It was Sunday night, and all was calm in Madera, or at least it appeared to be. No one at the shooting gallery on Yosemite had any idea what was going on in the mind of Charles Hensley. They didn’t know that he would be dead before midnight.
The 32-year-old lumberman, son of Thomas Jefferson Hensley and his wife Margaret Dennis Hensley, had left his home in the hills near Raymond and had been wandering around Madera all afternoon. He was looking for someone named Benninger; Hensley had loaned him a rifle, and he wanted it back.
In his wanderings about town, Hensley ran into John Barnett, the town marshal. When he told the lawman of his problem, Barnett agreed to give him a hand and look for Benninger. A little later in the afternoon, the marshal found Benninger and told him that Hensley wanted his rifle back.