WHEN THE LEGEND BECOMES FACT, PRINT THE LEGEND. 2/4: 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
⏱️ 8 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.
1920 COMPANY D TEXAS RANGERS
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I'm John Bachelor. |
| 0:05.0 | Joe Popolarda's new book is Red Sky Morning, the epic true story of Texas Ranger Company |
| 0:11.1 | F, the shootout that takes place in March of 1887 is led by a man |
| 0:16.6 | named Will Scott. Where does he come from? Why is he such a tough guy? Why is he so good at running |
| 0:22.1 | a Ranger Company that's about 10 or 11 or 12 men coming and going but it's discipline and |
| 0:29.0 | Captain Scott sets the tone of everybody, very stoic, hard riding, extremely hard riding, |
| 0:37.6 | living the life in the wilderness as they move around the state as law enforcement. |
| 0:43.4 | His beginning is as a volunteer detective. |
| 0:46.2 | How so, Joe? |
| 0:48.2 | Yeah, the toughness in the guile, |
| 0:50.1 | you can see from the beginning of his law enforcement career because he's a self-appointed |
| 0:55.1 | undercover detective. |
| 0:57.3 | He infiltrates a very infamous, the most infamous gang at the time, the Sam Bas gang, it was committing a series of very brazen robberies. |
| 1:06.9 | And outside of Dallas, he decides independently to track them down, infiltrate the gang, and turn over information to the Texas Rangers |
| 1:15.6 | had been hunting them. So he does this all in his own as a very young man and it works. He almost gets killed for his veins but it does work. He |
| 1:26.3 | delivers some information to the Rangers and he becomes a ranger and that's how he |
| 1:31.6 | earns his entrance. |
| 1:34.8 | That is his style. |
| 1:35.8 | It's guile backed with deliberate force. |
| 1:38.5 | And his approach is very, feels very modern to me, more modern than I thought. I think Texas Rangers, you think they come in a town, they know who the bad guys are and they shoot them and that's the end of it. But the very modern feeling use of informants of undercover officers, |
| 1:56.8 | intelligence operations, the way that they would set up an ambush versus setting up an arrest |
| 2:02.1 | to get the desired effect. set up an ambush versus setting up an arrest |
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