I, Tom Horn

by Will Henry

  This agreement was made the afternoon of the seventeenth of November, on Rowells's next to last visit.

  At that time he also assured me he had spoken to a Father Kennedy, of Cheyenne, and that the priest would come to my cell the early night of the nineteenth.

  Rowells had, too, gotten my messages to my "friends" who had to provide my horse and supplies once I reached the street. The lanky lawyer had, as well, brought my return message from my friends. He had it folded on tissue inside his big railroad watch. He had not read it, he said, anymore than he had the one I sent out with him to "the boys."

  "In all of this, Horn," he told me, "I am as guilty as Judas Iscariot; except that I do not believe I am betraying the Master." He looked at me in that passing strange way of his. "I know you didn't kill that boy," he said. And turned away from me, called the guard, and went out of my cell, and out of the cellblock, and that was the last time he ever looked at me in that unsettling way or spoke to me in the soft, strange voice that wasn't his.

  By dusk that day I was still remembering what lawyer Rowells had said and the way that he had said it. Unexplainably it gave me a strength and certainty that all those about me in the jail could not believe. Here was a man going to die in the morning, and he didn't seem to understand it. He behaved as if tomorrow was going to be the start of his life, not the end of it.

  Well, as I saw it and as it now began swiftly to work itself out, that was precisely right.

  A. W. Rowells came at suppertime and was permitted with me under no guard but that of the general block—one man at the far end of the aisle by the door leading down to Sheriff Smalley's office. He left the trifling things he had brought me—special fancy shirt of mine to wear to the hanging, an old favored sweater, all things from John Coble out to the ranch—and we were able to get the new manuscript of fine-wrote pencil pages into his handcase without being seen. He left me then, and quickly, and the guard stopped him, and Rowells showed him a permit from Smalley to take the Coble manuscript out of the jail. The guard was the hard-nosed and hated Les Snow, and he sneered and demanded to see the pages. A. W. Rowells only smiled in a kindly way and showed him. Snow saw the faked-up title and top pages: TOM HORN, MY LIFE AS A GOVERNMENT SCOUT & INTERPRETER in ARIZONA TERRITORY. Rowells then showed him on Smalley's permit where it stated the story did not concern Wyoming or Tom Horn's life in that area and was fit to pass out of Cheyenne Jail, remitted to Mr. John Coble, Bosler Station.

  Deputy Snow scowled and threw me a snarly look up the exercise aisle but passed A. W. Rowells and the vital handcase and manuscript. My last happy thought of it was that the son of a bitch Les Snow would end up being the goat of Tom Horn smuggling his true-life Wyoming story out of Cheyenne Jail. I would have the last laugh on the bastard, after all! I would have taken it then and there, too, except that Father Kennedy was still due to come. For him, I had to keep it all quiet and peaceful about my second-floor cell. The coming of the priest and, even more, his going, had to flow along calm and unquestioned as his long black robes and widecrown shadowy hat. And they did.

  It was just on the hour following supper with me in the exercise aisle, that I seen from its window the priest's horse and buggy coming up Ferguson from the direction of the big church. I watched him get out and just loop his lines on the dash brake handle, not even dropping a hobble weight. The old horse just drooped where she was stopped, and the bony tall form of Father Kennedy hurried up the jail steps and disappeared out of my sight.

  Now everything commenced to snowball.

  It all went so fast and so slick that I ever after believed the Lord had something to do with it. Even the priest's talk fell into the exact direction I would have tried to lead it.

  He wanted me to pray with him.

  I said I wanted to do that and had sent for him for that reason, but that I hadn't the nerve—a man like I had been—to go on my knees in the full light.

  "I think we can do something there," the priest said. He went away and came back with Ed Smalley. The sheriff looked at me and listened to the priest. He then went to the wall switch and turned down the block lights. He told the guard to turn them back up when the priest left.

