I, Tom Horn

by Will Henry

  Yours truly,

  W. D. Smith

  Ch. Insp.

  I handed back the letter to Joe, but he said if I meant to answer it, and avail myself of its opportunity, I had best take it along with me. I did so, putting it away.

  "I am not sure what to do," I told him. "I will go back out to Bosler and see if I can find John Coble."

  "I saw him in town today, Tom, and he said he will be on the Bosler ranch tomorrow sure. You will want to talk it over with him, I suppose?"

  "Yes. He should see the letter."

  "I agree."

  I went in the shop and got my Winchester from Frank Meanea and come back out. LeFors was still there.

  "If you decide to write Smith," he said, "better do it through me, Tom. I can cover for you on it. Otherwise it might get out somehow."

  "All right, Joe," I nodded. "I will get to you by the first of the year."

  He didn't say anything, and I went on down to the depot in time to hook onto the 3:05, for Bosler Station.

  I et on the train and met some good old friends of mine who had a bottle, and it was a fine trip home. All of them said I had nothing to worry about. Everybody in Laramie and Cheyenne knew what case Joe LeFors had, which was no case whatever, unless he wanted to bring up the Millers and issue a bill of indictment where one belonged. We drank to that, and the conductor came down into our car and told me we was slowing for Bosler, and I got off the cars and found Tack Cowans, one of the boys from the ranch, there to meet me in the rig.

  It was blowing up to storm on the way home.

  It was a mean sky and took some of the glow off me and off my prospects. "She's switching," Tack said.

  I can't remember it so goddamn cold for December.

  Nor bleak.

  I didn't say anything back to Tack.

  Yours Truly

  Mr. Coble read the letter for me and said he felt as though the marshal was right, and that I should answer him to that effect. He knew, as firmly as ever I did, he told me, that I had not done such a cruel murder as to kill the Nickell boy. Johnny Coble was with me and would stay with me, but he still believed I ought to try Montana.

  "There is a poor feeling to this entire affair, Tom," he said. "Be very cautious up there (Montana), and do not write back here through Joe LeFors. Send everything to the association, and Miss Smith will see it gets to me."

  "What do you think they will do, Johnny?" I said.

  "Nothing," he answered prompt. "They have not an iota of hard evidence and cannot find any. Scoundrels though they are, (the people), they have a curious respect for law, where it does not bind them."

  "I don't like it, Johnny," I said. "I've turnt hunchy and will do as you advise. When I drift back, the whole thing will have blowed over."

  "It must!" Coble cried, with his unquenchable spunk. "The rascals will suffer for their impudence. Kels is already gone. The others will think about that."

  "Yes, well I reckon we still suspicion mighty strong who done it, Johnny."

  "We do, Tom."

  "And they will go as free as we do."

  "Miss Kimmell saw to that unfortunately with her contradictive testimony. But that is done now. We cannot call it back nor, as Omar the tentmaker said, cancel half a line of it."

  Coble got up from his desk, where we were sitting in his game-head room and ranch office. He came over to me.

  I got up out of the big morris chair and set aside my Habana cigar. He patted me on the shoulder roughlike.

  "But there is something we can do, Tom," he said, in that special quiet way of his.

  He pointed to our map of his Iron Mountain ranges—Wall Rock, Plumbago, Bosler—and I saw his finger settle on a place along the fairest flow of the Chug. It was homesteaded land, the old J. K. Blister place at Four Mile fork. There was no better grass nor water nor winter shed on the Wyoming range, and I had often told John Coble he should move there in his old age. But he had it figured different. It was for somebody else's old age.

  "I want you to have the Four Mile pasture, Tom," he said. "I mean to deed it over to you, and I will when you come back. It is time to put away the Winchester and take down your detective shingle. Four Mile will make you a nice start. We will see if you can't brand a few fat head for yourself. How would you like that?"

  I had never until that moment thought of such an idea.

  My own place?

  Tom Horn rooted to one spot?

  No more muddy water, rat cheese, stale rye bread, and raw bacon?

