Kirk Hamilton is one of a handful of pseudonyms used by Australian author Keith Hetherington; a writer who had 800 – 1,000 stories published. Those put out by Cleveland fall into the novella category of story length.
Due to the short length of this tale, there is no room for padding, no room for anything that doesn’t propel the story forwards at a brisk pace. Braddock is a bounty hunter, a type of man despised by many, especially when his latest prey is brought in dead and backshot. The townspeople want him gone as soon as possible. Only thing is it’ll take a while for his bounty money to be authorized, meaning Braddock will have to hang around the town of Beaumont for a few days.
Beaumont has a new, inexperienced lawman, Kip Pickett. The local bigwigs are moulding the young sheriff into a man they can control as they conspire to run the town. When Pickett learns that Braddock is an ex-lawman he hires the bounty hunter as his deputy, much to the disgust of the town’s big shots. A fired stagecoach guard learns of some valuable paperwork being held in the safe of the stageline and plots to steal it with the blessing of the town’s criminal element but Braddock could be a problem so he’ll have to be removed, permanently. There’s more to the story than that though, such as the young woman who runs the stageline hating bounty hunters and thus despising Braddock even though he’s trying to help her. This adds for some electrifying dialogue between the two.
There’s plenty of action and the author took me by surprise with one shooting. The final showdown was exciting and even though it finished the story as expected it did bring about a satisfying conclusion to the tale.
I’ve yet to be disappointed by anything written by Keith Hetherington and this story proved to be another great tale from him that left me looking forward to reading more of his work very soon.
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