Book excerpt: Experienced federal deputy marshals, Charley and Abe Barnhill, are exhausted after years of facing down killers, horse thieves and corrupt whiskey runners. What else could possibly disturb the grim pattern of criminals they haul to Fort Smith to face Judge Isaac Parker? When a shrill howl of pain and fear invades their peaceful camp, Charley rushes toward the sound. An ax buried in the chest of an already dead Baptist preacher changes his life forever. In this second book of the They Were Lawmen trilogy, the brothers strive to make sense out of random murder and the greed of the whiskey peddlers. Who will succumb to the inevitable ambush or shoot out, the prey they seek or the man fighting beside them?