A dispute over hogs deep in the piney woods of East Texas results in a bloody family feud that involves everything from a defeat of the Texas Rangers to dogs out of a John Wick film.

Now That Should Be A Movie

Short Pitch

It’s called the Conner-Low-Smith Feud

It is a Western drama

In the vein of Open Range

It is like The Hatfield and McCoys meet John Wick.

It follows backwoods hog farmer Old Man Willis Conner

And ambitious newspaperman L. L. Loggins

As they seek to protect their political influence and hog range from the Low and Smith families. 

Problems arise when members of the Low and Smith families are found dead on the Conners’ range and the law come after the Conners and Loggins.

Now together the Conners’ knowledge of the backwoods and pioneer survival skills and Loggins’ writing skills will take on the entire Texas legal system and law enforcement, including The Texas Rangers. 

The idea came to me while listening to the audiobook version of Red Sky Morning by Joe Pappalardo while driving through Sabine County, the location of the feud, a place where time stands still and the mantle of history hangs heavy.

My unique approach would be a Western set in the forests, thickets, fields, swamps, and bayou bottoms of East Texas that involves hog ranges, hound dogs, and cattle horns.

A set piece would be when Texas Rangers with the help of a local sheriff are making their way through the impregnable thickets that cover the floor of the piney forest. All is quiet. All of a sudden dogs rush out of nowhere and everywhere in the underbrush, barking, snarling, and howling. The Rangers raise their weapons, expecting to see the feudists burst out of the woods. Instead, their ears are met by the sound of cow horns blowing through the tree limbs. One comes from the northeast. Does another blow come from the south? Southeast? As soon as the dogs appeared, they vanished toward the blowing of the horns. “Well, that does it,” says one of the Rangers, lowering his Winchester. “We’ve lost the element of surprise and might as well head back to Hemphill.” The local sheriff smiles with relief.

Target audiences would be men and women, 30-70, fans of Yellowstone, Kevin Costner, Taylor Sheridan, and Westerns, fans of Bluegrass, Folk, Country, and Western music, Texans, Louisianians, hog hunters, and other hunters, Texas Ranger aficionados, fans of John Wick’s dog, dog lovers, and gun enthusiasts.

Audiences would want to see it for its action, adventure, excitement of gunfights, thrills, suspense, twists, and turns of families and neighbors stuck between feuding clans, romance of the Old West, and simplicity of pioneer living, dogs, the Texas Rangers, and the unique beauty of East Texas.

Today’s historical story I would like to recommend for a movie is The Conner-Low-Smith Feud of Sabine County, Texas. For my research I have consulted, Red Sky Morning: The Epic True Story of Texas Ranger Company F by Joe Pappalardo, from Macmillan Publishers, Chapter 9: A Murderous Feud, December 5, 1883 of More Historic Murders of East Texas by Bob and Doris Bowman, from Best of East Texas Publishers, and a chapter in Gunsmoke in the Redlands By Joseph Franklin Combs, from The Naylor Company. AI Images were kindly provided by Disciples Media, LLC.

ACT ONE

Beginnings (pages 1-5)

In the virgin forests of eastern Sabine County, Texas, “Old Man” Willis Conner, along with his four mixed-breed Texas bulldogs, chases wolves. The dogs have been bred to hunt the wild animals that have been bothering Old Man Conner’s hogs that roam freely, eating nuts, and acorns on the open range that is the Big Thicket and creek bottoms lining the banks of Sabine River.

Up ahead, rifle shots ring out from the shadows of the forests. Old Man Willis sees a flash of fur in the undergrowth dash back towards him. He fires a shot that lays low the wolf. Then, despite missing two fingers, he raises his horn to his mouth and blows a signal. His sons emerge from the foliage from which they ambushed the rest of the wolf pack. Frederick, or Fed, is the oldest, with a Roman nose, and a cough when he speaks. The second oldest is Charles, or Charly, a bean pole whom the old man calls an “idiot.” Next is Leander, who is less of a bean pole, but makes up for it with the scars on his chin. Shorter still is Alfred, sometimes called “Alfie” or “Bubba,” who also has a scar on his upper lip. William Conner, auburn fair on both his head and face that he twirls while he talks and eyes that bulge out like a frog. John Conner is the youngest son and the shyest.

