I, Tom Horn

by Will Henry

  We all laughed at that, and I put up the harp.

  The schoolhouse was filling up, by then, with the folks hollering for the music to start. I floated out on the floor to find out if the famous Jim Hicks charm was still shaking up the ladies after all the years. It first appeared it was. I had the dumb little sister of the two free-teasers from Pot Creek all het up and sent out to wait for me in the Spicer buckboard in way short of an hour, but I had already conquered about a straight quart, and some scoundrel handed me another bottle as I was following her out. I don't rightly recall ever getting to the rig.

  Evidently I did, though.

  For I was still in it come five o'clock next morning when Nigger Isam woke me up and said we were home but had better leave again right quick.

  I looked around half sick and seen we was at Spicer's, parked in front of the harness shed. The pintos looked terrible used up, and one of them was shy a hind shoe and the other going limpy in the off foreleg and, well, hell, the nigger was right.

  I got Pacer and my saddle and we led the pintos into the shed. Just as we got shut of them, we heard Old Man Spicer strangling on his wake-up cough-and-wheeze and spotted the first blue smoke puffing out the tin-can stovepipe over the kitchen lean-to.

  "I am purely beholden to you, Mr. Nigger Isam," I said to the waiting black rider. "Let us be long gone from here."

  Isam only laughed in his soft, happy way, and said, "yes suh," and guided us down out of Spicer's Draw.

  He was all right, that Isam nigger. Him and Matt Rash was both good Texas boys. It made a man feel fair downmouthed to think on what might need to happen to them up on Cold Spring Mountain.

  I cheered somewhat as we climbed steadily up to Rash's high range through a pretty jack pine and red cedar country. Before long, the sun had burned through the early cold mists. It felt good on your back. Yes, I told myself. Jim Hicks will think of something else; there has got to be another way this time.

  Fortunate for me, and my chances of finding that other way, I was left alone up on Cold Spring. Isam had to go back down below to help Matt. "Be up nex Sattiday, Mr. Matt and me," the nigger said. "Likely in time for noon dinner."

  This being Sunday, it gave me five days. It would be enough, providing my luck held and I wasn't seen leaving Cold Spring Mountain, or caught away from it by Rash or Isam. My plan was simple and I had worked it many times. The first part took just plain hard riding.

  Five settlers (rustlers) that last week in June found warnings left at their places in Brown's Hole. It was a fifty-mile spread to cover them, and Old Pacer damned near gave out on me coming up the Cold Spring slide late that Friday afternoon. But we made it and I wasn't seen.

  Mel Tripplet, over on Talamantes Creek, would find a crude note nailed to the planks of his door. It contained a skull and crossed bones and was printed YOU HAVE EAT YOUR LAST TWO BAR BEEF. GET OUT. ONE WEEK. That was all.

  Al Goncher, up past Crouse Creek, would see his notice stuck to the inside of his outhouse door. He could read it easy sitting down. TWO BAR BEEF IS POISON FOR YOU. YOU WILL SHIT BLOOD.

  At Marco and Pete Arbolbides, up Hoy Canyon, it was a little different. The brothers would find an empty salt bag hanging from the lamp over their kitchen table. In it was two smooth stones about the size of good water-skipping rocks. Them and a print message:

  ONE ROCK FOR EACH OF YOU. PUT THEM UNDER YOUR HEADS. SAVE SOMEBODY ELSE THE TROUBLE.

  It went like that for all five of the rustlers me and Pacer hit. It was a good feeling to know this as I fried my meat in the Matt Rash line-shack the early evening of July 1. Yes sir. Come tomorrow morning, Saturday, Brown's Hole was going to be whispering a name that had nothing to do with Jim Hicks. It would be Tom Horn.

  That would be the name that Matt Rash and Nigger Isam would hear at the Lodore Store and bring with them up to Cold Spring Mountain to me next day.

  I was trailing straight, except for two things.

  It wasn't them that brought me the name up the mountain, nor was it brought the next morning.

  "Don't move, you son of a bitch," the lovely voice said, "or I will kill you."

  I set down my clasp knife and bent fork alongside the tin plate of Two Bar beefsteak I was eating, spread my hands atop the table, and looked up slow.

