Josiah Gordon Scurlock

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Josiah Gordon 'Doc' Scurlock was born in Tallapoosa, Alabama on January 11, 1849. He was a founding member of the Regulators during the Lincoln County War along with Billy the Kid.

Doc was described as 5ft. 8in. tall, weight 150 pounds, brown eyes, and dark brown hair. He had lost his front teeth when shot in an argument during a card game. The man who shot him is said to have been less fortunate.

Scurlock worked as a line rider for John Chisum in 1873. Sometime during that year he and Jack Holt were surprised by a group of Indians. Holt was killed but Scurlock found refuge among some rocks. After a protracted fight he killed the leader of the Indians. During the night he slipped away and walked 20 miles for help. When Holt’s body was found he had not been scalped, but his right arm had been removed at the elbow. To his dying day Scurlock wondered why. Over 30 years ago a collector in Mesilla, N.M., showed the writer an Apache war club in which the handle was covered with the skin of a right forearm and that of the hand and fingers brought around the stone head so that they appeared to be gripping it. He has often wondered whether the skin could have been Holt’s.

In 1875 Doc made the papers by stealing three horses, two saddles, and a gun, and lighting out for Arizona. He must have returned quite soon, however, since on September 2, 1876, he accidentally shot and killed his close friend Mike G. Harkins, manager of John H. Riley’s store at Blazer’s Mill.

Scurlock served as a deputy sheriff under Sheriff John Copeland. On May 14, 1878, he led a posse including Billy the Kid, Bowdre, George Coe, Brown, Scroggins, and others to the number of perhaps 18 or 20 to the Dolan-Riley cattle ranch, ostensibly in search of those implicated in the killing of MacNab and the wounding of Saunders. According to Riley they drove off 26 horses and two mules, killed a herder named Wair, a Navajo Indian employed at the ranch as a cook, and a 15-year-old boy called Johnny.30 However, W.T. Thornton, Thomas B. Catron’s law partner, reported that the latter two were only wounded.31

Since Catron had foreclosed on the property of J.J. Dolan & Co., the horses appear to have been his property. As a result of his strong protest to the governor, Copeland was removed as sheriff. Thus the raid by the Regulators resulted in the removal of one of their partisans from a position of authority and his replacement with George W. Peppin, who was just as strongly attached to the other side.

About October or November, 1879, Scurlock moved to Texas, where he settled down and became a highly respected citizen. He died at Eastland, Texas, on July 25, 1929.

[edit] Film Portrayal

In the films Young Guns and Young Guns 2, Scurlock was portrayed by actor Kiefer Sutherland. He was portrayed as a poetry writing and moral cowboy. At the end of the first film, Scurlock left Billy The Kid's posse and left New Mexico with an Asian woman he fell for earlier in the movie. In the second installment, he is arrested in New York and saved from hanging by The Kid. He rejoins Billy's posse and is killed in an ambush by Sheriff Pat Garrett. This is innacurate, as Scurlock died peacefully in Texas.