood there a few minutes then I too departed, retracing my route back down the hill to my camp.”
The rest of the day was taken up by the weekly visit to Charlie’s camp by Meechum’s foreman bringing him a fresh supply of grub. They also discussed the status of the sheep and how the pasture was holding up. Fall was still some time off so the summer range would have to do for a while longer. The foreman left with his usual gruff admonition to keep a sharp lookout for coyotes so there would be some sheep left to drive down to the home place come fall. He told Charlie he was doing better and it looked like he hadn’t lost very many sheep for the season.
When Charlie woke up the next morning the sun was already starting its arc across the sky. He was surprised he had slept so late. Then he realized there had been no wolf howling to wake him. A sudden fear gripped him as he hurriedly dressed and grabbed his rifle as he ran down the few steps from his wagon to the ground below. He had to see if his sheep were okay. If the wolf was gone had the coyotes returned?
To his relief all the sheep were scattered across the little valley in their little groups peacefully grazing. He could find no evidence of anything having been prowling around or any dead sheep. After satisfying himself that everything was as it should be Charlie returned to camp and fixed a late breakfast.
Since his sheep were all okay and he had found nothing that looked like coming trouble, he allowed himself the luxury to stay in camp and try to understand the events of the last week. A strange feeling of contentment pervaded Charlie. A feeling he hadn’t had for years. He knew he had been witness to something very unusual. Something he would never completely understand.
As he pondered the events he had witnessed, he knew that big black wolf was definitely not a wolf. He had been within a few feet of the animal and recognized it as being some kind of a large black dog. He couldn’t tell for sure because of its thick fur, but that dog must have weighed 150 pounds. It could run as effortlessly as the wind, disappearing from sight after only a few seconds. Charlie finally gave up trying to understand things he knew were beyond him. He had a large flock of sheep that needed his full attention and protection.
The days became shorter with the coming of fall and time to move the sheep down to the home ranch. With that done Charlie had no sheep to watch so he decided he would do some traveling. He had a friend down in Idaho Falls that he hadn’t seen in years.
“I ended up spending all that winter in Idaho, mostly swapping stories with some other sheepherders I holed up with. One of the stories that I heard was an old Indian tale from the Nez Perces about a large black wolf/dog they could not kill. They shot it several times, but the arrows just went clear through that animal without doing it any harm. It was powerful medicine for them.”
“That story made me think back on my experience earlier in the summer. I decided maybe I met that same wolf/dog because my bullets had just gone through it without doing it any harm.”
Charlie looked over at me and mumbled in a low voice, “That wolf/dog was powerful medicine for me too. Old Crazy Charlie is tired now and needs to sleep.”
He leaned back in his recliner and was soon softly snoring in peaceful sleep. I got up and quietly left. A glance at my watch showed 3:15 pm. We had talked for just over five hours. Charlie had earned his nap.