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.