Getting on toward the dinner hour, Marshal Mack Barton had been fixing to get himself some chow when an excited youngster burst into his office at the jailhouse to tell him he was needed. “There’s been a shooting over to the campgrounds, Marshal,” the freckle-faced kid piped. “A man is dead!” Barton grumbled heavily. He hated missing or delaying his meals. But it was best to move fast to nip trouble in the bud before it got out of hand. He was in a hurry but not so much that he neglected to take a shotgun down off the wall rack. He loaded the twelve-gauge double-barrel and slipped a handful of buckshot shells into a vest pocket. “Let’s go, Deputy.” Smalls was a medium-sized man with a long mournful basset-hound face. He followed Barton out the jailhouse door onto Trail Street. They turned right, going south on a cross street. The campground was southwest of town, a vast rolling meadow cut by a stream that ran southeast to eventually join Swift Creek. It was far enough away that Barton would have liked to ride, but he didn’t have a horse saddled and ready.