They take the wolf furs, the valuable trophies of their hunt, back to Old Man Conner’s place. There they are greeted by their women, including the Old Man’s wife, Piercy Conner, and his daughters, Nancy and Catherine. Catherine is married to John Williams, with whom she has four children. The oldest is a boy named Thomas.

The Connors have called the woods and bottoms of Bull Bay Creek home for over three decades, ever since Old Man Willis deserted from the US Army while fighting Seminoles in Florida after he was accused of murder in Georgia. He settled along the El Camino Real de los Tejas in East Texas, finding a place of hiding and peace among the thickets and hilly terrain. When sons Fred, Charles, Leander, and Alfred marry, they build their houses nearby. Soon the neighborhood is called the Conner Community. After four grandchildren die of illness in the late 1870s, the Conner Cemetery is built on a hill near Charly’s place.

Despite their insular nature, the Conners are involved in local politics. This brings about their first clash with two important families in Sabine County, the Smiths and Lows. The heart of the debate was the location of the Sabine County seat. The Connors believed that the center of the county was at Milam. But after a new survey was taken of the county,  the center was found to be six and three-quarter miles south of Milam, 10 miles away from the Conners and closer to the Smith homestead. The Smith and Low families supported the move to the new location, Hemphill. Although this conflict over the location of the courthouse did not result in bloodshed, as did similar disputes in Texas and Wild West History, it lit the fuse to the keg that would explode in violence between the families years later.

Second Thoughts (pages 5-15)

Unlike Willis Conner, Lewis L. “ Pete” Loggins was born in East Texas. He found his niche in society working as an apprentice at the Jasper Newsboy in nearby Jasper County. He married and got into politics, winning the office of county attorney. After his term was up, he ran another newspaper, The Saxon. He ran for district representative but lost the election. During his time as editor of The Saxon, he made enemies with Sabine Judge James Irvine

The main disagreement between the Conners and the Smiths and Low would be, of course, over hogs. While the Conners hunted and fished, and grew cotton, cane, and corn during summer, which they fenced in, and logged in winter, their main source of income was hogs. Like the herds of cattle on the prairies of West Texas they roamed across an open range of forest floor and swamp bottoms, rooting for nuts, acorns, and worms. They were rounded up in the fall and winter for harvesting, and brands were cut or notched into their ears. Records were kept on hand at the courthouse in Hemphill. The population of pigs outnumber that of people in 1880s Sabine County. 

Other things besides pigs stoked the simmering fire beneath the family feud. There are political disagreements with the Lowes and Smiths over better schools and roads. Surprisingly it is the backwoodsman Old Man Conner who is more progressive. At a dance following the January 19, 1882, wedding of Melissa Cordelia Travis and Isaac Low, both twenty-four-year-old William Christopher “Kit” Smith and Charles Conner bring their fiddles. Playing fiddles at dances was a way for men to earn extra income in that day and age so naturally there was a competitiveness between the two men. Smith, a large, overbearing man used to pushing people around has already stirred up trouble by building his homestead near the Conners, on what they consider their range. The festering competition between the two fiddlers erupts in a fistfight after the dance.

Kit Smith is friends with twenty-two-year-old Eli Low who has also built his cabin near the Conner’s range. The tension between Low and Old Man Conner is not as strong since they are distantly related through marriage. Nevertheless, in June 1882 while participating in a bridge raising over Six Mile Creek – when was the last time you saw that in a movie? – there is a confrontation between Low and William Conner that nearly comes to blows. Fed Conner is on the scene but does not participate.

Meanwhile, L. L. Loggins became involved with the land boom exploding in East Texas. He goes into business with a partner named Abraham Smith. The only problem is the land he tries to sell doesn’t belong to him. With accusations of deed forgery in the air, he was arrested and thrown into the Hemphill jail in September 1882. He set fire to the wooden structure and escaped during the evacuation.

