I, Tom Horn

by Will Henry

We were going to be in on the kill.

  Contrabandista Spring

  It was only after we had been called in and told of our assignments that me and Al Sieber were given the rest of the excitement. At long last, the army had got around to chasing Indians with other Indians, as the old Iron Man and his "boy" had been trying to tell them for seven years. Wirt Davis's command was to have only one company of white troops, three of San Carlos and Fort Apache Indians. Crawford's force was even more thumping to the pulse; but for its chief scout and its white field officers, the entire one hundred riders of the command were to be my enlisted Apache scouts.

  Now Geronimo and his Bedonkohe broncos were done for.

  Gokliya was finished, and the rest of the Chiricahua bad ones with him.

  Our columns went into the field at once. We moved apart but in continual touch, pushing always deeper into the wild Mexican monte. January of 1886, mid-month, Crawford located the main stronghold of the Chiricahua Apache in a mile-deep, uncharted canyon south of Janos and west of the Rio Casas Grandes. Tom Horn and Al Sieber, with Merijilda Grijole, were the three scouts found it for him (and Tom Horn is still waiting to hear the Army say so).

  The Chiricahua scouts discovered us early, but Crawford's one hundred Apache troops were real war dogs, and we got the entire enemy horse herd, along with a big surround of squaws and children all ages. While we regrouped our scattered Indian riders to follow up the main bunch of hostile men who had made it away, in came an old squaw saying to Crawford that Gokliya (Geronimo) had sent her and wanted a meeting set for his surrender the next day. Our stout captain agreed, but brave Emmett Crawford was never to see Geronimo.

  It was not the Apache but the damned Mexicans that brought the tragedy on us.

  A big bunch of their sungrinner cavalry jumped our camp before daybreak, to get at our troops because they were composed of Apache Indians. Poor Crawford, than who no braver officer nor finer man ever saw Indian service, took a bullet into his head which let out a part of his brains onto the rock against which he fell. Lieutenant Maus took over, and we retreated some miles in a fair disorder, but gathered again. We made camp that evening, prepared for anything. It was a scary night and cold as rim ice.

  But next morning our young lieutenant got a happy relief along with his hardtack and hot water.

  The Mex irregulars who had jumped us had been hounding Geronimo and the Chiricahua hostiles right hard previous to our arrival, and for once we got the benefit of their drive. For, lo! who was that up in the sunrise rocks above our nervous night-camp? Could that six-foot devil looking eight foot tall posed up yonder on the slope like Moses be who he looked to be?

  He was; his deep bass voice soon enough rolled down to let us know it.

  "You know who I am. You know my name. I am ready to talk."

  As he spoke, a number of subchiefs, warriors, and fighting women with some older children began to appear out of the same rocks, forming a red phalanx about the feet of their granite-faced messiah. There were a mort of them, many of substantial reputation, and young Maus was shook to his muddy spurs. "For God's sake, Horn," he said to me, "what will we do? What would Crawford have done?"

  "He'd have talked to them, lieutenant," I said.

  "Yes, yes, of course. Tell them that, man."

  "Hold the men steady, sir," I said, and I moved out a little away from Maus. Looking up that mountainside into the morning sun, I quivered a bit in flank myself. Goddamn but those were rough-looking Indians up there. And Geronimo the most ominous of all.

  "Gokliya," I called out, "do you remember me?"

  I thought the answering silence would never end.

  But Geronimo laughed of a sudden and said of course he remembered me, he always remembered young men who stole prize young wives from him. "How are you, Talking Boy?" he said. "Where is Seebie? Where is Captain Crawford?"

  "Seebie is with Captain Davis," I said. "Captain Crawford is resting. This is Lieutenant Maus. He will talk for Crawford."

  "I won't talk to him."

  "Talk to me then, Gokliya." I made him the Indian sign of respect, touching the brow toward him. "What is it you came to say? We will be quiet for a chief."

  That reached him. He seemed to grow another foot taller up there on the mountain.