  I thanked both God and God's priest and went on my knees with him in my cell like I had promised. He prayed so earnest and straight for me that I hated to go on with what was in my mind. But a man will do anything for his life. I prayed even a little louder while I reached under my bunk and brought out the length of old dirty sock I had saved and into which I had packed the sandy dirt from the pot of my little green plant on the cell window ledge. When the padre left off his words to cross himself before continuing, I hit him. It made only the littlest "thunk," and I saw him stiffen, quiver a trill or two, and go slack. I caught him to keep him from knocking into anything on his fall over on his face to the floor.

  "Father and Son and Holy Ghost," I said, raising my voice for the guards. "Friend, Kennedy," I went on, seeing out of my eye corner that the guard was not watching. "Will you now pray with me, in my faith, sir?" And then I mumbled low something like a man would mumble saying yes and commenced to pray in real earnest. I used the Lord's Prayer, or the Twenty-third Psalm, and remembered it right good. Also, I stretched it out just long enough, or those old biblical fellows had wrote it so, that it covered the time I needed to get Father Kennedy's long robes off him and bundle him into my bunk, under the gray jail blanket, face to the wall. The only extra time I took was to listen to his chest just at the last.

  I heard the bump of his heart, a little rough but running. "Thank thee, Lord," I said, in cellblock tones, and repeated the only three Catholic words I knew. "Name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost—Amen!"

  I jammed on the padre's round, low-crown black hat, brim down over my face, collar of his winter vestment-coat high as it would turn around the Tom Horn jaws.

  "Thank you, padre," I said good and loud. "I hope the Lord goes likewise with you, as you have prayed for me—"

  This was it: I saw the guard turn and look our way, hearing my words to the departing priest. I stepped to cell's front, hard against the bars. Taking up the cross Father Kennedy wore belted at his middle, I rapped ever so tinkly with it on the iron of the big flat padlock fixture to my cell-door. At the same time I made a little upraised wrist motion out through the bars, as though sort of to bless the guard and beckon him too.

  He came plodding right down the block, looked for Tom Horn, and seen him on the bunk turned to the wall, no doubt sobbing with the terror of his tomorrow's fate, and then he just unlocked the cell and I went out past him, head down, and making the sign of the cross over my chest as I had practiced it from watching Father Kennedy and using it now to unction the jail guard for his kindness in not crowding us at our last prayers.

  There was a bad moment at the block door, when my belt sash slipped down on me because Father Kennedy had a much wider rump than I did. The cross damn near hit the floor, but the guard was Sully Schoopman and kindly in his ways and respectful of the holy father, being a Jew himself and careful of all religions. So he didn't see nothing nor say anything, and fifteen seconds later I was through the block door going down the stairs to the first floor. "God," I said in my mind, "stay with me."

  The two tired-looking deputies at the bottom of the stair only nodded to Father Kennedy. I raised my hand to them and passed on clutching the cross. I had to raise my eyes a trace then to see the way to the outside door. That is, to pass by Ed Smalley's office, the door of which was propped wide, with full light everywhere. As I did look up, two things hit me hard. The outer door was closed and inside-barred, and four tough Cheyenne men were flanking it with shotguns. Sheriff Ed Smalley was coming almost on a trot to cut off Father Kennedy. "Father," I heard him call, "just a minute. How did, uh—"

  God in heaven! was this the end of it, I thought.

  I could never fool Ed Smalley, near up.

  But God and my sombra were still in step.

  Something made me put up my
two hands to my face and go into a muffled sobbing of sorts, hunching my black-robed shoulders, then holding up a hand toward Smalley as it to plead, "No, please, sheriff, not now—"

  And, my dear God, Ed Smalley stopped and made a motion with his own two plump hands and said, "Of course, father; I only wanted to ask about Horn. But I see you've had it hard up there. Will you be in in the morning?"

  I made him a wave with the right hand to my parish hat brim, to say, yes, of course, and then I sobbed again and hurried toward that barred and heavy-guarded outer door.

  The last door.

  Again, it seemed that in the very final breath of it I would be found out. But in the instant that I got too near the door to go on without a stop and wait, Smalley's God-blessed high-pitched voice caught and passed me.

  "Open up, Wade; what's the problem?"