In July 1883 he stokes and murders Abraham Smith. He takes refuge with his cousin who lives near the Conners. In the backwoods of the Sabine country, the lettered lawyer will ally with the dirt farmers.

The Conners have been feuding with the Smiths and Lows for over a year regarding the ownership of wild hogs, accusing them of cutting off their tails, dogging them, riding them down with horses, and throwing down the Conner’s fences.  A later advocate for the Conners, Sheriff Andrew Jackson Spradley, will all but accuse the Smith and Low families of being hog thieves. The following exchange between Eli Low’s father, Jack Low, and Old Man Conner, occurred on December 4:

Inciting Incident and Climax of Act One (Pages 15-25)

On December 5, Eli Low and Kit Smith, who had also had a threatening encounter with the Conners in the woods, mold bullets at the Low home. Despite the overcast skies, they ride off to hunt hogs. When they do not return by the 6^th, seven neighbors go looking for them. One of them is a man named Dan MacNaughton. The group finds their bodies on an isolated horse trail in an area six miles east of Hemphill known as Holly Bottom. It is also on the Conner’s range.

When the coroner finally arrives, the scene is nearly the same as the search party found it, except for the placement of Low’s body, which has been pulled out of a pool of rainwater. Smith’s empty gun, breech broken and bent, lays near his head. Low’s gun is found in the bayou. His shot pouch is on his body. Their horses, one wounded by a shotgun blast, graze in a nearby field.

The coroner rules that they have both been dead 24 hours from multiple gunshot wounds from buckshot, squirrel shot, and shotgun blasts. Kit Smith has a head wound in his left temple, pellet wounds in his right shoulder, and buckshot across his back. One of Low’s eyes is gone. One of his hands is up near his face, like a pleading shield. There are shotgun wounds in his lower back, two small shots made by pistol balls five inches apart.

Wadding is found on and near their bodies. Wadding is fabric patching tucked inside cartridges to seal the explosive gases in all directions but down. A lady guest of the Conners says she saw similar cloth on a loom in the home of Charley Conner. A merchant in Hemphill claims to have sold the wads – blue, white, and copperas – to the family. A neighbor told authorities he had heard them casually discussing the shooting without any surprise or remorse.  

Authorities settle on the Conners, who are notably absent from the funerals despite the fact both victims can claim a Conner man as a brother-in-law. A habeas corpus trial is held without them. With the help of L. L. Logins, the family tells the public through letters that they are innocent of the murders and will not submit to trial under the circumstances. They remind the people of Sabine County that they had helped build the community and were now being persecuted. When they finally do surrender, they wear their best clothing and hire former state senator William Weatherred and James Polly to represent them.  Willis Conners and his sons John, Charles, Fed, and Wiliams were indicted for murder on February 16, 1884. As prisoners, they gave their guards no trouble.

ACT TWO

First Obstacle (Pages 25-35)

Hemphill is a town of 350 people so nearly everyone is related by marriage, making it hard for the trial to be fair and impartial. Nineteen-year-old Octavine Cooper is the star witness. Her father is related to murder victim “Kti “Smith, state’s witness Alex McDaniel, and the accused murderer Charles Conner. Victim Eli Low is her second cousin. She had moved into the house of their half-sister and Charles Conner six weeks before the killings to be a teacher to Willis Conner’s daughter, Nancy. There she had heard the Conners talk of what they should do about the activities of the Lows and Smiths and had seen the colorful wads.

Surprisingly two key witnesses are African American men, Joe Ford and John Marshall. They were working for the Conners the day of the murder and had seen them take guns with them when they went to round up hogs. Then they heard gunshots from the direction in which the Conners had gone, a number that coincided with the corner’s inquiry. They and other witnesses claim to have heard the Conners talking about what they should do with the Lows and Smiths and dismissing the murders of the men because now they couldn’t bother their hogs. Because Ford’s court testimony does not line up with that of his examination during the habeas corpus trial, there are charges of witness tampering.

