by Ron Lewis
****
The train moved at a slow, steady pace at first, then picked up momentum. Leaning out as far as safety permitted her, Michelle maintained the sight of her father. The train began to pick up speed. Eventually, she realized she could see the man no more and with reluctance moved to the center of the platform. She jostled from side to side as the train moved down the tracks. Lost in thought, she stood there for some time. Finally, shaking herself from her doldrums, Michelle Tanner stepped inside the car. Walking down the tight aisle between the benches, she reached out occasionally, steadying herself by grabbing the back of a bench. Everyone stared at the sight of her. Some women giggled, and some men wondered why she was dressed as she was.
A buckskin-clad man sat looking out the window; his long gray hair and keen eyes gave him a distinguished and distinctive look. Michelle, along with everyone on the train, knew him as soon as she saw him. Known by sight from the covers of a dozen or more dime novels, Joseph Nathan Meeker was one of the better-known mountain men.
“Hello, sir. If you wouldn’t mind...” Michelle stammered for a second, and then continued. “There don’t look to be many open spots on this car.” Again, her tongue failed her for a moment. “If it is not too bold of me to ask, would it be alright for me to sit beside you? I promise to not be a pest,” Michelle said as the famous man looked up at her. He was unaccustomed to seeing such a sight. Lord, this gal was tall—over six feet he guessed—and her brilliant red hair and green eyes spoke of her Irish heritage, he assumed. The oddity was her dress. Sporting a man’s dress shirt, vest, and a frock coat, she wore braces, which held on tight to her men’s riding pants. He smiled up at her and stood.
The car swayed from side to side. Chug, chug—the deep, distinctive sound of the steam engine along with the clanking of the wheels on the track invaded the car. Meeker reached out and steadied himself, smiling at the woman—or oddity—which stood before him. He formed in his head what he would say. Something he had cultivated doing in the past five or six years to avoid misstatements.
“I would be honored. I’m Joseph Nathan Meeker, but you can call me Nate or Nathan, Miss, and conversation would be dandy. I used to crave solitude, but of late I have a desire for company.” He bowed to the woman. “But not just any company.”
Meeker moved to the aisle to give Michelle the window seat. She moved in and stood as Meeker reentered the tight area between the fronts of the seats and the back of the next row. Michelle sat first while Meeker followed suit as he sat and continued to talk. “The last few years have been a journey I am happy to complete. With my service to my country, I hope performed with honor now complete, I look forward to the vast freedom of the West.” His hand swept toward the front of the train. “Now, Miss, what is it that brings you westward? Visiting family in St. Louis, I suspect, or old friends of the family.” He looked at her with a trace of nothing but curiosity. Michelle felt at ease with this living legend.
“I am Michelle Tanner, and I, of course, know who you are. I have read the books about you…”
“All lies, Miss Tanner, but lies fueled by drink and a crafty penny dreadful writer.” He smiled, wagging a finger at her. He was always amused that his exploits—some real and some blown so out of proportion they were laughable—were always the first thing anyone would want to talk about with him. Perhaps it was just the nature of things.
“Well, I knew you as soon as I saw you, but would have never intruded on your privacy had there been other seats.” Michelle’s eyes lit up as she spoke, “Though, in truth, to sit beside someone I have so much admiration for pleasures me a great deal. As to me, I’m not visiting relations or going to visit a friend of the family.” Michelle looked him full in the eyes, showing no shame, no embarrassment at the words she spoke; her head and body shook with the motion of the train and perhaps a tad of excitement. “I’m striking out to make my way in the West. What I will do? I am not sure, but I will find my way. I am a very determined woman; I will have the life I want, and not the one that society says I should have. I will not sell myself short, nor make my way by selling myself.”
Meeker broke into a loud laugh, looking at the woman with wonder. “I like you, Michelle Tanner, you are what the West needs more of and the East as well, but you can’t be in both places at the same time.” Meeker pulled a leather bag from the inside pocket of his coat and extracted a large black rectangle of chewing tobacco. He bit off a hunk and worked it to the side of his mouth. As Meeker continued to talk, he put the tobacco back in the pouch and then returned it to his pocket. He did all this without missing a beat in his conversation. “The West will be more accepting of you for at least ten to twenty years. Then who knows? When civilization with all its prejudices, rules, expectancies, and refinement will catch up,” he spoke this with some contempt in his voice. “Eventually civilization always catches up to wherever you go. Miss, civilization always finds its way to paradise and messes it all up; for better or worse, that is what we have to look forward to, civilization. They think they bring God to you. Hell, God was there first.”
The two people talked as the train moved westward chasing the sun, which outpaced it. For his part, Meeker would tell her a story, as true as his memory and his penchant for exaggeration would allow. Michelle would marvel at the story, and he would always add in the end, “Now that is how I remember it; accuracy is not ensured. I am sure I have added some colorful events or made those happenings a mite more spectacular than they were.”
They talked between themselves as minutes turned to hours. Sooner than one would want, the night followed the day. The train stopped every thirty to fifty miles, taking on water and wood, allowing some passengers to depart and others to come aboard. Still, they managed to move thirty miles an hour, flying along at breakneck speed.