  "No problem, Ed." It was Wade Everett, a mean one and not stupid. "Just that you told us to pass nobody without you said."

  "Yes, I know. Well, it has been a hell's day for all of us. Good night, father."

  Again I had to bet my pile on a snuffle and another raising of the good right hand. Passing by the deputies, I hunched my black clothes higher yet and shivered, ''bbbrrrrrr!" as the outside cold hit me. It was that cold in fact that the parish hatbrim near buried itself in the collar of the padre's overcoat, and I couldn't see a thing for a minute and almost pitched down the stairs due to a slip on the ice and slush. I caught myself and went to the buggy where it and the old mare yet drooped in front of the hitch-rail. The damned old fool horse snorted some when she got my smell instead of Father Kennedy's. But then part of him was on his clothes and part of me on mine underneath the priest's outfit, and, well, old Dolly decided to settle down and sort it out later in the nice warm parish barn.

  I swung her and the buggy out from the rail and off down Ferguson Street toward the big Catholic church. As I passed by and waved to the last of the rifle-toting National Guard troops at block's end, I heard the tower bells of some church behind me commence to chime the hour. I counted the strokes like years of my life. Each one was a beat of my heart growing stronger for the long run ahead. Eight of them I counted, and then the striking fell still. Eight o'clock of my last night on earth. Four hours yet to that last day. The day they had thought they would hang Tom Horn.

  And he was free.

  Tom Horn was out and going free.

  For some reason the words of the old song sprang into my mind:

  My foot's in the stirrup, my pony won't stand

  Good-bye, Old Paint, I'm a-leaving Cheyenne—!

  I laughed out loud, the tune of it soaring inside me:

  Good-bye, Old Paint, I'm a-leaving Cheyenne

  Good-bye, Old Paint, I'm a-leaving Cheyenne!

  Great God, but the feeling of life in a man ran strong when it was let free.

  I had only to haw the old parish mare down to the U.P tracks and over them to where the boys would have Old Pacer waiting in the lean-to shed of Earl "Shorty" Showalter's place, out south of town at the edge of the sage. Then I would be free! No horse in Wyoming could catch that big crazy bay, once off and racing.

  It was in the lift of that moment that the old mare shied and snorted, and I heard behind me from Ferguson Street the sudden yelling of commands and the sounds in the night, so still but heartbeats before, of angry and frightened men running and cursing and getting to their horses.

  Going Home

  I had to whip the old mare. She wanted to "gee" and go home to the parish stable. I sawed at her mouth with the lines to keep her straight. The whip broke, and then the left line, and she was of a sudden running on her own. She did get me to the yards, and over the main U.P. tracks, before she realized her situation and broke on me. By that time, I had jumped onto the buggy shafts and to her back and had her by the cheek straps.

  "Hee-yah, hee-yah!" I yelled at her, but she was fighting me.

  By this time others in the streets of old Cheyenne were shouting too. They were shouting to one another to know why Father Kennedy was barebacking his old buggy mare over the railroad tracks, south out of town in the darkening of the young night. About this time, some of the townfolk, beginning to show along the way with shotgun or Old Betsy rifle to hand, were into the street ahead of me. I was having a chancy time of it guiding the miserable mare. The last thing I wanted was to hit somebody, or careen into some lamp pole or paling fence trying to avoid hitting somebody. If we wrecked that buggy with the old horse still in its shafts, Tom Horn would be set afoot with still two miles of town settlement to get shut of. "Hee-yah, hee-yah!"

  Right there, I heard the hammer of horses behind me.

  They were about three blocks back, just wheeling off Ferguson Street. Looked to be five, six of them. Not soldiers. Likely hardcases from the jail volunteers. Those bastards camped by their fires all over Ferguson Street that night before the big day. Having a lark of it camping out to "stand citizen guard" over old Tom, just happen he would try anything at the last clock tick.

  The "people," God bless them.

  They had my track one more time. Whoever was in that posse back yonder they would, each of them, rather take care of Tom Horn with rifle or pistol ball in the back than to cart him back to Cheyenne Jail for "the law" to carry out their will, come sunrise.