But despite these charges and the circumstantial evidence, Fed was convicted of murder in the first degree and given a life term in the state penitentiary. Charles was convicted in the second degree and given twenty-five in the pen. The trials for John, William, and Willis await and they are shipped to the jail in Nacogdoches for safekeeping. In Sabine County, a mob might free them or lynch them. In charge of the transfer is Sheriff A. J. Spradley who listens to the prisoner’s side of the story. They tell him that Smith drew his rifle first. Old Man Conner says they “shouldn’t have brought Charly along, idiot that he is.”

Fed’s conviction was overturned in October 1884, but he must wait in jail for a new trial. Charles is sent to the Huntsville Penitentiary where he is to remain until released in 1909 at the age of sixty-one. On March 14, 1885, Catherine Conner Williams’ husband was committed by a jury of six to a mental hospital in Austin. Preteen Thomas is now the man of the Willaims household. John, William, and Willis continue to wait in detention for their trials. Authorities, believing that tensions have died down in the Sabine area, return them to the Hemphill jail.

But during the winter of 1884-85, public opinion in Sabine County shifts in favor of the Conners. They were defending their homesteads and livelihoods. None of their statements were tantamount to confessions or admission. And the evidence was just circumstantial. Alferd Conner sells a piece of property for $200.

Second Obstacles / Rising Tensions (Pages 35-50)

On March 25, 1885, a group led by Loggins approached the jail in Hemphill. He leads a group that includes Leander and Alfred Conner, his cousin Jim Sanders, a schoolteacher, a member of the coroner’s jury that oversaw the Smith-Low murders, a man seeking to free his brother on an unrelated charge, and a dozen other mostly upstanding citizens of varying degrees.

Loggins is familiar with the wooden jail after his previous escape. The group pries open the wooden floorboards. Out wiggles Willis, Fed, Bill, and John. A couple of other criminals take the opportunity to escape. The overzealous friends and relatives of the Conners have crossed the Rubicon and are now on the wrong side of the river opposite the law.

The Conners escape into their backyard, where they send a message to law enforcement that they are stocked up on weapons and will never be arrested again. They know every trail for twenty miles and have twenty-six dogs trained to search for law officers. They cross the Sabine River into Louisiana at will, where efforts by Texas officials to extradite them fail. At least 75 men join in a hunt for the outlaw family. Every hunt comes up empty as the family evades capture for eleven humiliating months. “Pete” Loggins, on the other hand, continues to write news articles at the expense of Judge  Perkins while pursuing a new career as a doctor.

On September 5^th, 1885, several of the jailbreakers were indicted. The town splits into two uneasy camps. Members of the community meet the Conners in the woods and give them food and other supplies. Other members of the community fear for their lives at night. There are reports of the “Conner Gang” robbing farmers of their crops. Citizen-led manhunts, private detectives, sheriffs from three counties, and Texas Rangers in solo or pairs backed up by local deputies fail to penetrate the thickets of the Sabine country.

 Live goes on for the Conners. Piercy Conner sells land in her name for $500. The funds will go to support the fugitives. Nancy Conner marries Issac “Little Ike” Low despite the bad blood between their families. Fed and his wife had a child in 1886.

Midpoint – Crisis (pages 50-60)

A new sheriff is elected but he doesn’t go after the men. Loggins writes to Judge Perkins offering to settle the matter in a civilized manner. The judge, who has defended black men in the past when it was unpopular, refuses to compromise the law. Soon Judge Perkins and the sheriff, distressed over the feud that is depopulating the county, appeal to officials in Austin to place rewards on the Conner’s heads. Ammunition is given to the judge and sheriff when William Weatherred, the Conners’ attorney who botched their case, finds the outline of a pistol imprinted on his pillow in the sanctity of his house. Nobody knows who left it, possibly Loggins, but Governor John Ireland puts 200 dollars a piece on the outlaws’ heads. Except for Fed, who is wanted for $300. He also calls in the Texas Rangers.

