I, Tom Horn

by Will Henry

  Well, naturally, such a pleading, overwrote letter could come only from Glendolene Kimmell, mixing in over her head again.

  But help like Glendolene's, like she had given me at the inquest, say, was hardly wanted anymore by me, or by my friends at the stockmen's association. And this letter—it got mighty heated up in the middle of it—gave uneasy promise of more of the same sort of flashing-eyed but harmful defences of me getting made public by her.

  Likewise, the letter showed she had not given up or got over mooning after Tom Horn. And I surely did not wish to see her doing herself further hurt on that account. She just wouldn't admit, or couldn't come to admitting it to herself, that I wasn't worth it. The fairest thing Tom Horn might do for the little schoolmarm and her letter was to ignore the both of them.

  But just when I had decided my mind on that course, I got down to the end of Glendolene's letter.

  There was a P.S. on it that turned my hair: "It has just been learned, Tom, that LeFors can prove you were not on the train between Laramie and Cheyenne on the day of the killing."

  That was a shaker for certain. But then I false-calmed myself out of it. After all, what the hell? I already knew I wasn't on that damned train. There wasn't any danger in it being knowed I was riding the backlands when Willie was shot. That fact wasn't going to convict me. Not even a jury of cow thieves would vote guilty on that kind of "evidence."

  Yet, I confess I was edgy.

  Something in all this, not Glendolene Kimmell, not Joe LeFors being so busy, not Mary Nickell failing me, kept hammering at me. The small voice of my sombra seemed stuck on the two words, ride out! ride out! and they were in my ears continually, those two words. But I knew how to shut them off.

  I still had money for whiskey, and Big Blondie had come up from Denver, and all my friends and everybody in Cheyenne, it appeared, wanted to talk to the famous Tom Horn and to buy him another round for the privilege and to so get his "view" on the Willie Nickell mystery. It got especially so, when it was learned that Sam Carson, the head of the Laramie County commissioners, had got LeFors a leave from the U.S. marshal's office and hired him on to take charge of the investigation into the shooting of Kels P. Nickell, not that of little Willie.

  Again I thought of Glendolene's letter,

  Willie had been shot July 18. Kels was ambushed August 4. Considerable over two weeks' lapse there. Then Joe LeFors had got on the case after that. Maybe a three-week span or lag. So why was he going out to investigate Kels's shooting but only asking questions about Willie's? The schoolmarm's letter said not one word to hint LeFors was after who got at Kels. It was all Willie Nickell killing answers he wanted. As a man hunter, myself, that ought to have read like darkblood sign for certain.

  But the friends of Tom Horn were standing by to set me up to all the Old Overholt I could guzzle, and, well, Tom Horn was still Tom Horn. The hell with Joe LeFors. What I had heard of him didn't scare me. I hadn't shot the kid. Where at, in such a fort-up, did I have any real reason to fret? No sir. It was a pat hand I held. I would sit on it.

  Besides, me and Big Blondie had business to settle.

  We was in fact settling some of it in the back room, of this saloon in Cheyenne which I will call the Bull's Horn, when, through the fringe-and-spangle draperies I seen somebody come in the front that I surely didn't want to see me in the back. It was Glendolene Kimmell. Talking to the barkeep.

  I saw the damn-fool barkeep point back toward the rear room. I shoved the blonde off my lap and said, "Yonder comes a crazy woman that follers me everywheres; get shut of her, right off." With which, I slid back of where they had the wine bottles racked and held onto my breathing like I was gut-down in some outlaw gulch with the killers searching six feet away.

  There was a red glass tulip shade over the light in the musted little wine room. Glendolene come in partway through the spangles, stopped, and stared around.

  "Oh, I'm sorry," she said. "I was looking for someone."

  "We all are, honey," the blonde said.

  "But the bartender told me he was back here." Glendolene looked around again, and even half lit I could make out she was bad agitated.

  "Maybe he was," Big Blondie shrugged, after her good-natured way. "What's his name, honey?"

  "Tom Horn," the schoolmarm whispered, guarding it. "Please, if you know where he is, won't you tell me? I must find him. You must help me if you can. Mr. Horn's life is in danger."

