Tom Horn
November 1860 Memphis, Missouri to November 1909 Cheyenne, Wyoming.
Cowboy, railroad employee, stagecoach driver, army scout, miner, teamster, law officer, Pinkerton detective, range detective, soldier, hired killer. Raised on a Missouri farm. Raised on a Missouri farm, Tom was a habitual truant from school, and after a whipping by his father, the rebellious fourteen &e year &endash; old ran away to the west. By 1876 he had signed on with the army as a scout, and in 1885 he succeeded the famed Al Sieber as a civilian chief of scouts. He was an important figure in the campaign which resulted in the final capture of Geronimo, although his role was not a significant as he later claimed. He hired his gun out in Arizona's Pleasant Valley War in 1887, then secured an appointment as a deputy sheriff of Yavapai County. Occasionally he worked a gold claim near Tombstone.
In 1890 Horn joined the Pinkerton detective agency in Denver, and in 1892 he enlisted as a range detective with the Wyoming cattle Grower's association. In 1894 Tom was hired by the Swan Land and Cattle Company &endash; technically as a horsebreaker, but reputedly as a killer of rustlers and bothersome homesteaders. Once a member of the company turned in the name of a troublemaker, Horn supposedly would track him and methodically learn his habits. Then he would set an ambush and kill the offending individual with a high-powered rifle. He would carefully collect shell casings and other possible evidence, set two stones under the head of his victim as a sort of trademark, then leave the scene to collect his six-hundred-dollar fee.
Normally a reserved man, the tall, muscular Horn would periodically travel to Denver or Cheyenne to blow off steam with a drunken spree. Tom was employed in 1901 by John Coble, who owned a large ranch north of Laramie near Iron Mountain. There were hard feelings between Coble and a neighbor named Nickell. Horn decided to kill the man, but he mistakenly shot Nickell's fourteen &e year &endash; old son and the subsequent furor put lawman Joe LeFors on his trail.
Tracking Horn to Denver, LeFors got him drunk and extracted what amounted to a confession. Eavesdropping deputy's statements resulted in Horn's arrest and conviction for murder. While in confinement, he spent the months writing an understandably one-sided autobiography. Despite the legal efforts of the big cattlemen and their lawyers, Tom Horn was hanged in November 1903.
LINKS:
Tom Horn's Indian Territory Manhunt
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