  In the doorway stood the most leanly handsome woman ever born or bred. And in her hand was the biggest goddamned long-barrel Colt's .44-40 revolver ever bored or blued—pointed right square, and cocked, into my belly.

  "I mean it, by God, Tom Horn," she said.

  And I answered, "Yes, ma'am, by God, I can see that you do."

  And I kicked the table up into the air from underneath with my knees, caught it by its turning top, and drove it across the room at her with every uncoiling force I had.

  I had her figured right, thank Christ.

  She got off four shots into that table in the time it was in the air coming at her. Unshielded by the flying furniture, I would have been as dead as a plucked dodo. As it was, she got a glance off the forehead from the edge of the table and was knocked silly. Bringing her around with cloths cold-wrung from the spring gave me time to think. When at last she opened those gray eyes, however, I couldn't think of nothing. I never had a woman to hit me like that one. Never. No wonder Matt Rash hated so to give it up to marry Anne Bassett.

  "I'm sorry as hell, lady," I told her, "but I wasn't aiming to set still and get gut-shot for Tom Horn."

  I had put her on Matt's bunk. She was still dizzy and a little sick from getting hit. But she sat up and swung her legs to the floor, giving a soft groan.

  "Goddamn you," she gritted out, "I know you're him."

  "You're crazy, lady. Name's Jim Hicks. Been working all summer for Sam Spicer. Ask Matt. Or Isam."

  She shook her head, wincing at the hurt of it.

  "They're both stupid," she said. "They believe you."

  "So do I, lady." I went over to the bed. "Leave me get you another of them cold cloths. You ain't thinking straight."

  "You go to hell!" she seethed at me, pulling away.

  "Where's this Tom Horn talk coming from?" I asked, her. "Damn if I like it, wherever. Man could get shot."

  "You know where it's coming from, you bastard.*"

  She didn't talk nor act like a lady but, God knew, she was the greatest looker of all time for me. I just could not get my eyes off her. She had glossy red hair, sheeny as beaver. Her body was trim and hard and beautiful; her face, well it was the same, so to speak. And the looks she gave!

  A man just knew how she would go, could he get at her.

  Of a sudden, I felt all cold toward Matt Rash.

  The son of a bitch. He had played and daddled with this queen of all women. Rolled her around and pawed her no different than I'd done Lucine Pratt and such trash. Goddamn him. Down there in the brakes sweet-talking the Bassett girl, whoring all the while over to Zenobia Basin with this cat-bodied redhead. And what about me? Getting my ass shot at, that's what. And for what? Trying to get an honest job done on this bunch of goddamn cow thieves in Brown's Hole and still not have to headstone any of them. Well, damn that there was real danger in this woman saying I was Tom Horn. That had to stop. Right now.

  "Lady," I said, "your head cleared yet? Me and you have got to talk. If I am Tom Horn, then I'm going to have to kill you, ain't I? If I'm Jim Hicks, and you keep running around calling me Tom Horn, you're going to get me killed. Now what's it going to be, your way or my way?"

  She had quit wincing and plainly felt better.

  A light got into the pale gray eyes.

  "I will make a dicker with you," she said. "Call yourself anything you want, but get out of the Hole and don't come back into it. Somebody's been giving people a week to leave their land hereabouts, and I will give you the same." She took a breath, and I noted the rise of the high breasts under the riding jacket. "Matt is going to the rodeo up to Rock Springs for the Fourth of July," she said. "Be gone when he get's back."

  "That's it?
" I said.

  "Flat-out final," she said. "No little notes pinned up in the crapper. No little rocks hung up in salt bags over the kitchen table. Move out, or else."

  "And meanwhile?"

  "Meanwhile, I won't call you Horn."

  I eased back from the table.

  "Well, lady," I said, "you're wrong as a five-legged jacksnipe, but right as rain in August. I want to say you are the most beautiful woman God ever fashioned and Matt Rash is plain crazy. Was I him, I would throw you crost my horse's withers, jump the Lodore Canyon, and thunder off inter Utah with you, forever and ever after."

  Her eyes flashed a glimmer like heat lightning far off in a summer storm. "That was purely fine of you, Jim Hicks," she murmured. "If you were Matt Rash, I might get on my own horse and jump the canyon with you."