Rising Obstacles / Rising Action (Pages 60-70)

Rangers have already been working in the area. One of them is Captain William Scott. He could be introduced in a movie with a depiction of his role in fighting the outlaw Sam Bass. In August 1886, Willaim W. Weatherred and his former co-council James Polley from the Conner case are now deputized to create a citizen’s posse to join Scott and the Rangers. They hear that Alfred has crossed the Sabine River and is working in the lumber industry around Lake Charles where he thinks he’ll be safe from Texas law enforcement. But the Rangers just crossed right over the state line and arrested him there. A weary Leander turns himself over to the Texas authorities shortly thereafter. For their roles in the prison break, they and their neighbors will be given four years in Huntsville. Loggin’s cousin Jim Sander will die there due to the conditions.

Loggins writes back and forth with Sheriff Spradley trying to secure liberty through compromise. When that doesn’t work, he flees the county and ends up in Little Rock writing for The Arkansas Democrat. He will also marry despite still having a wife in Texas.

The Conners live like Indians, always on the large in the dense woods. They keep a close eye on their property while their women folk and friends supply them with ground flour, cornmeal, and primer for their shotgun shells. Despite this setup, there are no information leaks.

On February 2, 1887, Captain William Scott sets out into the impenetrable thickets with a posse to capture the remaining Conners. Some local officers refuse to work with the Ranger. When Spradley hears that Scott’s policy is to “shoot first, talk afterward,” he perfectly understands.

As the Rangers advance through the woods, dogs come out of nowhere and everywhere, barking, snarling, and howling. The hounds serve two purposes. They are a security alarm for the Conners and wild geese for the Rangers to chase.  The Conner men blow two different horns at different locations and the dogs take off toward the sounds. The searchers have not only lost the element of surprise but are also confused about the direction of their prey. When was the last time you saw that in a film? To Spradley’s relief, the posse gives up the chase.

It is time to call in Company F of the Texas Rangers.

Higher Obstacle (Pages 70-80)

F Company consists of two of the “Four Captains” of the Texas Rangers, John H. “The Praying Ranger” Rogers and James A. Brooks. They could be introduced earlier in the film catching fence cutters and cattle rustlers on the plains of Texas, including interrupting a wedding of cowboys and settlers to arrest a whole gang in one swoop. They even go as far as rigging dynamite to the fences to explode when the outlaws cut the barbed wire.

Other Rangers can be introduced with a horse race, during which Private J. H. “Jim” Moore’s right stirrup gives way. The laces that fastened the stirrup to the saddle had been cut as a practical joke, a hazing. The other Rangers of Company F include Billy Treadwell, Bob Crowder, Ed Caldwell, Len Harvy, and Bob Fenton.

The Rangers arrived in Hemphill in March 1887, where they teamed up with the citizen’s posse under Weatherred. Their greatest weapon will be local guides that start from the southern border of Sabine County and come north through the thickets, slowly working their way up, day to day. Local lore says the Rangers have two informants, Redden Alford and Fed Conner’s brother-in-law,  Milton Anthony. Milton, through Nancy Conner, will help the Conners go for a hunt. Then, under the guise of going to town for supplies, he will tell Alford where the Conner’s Camp is located. Then Alford will guide Company F and the citizen’s posse to the campsite.

The Rangers tramp through the woods for days with no sign of the Conners. Scratching and cussing all night, they are hungry, tired, and angry. Scott accuses Alford of being a liar. Alford insists that a hill with five pines called Camp Handy is where they’ll find the Conners. Scott divides the posse into two groups. Six men  – The Rangers – will go to the right and six men – the civilians under Weatherred – will go to the left. They climb the hill and get the drop on —

— an empty campsite.

Old Man Conner has been watching these “wolves” that have invaded his range. Like on a wolf hunt, the Conners found the Rangers’ trail, then doubled back ahead of their quarry and were ready to surprise their approaching prey with a volley from a position of their choosing.

