Meeker and the Old Man

By Ron Lewis

A fourteen-year-old boy heads west to be a mountain man in 1830. Along the way, he makes friends with two mountain men. One an old man, Conan McCallan, the other one a younger Frenchman, Guillaume Paternoster, both of whom took a liking to him. As the group moves west, the 80-plus-year-old man tells the boy of his life.

One of those tall tales told of him saving Daniel Boone’s daughter. While the story was quite wild, it held the ring of truth.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ron Lewis
• Release date: Jan 22, 2024
• ISBN: 9798215736494

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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Meeker and the Old Man

A Tale from life of Sleeps-With-Bears, Joseph Nathan Meeker

Ron Lewis

Copyright © 2017/24 Ron Lewis

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.

Meeker and the Old Man

I remember the first time I laid eyes on Joseph Nathan Meeker. You’ve probably heard his Injun-name, Sleep-With-Bears. Well, he weren’t always called that. It was mid-June, in the Year of our Lord, eighteen hundred and thirty.

I was near to 80 years old at the time. Me and my partner, Froggy Guillaume Paternoster, was in Saint Louis buying supplies for the year. We had completed outfitting for the winter and trapping season. We were on the verge of leaving town for the long trek back to the Black Hills, our base