  Then it happened.

  I was just coming to the last switch spur track to cross, when I looked back. As I swung my eyes around to the road again, a little towheaded kid and an idiot yappy mutt ran square out from behind some sided cattle cars, into my way. I couldn't do anything but haul on the mare to swerve her. It was that or hit the kid.

  The buggy tipped, slewed wild, the rear wheel of it smashing into a switch pole. The shatter of the wreck and the ki-yiying of the dog, whicht had got hurt, was enough to rouse up all South Cheyenne. The kid, thank God, was all right.

  I seen that at the same time he seen me.

  That was when I lit on the ground, hard, where the mare throwed me in falling herself, and when I staggered up and ripped off Father Kennedy's robes so's I could run afoot, full stride. Me and the kid weren't ten foot apart, and there was a gas streetlamp at the crossing, handclose.

  Well, my face had been in all the papers so many times and for so long it was better known in those parts than Teddy Roosevelt's. This little kid let out a fearful screech and lit off up toward town yowling, "Tom Horn! Tom Horn! Help, help—!" And Tom Horn, unarmed, set afoot and limping bad from the buggy wreck, ran for the only cover there was—the winter-bare brush of the creek beyond the spur siding.

  The posse was past the kid now and had begun firing into everything they could see in the throw of light from the crossing lamp pole. Which did not include me. I was into the brush, still running, scarce hitting a limb or twig, as I had run through the brush of Wyaconda Creek thirty years gone. I was safe away from the tracks and the yard in five minutes and had left them no trail they could follow. As man, as boy, the tracker didn't live who could stay with Tom Horn once he was into the timber and coursing the creek draws.

  Half an hour later I made Showalter's barn and was in it, its signal lantern blown out and smoking in the darkness there with me, and had found everything by its light the moment before. Saddle sack, rat cheese, rye bread, bacon, winter mittens, ammunition, an old .30-30 rifle and .45 Colt's revolver, and, praise God! in the one box stall, saddled, bridled, rigged to step up onto and go, and whickering now to smell my scent again, the great bay horse that couldn't be caught, Old Pacer!

  We got out of there, into the range south. Pacer went like he could run all night and never snort. And I ran him all night. Oh, we stopped now and again, when we hit a landmark of the route I was following, or just when, out of rising spirits, I had to stop him and leap down and drag in that cold Wyoming air and stride around as long in steps as my long legs would take me. God, I was free!

  On we went, following the markers on my chosen trail down into Colorado. Taking Granite Gap, the Lone Tree River road, an
d then the Buck Eye Cutoff, over into the Fort Collins country. We hit them all and right on the time I had figured in my mind. With day paling over east we were down off Wellington Buttes, crossing the flat toward Box Elder Creek, just north of the fort.

  But the light was poor down there. A cold fog coiled in from somewhere, and it was yet not dawn enough to see easy through it. Pacer was going a little uncertain now, too, and for the first time. It was like the both of us didn't know this country, after all.

  But we did, damn it.

  Up ahead, acrost the creek, would be the spur of Box Elder Ridge, rising with the road to carry it over to the Fort Collins side. And at the bottom of the rise, on our side, would be Old Man Gawters's pole corral and mustanger's shanty. And in the shed of that corral, warm and full of oats and fresh as the wind, would be my relay horse, Ora Haley's famous Yellowbird. I would eat with old man Gawters and thaw my bones at his fire. Then leave Old Pacer snug and warm in the corral shed, go aboard Yellowbird, swing wide of the fort, and be gone.

  The light grew a little, some of the fog thinned.

  We came to the creek and to a bridge I didn't remember being there. It rung hollow to the thud of Pacer's hooves going over it. Damn. Where was the pole corral. The Gawters's cabin? The road went up ahead of us, all right, the rise was there. But this wasn't right.

  Could it be I was groggy from the ride?

  Or maybe me and Pacer had missed our turn somewheres?

  Or that I had plain forgot, and the old man's place was on the far side of the Box Elder rise?