I, Tom Horn

by Will Henry

  But sometimes they do a decent job.

  One reporter's account I recall—it sure wasn't from the New York Herald, you can bet—crammed the next ten years of my life into two, three columns for his paper's Sunday edition and managed to get it close enough to the bone that I will enter it here. It will close up the straggle of those mean years, 1890 to 1900, that brought Tom Horn to look across his last river.

  Somehow, the name of the paper never came to me, nor of the reporter. But it was an eastern paper. That I remember. For they was all against me from the outset.

  Except this here one fellow.

  And even he had to start out with what they call a "lead caption" to sell newspapers for his "sheet."

  BORN TO HANG, it said in the big print, with underneath it, in littler letters, but still bold enough to bite your eye in bad light, Tom Horn's Decade of Death. With which it set sail square out through the sage, as given here copied in my own hand and signatured:

  In his Arizona days, as a cavalry scout for Crook and Miles, Apache mothers used to frighten their children by telling them Tom Horn would get them if they didn't obey and be good. By the time this "Man of the Dark Shadow" got to Wyoming, white mothers up there did not need to use his name to get the kids to come in and eat their suppers. They were already "in," being afraid to put their noses out sod-house doors to begin with, when it was known the ominous horseman was in the area.

  Leaving Arizona—many accounts claim at the request of the government—in the late summer of 1890, Horn went to Denver where James McParlan, famed "Molly Maguire" suppressor for the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, put him in hire as a "range detective." In this capacity, Horn worked all cases, train robberies, bank jobs, horse and cattle thieving, every capital and petty crime in the western "bad brand" book. But it is safe and indeed accurate to say that 90 percent of Horn's "detective" work for the Pinkertons was "detecting" cattle rustlers for wealthy rancher clients of the renowned man-hunting agency.

  In its Colorado and Wyoming connotations, "detecting" a rustler meant anything from the routine and proper arrest (with subsequent fair bringing to trial) to the kangaroo-courting on the spot of the unfortunate poor devil apprehended "eating the boss's beef."

  At this dangerous work Horn became so proficient in the skills learned from Hash Knife and Chiricahua Cattle Company days in Arizona that the demand for his services began to exceed Pinkerton's capacity to pay him. After four years, during which Horn is said to have made the murderous Charley Siringo's work for Pinkerton to have "appeared benign," the big agency was forced to "lease out" its best-known bloodhound to the highest bidder, the vast Swan Land & Cattle Company, of Wyoming.

  In the following two years, alone, 1894 to 1896, Horn is alleged to have "cleaned out of rustlers the whole south of Wyoming."

  It was during this "campaign" that he met his to-be great friend, John C. Coble, an easterner of means turned western cattle rancher (personal friend of Teddy Roosevelt), and a man whose "spread" lay in the middle of the Iron Mountain country, "a fifty mile square area containing more rustlers per square mile than any other part of Wyoming."

  Horn's original employer in this bloody business was John Clay, not John Coble, however. Clay, a Scotsman, holds vast feudal lands along the drainage of the Chugwater River. One of these holdings, alone, the Swan L.&C. Company, is capitalized at over $4,000,000, the main stockholders being in Scotland. Clay was president of the allpowerful Wyoming Stock Growers Association at the time he hired the killer Horn. He is rumored a heavy holder in the Chicago Union Stockyards, as well as the Wyoming properties. A worthy king to armor such a deadly knight, it would appear.

  Over the subsequent two years, 1896 to 1898, small cattlemen (the "enemy" to Horn and his baronial bosses) interviewed by this reporter in the field accused the "Association nightrider" of no less than eleven (11) "coldblood executions" among their helpless number. Of these, two are documented cases of record, the celebrated Powell and Lewis slayings. But the prologue to these famous "detections," as Horn still calls them, was of more note than the murders themselves; it is the first appearance of, or rather immediate cause of, Horn's dark statement to the irate Wyoming Stock Growers board meeting that he had "a system that never fails," with regard to rustlers.

  Horn had just spent 13 weeks gathering evidence of cattle stealing against the so-called Langhoff Gang, in reality a "nest" of small owners, called squatters. "They ‘squat' to eat our cows," as Tom Horn defined it in testimony. The evidence he brought into court, in Cheyenne, would have "hung the governor's mother," according to the disgusted members of the Stock Growers Association, Horn's employers. But the jury, itself composed of small owners, "winked at the proof and turned the guilty rascals loose."