  "Listen, Seebie's Boy," he rumbled down, a sudden anxiousness upon him, "we hate these Mexican people as you do. We want to go home with you to your country. We are all done fighting down here. We will put our families in your care so that you may see we do not talk two ways. Go and tell that to your officer."

  I went quickly back and consulted with Maus.

  He knew Crawford had come to trust me to interpret for him, as Wirt Davis trusted Sieber. When I told him he must let me talk for him, to set up the surrender with Geronimo, he agreed at once. "Hit me on the shoulders with both your hands," I told him. "Then point to me and point from me up to Geronimo and back from him to yourself. That tells him you name me to talk for you. Your boy. Your talking boy. All right, hit me."

  He did so, smartly.

  On the mountainside we heard the audible "Ahhhh!" of the waiting Apaches. They all moved, unbidden, farther down the slope, halting finally just above us. And God but they were a fascinating and beautiful sight. Seeing them so close sucked my breath away. It was a long minute before I could speak.

  I asked Geronimo if he was ready, and he was.

  The following is precisely the words and the way that it went, written in the eye of my memory as firm, and clear as any parchment scribed with ink and pen.

  HORN: To begin, be very careful what you ask; little can be given.

  GERONIMO: All right, yes. Nana will go with you now, right now. Nachee and I need time to gather our people and to influence Josanie and Chihuahua to come in with us. We will put our wives and children in your care and will, the others of us, all come north in two moons to talk with Red Beard. We will not speak with any other. Now let me tell you what place we will come up there to meet Red Beard in.

  HORN: Wait now. Do you think that Seebie taught me to be a fool?

  GERONIMO: Say what you mean.

  HORN: I mean I would be a fool to let you pick the place. We will pick the place. Now say yes or no.

  GERONIMO: I don't see you speak to the new soldier chief (Maus). I think he doesn't know anything and you are bluffing for him.

  HORN: The place will be Cañon de los Embudos. No other place.

  GERONIMO: Well, all right. But no soldiers. Is that heard?

  HORN: Agreed. (The Indians did not know we were out of ammunition and food, and Crawford in a coma dying.)

  GERONIMO: I mean not even the few soldiers that you have here now.

  HORN:You did not mean that. These are Apache scouts. You meant white soldiers. Talk one way.

  GERONIMO: (laughing) You have learned well from your father. (Sieber) I like that. Yes, no white soldiers.

  HORN: It is done then.

  GERONIMO: Anh, yes, all done. Ugashe—!

  And that, indeed, was the end of it there on the sunlit mountainside in Sierra del Norte, Mexico. The Apache remaining with Geronimo went south. Those staying with us turned to the north. I never saw that country again.

  Nor wanted to.

  The Indians were another matter.

  In March, General Crook, talking through Lieutenant Marion Maus—whose tongue was Tom Horn—met with the Chiricahua, as agreed, in Funnel Canyon, called by them Cañon de los Embudos. Geronimo, Chihuahua, Josanie, and Nachee all came in as promised by Geronimo. Nana, the old Warm Springs killer, we already had in custody from the talk on the mountainside.

  Their friend Red Beard Crook spoke—again and always through me—with an unexpectedly harsh, because bluntly honest, tone. He offered the Apache only tears and punishment for the sorrows they had brought both Mexico and the United States. Terms of the surrender were crushing: the Apache must give up unconditionally, they were to understand that they would be sent to
Florida, the dreaded "Hot Place."

  It seemed an exodus of the wild Indians would follow, but it did not. The Chiricahua had been too long driven, had lost too much tribal blood, were too weary and starved and lost in spirit to continue.

  A compromise of sorts was arranged: they would surrender on Red Beard's terms if they could spend but two years in Florida. Crook accepted this limitation and climbed on his roach-maned army mule.

  "All of this is over now," he had me tell Geronimo. "You have given me your last promise. Remember that."

  This was his entire "speech" at Canon de los Embudos. Delivering it, he turned the mule and rode out of the canyon, bouncing and jarring to the rude gait of the lopeared charger some say he loved better than any man.

  His departure, with all his staff, left Lieutenant Maus and Tom Horn to supervise the march of the Chiricahua from Cañon de los Embudos to surrender site.