  There was something wistful in the words. It was like maybe, met some other way, we could have changed it all. But we both knew who we were.

  I got up from the table, and so did she.

  "I thank you, ma'am," I said. "Hicks or Horn, I will see that he gets out. It'll be tomorrow. No need to count any days. Maybe I'll go up to that rodeo in Rock Springs myself. Once upon a time I could tie off a calf with any of them."

  "Do you expect Matt tomorrow?"

  "Yes, him and the nigger. I will wait until they get here. The stock is all fine."

  "Thank you. Good-bye, Mr. Hicks."

  "Good-bye, ma'am."

  She started out the door, then held up just within it. She was a woman and had been reached. She gave me a look I will never forget and said in that low voice, "I've not been Matt Rash's, nor any man's, if it matters." And she went on out into the night to her horse and was gone.

  Saturday, Rash and Isam showed up early. They had news of the "Tom Horn" notes, and "salt-bag killer stones." I had to move one foot ahead of the other, not knowing if they had talked with Queen Zenobia. I waited till Rash had spoke his views, then said, "Well, I am glad you don't spook at notes, for you've got one of your own. Had to be placed some time last night, after your girl left."

  "What the hell you saying? What girl?"

  "The one from Zenobia Basin."

  "Oh, sure; what of the note, Jim?"

  I got it out of my pocket in a crumpled ball and handed it over. "Looks the same as you describe the others, don't it?" I said.

  He spread it out: M. RASH. STAY IN ROCK SPRINGS. OR YOU WILL STAY ON COLD SPRING. PERMANENT. THE NIGGER SIMILAR. XXXX.

  "What you reckon them x's is for?" the Texan said.

  "Kisses, maybe," I answered. "I didn't get none on mine." I dug out the second note, tossed it to him. He gave it a quick scowl: P.S. JIM HICKS WON'T KICKS IF HE STICKS.

  "What's that supposed to mean?" Matt Rash asked, returning the note to me. "You won't kicks? You won't complain, or what?" He was getting very edgy.

  "Either way," I said, "you ever see a dead man that could kick or complain?"

  "Oh," he said. "Yeah."

  It went uneasy the rest of the morning, the three of us working his cow-and-calf herd up till noon dinner.

  At that time, Isam announced that he had imperative reasons to "go down the hill." We both watched him go over, get his sorrel gelding out of the pole corral, and depart. "I mentioned to Isam earlier," I said to Rash, "that I would pay him three prices for that sorrel. He laughed and said nothing could buy the horse. You suppose that's so?"

  "Don't know," Matt Rash said. "But it's some horse. I mean to get him for a lady I know."

  I didn't ask him which lady, figuring I knew.

  Pretty quick, the nigger gone, Rash said, "I hear there's another stomp at the schoolhouse tonight. Want to go down and give her a lick?"

  I laughed quick, to cover my hunch feeling, and answered him, "sure, let's ramble."

  Matt Rash said, "All right," but he wasn't laughing about it. Something had spooked him. There wasn't any more talk. We just got our horses and pointed them down the hill, and let them go.

  It was strange the way it went then.

  Matt Rash and me were coming down the last draw off the mountain when our horses went to pitching on us. We got them quieted, but they wouldn't go ahead. I made a sign to Matt and we got down and tied them and went in, walking careful where we put our feet.

  But not careful enough.

  "Hold it right thar," ordered a voice we both knew. "You cain't come on down here. Ride around."

  "Isam," drawled Matt Rash. "You black bastard. Get the hell out of my trail."

  The tall Negro rustler levered his Winchester.

  "Cain't leave you to pass this way, Mr. Matt," he said. "Please, suh, ride on around."

  Before Rash could answer, the wind switched in the draw and came at us from behind Isam Dart. Old Pacer humped his back again and made a noise down in his chest that I knew meant one thing. Bloodsmell. The nigger had killed something, or somebody, and we had rode up on him doing it.

  "Will he shoot?" I muttered to young Rash, never looking away from the black man and his rifle.

  ‘Well," Rash said, ‘let's find out."