Early on the morning of March 31st, 1887, a small gentle creek called Lick Branch will become known as Bloody Gulch as the Conners open fire on the Rangers. Private “Jim” Moore is killed by a bullet through his heart. John Rodgers is hit in his arm and side. The other Rangers fire back as best they can, trying to meet the barrage with superior fire.

The Conners have the advantage of the high ground as they fire down on the Rangers from twenty-to-thirty feet away. Scott and Brooks take beads on William Conner. Both of their shots send him to the ground. William continues to fire from the knees until another Winchester bullet fells him for good. But then Brooks is down, a finger on his left hand gone, two more mangled, with a bullet lodged in his right wrist after burrowing through his fingers on that hand. A ball rips into Scott’s shoulder and plunges into his chest, breaking ribs and puncturing a lung. The captain fires his Winchester as long as he can, crawling on his hands and knees to get a better shot.

Billy Treadwell throws himself to the ground after his weapon stops working. Now only Carmichael faces the Conners. Brooks aids him by firing his Colt while prone. Scott propped up against a tree, returns fire into the woods. One bullet kills the Conner’s pack mule. Another wounds Fed. One hundred shots fill the air during the battle as the Conners fire upon the company from different directions. Even their dogs take part in the fight.

The civilian posse under Weatherred is cautious about running into the same ambush and by the time they arrive on the scene Willis, John, and Fed have retreated, leaving behind the body of Williams. Willis will later claim that they ran out of bullets. When the posse pushes up to the abandoned position of the outlaw family, they find the abandoned body of the mule, a handful of hunting dogs, and a cache of supplies. Brooks orders the dogs killed and the supplies burned. Here family lore becomes confused with history.  William Conner is still alive when one member of the Rangers approaches him. William asks for water. One Ranger says, “Here’s your water,” before shooting him in the mouth.

The Rangers are four miles from their horses and 14 miles from Hemphill. Scott sends orders to fetch doctors from nearby towns. The remaining Rangers form a perimeter to protect the dead and wounded for the night. Scott’s sister, Miss Vernon Scott, drives a wagon out to Lick Branch to rescue her brother.

Company F retreats to Hemphill for medical aid. Jim Moore is buried in the local cemetery. Since the Rangers are no match for the Conners on their range, with the help of Weatherred’s “Council of Citizens,” begin to round up sympathizers, relatives, and citizens suspected of aiding and abaiting the Conners. Twelve men are arrested, some dragged out of their beds during the night, before a local attorney challenges the legality and stops the council.

The Rangers call in bloodhounds from Huntsville used to hunt inmates to track down the Conners, but the trail has grown cold. The outlaw family has melted farther back into the tangled forest. Sheriff Spradley joins in the search. He stops by Nancy Conner’s place, where she relates her version of the events: The Rangers ambushed the Conner men.

Highest Obstacles and Climax of Act Two (Pages 80-90)

Shortly after this time, John Conner disappears. Under an alias he crosses the Sabine River and takes up residence at a place in Louisiana called The Devil’s Pocket. Now only Old Man Conner and Fed remain to fight side-by-side. Fed takes to wearing women’s clothing to go outside to work. However, he cannot provide for his wife Nancy Conner, who must save up money to buy a replacement mule for the one killed by the Rangers. There is tension between Nancy, her sister-in-law Docia (who has a scandalous past despite her teenage years), and Fed over Milton Anthony working on the farm. Fed holds his brother-in-law responsible for the ambush because he would have known where they were camped after having hunted with them that night. Fed gives him an ultimatum: Leave Sabine County.

The next night Milton is riding to get medicine for his sick daughter when a bullet snatches the hat off his hat. He rides to his father Thomas Anthony and shows him the hole in his hat. That does it! It is time for the men of east Sabine County to do what the Rangers and Weatherred “council of citizens” could not: Put an end to the Conner troubles once and for all.