  My God, I must be getting age on me; it sounded damn good. "Johnny," I answered him, "I reckon I would like that fine. Lord bless you, and if he don't, tell Tom Horn!"

  We left it there and I figured out my letter to Joe LeFors: I told him in it that I would take up the work and felt sure I could give Mr. Smith satisfaction. I said I didn't care how big or bad his men were, or how many, I would handle them. They could not be any worse, I pointed out, than the Brown's Hole gang where I had stopped cow stealing in one summer. I told Joe he could assure Smith that I would handle his "work" for him with 'less expense, in the shape of lawyer & witness trouble fees, than any man in the business." I closed by adding, "You yourself know of my reputation, Joe, and what it is, even though we have never been out together." I signed it like I did most anything I ever wrote, "Yours truly, TOM HORN."

  That was January first.

  In a few days, here come another letter from Joe LeFors dated January 6, saying mainly that he had forgot to tell me that the "Montana man will have to report to Smith in Helena, for the job."

  I frowned over it a bit. Wasn't it off-trail for him to send a whole other letter just to say that?

  The sombra feeling stirred again.

  And I said, oh, the hell with it. This here is Wyoming, not Arizona. It ain't sombra country up here.

  So back went my last letter to Joe LeFors.

  Joe LeFors Esq. Iron Mountain

  Cheyenne, Wyo. Ranch Company

  Bosler, Wyo.

  Jan. 7, 1902

  Friend Joe

  Rec'd your Jan 6th today and contents noted.

  Joe I am much obliged to you for the trouble you have taken for me in this matter . . . I will get the men sure, for I have never yet let a cow thief get away from me. . . .

  I will come to Cheyenne to get my pass on the railroad as I can get one on the U.P. to Helena from there. I can go at any time after ten days. I will see you in Cheyenne when I come in. . . .

  I am yours truly,

  TOM HORN

  When I had sealed up that letter and put it on the train from Bosler so LeFors would have it next day, I figured I had my calves all in the barn for the winter.

  But I had forgotten one small thing.

  I didn't look to see that the barn door was shut tight. It wasn't.

  There was a two-inch crack under it.

  Just enough to let out a man's life.

  Bad Business

  I had told Joe LeFors I would see him in Cheyenne in ten days. But some days after this another letter followed from him, saying I must come in before that time. It was necessary, he said, for him and me to have a meeting. He called it an interview. The idea was that the "Montana people" wanted him, LeFors, to "give Horn a final look," as to his qualifications for the work.

  Well, it was only January 11, but I went immediate and got him off a telegraph from Bosler. It said I would be into Cheyenne later that same day. I then went to Coble and asked could I borrow the team and rig, as it was a long ways and I did not care to ride it horseback in such a cold snap. Coble quickly consented.

  The weather would make a wolf shake, and I stopped in Laramie to warm my belly inside and out. It made me a little late to Cheyenne, but I was in there at the livery barn and left the horses by eleven o'clock p.m.

  I took a few more drops of the medicine—it was at either the Hynds Saloon, or Tom Heany's Tiviola—and done too much talking and was later told some friends put me to bed. I only know, for sure, that next
morning I had a busting head and went downtown and stood up to another bar for about an hour and commenced to feel better for it. That's where Joe LeFors found me, no matter what he says.

  "Tom, come on and have another one, and then let's go up to my office. I would like to get this 'interview' business out of the way and know you would too."

  By this time, midmorning, I was sure I was going to live at least another day. But I didn't want to leave the bar, as I was afraid I would fall down from not having it to lean on. This is when LeFors, damn him, says to me, "Tom, I have got a bottle of your favorite Overholt whiskey up to the office. There is nice carpet there and you can take off your boots and lay back in a soft chair."

  "By God, Joe," I said, "you have found the recipe."

  "Well, I know your brand, Tom."

  "No, no, hell, it ain't the whiskey; it's the soft carpet and shucking my boots. Christ, my feet like to kill me when I'm standing. They've always hurt me."

  So up to his office we went.

  There was two easy chairs and his desk and the carpet, and it was nice and dark and warm in there, and he did sure enough have the bottle of Old Overholt.