  For two days all went well. The last night we camped the lot of them—upwards of 125 of them, mostly famous or infamous wild bronks—just to the south of the U.S. border. It was there that rotgut hell caught up with Cherry Cow destiny.

  Charles "Swiss Charley" Tribolet was the bastard's name. He was running an Indian trading post on the line but some miles off from where we were. He was a notorious fence for the stuff the Apaches stole on both sides of the border, but he mostly did a cash business in skull-buster whiskey at $10 silver the quart.

  Tribolet was likewise a known member of the Indian Ring in Washington, D.C., and worked for them as Sieber and me could easy prove. Sieber had documented evidence which I had seen that Swiss Charley was given his orders by the Ring. And more. He had also a letter intercepted by our Indians at the San Carlos post office which showed that the whiskey runner was explicitly paid by the Ring to do the hellish thing he done that night. Why the old German chose never to reveal this letter, only he knows. I think it was to let the dead past bury its dead. Seebie believed in tomorrow; he always rode with his shadow behind him, toward the day.

  But Tribolet didn't wait for any sunrise; he did his labors in the dark. That night of our last camp in Mexico, he voyaged toward us through the chaparral with a double mule-load of kegged whiskey, plus a big pannier of cheap squaw gimcracks to grease the celebration. At a spot not far off from our fires, he set up his floating whiskey camp in a tangle of lonely brush called Contrabandista Spring. It became then merely a matter of letting the Apache leaders under our guard know that the drinks were on Swiss Charley.

  Business was brisk, once so advertised.

  And all sales were final.

  Tribolet soon had the worst of our Indians, Geronimo, Nachee, and Chihuahua—all known bad drinkers—well into the staggers. When he saw that he had the three of them "fired up," he let drop to them that he, Swiss Charley, had learned that Lieutenant Maus and the traitor Talking Boy Horn were leading them into a trap set by General Crook just over the American border. They would be put in irons, placed in unknown soldier jails, never see their loved ones again. Well, Christ Jesus, that was it.

  Geronimo and Nachee, with twenty-one men and nineteen squaws and pups, stampeded. As Al Sieber later wrote of it, "they lit out back down into Mexico, fetlock, gunstock and whiskey barrel." Tom Horn had no comment for the occasion. They had been his Indians and had got away from him. Bright remarks wouldn't bring them back.

  We got the details of the treachery of Swiss Charley the next day. It came from Chihuahua. The old boy had gotten too happy the night previous. He could not in fact stay on his pony, but kept falling off, and so didn't make it away with the others. We found him with his aching head dunked into the cold water of Contrabandista Spring, one moccasined foot still hung up in the stirrup of his faithful pony, which stood patiently by him cropping mesquite beans and dropping horse apples on the fallen chief. But Chihuahua gave us the line on Tribolet and on the vanished Geronimo. We thanked him for that and pulled him out of the horse apples. He seemed grateful.

  Back at camp, I asked Lieutenant Maus for the loan of Merijilda and a permit to go after Swiss Charley. Maus understood. "Go get him," he said. "Unofficial."

  We ran the bastard trader three full days and damn near got him, but the Indians were helping him lay his trail, and they mighty close to killed us from a dry-gully rifle pit down on the Mexican side, and me and Merijilda figured we had done our duty. We went back and picked up Maus and our remaining Chiricahuas, some seventy-nine of them, as I remember it. We got them on over the line into the U.S. and then safe up to San Carlos. They were restless as hell and there was some fair doubt we would have come off so good, but that crusty old Nana had persuaded Chihuahua and even crazy Josanie to pitch in and quieten down their people.

  They were Judas goats, the poor wild devils.

  Every one of their seventy-nine kinfolk that followed them into San Carlos, and themselves with them, were seized and sent onto the train for Florida "for life," routed for Fort Marion to an existence of whipped dogs, lied to, cheated, and shamed to the end.

  General Crook did his level best to fight the double cross of their sentences. But the government broke its word to him, a sorrow he bore to the grave.

  Nor was that all.