Unlike the Rangers but like the Conners these neighbors and in-laws turned assassins know the lay of the land of the Sabine country. Motivated by the state’s reward money, they could follow every trail and hummock as well as their prey. Lows and Anthonys make up a good portion of the posse. Among their leaders was a relative of the Lows, Dan McNaughton, who had had it in for the Conners ever since seeing the bodies at Holly Bottom. And a mysterious R. C. Turner, who might have been a private detective disguised as a cattleman. Due to his presence, the vigilantes became known as the Turner Posse.

Meanwhile, Loggin’s legal wife leaves Texas and finds him in Arkansas, where he is practicing medicine and writing news articles under the alias Dr. Hemphill. He manages to quiet her and send her back to the Lone Star State for the time. But when she returns with the law in tow, exposing him as a bigamist and causing him to lose all his supporters, he goes on the lam.

The Turner Posse managed to convince a Conner sympathizer and son-in-law, “Little Ike” Low, that, in the words of Pappalardo, ‘to save one brother-in-law he had to help kill another brother-in-law.” Isaac often provided the Conners with food, who let their guard down as they chatted with him. “Little Ike,” tells the posse that the Conners use certain trails every day. He allows the Rangers to use his remote crib.

On October 25^, 1887, Fed and Old Man Conner approach the crib. They do not know that inside a posse is huddled with shotguns and Winchesters, who peer at them through the slats. As the two Conners cross in front of the small wooden structure, the posse gives the command to halt. The Conners’ response is to raise their weapons. Soon the clearing is filled with the rattle of lever action rifles and booms of shotguns.

Fed advances on the small cabin, hoping to fire through the slats. One source says that he had nail-embedded cartridges for his specially designed-rifle. A shot blows the cabin doors off the hinges. Fed is injured and falls no more than ten feet from the cabin. He pulls out his Colt Frontier and continues to fight until a Winchester’s bullet ends his life.  

Willis finds safety behind a stump. “You killed my boy,” he yells as he continues to shoot. A shot grazes Thomas Anthony, who loses the tip of a finger due to shrapnel from one of his own shots that ricocheted off the slats. The posse continues to fire at Willis Conner as he dashes to the shelter of the pine trees, one bullet hitting his arm. After firing nearly 50 shots, the posse is too tired to pursue their wounded quarry. Fed is buried alongside his children Millie and Monroe who had died in 1877 of diphtheria.

Now Old Man Conner is the last man standing.

ACT THREE

Climax of Act Three (Pages 90-100)

Meanwhile, Loggins is captured in Tennessee where he was working for the Southern Methodist Publishing House and extradited to Arkansas. He supposedly has a mental breakdown in jail, reportedly pricking his eye with a needle. During the trial, he displays some gutsy theatrics in an attempt to move the judge, who finds him guilty of bigamy and sentences him to time in the Arkansas state pen.  Loggins escapes on the way to the pen but is quickly recaptured.

In Sabine County, the Turner posse watches the homes of Old Man Conner’s relatives and friends day and night. Willis is now sixty years old and improvised, living in a shelter made from a thicket of tree branches. His 12-year-old grandson, Thomas Williams carries food to him every day, down a forked trail that is just as crooked as the different versions of what happened on November 13, 1887.

On that day Thomas did what he always did, unaware that a posse led by Turner trailed him. As normal his grandfather set aside his rifle to take food from his grandson. Some say that the posse ordered Thomas to run and gave Old Man Conner time to surrender but he reached for his rifle. Another version says he fired at the posse even though his grandson was in the way and after he had been hit. Others say that the vigilantes simply opened fire and Thomas was caught in the crossfire. Another source says Dan McNaughten said, “We might as well end it forever” and had the grandson shot. Or that he said, “Still tongues don’t talk,” and killed the boy himself.

However it occurred, both a senior citizen grandfather and his preteen grandson lay dead on the floor of an East Texas forest, victims of a hotheaded and misguided injustice.

Resolution / Coda (pages 100-105)

Willis is buried next to Fed and William. There are no adult Conner males left in the county. The reward money is collected by Milton Anthony’s father Thomas Anthony. But, as in any good Greek tragedy, hubris proves the undoing of the self-proclaimed good citizens of Sabine County who would otherwise be considered heroes for returning law and order to the area.  Like Sophoclean heroes, in their seal for ridding the country of outlaws, they had become outlaws.  