  I am fair with a handgun myself. Not many could get their piece out ahead of mine. I never saw the Texas boy make his move. I just heard the crack of the Colt .45 long that he carried and saw the buttstock of Isam's Winchester go to kindling splinters between his hands. "Now, you black son of a bitch," said Madison Rash, "stand out of the trail." And he went forward, me following him.

  There in the brush, just off the draw, lay the big carcass of a roan shorthorn.

  "Christ Jesus," Matt Rash said, "you've killed old Sam's prize herd bull. God Amighty, why for?"

  The nigger didn't really know. It had just come to him to do it. There'd been trouble twixt him and Old Man Spicer over lies told by Spicer against Isam. The bull had just seemed the meanest way to get back at the old devil. Rash couldn't believe it.

  He raked that poor nigger up one flank and down the other for being so stupid. Isam flared back at him and, in the next three, four minutes the two of them washed more dirty rustler underdrawers in front of Jim Hicks than his six weeks of dangerous riding had shown him on the entire Brown's Hole clothesline.

  These two were the pair that sided the queen of the rustler war against the Two Bar, no question. What had been only hearsay evidence against them now was what the courts call prima facie, or cast-iron clad. No way out. Not for them. Nor for their friend Jim Hicks.

  The close of their argument came when Matt Rash demanded that the nigger pay over to him his beautiful hand-raised sorrel horse, for Rash keeping his mouth shut about the bull. Isam Dart at once turned ugly. "Mr. Matt," he said, "if you wants to start telling things you know on me, ain't the half of whats I could tell on you. You ain't never getting that sorrel horse away from me if I has to die for him."

  They left it there. Matt Rash and me rode on. Isam went his own trail. At the dance that night, I spread the story of the angry meeting. Before the substitute fiddler wore out and went home, half the people in Brown's Hole knew that Matt Rash and Nigger Isam had "fought" and that the nigger threatened to die before he would give in. The run-in between the two gave Jim Hicks what he needed to draw suspicion away from himself for distributing the notes warning the rustlers to quit the Hole. Now, should something befall Matt Rash, neither Jim Hicks nor Tom Horn would be given the blame for it.

  Isam Dart would be.

  Grim and printed proof of this was swift to come. It showed first in the Routt County Sentinel. The date is tore on my clipping, but I make it out to be July 11, 1900:

  Mr. Rash had nearly finished eating when a man materialized in the doorway to his Cold Spring cabin. The Brown's Park ranchman did not even have time to stand up before three shots came in succession. After a few moments of silence disturbed only by the hum of summer insects, a fourth shot sounded outside; the killer who had fired on Mr. Rash had taken time to shoot a fine sorrel horse tied to the doorpost of the corral gate. It was just after noon, Monday, July 8.

  Thus r
eason the two witnesses who found the flyblown corpse, as taken in their testimony to Routt County authorities.

  Two days after the murder the witnesses, "Uncle" George Rife and Felix Meyers, a fourteen-year-old boy, chanced to ride past the Rash cabin.

  Rife waited while the Meyers boy went to say hello to the dashing Texan, who was the cowboy idol to all the boys in the Hole.

  Mr. Rife says that he next heard a terrible scream from Felix and went to the cabin himself.

  He describes Matt Rash as lying on his bunk but not answering to any hail. The stench in the foul-aired cabin was awful. Rash's body was badly decomposed from the July heat.

  George Rife testified that the victim had taken off his boots after being shot—strange behavior in a mortally wounded person—gotten somehow over to his bed, and fallen thereon. He had gotten an envelope from somewhere and tried to dip a fingernail in his own blood and write on it the name of his destroyer. He died in the effort.

  Charley Sparks, Routt County's fine deputy sheriff, who led the investigators, reports the stink so overpowering that to get the body out it was necessary to soak clothes in carbolic and tie them loosely over the nostrils. The burial, Deputy Sparks says, was sickening.

  Every effort will be made, Sparks assured, to track down the killer, who fired a .30-30 rifle and walked up to the cabin without his boots on. However, Sparks warns, the matter will prove difficult. No other trail, either of ridden horse or man on foot, was found.

  "It was in every way a professional job," says Charley Sparks. "Witnesses confide it was likely Isam Dart, but no charge has been brought, nor arrest planned."

  Mr. Rash will be reburied in Hood County, Texas, his home. His father and a brother are coming on the cars to claim the body.