WHEN THE LEGEND BECOMES FACT, PRINT THE LEGEND. 1/4: Red Sky Morning: The Epic True Story of Texas Ranger Company F, by Joe Pappalardo
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 7 October 2024
⏱️ 11 minutes
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Summary
https://www.amazon.com/Red-Sky-Morning-Ranger-Company/dp/1250275245/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
Between 1886 and 1888, Sergeant James Brooks, of Texas Ranger Company F, was engaged in three fatal gunfights, endured disfiguring bullet wounds, engaged in countless manhunts, was convicted of second-degree murder, and rattled Washington, D.C., with a request for a pardon from the US president. His story anchors the tale of Joe Pappalardo's Red Sky Morning, an epic saga of lawmen and criminals set in Texas during the waning years of the “Old West.”
Alongside Brooks are the Rangers of Company F, who range from a pious teetotaler to a cowboy fleeing retribution for killing a man. They are all led by Captain William Scott, who cut his teeth as a freelance undercover informant but was facing the end of his Ranger career. Company F hunted criminals across Texas and beyond, killing them as needed, and were confident they could bring anyone to “Ranger justice.” But Brooks’s men met their match in the Conner family, East Texas master hunters and jailbreakers who were wanted for their part in a bloody family feud.
The full story of Company F’s showdown with the Conner family is finally being told, with long-dead voices being heard for the first time. This truly hidden history paints the grim picture of neighbors’ and relatives’ becoming snitches and bounty hunters, and a company of Texas Rangers who waded into the conflict only to find themselves over their heads—and in the fight of their lives.
1904 TEXAS RANGER REVIEW
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is on the |
| 0:05.0 | This is CBS Eye on the World. |
| 0:08.0 | Here's John Bachelor. |
| 0:10.0 | Sabine County, Texas, March 31st, 1887, the moonlit pines of a thicket, it's called, a dense forest |
| 0:20.9 | in East Texas. Suddenly gun flashes erupt. This is the centerpiece of the explication |
| 0:30.3 | of the Texas Rangers in Joe Popolardo's new book, |
| 0:33.6 | Red Sky Morning, the epic true story of Texas Ranger Company F. |
| 0:39.1 | At this shootout, March 31st, 1887, and we need to tell the story of who's shooting and who the |
| 0:46.7 | captain and sergeant of Company F. R. that get hit by the gunfire. Joe, |
| 0:51.6 | congratulations it is wonderful to go to get hit by the gunfire. Joe, congratulations. |
| 0:52.8 | It is wonderful to go to Texas because your history of Company F also tells the story of |
| 0:59.0 | the transformation of Texas into the modern superstate that it is. The shooting that night is between |
| 1:05.9 | Company Aff led by Captain Scott and Sergeant Brooks and the Connor family. Why |
| 1:11.1 | are they shoot, why are the Rangers shooting it out with the |
| 1:14.0 | Connors? Who are they? What did they do? Good evening to you Joe. |
| 1:17.8 | Hello and thank you so much for having me. The Connor family and East |
| 1:21.8 | Texas family of master hunters backwoodsmen who live and |
| 1:28.0 | managed to do better than scrape out but do actually make a very good living out of terrain that most people in Texas don't know what to do with it. They run hogs, they cut timber. They are masters of their terrain there and they have been swept up into this very violent |
| 1:47.2 | feud in Sabine County with two other prominent families and there has been killings and jail breaks and now they're on the lam hiding in |
| 1:55.1 | their own backyard and the Rangers have been assigned to root them out one way or |
| 1:58.6 | the other and it's this moonlight raid. This is an existential threat to the Connor family. Old man Connor, Willis |
| 2:06.0 | Connor, comes from Florida I believe and he has a patchy background although I |
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