  "He's not the one, honey, to flinch at that."

  "You do know him, then! Oh, please, please—"

  She faded the words away, waiting for the blonde to help her, but Big Blondie just shook her head.

  "Who don't know Tom Horn, honey?" she said.

  Glendolene stood there, face twisting, hands doing the same. I blinked and squinted, peering at her.

  I could see her good from where I was hid.

  The view didn't help none.

  It looked to me like she had put on fifteen pounds. She was sweaty with fear, and her skin was yellow as a chuck wagon biscuit. Her poppy eyes was bugged out to where you could have knocked them off with a stick. She didn't have no color on her face, her shirtblouse had big perspire rings under the arms of it, and, in that whiskied light, she appeared about four foot tall and homely as a pockmark Paiute Indian squaw.

  That, naturally, was the booze-blur of it.

  The booze-blur and my interrupted lather to get at the big blonde.

  It made me see some other Miss Kimmell than the dear husky-voice little loving one I remembered.

  A man and his whiskey bottle. Christ Jesus, the woes and wrongness that pair had wrought to my life.

  I slunk there back of the bottle rack and watched Big Blondie tell the schoolmarm to forget Tom Horn, as neither him nor any other man was worth such fretting, but to do her forgetting of him in some other back room than the one at the Bull's Horn, where Big Blondie had business lined up and waiting.

  Glendolene sounded to me like she was crying. But she bucked up, said something of apology to the blonde, and backed awkward out the spangled curtain. I seen her stop and pester the barkeep again, showing him some kind of a letter. But he was smartening up. He give her the directions to find the Inter-Ocean Hotel, where he said Tom Horn generally stayed in town, and Glendolene bolted out the front of the Bull's Horn on an actual trot. I remember the last view I had of her was of that perky little red hat she always wore square atop the black bun of her hair abobbing out the doors. And I remember my last feeling for her to be one of vasty relief that she was gone, and nobody had got bad hurt over it.

  Nobody?

  Ah, Christ! how late I forever was to learn.

  Had I but known, even dreamed to know, what she had brought to show Tom Horn—the handwrote hard evidence she waved at the barkeep that Joe LeFors, with the Cheyenne police and the county sheriff, was setting a deadfall trap to drop on Tom Horn in twenty-four hours— God alone can say how far off and free I would still be riding. But that's like saying that, if I had listened to her that one decent, small, kindhearted minute, I would not be where I am now, with my sunrises cut down to the few more coming, and every preacher in Laramie County wanting to set me right with the Lord whiles the time remains.

  Instead, I went back to the blonde and the bottle. Of the two of them, it was the bottle got me.

  I don't even remember the big blonde woman's name; likely she never give it to me. But I can see the label on that last bottle—it was OLD OVERHOLT, my favored brand of them all. And the fellow setting crost from me buying that final bottle for Tom Horn was U.S. Marshal LeFors.

  Deputy U.S. Marshal Joe LeFors.

  The little sandy-haired lawman I didn't know, and wasn't any way scared of.

  I can see that bottle yet. Every chip in its uncorked mouth, every bar stain on its label, every fly speck on the tumblers coming with it.

  And I can see Joe's hand, as he picked it up to pour for me.

  "Have another, Tom," he smiled, "and tell me how you done it."r />
  Joe LeFors

  Sometimes, when a man is running, he must back up to get the right start. Sometimes he doesn't even know he's running yet, but backs up anyways, on instincts. I done that then, and do it now.

  I was, on this day before LeFors bought the bottle, over at Frank Meanea's saddle shop. Frank had been sewing me up a saddle scabbard for my .30-30 Winchester, and I had the rifle with me. I saw shadows in the shop door from one eye-corner and moved around quick but easy. It was Laramie County lawman, then chief of police in Cheyenne, Sandy McKneal He had a short, wide-shouldered man with him. The man was of a roany blond complexion, stiff short hair, and he spoke a rich southern drawl. He didn't look to be another lawman, and I let down according.

  "Tom," McKneal said to me, "I want you to meet Joe LeFors. Joe, this here is Tom Horn."

