Marshal Colburn
The men engaged in their nightly upkeep and banter, the Marshal being polite and quiet, but still relatively impersonal. He was finishing a stew cooked with one of Bear Trap’s fine catches when Dakota asked him the question.
“I wondered when someone would bring it up,” he says. He taps his spoon on the tin bowl to get everyone’s attention. “Y’all give me a minute to get catch you up on our mission.” He waits for the men to settle in before starting, concerned a little about their reaction but relieved at once to relieve their curiosity.
“About a week before you received my letter I got the following report from the Marshal Service. Deepwood and Gibson have always had a fairly regular trading relationship. Mostly it’s just individual citizens coming down from Deepwood. About a month ago, people stopped coming. Sheriff Beaudoin of Gibson - the closest town with any significant law - was especially concerned. There’s a real sharp fella’s been riding throughout the West moving into towns and taking advantage of the townfolk through their businesses before leaving them high and dry. Only a few weeks earlier, a suspicious man passed through headed for Deepwood, and some in Gibson thought this might be the same. I reckon you could classify this particular fella as a suspect rather’n a wanted man, only because the culprit changes his name often and there’s no hard evidence against him. The Sheriff sent a couple of deputies to investigate. They weren’t to dig too deep, but just to check in on the town, gather what information they could, ensure order was in place, and report back to the Sheriff." Colburn pauses and looks about at the men's faces to make sure there are no questions, then continues.
"He waited a week for their return - three days past the expected date – before sending out a small search party composed of himself, his remaining deputy, and two retired lawmen that still lived locally. They had barely left for Deepwood when they encountered one of the missing deputies on the road. He was severely wounded, terrified, and quietly insane, unable to speak in full sentences or with any sense at all. All the Sheriff could gather was that the other deputy had been slaughtered, and that the surviving one had witnessed it. The man’s description of the attacker was very unclear…and very disturbing. He claimed that his colleague had been torn to pieces by some sort of beast. He seemed particularly confused, as he repeatedly called the beast by the name of the man he went in part to investigate. Perplexed and without a worthy force with which to approach the town, the Sheriff returned to Gibson with the injured deputy and sent a telegram to the Marshal Service for help in Deepwood. When the Marshal's Office heard, they ordered all local law to stand down from the situation until more proper authorities could arrive. Sheriff Beaudoin was infuriated, but the townspeople weren’t keen on rallying and taking it into their own hands, and he sure wasn’t going it alone."
"You might be askin’ yourselves, ‘what makes us the proper authority?’ Well…I do. The details of this case are a particular specialty of mine, and you’ll have to trust my judgment in choosing you to ride along. I have a talent for and experience with the unexplainable, and this case bears the hallmarks of something that could use my attention.”