  Actually, one man was sentenced properly, one lightly, two fined an amount that evoked titters from the spectators. The remaining rustlers, all arrested single-handedly by Tom Horn, got off "free as tickbirds flitting off a clean-picked heifer's backside."

  Leaving that trial, Horn is quoted in the Cheyenne paper as saying, "That's the last of the sons of b——s that I will bring in. You couldn't get a conviction here if you cut the critter's belly open in court and found the rustler inside your cow, eating his way out."

  It is scarcely doubted the quote is accurate. Horn is a man who expresses himself freely and often, a habit which has cost him dearly of both friends and liberty in this tragic situation.

  1898 brought "Teddy's War," in Cuba, and of course Tom Horn must go and serve his country, being as Rough a Rider as any in that famed brigade. But Horn, by his own admission, never rose above "head mule packer" nor got any closer to San Juan Hill than the beach at Daiquiri. There he was, in his words, "took down with the yeller fever, and shipped back sick to die in New York City." He outlived the latter fate and "took the cars for Chicagy and home," home being the Iron Mountain ranch of John C. Coble, where he had a long recuperation.

  Ah! the readers say. But you forgot to account for the "celebrated Powell and Lewis slayings," before the war. What made them so celebrated? Well, only one thing: they marked the turning in Tom Horn's detecting policy; they were the first two "tried alongside the evidence." That is, shot and killed as they bent over somebody else's beef.

  No more courtroom losses for Tom Horn's employers. His reputed comment, en toto, of the assassinated pair's preparation to meet their Maker, was, "They was the worst scairt —— — ——— you ever see."

  Following his recovery from yellow fever, Horn resumed his range cleaning work, operating out of Coble's Iron Mountain Ranch.

  "I was by then," Horn says, "thirty-eight years old, and still some shaky in health from the yeller fever.

  Evidently the realizations of middle age, plus the conditions of first doubt of his cast-iron constitution, reduced his pace afield. For in the period 1898 to 1900 not a solitary notable "detection" is credited against the "system that never fails."

  When your correspondent interviewed Tom Horn for the last time in the spring of 1900, he was nearing forty years of age. He was balding and quiet, soft to speak, and had the look of a man more hunted than hunter. He told me that he had worked mostly for Mr. Ora Haley, millionaire owner of the famed Two Bar ranch, since 1898, although staying much with Haley's neighbor, John Coble. He said he believed his work was about finished in Wyoming, and he was planning to go down to Arizona the coming winter, to "live again with the onliest true friends I ever had," by which he meant the Apache Indians. He was "getting too agey" for stock detective work, he said, and had moreover been bothered a great deal by something he called his "sombra." This was a man's inner spirit, he explained, taken from the Mexican word for "shadow." His sombra was what guarded a man from harm, he said. When it "took to twinging him" and he didn't saddle up and move on, he was running "crost prairie full of dogholes, in front of a dark-night stompede." A man ignored his shadow-spirit, I took it, at the express peril of his mortal connection.

  When we shook hands, I noted the fa
mous outlaw's appearance, understanding that his was a story that would carry into legend.

  Horn was tall, over six feet, slender and of dark complexion, good forehead, kindly expression, smiling sadly or brightly, by mood, but withal of a sanguine, hopeful nature and absolute steady nerves. His long legs were set upon a short, muscular upper body, notably wide of shoulder and flat in the hips. The legs were visibly bowed from a lifetime in the saddle. He walked with an Indian grace, unlike most cowboys—of which, by the way, he was a rodeo champion roper and bronco rider—and when mounted had a spellbinding, unforgettable "look."

  As we said our good-byes, the pressure of his grip upon my hand tightened.

  The dark eyes, and eagle's intensity in them, searched into my face, into, it seemed to me, my very mind; it was unsettling, even unnerving, and suddenly I understood something that the sad smile and soft laugh had masked from me.

  These were the last eyes looked into by dead men whose true number will never be known. Far back in those eyes, deep beyond the crinkly brown and friendly face, lived another creature than this celebrated cowboy and honored Indian scout.