  Well, we both settled in our boots, sizing the other. "Horn," LeFors nodded, pleasant enough but not offering any handshake.

  "Marshal," I nodded, returning his failure to put out a hand. "I've heard of you but had you pictured a bit different. Our tracks were bound to mingle, eh?"

  "It seems," the marshal agreed.

  "I got to go along," Chief McKneal said. "I will leave you two to your talk."

  I watched him leave, wondering why it was assumed me and the marshal was going to palaver.

  "Your rifle?" LeFors said, pointing to the .30-30 on the hide-cutting counter.

  "Yep."

  "Thirty-thirty, I see."

  "Yep."

  "How do you find that caliber?"

  "Good." I gave him the ballistics of the round, together with the character of the rifle, and he just kept nodding, very pleasant all the while. "It will put all them other calibers out of business," I finished. "You will find it in a class by itself, marshal."

  LeFors looked at me.

  "Yes, very nearly so. Not too many thirty-thirties around."

  "Not too many, marshal, no."

  "Name is Joe, Horn. We don't know one another, in spite of what people think, but that is no reason we must be so formal. We are in the same business."

  Something warned me to go along muy cuidado, and I fell into his invitation as if not in any way spooked.

  "Well, Joe," I said, "if that's the way it is, then it's Tom and not Horn. You are right. If we are going to do business, no use walking around it stiff-legged."

  "No use at all. Tom, you are headquartering up to John Coble's Bosler ranch at this time, if I am right. And George What's His Name is bossing there now."

  "Yes, that's so. We are moving cattle up from Iron Mountain. And some over from the Wall Rock."

  "I want to talk about a time before Willie Nickell was killed. About what you were doing then."

  "Yes, all right. If I remember."

  "I have a letter here which may help you, Tom." He pulled out a letter wrote by John Coble, dated ahead of July 18, handing it to me. "Just read the last of it there. About the sheep. And you."

  "Hell," I said, straightening the paper. "How'd you find out I can read, Joe. I ain't even supposed to have sense enough to sign my name."

  "Well, we know better than that. What does it say?"

  I read it for him:

  "The Iron Mountain, Wall Rock, and Plumbago pastures look woolly and are filled with sheep. . . . When the sheepmen attempt to drive or handle our cattle I will at once have them arrested. But they are scared to death, are hiring all the six-shooters and bad men they can find. I want Horn back here; he will straighten them out by merely riding around. . ."

  I give the letter back to LeFors, watching his feet and keeping my glance down in my way.

  "What do you think? the marshal said.

  "About what? Riding around and straightening people out? That's my work. It's how I draw my pay. Same as you."

  "Yes, well, somebody straightened out little Willie Nickell, Tom, and I wanted to let you understand that if you learn anything I would like to hear of it. This man will be caught, but he is very cute."

  "The schoolmarm says it wasn't no man did it," I said, bringing my eyes up. "She says Jim Miller told her Vic did it, and Vic later admitted it to her that he did kill Willie and was woeful sorry for it."

  "I heard she said that."

  "Well, I done better than that; I heard her say it."

  "Tom, it's only hearsay evidence. It's no good."

  "Well, what you want of me, Joe?"

  "Tom, we can do a lot of good if we can work together on this thing. You know, setting a trap for this fellow."

  He was a very engaging man. Made you believe him and want to believe him. And the next thing he done there in Meanea's place convinced me like a cold rain.

  He had just come in on the train from taking a convict to the pen at Rawlins, he said, and on that train had run into some information he knew I would want to act on. And he wanted me to have it first.

  "Go ahead on," I told him.

  "Come outside in the sun," he said. "We'll set on the bench and let folks see us talking, and they will think everything is all right."

  By that, I knowed instantly that everything was not all right, of course, and followed him out of the shop.

  "Tom," he began, "I will be careful with this, as I want you to take it in the proper way. The flag was up at Bosler station, when the U.P. #39 come past with me aboard, from Rawlins. Fellow got on that I recognized for George W——, your boss up there. I went and set by him and told him I wanted to talk about the killing of little Willie Nickell.

