Tales of the Western Frontier: Collection Two

By Ron Lewis

Two tales of Frontier Justice in the Old West

Retribution: Carterville’s City Marshal Dan Barton is quick-tempered, fast on the draw, and someone not to be taken lightly. He’s also a murdering thief who rules over Carterville with fear and intimidation. He kills indiscriminately, goading fights with slow-acting cowhands, murdering them with impunity. Someone must rid the town of Barton, but who would dare face off with the cold-blooded murderer?

Long Time Coming: The setting is Ellsworth, Kansas. A former lawman recounts the early days of the town called The Wickedest Cattle-town of the plains. Duty sometimes requires the most painful sacrifices.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ron Lewis
• Release date: Dec 12, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005726652

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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Retribution

Something justly deserved

Ron Lewis

License Notes

This eBook license is for your personal enjoyment only. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

© Copyright 2019/2021/2022 by Ron Lewis

Published by Lewis and Young

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.

Retribution

ret·ri·bu·tion (rtr-byshn) n. Something justly deserved; recompense.

From the diary of Serenity Lancaster

Friday, May 1st, 1868

I start this new journal with the fervent hope that someday, my offspring, should I have any, may read my words and glean a better understanding of me. Should I have children in the future, I’d like them to understand their mother in a more profound way than one often appreciates another person. My mother named me Serenity, wishing only happiness in life for me. She raised me with love and affection in a comfortable home, a mansion, if truth be told, in Saint Louis. And, for the most part, I was a merry girl.

My father, Alfred Lancaster, was a mean, abusive drunkard. His only saving grace was the vast sums of money he built in a life filled with hard business decisions. He was a shrewd, hard-nosed businessman, who took immense pleasure from thrashing my mother, his wife. Her name was Winnifred. His inclination, after beating her, involved having his way with her, while snockered to the gills on brandy.

The war, the not-so-Civil War between the States, has been over for several years, and I have left Missouri, with all its terrible memories, behind as I sojourn west.

When I first boarded the train, in the dead of night, catching sight of my reflection in the window as we pulled out of the station, I spied father’s eyes, blinking, confused as he tried to understand what happened to him. The memory was disturbing. I shook the vision from my mind.

I found the Kansas Pacific Railroad ride exhilarating; we rambled down the tracks at a dizzying twenty-five or thirty miles an hour. The flat, featureless landscape rushed by at a befuddling speed.

Trees or grandiose boulders, a bush here, a gully or stream, and wild beast, hurled by so swiftly, one mightn’t wrap their brain around the images in a fast enough fashion to appreciate what they witnessed.

After my train ride, I traveled by stagecoach. The coach wasn’t as quick as the train, but the terrain moved past me slowly enough to appreciate the beauty in the landscape’s starkness.

I know what one would say; really, I do. The thought is silly to most: the beauty of the prairie? In its own unique way, I insist the plains are as beautiful as any forests or mountains. A rugged beauty, to be sure, nonetheless, a loveliness is here, a lonesome exquisiteness, to be appreciated and savored.

I spotted antelope in abundance. The mighty buffalos moved in the most massive herd imaginable, and the lowly jackrabbit showed his stuff to me as he raced away from a