Track Down

Synopsis

Sometime in the late winter of 1889, a forward-thinking outlaw named Josiah Gordon Scurlock devised a plan that would take him out of the dirt and grime of ranching along the Rio Ruidoso in New Mexico Territory and set him up for life on Easy Street.

As a young man he had received some secondary education and even some medical training in his home state of Alabama. The nickname "Doc" stayed with him for the rest of his life.

He was smallish in stature, with dark blond hair that curled along his collar and behind his rather prominent ears. He'd become a hardened criminal, riding with the Evans Gang during the Lincoln County wars and was a founding member of the Lincoln Regulators after participating in the murder of John Tunstall. Following that watershed event, Doc Scurlock was involved in most of the battles in Lincoln County.

Now, he was forty years old and tired of life in the saddle. His plan would involve the kidnap for ransom of a prominent member of a wealthy family in Odessa. He recruited an old friend, A Black man named Isom Dart, as deadly a pistoleer as ever there was and two ne'er do well, small-time gunnies named Frank Jackson and Dutch Henry Borne. As part of his scheme he recruited four Comanche Reservation Jumpers to aid in the confusion of lawmen who would certainly be tracking their movements.

North of Pecos City on the Pecos River was the land that became the Red Wolf Rancheria. It was owned by the son of an extremely wealthy man named Ethan Lacey. His son's name was Ezra, and Ezra's wife's name was Rebecca. Doc Scurlock's plan was a simple one, but vital to its success was confusing the trackers that would surely follow.

What they didn't count on was the tracking skill of Ezra Lacey and the relentless pursuit of the most feared Lawman in Texas, U.S. Deputy Marshal Frank Bass.

What follows is their story.