  But twelve days after we got home from Mexico with our Indians, General Nelson A. Miles was given the command in Arizona and arrived at Fort Bowie to assume it.

  Crook was sent off back up north to the Department of the Platte. The Ring had got him at last. He was the best friend the Apache had. His end forecast their own. The day of the Chiricahua had come to twilight.

  So neared its close the field book of campaigning that brought me and Al Sieber to the grits of our own last decision. Like always, it wasn't us that made it. It was our shadows. The ones we cast that night at Contrabandista Spring—or that Tom Horn cast there alone—and cost George Crook, "the old clothes soldier," his honorable peace with the Apache people.

  Skeleton Canyon

  Let it not be said amongst his friends that Tom Horn then took, nor now takes, the entire fault for what happened to let Geronimo and Nachee get away from Lieutenant Maus at Contrabandista Spring, Sonora. It was a great many things involved there. But I knew, for my enemies even then were letting me understand it, that Talking Boy was going to get the main credit. Sieber warned me so.

  This was in the immediate days, of course, of Maus bringing our Indians in. None of us knowed then that Crook was going to go, or who would replace him. Moreover, my mind was already looking back on other times, trying to think where Nopal might be, or my boy from her, now that most of the hostiles had "come in," with yet no sign, nor Indian word, of neither of them.

  But then came the news that General Crook had resigned in despair of the Indian Bureau treachery to his Chiricahua charges. When their Red Beard went away, however, the Apaches mourned as for a friend. When Bear Coat Miles showed up to take his place, Old Mad and me joined the Indians in their sentiments.

  "Horn," Sieber said, hearing of the change in command, "this will wash out the riffle box for both of us. We mighten as well take our clean-up and git."

  But I still had one more try in me.

  "Nope, Al," I said. "It would be going back on the boys with Maus and me. I owe the lieutenant one."

  "For what?" Sieber demanded, bluntlike.

  I fished inside my vest and brought out a crumpled piece of paper. "For this," I answered, full proud.

  Al took the paper and unrolled it, squinting to make out the hand print of it, and the signature. His lips moved like it was painful to form the words he saw.

  To Whomever May Be Concerned:

  I cannot commend too highly Mr. Horn, my Chief of Scouts; his gallant services deserve a reward which he has never received.

  Sgnd. M. P. Maus

  Marion P. Maus

  Lt. 3rd Cav US.

  Sieber recrumpled the paper careful to get the right creases back into it. He handed it back.

  "That and five cents," he said, "will buy you a good nickel beer anyplace th
at sells it."

  "You're sore," I said, "because you was with Davis."

  Al Sieber did not get mad. He just looked sort of used up and shook his head with a vast sigh.

  "No, kid," he said. "For once you read the trail sign wrong. It's that I am coming up on forty-four years old, and you ain't yet hit twenty-seven."

  "I still don't read your sign, Al."

  Again the sad, slow nod, the flinch of pain over the jowly, square face that I had seen across those many hundred campfires from me since 1876.

  "Enjuh, ish-ke-ne," he said, "that's good, boy."

  I had the sense to let it ride.

  Sieber proved right as Sieber always proved.

  Miles's first act, mighty near, was to fire me and the old German "out of hand." That was April. Me and Al took off for our other home, the saloons of Tombstone. There we prospected some, kept up with "the war" in the papers, let old Bear Coat run his tongue hanging out chasing Apaches with his white "super troops," as his press officer called them. By July, Miles was truly desperate for a victory—he was in line for making major general and instead the Apaches was making a fool of him—and he sent at last for his one real "Injun captain," Charles B. Gatewood. "In the name of God," Miles said, "what must we do, Gatewood?" The captain had his answer ready.

  "General," he said, "you must do two things; you must get me old Al Sieber to scout for me and let me have young Tom Horn and his war dog scouts for my troops—not one white soldier squad in sight anywhere."

  Miles didn't care for that. There'd been words betwixt him and Sieber when we was layed off. And likewise, Miles did not think of Indians as Crook did, as human men and master cavalrymen. But he was trapped.