  Well, I pried off my number nines and said, "Ah, Christ! that feels better" and told him to go on and do what must be done. "I will suffer through it, for I want the job and mean to have it."

  Joe laughed and said, "I will make it easy for both of us and not keep you too long. You will want to be on the noon train tomorrow."

  "Yes," I said, "that's right. Goddamn, but that carpet is kind on the feet. Will you have a glass with me, marshal, or don't you imbibe on the sabbath day?" I picked up the bottle, but Joe LeFors wasn't drinking, and I poured half a tumbler for Tom Horn and was ready.

  For a moment before LeFors commenced, I looked around the place we was in. It was a nice office, old wood panel walls, a picture of Steamboat bucking off Frank Stone, another of some homely woman I took to be Mrs. LeFors, but it wasn't her I later learnt. Then a second door to another office, I reckoned, but it was shut. That was all. The door we come in was right off the hall, direct. But compared to a saloon and standing up at a bar, it was summer pasture.

  For some reason, though, my eye kept coming back to that second door. Not even thinking to mean anything, I hooked a thumb at it and asked of LeFors, "Where's that lead?" I would have swore he flinched when I said it, but the light was poor, and I had had enough to drink to where I was blinking a lot in order to clear the blur.

  "Oh," Joe said, "it's a sort of storeroom. We keep it locked. Used to be another marshal worked up here with me. Costs money to heat and light it."

  "I could see the room was dark, was why I asked," I told him. "There's a two-inch crack under it that you could toss a billiard ball through. You'd ought to get that door rehung, marshal. You're wasting your fire."

  He laughed again and said he would see to it and then said, "Now, Tom, I wonder if you know why I've been pushing all along on this thing. You know, with you?"

  "I have figured it was to get at whoever done the Willie Nickell killing. You have said right along that you need my help to nail the bastard. Ain't that it?"

  "That is it precisely, Tom. Now are you clear on that? You're not drinking too much. Not drunk."

  "It ain't the same question," I objected. "Damn right I'm drinking too much, but damn no I ain't drunk."

  LeFors laughed again. He laughed or grinned at near everything I said; I seemed to amuse him something special. "All right, Tom; good: here is your letter of introduction to Mr. W. G. Pruitt, up in Montana." He handed me the letter and I frowned to think out another name.

  It came to me and I said, "I thought our man's name was W. D. Smith. Where's this Prudjit come into it?"

  "Pruitt, Tom," he answered me quietly. "You can't expect to deal with Smith; he's chief officer."

  "All right." I took the letter and fumbled it into some pocket of mine, where I never found it again, and waved to LeFors. "Go ahead on. Damn, it's hot in here. Can we open that other door?"

  "Afraid not, Tom. It's locked, you will remember."

  "Sure, all right. But I scarcely ever sweat, and it is pouring off me like oil from a scalded shoat. Must be I've tooken on more than my usual."

  '"Don't take anymore; let's get this interview out of the way."

  "Sure enough, Joe. Well, do you know the exact nature of the work I will have to do up there?" I squinted my eyes to ease the pounding in my head. "They ain't afraid of shooting, are they?"

  "No, they're not afraid of shooting."

  "Well, I shoot too much, I know. But I will protect the people I am working for. And I've never got any employer of mine in any trouble."

  "Tom, they are good people up there. Just fine."

  "Yes, well, I don't want to be making reports to anybody at any time. I will simply have one report to make, and that will be my final report."

  "All right. Why is that, Tom?"

  "This is why it is," I said, wiping the sweat off my nose and mouth. "If a man has to make reports all the while, they will catch the wisest s.o.b. on earth."

  "They won't catch you, Tom. You are the best man to cover up your trail ever I saw. In the Willie Nickell killing I could never find your trail, and I pride myself on being a trailer."

