I'm John Batchel with Joe Pappalardo.

Red Sky Morning is the new book, The Epicruz Story of Texas Ranger Company F.

The shootout in March of 1887 in Sabine County includes the severe wounding of the two leaders

of the Ranger Unit, Company F, the killing of one, the murder of one,

who's buried with great mourning by the local people, and the wounding of another John Rogers,

who will become the praying Ranger. He says, he's a severe, a Presbyterian who doesn't drink, doesn't smoke, you understand.

He will become a legendary captain in the future.

But right now we're following J.A. Brooks because he is the sergeant that night,

and he will become a legendary captain of the Rangers as well. But a year before, in a town

called Alex, Brooks is caught up in law enforcement. He's asked to back up an Indian agent

who is in town to confront a gunslinger cowboy who's well connected coming from a wealthy family named St. John.

The events of that day very much changed the direction of Sergeant Brooks's life,

and it gives him a taste of the other side, which he doesn't like at all, the law-breaking side.

That day, Joe, let's go to the details,

because there's an Indian agent. This is Indian territory, I believe, are at the edge of it.

St. John is a well-understood cowboy, tough guy who carries a weapon where he knows he should not.

The Indian agent asks Sergeant

Brooks and another ranger to back him up. Why? And what happens? Right. The TR Knight has run

into St. John before and told him that he shouldn't wear his gun town and wasn't very very much insulted and St. John rides away.

Now, Knight didn't even have a firearm on at the time, but there's no respect for Indian agents.

They're federal law enforcement officers, but there's the inherent racism and their job of trying to police cowboys who are coming in from out of state.

It was, you know, that that was conflict that almost seems inevitable.

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