The Hell Hole Saga

Best Western Fiction by:
S.L. Kotar and J.E. Gessler

Published by: Ahead of The Press

First Draw

Hellhole, Kansas, was no ordinary town. Like other places, it was comprised of desultory businesses, saloons, livery stable, bank, and clapboard homes, clinging to life by their figurative fingernails. What set this hider town apart from other post-Civil War outcroppings of civilization was that it also housed a United States Marshal’s office. Hellhole was known to the authorities in Topeka as the place where lawmen went to die. Claw Kiley had served in the Union Army during the Civil War, being discharged, as he had entered, a private. That fact hardly qualified him for a Federal position, yet he knew something about deputing, having served under the legendary Marshal Jack Duvall before the War. Duvall was widely regarded as the best man ever to wear the badge, yet he had been gunned down on the street of some unnamed town by a man seeking a reputation. Kiley had been the youth who outdrew the man who killed Jack Duvall. That alone made his resume worth considering, and as his life expectancy was deemed to be short, the government agents offered him the job on the expectation he could do little harm in the time he served in the position. Bright-eyed and with faith in the almost mystical power of the badge he wore, Marshal Kiley drew three rapid conclusions about his new town: the residents of Hellhole still seethed over the outcome of the War Between the States; a girl working at the Lowdown Saloon would become very important to him; and outlaws held no respect for the Law. His first order of business was to teach the citizens to put the late conflict behind them and develop a respect, if not a friendship for the Federal man. His second, get to know Miss Cougar Bradburn; the third, to survive against those who took what they wanted by the power of guns and sheer audacity. How he succeeded would determine not only his own fate, but how the law of the land was to be carved out of hell.

Audition for a Legend

The post-Civil War era in the American West was a troubled, turbulent time. With hatreds still seething, men often took it upon themselves to enforce their own brand of justice. When they did, it brought them in conflict with those few who attempted to apply a standardized set of rules and regulations to a rawboned civilization. Convincing men who did not fall into the category of outlaws but who were, rather, self-appointed vigilantes to follow the law was not a simple task, yet that was what Marshal Claw Kiley faced when he confronted a gang of mountain men from West Virginia, out to punish renegades for dishonoring a woman. Not unsympathetic to their cause, yet well aware how easily vengeance turned to slaughter, Kiley was forced to risk his life in order to let the law judge and sentence the guilty. To survive past the one-year life expectancy the Federal men in Topeka had given him, the marshal will need all the help of trusted friends. Not only did he face the task of keeping peace in the brutal environs of Hellhole, a town existing solely as a half-way point where buffalo hunters gathered to sell their hides to Back East buyers, but he also faced the threat of drifters, gunfighters, and outlaws, all eager to try their hand at bringing the new “Badge” down. If Kiley lived, he would become a legend; if they gunned him in the street, he would fill a grave on Boot Hill – next to those who had come before and failed.

Strange Bedfellows

The expression “holy revenge” might seem a misnomer, as it is often believed that vengeance belongs to the Lord. When a race of people were cruelly and habitually enslaved, however, freedom meant more than emancipation: it offered the opportunity to redress wrongs in a more earthly court. The man called “Red” arrived in Hellhole with an aura of trouble surrounding him. Immediately sensing his presence meant bloodshed, Marshal Kiley ordered him out of town but not before allowing him to have his wounds treated by the doctor, Fiz Ward. Even more intuitive than the lawman, Dr. Ward is quick to identify the stranger as a Southerner – not merely a man who fought on the same side he did during the Civil War – but one used to money and status, marking him for a plantation owner. Easily guessing why the man was on the run, he further deduced who was chasing him. It only remained to fill in the details. Although Red denied he was being hunted to ground by former slaves, his fear was palpable. Just as a drowning man clutched at straws, he sought Ward’s help, placing the doctor in a moral dilemma that not only brought out the ghosts of his own past, but placed him in the middle of a tragic and tangled web that could only end one way.