  My back muscles tightened. I looked at Joe LeFors. The reason he hadn't found any Tom Horn trail up on the Nickell ridge, I told him, was that there wasn't any Tom Horn trail up there to find. I said it plain and flat out, and there was no way he could not have heard me say it. And more. I told him then and there that I didn't have anything to say about the Willie Nickell matter beyond what he, LeFors already knew. Which same was that I had not killed the kid and never would. But those words of mine vanished into nowhere. They never appeared again. They were as though wrote in a different script. With ink that would fade away. Leaving only the dark print. The things that LeFors said. Or wanted said.

  "Goddamnit, Joe," I heard myself growl to the marshal, "I didn't leave no trail up there. You know that."

  "Sure, I know it, Tom. I was only talking about how good you cover a trail. It could be any trail."

  "Not meaning on the Nickell ridge?"

  "No, just anyplace."

  "Well, if it's just anyplace, Joe, the only way to cover up your trail is to go in on your bare feet."

  LeFors had been sitting quiet, nodding and waiting for me to answer. When I had, he nodded again.

  "All right, that's damn interesting. Where did you leave your horse, Tom?"

  Again I veered off sharp, holding up. I told him to quit worrying that old bone. If he wanted to talk about the Willie Nickell case, he had only to say so and we would know where we stood. But I had come up to answer questions to him for those people in Montana, and I reminded him of it. Joe laughed and reached out and put a hand to my knee and said to ease down. He was only testing my answers to situations any stock detective would need to know for the Montana job, and he was using the Nickell case only to example just any case where somebody had been killed in range work, or so suspected. His Montana people had just wanted him to double-check Tom Horn for them. By him, LeFors, asking questions about the Nickell case, which was so tough to figure out, it might be my answers to how it was done, or could have been done, would just help us come up with the real killer. I told Joe I didn't like it, but I wanted that Montana work and would play his little game with him if I had to.

  "Good," Joe LeFors said, pleased. "So just say it was you instead of the real killer up there on the Nickell ridge above one-mile gate. Where would you leave your animal? It's you up there now, Tom." He paused, eyeing me sharp. "Where did you leave your horse?"

  I let down, wanting to get on with it.

  "You can bet he was left a goddamn long ways off," I said, sort of bantering it with him. I remember hazily thinking it might have been kind of fun, sparring wits with the marshal, if only my head didn't pound so. LeFors scratched his head, still going easy and careful.

  "Hmmm, yes," he sa
id. "Well, maybe so. But I would be afraid to leave my horse so far away, Tom; you might get cut off from him."

  "It might be, Joe," I agreed, emptying my tumbler of the spot left in it, "but I always depend on this gun of mine."

  "Aha, yes, the system that never fails, eh?"

  "Well you know what they say of it, Joe."

  He nodded but passed that one up, turning the talk instead to a side-gully question. "Tom," he said, "I never understood why Willie Nickell was killed. Was it because he was one of the victims specified? Or was it a thing the kid caused by accident? You know, like blundering up on somebody. We're talking about the real killer now."

  I wiped my face of its heavy sweat and sipped at another weak shot. I didn't feel good. I had to work like hell to make sense. To follow Joe and answer him in a sharp way that would guarantee me his okay for the Montana job.

  "Joe," I said finally, "look at it backed off from it; I think it was this way. Suppose our man was in the big draw to the right of the one-mile gate. Suppose the kid come riding up on him from the wrong way of the draw. And suppose the kid begun to run for the house and the fellow—that's our real killer now—he headed him off at the gate. He must of killed the kid, I figure, to keep him from getting up to the house and raising a commotion. That is the way I think it went," I finished off, "but I will tell you one thing sure: I wisht it had went otherwise, and the killer not hit the kid and the kid got up to the house and did say who it was down yonder to the gate trying to kill him."

  "How do you mean, Tom?" LeFors said, frowning.

  "I mean then there wouldn't have been no talk of Tom Horn doing it, and no need of me going to Montana, nor any of this. But shit. Wishing is useless as trying to graft tits on a boar hog. They'll either slough and fall off, or, if they take, they won't suck a drop to nursing."

  LeFors let that slide by him, too, and got back to what I'd said of our real killer. He said he had never thought of it the way I described as possible just then. He had knowed all along that I was bright, he added, and maybe just the very best yet at this work.