  It was the other Tom Horn.

  The one who would kill you for $600, as he had—they say—those others without number who had "squatted to eat the boss's beef."

  It is not clear at this printing where Horn is.

  He told me had had "one more job" and then was going home to Arizona. But one wonders if any man may "go home" after dealing a decade of death to his fellowmen. It would seem that the only home Tom Horn will truly find is at the end of a hempen rope. May God rest his search.

  Well, there it is; the fairest to me of any of the big newspaper "yellow journal" stories on Tom Horn. Yet think what it says! Mothers telling hobgoblin and fantod lies to their poor kids that "Tom Horn will get you if you don't look out!" Small ranchers "interviewed in the field" giving reporters herd tallies on my murders like they was counting ducks shot over decoys. It was outright bald-ass bull hockey, all of it

  Didn't those "mothers" ever stop to think what I was going to do with their kids when I "got" them? Skin them and eat them? Sell them to the Apaches? Start my own orphanage? And how come those tally keepers on all them corpses I strewn over the whole of south Wyoming stopped at only eleven? Why not thirteen, or thirty-three? Hell, eleven don't even make a jury. Except if you're judging Tom Horn, I guess.

  All right; it's over and did with.

  But lies sell newspapers.

  Facts don't.

  In all of the time that I was accused of being a hired killer, no single capital crime was ever proved on me. Not either by legal-swore witness, nor any other reasonable nor lawful rule of evidence.

  That's the facts of it.

  Jim Hicks

  The people hated Ora Ben Haley.

  When a man said "the people" that lulling summer of 1900, he meant the nesters and squatters that plagued the working ranches. If you were worth over thirty-dollars cash, or held title to so much as a quarter section of thin grass, you weren't considered people. Neither were you if you hired on for wages or paid your proper taxes.

  You were only people in Sweetwater, Carbon, Albany, or Laramie counties if you were one of three things: busted-gut broke; on the dodge; or working for state or county.

  If, like such a mort of the nobler citizens, you were all three, then you were blue-ribbon stock, qualified to set on the juries that tried your friends, the cow thiefs.

  Contrariwise, if you ran enough cow stuff to hire riders, you were a rich son of a bitch. And if you were Ora Ben Haley, you were the richest son of a bitch. It followed that you was the meanest and most hateful.

  But even the people testified honest once in a while.

  "We thanked God for our bread," they said, "and Ora Haley for our meat."

  Which is where I will leave it.

  I didn't see Mr. Haley, but his ranch manager for the main Two Bar, Hi Bernard. "Tom," Hi said to me, "we are taking a terrible loss over in the Hole. Mr. Haley wants somebody to go over there."

  The Hole was Brown's Hole, Colorado, properly called Brown's Park. It was where the Big Vermillion Creek and Green River came together to empty out of Lodore Canyon down to the big Colorado. It was rustler heaven, and you could not pay a legal lawman to go down there. Ora Haley's Two Bar boss was naming a stiff order, I hesitated.

  "You know anybody?" Hi Bernard said.

  I quit looking at my boots and said, "How about Jim Hicks?"

  Bernard nodded, quick. "He will do just fine," he said. "When can he leave?"

  I give him a grin. "About now," I said and got up from the office chair and went out the screen door and to my horse, Old Pacer, hitch-tied outside.

  Me and Pacer was in the Hole six weeks before I had broke anything. But it takes time. You have to work yourself into a country.

  I hired on as a drift range rider with Old Man Spicer, a pioneer in the Hole. For the first five weeks I rode sixteen hours a day. I slept dirty, lost weight, ate muddy water, never shut both eyes all the way. But at the end of it I had met with and been accepted by the citizens (cow thiefs) of the basin as just another wolf of the same pack as their own. They let me be to do my work and, with July pushing in, I had learned who was running the rustler show in Brown's Park, Colorado.

  I'll not name the party, for her folks can't help that she is coyote-wild. Yes—she; for the first time in my rangedetecting work I was up against a woman cow thief! The idea of it sweated me bad. Could it be that the system that never failed was about to fail? Damn. There must surely be another way to cut down this lady rustler than leaving her with a stone under her head the way they said Tom Horn marked his "victims." In fact, there had to be another way. Where to look for it was the next question for Jim Hicks.