According to Pappalardo, as soon as the body of Thomas Williams had hit the forest floor, public opinion in the county swung in favor of the outlaw family. The Turner posse is considered no better than a lynch party by other locals. Soon educated newspapermen are defending the backwoods family. Before the month is out the Texas governor has reduced the reward money for John, “reformed from his bad habits, although still a fugitive,” by a hundred dollars.

Leander and Alfred Conner are released from the Texas state pen on good behavior. Members of the Conner and Smith families marry and seek to put the feud behind them. Judge Perkins and former posse member Weatherred sense the change in public sentiment and, seeking to distance themselves from the Turner posse, petition the governor for a pardon for Charles Conner. He was pardoned and released on March 18, 1889, and joined his brothers in repopulating the area with little Conners. Nearly all the jailbreakers are pardoned. Even though the murder charge against him is dropped, John is the only Conner to never return to Sabine County. He remained in Louisiana, became an alcoholic, and spent his last years in the State Insane Asylum in Jackson, where he was buried on the grounds upon his death in 1910.

After serving his time, Loggins is released from the state pen in Arkansas and into handcuffs held by Texas law enforcement. He’s sentenced to life in prison for his murder of Abraham Smith. He was pardoned, possibly due to corruption, in 1901. He was killed in 1905 in a shootout over a woman.

Dan McNaughton lived with guilt over his role in the death of Thomas Williams. In 1920 he told his family that if anything happened to him not blame the Conners. He killed himself later that year.

In 1983 Texas Governor Bill Clements reviewed the case of Alfred “Bubba” Conner and issued him a pardon for his role in the jailbreak

Conclusion

The Conner-Low-Smith Feud would make a great Western. There are shootouts, ambushes, a jailbreak, changing allegiances between relatives and neighbors, an old-fashioned sensational newspaperman – “When the legend becomes fact, print the legend” – open range, fence cutting, a barn dance, and ever dog attacks like those in the John Wick movies. Then there are the Texas Rangers. In a day and age when the Rangers’ excesses against Native Americans and Hispanics are being used to smear law enforcement, their late 19th-century quest to bring justice to white train robbers, cattle rustlers, and feuding families should be used to balance the picture and honor them. John Rogers, who was defeated by the Conners at Bloody Gulch, said that the most desperate outlaws were white, remarking to a reporter, “They make the best citizens and most dangerous criminals of them all.”

I would like to see the Conner feud made into a movie because East Texas is a great place to film a Western. In some areas, the tall trees have blocked out sunlight to the smaller plants and turned the forest floor into grassland similar to the prairies of the Great Plains. In other places, the foliage of the Big Thicket is so grown up and deep that it has the same maddening psychological effect as the jungle. If you have ever had to hack your way through such underbrush on a hot summer day, you can relate to a cowboy lost in the desert “thirsting for water.”

A more personal reason I would like to see this story told in a film is that my family came from the same area. If you ever drive through present-day Sabine County and its sister parish across the river, you can feel that time moves slowly and the mantle of history hangs heavy. My distant cousin Weldon McDaniel who helped Pappalardo write Red Sky Morning is related to Kit Smith.  On the way to family reunions, my family would drive through some of the places the book mentions, including Milam. Other places, like Holly Bottom, are under the waters of Toledo Bend Reservoir which displaced a lot of people, including my family, who weren’t that different or far removed from the Conners, Lows, and Smiths. The government told these hardscrabble people that the lake would boost the economy by bringing in tourists. Well, you know how well you can trust the government. I would like to help make a film about the Conners, Lows, and Smiths to vicariously honor my family and other backwoods folks displaced by the reservoir. Maybe interest in the Wild West in East Texas would bring in the tourists the government promised but failed to deliver.

Because it is an exciting Western set in an unusual location that features Texas Rangers and dogs while honoring the hardscrabble people of East Texas is why I think The Conner-Low-Smitg Feud Should Be A Movie