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Red Sky Morning

The Epic True Story of Texas Ranger Company F

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1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available

The explosive and bloody true history of Texas Rangers Company F, made up of hard men who risked their lives to bring justice to a lawless frontier.

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 were the Rangers of Company F, who ranged from a pious teetotaler to a cowboy fleeing retribution for killing a man. They were 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' 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 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 in over their heads – and in the fight of their lives.

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    • Kirkus

      May 1, 2022
      Lively tale of a pioneering band of Texas Rangers and their adventures in a decidedly wild West. James Brooks (1855-1944), the center of Pappalardo's story, wandered into the Texas Rangers more or less by accident. Though in Texas for only a few years, he'd "already been a rancher, hired hand, mineral prospector, sheep farmer, aspiring groom--and nothing worked out." At 27, he found a job that suited his "rootless disposition" and paid the satisfying sum of $45 per month as well as three meals per day. Brooks took to the job, which meant keeping order on the open range and trying to mediate conflicts among ranchers, farmers, and Native Americans, a complex tangle that eventually landed Brooks and two of his Rangers in jail, requiring a pardon from Grover Cleveland: "Backing the Texas Rangers...seems a risk-free way to send that message to intruding cattlemen and unwelcome settlers in the Indian Territories." The author weaves an entertaining yarn about the long-lasting feud in the dense forests along the Sabine River on the Louisiana border, where an argument over hogs in a place called Holly Bottom led to numerous deaths, starting with what amounted to a double execution. Regarding that incident, a local paper wrote, "Yesterday a company of ten Rangers, in charge of Sgt Brooks, arrived here by rail and went into camp....Nothing can be learned of their mission. They are hunting somebody, and some developments will be made in a few days." Those few days stretched out into years, and, as Pappalardo shows, lacked the neat resolution of most other Ranger operations--and, interestingly, still occasionally reverberate today. All of the author's tales have many moving parts, and as he wryly notes at the end of the book, so many characters "require a cheat sheet" in the form of a dramatis personae that readers may want to consult it often. Fast-paced and full of local politics and old-fashioned gunfights--a pleasure for fans of true crime and oaters alike.

      COPYRIGHT(2022) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

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  • English

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