  The Saturday night dance is the place to learn about any cow country settlement. Sam Spicer told me about a big one the coming Saturday at the Lodore School. It was certain to draw from the whole of the area, Diamond Mountain, O-wi-yu-kuts Plateau, the Zenobia Basin, Cold Spring Mountain, Clay Basin, Cottonwood Draw, even Pat's Hole down on the Yampa. The main bait was a new girl from over across the Utah line, who could be "braced easy." And she had a little sister, of like convenient virtue, that she was bringing with her. Their names was the Misses Arabella and Lucine Pratt, of Pot Creek, Utah. Other attractions were scheduled.

  The fiddler would be the renowned Nigger Isam, with Mex guitar played by Madison "Matt" Rash, the high-rolling Texas boy that was going to marry Ann Bassett, of the Brown's Hole pioneer Bassetts.

  It was likewise speculated that Miss Icy Nice herself would attend. As this was the Hole's name for the lady rustler I was looking for, Jim Hicks naturally pricked up his jug-handle ears. I'd not dared push too close to her place under Zenobia Peak, but if there was a safe spot to study the outlaw lady, the Lodore School dance ought to qualify.

  Saturday noon, I went up to Old Man Spicer's shack and asked to borrow the buckboard and team of pinto mustangs. I told him I wanted the buggy for my fair try at the Pratt sisters, from Pot Creek. Sam Spicer blinked at me and said, "Ain't you a little gray in the muzzle, Hicks, to be bracing young she-stuff at the school dance?"

  "The muzzle, maybeso," I grudged. "But it ain't spread to the trigger yet."

  "Cowflops," snorted old Sam Spicer. "I will rent you the rig. Five dollars and damages. No spurs nor square-corner conchas wore while using. Daybreak return."

  "All right," I said to Old Man Spicer. "It is highway robbery, but I will pay it. Maybe I will invest it in Miss Icy Nice, instead of them Pot Crick tramps."

  "Hicks," the old man said, "stay shut of her; she's Matt Rash's girl."

  "The hell! He's engaged to Ann Bassett, ain't he?"

  Sam Spicer looked at me. "Hicks," he said, "you ain't tall enough to touch bottom in that quicksand. Don't try."

  "Well, maybe she won't show, Mr. Spicer," I laughed. "I'll be spared and you'll make money."

  He shook his head. "She'll be there if Matt
Rash and Nigger Isam are. They're her two shadows."

  "Ahhh," I said. Then, covering it, "They'll be there, sure. They're the two-man band, ain't they?"

  The old man gave me a hard Brown's Hole look.

  "They are," he said. "Gimme the five dollars for the rig."

  I was glad to pay him. The musicians hadn't even tuned up yet, and he had told me the names of the rustler lady's two main riders. He had given me the way to go around the unfailing system.

  Jim Hicks had only to circle Matt Rash and Nigger Isam and come in on them from the rear.

  You cut the hocks, the heifer dies; but you don't have to kill her.

  The dance went good, even though the rustler lady never showed.

  I bought four drinks for Matt Rash and we sung snatches of good old Texas tunes. I let him know I was leaving Old Man Spicer. Did he know anybody else in the Hole that could use a hand till maybe September? He did, he said. Him and Anne Bassett was building a house along Matt Creek, next the Bassett homeplace. So he could use somebody to look after the 700 head he was running up on Cold Spring Mountain, the while he was putting up the new place.

  "Well, Matt," I said, "you have found your summer hand."

  Matt Rash looked at me a little sideways. "Let's pick another tune and we will see," he said.

  He struck a lick on the guitar, getting into "Red River Valley." Nigger Isam slid in on the fiddle. I grinned and dug out my old French harp, which most never knew I owned, as I played it mostly when out in the hills making the long dark rides of my trade. But I was fair good at blowing it and after I joined in Matt Rash asked if I knew any Mex songs, as he was homesick for the south Texas border.

  Well, I knocked the spit out of my harp and played him two choruses of "Pajarita Barranqueno" and Rash said to me, "Hellsfire, Jim, I will go up there to the Cold Spring camp with you in the morning and see you settled in, personal. You got the job and can even have some meat with your beans." He fetched me a clap on the wingblades and said, "Naturally, it ain't going to be my meat!"