  "I said, 'George, what are all the Pinkertons doing around Cheyenne? I've seen three of them in as many days. The ones I saw were following Tom Horn around; Tom was drinking and, I understood, talking about the Nickell case. Why don't you send him out of the country? Horn is going to get someone in trouble yet by his talk.' "

  "Hold off," I broke in. "What the hell talk is that?"

  LeFors grinned at me friendly and said, "That is exactly what George W—— asked, and I told him."

  "Told him what, goddamnit, Joe?"

  "Tom, you remember the night you got your jaw busted in Denver?"

  "Shit. Does a bull calf beller when you cut his balls off?"

  "Well, all right. Do you recall what you said about the Willie Nickell killing that night? It was in the Scandinavian Saloon. To the head bartender, I think."

  "That was before the fight, Joe."

  "Yes, before that."

  I started to deny the barkeep and me had even talked. But the memory of it twisted in me.

  "The bastard was pumping me," I said. "Yes, and priming me too. He would say a thing and then I would agree to it, or add onto it. You know how I am, Joe."

  "Yes, and I take it into account, Tom. But the man is serious about it. He will come here to testify against you, and says he has a witness, as well."

  I scowled and switched trails, backing him up.

  "We was talking about my Bosler boss," I said. "Go back to that. It was about me talking too much."

  "That's what I'm getting to, Tom." LeFors touched me on the arm like an old friend will do. "When your boss man asked me, just like you did a minute ago, what talk it was that I had heard that would get somebody in a lot of trouble, I had to tell him it was what you said about the Willie Nickell killing to the Denver barkeep."

  We sat there in the late December sun.

  It was warm and very still.

  I never said yes or no to Joe LeFors on that twisted barkeep story. I wanted to forget it. I just studied the boards of the saddle shop walk and said, "Joe, why are you telling me all of this?"

  "I haven't told you all of it," he said.

  "It's enough," I answered.

  "No, I don't think so, Tom. Your Bosler boss man answered me that if Horn gets to talking too much more like that, we will have to bump him off ourselves.' "

  "The hell!"

  "He also said he had paid you for other jobs but not this one. He said the pay was made on the train between Cheyenne and Denver, always in gold or fr
esh paper bills."

  "Jesus Christ, it seems to me they're the ones that is doing the talking, not Tom Horn!" I snapped out.

  LeFors nodded, thoughtful as could be. "Seems that way to me, also, Tom. It is why I've had this talk with you."

  "Well, Joe, I am grateful to you."

  "I know; but you have got to do something, Tom."

  "What is that?"

  "Well, let me show you another letter."

  Joe LeFors brought forth a thicker document this time. I saw the seal of the Montana Livestock Inspector's office on the envelope. "It is from W. D. Smith," LeFors said, seeing me frowning at the seal. "He's their chief investigator. He wants me to send him a man for detective work in northwestern Montana. I am wondering, Tom, if this might not be a good place to get you out of sight for a while."

  "How do you mean that, Joe?"

  "Well, George has said you are clean in the Willie Nickell case. He didn't pay you for that. He also told me you were not paid in the Kels Nickell shooting."

  "Hell, I know that, Joe."

  "Sure, and every time I can help a man who is clean, I will do it, Tom. The trouble here is that the people think you did it, and they want it that way."

  I opened the letter quick then but trying not to seem shook or spooked. I was both, and bad so, by that time.

  The letter looked to me like a fresh horse and a fair start away:

  Joe LeFors Esq. Miles City, Montana

  Cheyenne Dec. 28th, 1901

  Friend Joe

  I want a good man to do some secret work.

  And want a man that I can trust. And he will have to be a man not known in this country. The nature of this, there is a gang over the Big Moon River that are stealing cattle, and we purpose to fit the man out as a wolfer and let him go into that country (and wolf).

  And if he is the right kind of a man he can soon get in with the gang. He will have to be a man that can take care of himself in any kind of country.

  The pay will be $125 per month and I believe a man can make good wages besides.

  Joe, if you know of anyone who you think will fill the place let me know. There will be several months' work.