The odd pair dozed through the night, alternating between talking and sleeping, as best they could, in the uncomfortable seats. The following day they continued their conversation. In no time, Meeker grew fond of the upstart young woman. He felt a fondness for Michelle akin to her being his niece from some long-lost brother.
Michelle was confident that Meeker had told her the straight truth. Later in life, she began to suspect that everyone adds bits and pieces to their stories. For now, though, Shell was a twenty-year-old woman full of faith in those she had admiration for, her father being the person she respected first and foremost. She could hear that last advice he gave her just before she boarded the train. For a few minutes, she was lost in her thoughts, of her father and the life she had left behind her. Meeker’s voice, coupled with the loud scream of the engine’s horn, shocked her back to the here and now.
“I have been dominating the conversation. Now we come to your turn. Why move west? What is so wrong in your life that you feel the need to change it? Once you are out west, what do you think you want to do?” Meeker questioned her. She turned her attention to him once more. She was not sad about her choice, but already she missed her father. Her father, who had been her only parent for all those years since her mother had died in childbirth; Michelle’s little brother had died as well. Her mother died leaving only John Tanner and his ten-year-old daughter to move forward with their lives. They had been each other’s world, so it had been, for ten years.
She explained how her life had a hole in it. She wanted to fill the hole. She talked about the need for more than she had and told him about the suitors who only wanted her father’s money. She spoke about her childhood and her interests and explained about wanting to make her own way.
“I love to play poker, and I like horses. I am a superb horseman—or horsewoman, I reckon I should say. I like hunting and fishing; not to brag, but I reckon I would have been a hell of a trapper, perhaps not as good as you or Jim Bridger,” she said, smiling at him.
“Well, you will not be a trapper, young lady; there aren’t enough of the beaver left to supply a lot more seasons. Men must change their haberdashery habits, I fear.” Meeker frowned. “Trappers find e
nough of the critters every year for the ‘Company’ to make hats that cover empty heads. The ‘Company’ always finds a way to cheat the trapper out of most of what he is due.”
“Well, sir, if you do not mind my asking, what do you intend to do out west this year? Returning to trapping?” Michelle asked him, bubbling with curiosity as to what his answer would be. Meeker’s face grew stern and cold-looking while his bright eyes darkened and his lids nearly closed. A single tear ran down his face as he looked angry and sad at the same time.
“No, Miss Tanner, I’m going hunting. I’m hunting for a man. Once I find him, I’ll kill me a man who has needed killing for a long time.” Meeker’s voice grew harsh. It was a tone she had not heard from him. He fell silent for a few moments. “But that’s nothing about that for you to fret your pretty head.”
The statement shocked her, though. She was not sure why. She knew this legend of man had killed men, Indians included but white men as well. He grew silent for several minutes, and Michelle did not know what to say. Choosing discretion to be the better part of valor in this instance, Michelle said nothing. Asking no question, Michelle offered no conversation at that point as well. Her silence was more of a judgment to him than she intended.
“Michelle, some men are just sick in an evil sort of way; they need to be killed. This is one of those men. I will kill him for he did me wrong. Worse, he did my child and wife wrong. She was just a Sioux squaw…by God in Heaven, she was my…wife. He was only a half-breed kid…but by God in Heaven… he was my boy! I will not let it pass.” His eyes were open but saw nothing; tears streaked down his face as he spoke.
The gloomy mood lifted, at last, and then the conversation grew lighter. Michelle allowed that she might want to own a saloon—maybe even a brothel. But she would not be part of the merchandise. Confiding in Meeker, Michelle told him she wanted to learn how to shoot, not that she wished to be a gunman—gunwoman. Still, she wanted to be able to defend herself. She knew how to shoot a rifle, she could hunt, but she wanted to learn how to handle a pistol.
Another day and night passed by, and soon they were crossing the Mississippi River. Michelle marveled at how long it took the train to cross over the river. Meeker told her it was more than a mile across the river.
They moved forward at a steady pace, chugging along until they ran out of track. The conductor entered the car—he came clambering back down the aisle calling out to the passengers. “Last stop Kansas City, Kansas City, Missouri, everybody off the train for we are done a going where we were a going, END OF LINE.”
“I would like to tag along with you, and learn what there is to learn if you would take on an apprentice like me,” she told him. In honesty, she had the thought of changing his mind on this death quest. He laughed for a moment and then put his eyes on her.
“Alright, then I will teach you what I can. But when push comes to shove, you will not get in the way of what I have set out to do.” Meeker told her, “That is what I have to do, and by God, I’ll do ‘er.”
“I did not say I had the intent to change your mind on that subject,” Michelle said as convincingly as she could.
“You did not say you did...but you do.” Meeker turned his eyes back to the window. “But tag on along and you will learn, I will teach, and we will see what comes of what.” Michelle could not help but wonder why Meeker wanted to kill this man. She knew that the man had murdered his wife and child, but still…there was the law, even
