Ambush at Kansas City: Michelle Tanner Going West - Part One

By Ron Lewis

Michelle Tanner, a fiery red head who wants more out of life heads west into a new frontier. After a chance encounter with the lawman and living legend, Joseph Nathan Meeker, friendship blooms and he becomes her mentor. His words to her could make her continue, or turn back to her father in the east. "You got it all Missy. For better or worse, you got it all. You may become a legend or you could be a corpse. I don't want to be sending no letter to your Pa explaining how you were killed." Michelle realizes life in the west may be a whole lot more difficult than she had ever imagined, but resolves to set her focus on the life ahead of her.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ron Lewis
• Release date: Apr 29, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310068324

Ron Lewis

Ron Lewis has had a life long interest and love of both history and westerns. Blending fact and fiction together, mixing real characters and those created from whole cloth, his stories are his views of the old west of the 19th century.Mr. Lewis’s roots in Oklahoma reach back to the 19th century when is his great-grandfather John moved though the Indian territories, and eventually Oklahoma territory yearly. He operated a traveling musical group who sold a panacea concoction most often called “Snake Oil.”Eventually his grandfather, John Henry, settled in the Winding Stair Mountains of eastern Oklahoma, very near to Robbers Cave. John Henry worked for a mining company as an elevator operator. His grandfather was well known and all who knew him knew his credo in life. “I don’t want to be higher than picking corn or lower than digging potatoes.”Hearing stories from his father, uncles and grandfather about life in the late 19th and early 20th centuries kindled a love for those bygone days. Many of these stories are the basis for his writing.

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Michelle Tanner Going West

Part One:

Ambush at Kansas City

Ron Lewis

© Copyright 2014, 2015, 2017, 2022 by Ron Lewis

All rights reserved

Lewis & Young Publishing

This is a work of fiction and not intended to be historically accurate but merely a representation of the times. The names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any similarity to any person, living or dead, is merely coincidental and unintentional. Historical characters used are strictly for dramatic purposes. This story contains some violence.

Ambush at Kansas City

The Western frontier was settled and tamed by bold men and women whose exploits of derring-do reached mythological proportions. Fueled by writers who exploited their deeds in cheap, sensationalized books—the penny-dreadful and the dime-novel published stories by authors who, often, hadn’t even met the person about whom they wrote. They exploded the tales beyond recognition even to the person on whom the account was based. Upon reading one of the stories about himself, one notable commented, It may be the gospel, but I don’t have any recollection of it, a’tall.

For a time, a celebrated frontiersman’s legend grew and then declined—usually accompanied by two simultaneous events. Their age advanced, and their exploits declined, along with some new singularly unique individuals capturing the nation’s attention. On rare occasions, the declining celebrant tutored the climbing upstart. Such was the case of Joseph Nathan Meeker and Michelle Tanner.

Sleeps with Bears

The rain threatened to fall for days. Winter was behind them, while summer didn’t yet beat its heat down on them. The north coast of Maine produced hardy people with a yearning for adventure in their souls. Joseph Nathan Meeker was no different from other young folks from Maine. At fourteen years old, he wanted to see what the world offered.

Many Maine adventurers turned to the sea. Not Meeker. The boy possessed a yearning to see what lay further west. Therefore, on a beautiful March morning in 1830, Meeker’s mother and father watched as he walked out of their life. Walking down the small rock walkway in the house’s front yard, Meeker mounted a horse, an imposing bay Morgan.

Meeker’s father realized he would never see his boy again. Meeker’s mother feared he was far too young for the adventure he set out to find.

Having raised him the Maine way, they taught him self-reliance, responsibility, and he had a right to do whatever he wanted—as long as no one else was harmed by what he did. Having raised him this way, they found telling him, You can’t do this. Even so, he was only a boy of fourteen.

Meeker’s father argued with him through the nights leading up to his departure. He yelled at him. The man accused him of breaking his mother’s heart. But in the end, he couldn’t bring himself to say, No. They never had, in point of fact, said no to Nate. Always a wonderful boy, Nate never got into trouble. The boy had excelled in school but left school short of where his parents had hoped for him.

His father had a dream, a foolish one in retrospect. A plan his boy would share law offices with him.

This was America, and they were Americans, a rougher cut of human than their ancestors back in England. America seemed somewhat lacking in the social graces, or it appeared so in the 1830s. But the east was tame as milquetoast when compared to the west.