Tom Horn: The Controversial Life and Legacy of One of the Wild West’s Most Famous Gunslingers

by Charles River Editors

*Includes pictures *Includes excerpts of Horn's own work *Includes a bibliography for further reading *Includes a table of contents “You're the sickest looking lot of sheriffs I ever seen.” – Tom Horn The exploration of the early American West, beginning with Lewis and Clark’s transcontinental trek at the behest of President Thomas Jefferson, was not accomplished by standing armies, the era’s new steam train technology, or by way of land grabs. These came later, but not until pathways known only to a few of the land’s indigenous people were discovered, carved out, and charted in an area stretching from the eastern Rocky Mountains to the Pacific Ocean, and the present-day borders of Mexico and Canada. Even the great survey parties, such as Colonel William Powell’s exploration of the Colorado River, came decades later. The first views of the West’s enormity by white Americans were seen by individuals of an entirely different personality, in an era that could only exist apart from its home civilization. In the span of scarcely more than a half century, the West developed from a handful of scattered fur trapping enterprises predominantly inhabited by males to a region full of burgeoning rustic communities, and before the government’s official “closure” of the frontier as a lawless expanse, Western societies were essentially living apart from traditional American rule of law. What judicial structures were at work across the West were erratic, often willing to exercise extremes without evidential justification, and manipulated by major corporate interests of the day, most notably cattle. The latter 19th century brought about both the heyday and decline of that industry, but the modernized and increasingly technology-oriented societies began to bloom while many of the legendary frontier figures were still alive. In some cases, the old and new worlds were able to coexist as the lone wolves and lawmen of the frontier became obsolete as an archetype, but still a part of folklore. Wyatt Earp was the subject of several early motion pictures and lived long enough to consult on their productions and meet actors. Iconic rodeo stars, lawmen, and notorious outlaws who made themselves famous on horseback witnessed the beginnings of the age of flight. However, the transition from a mostly lawless region to an ordered society that more closely mirrored the East Coast could be rough for some, and perhaps nobody struggled to adapt to societal progress more than the infamous Tom Horn. At the close of the 19th century, Horn undertook virtually every form of employment available on the frontier before ending his career as a paid assassin for the cattle industry, anonymously ambushing cattle rustlers. According to an ongoing debate, he was either the perpetrator or scapegoat for the murder of a young boy in Iron Mountain, Wyoming, an ambush execution that occurred in the context of a raging feud between the cattle and sheep industries that broke all borders of rationality. With a raft of unanswered questions, Horn remains among the most prominent and controversial figures in the annals of frontier America, a reputation due in large part to the sensationalistic autobiography he wrote in prison, Life of Tom Horn, Government Scout and Interpreter. Tom The Controversial Life and Legacy of One of the Wild West’s Most Famous Gunslingers chronicles Horn’s time as a scout, cowboy, Pinkerton agent, and writer, and how he became one of the most famous folk legends. Along with pictures depicting important people, places, and events, you will learn about Tom Horn like never before.

Genres: Biography

43 pages, Kindle Edition

Published January 22, 2020

About the author

Charles River Editors is an independent publisher of thousands of ebooks on Kindle, Nook, Kobo, and Apple iBookstore & provider of original content for third parties.

Reviews

[stephanie suh · Rating 4 out of 5]

You may know what you are, but you don’t know what you may be. Things never seem to go in a way that you want them to, and life can’t always be lived at the same pitch as your heart’s content. For the fickle nature of life is beyond your mortal measure, which is called the vagaries of life according to the positions of the slings and arrows of the Wheel of Fortune on which someone’s loss can become your windfalls and vice versa. That’s why life isn’t fair, and you know it, but you just have to bear it with a grin in the manner of an obscure performer on stage getting the part you don’t like. It’s easy to be said and done, but that’s how the life of Tom Horn, one of the Wild West’s most famous and last gunslingers, seems to mirror how the play of the Fate in company of the juggernaut of an epoch betrays a man’s life despite his efforts to carve it out according to his will, which makes me question the validity of Calvin’s Doctrine of Predestination that I have thus far resisted.

Tom Horn, born on November 20th, 1860 in Missouri, was an American scout, cowboy, soldier, cattle detective, and Pinkerton agent in the 19th-century and early 20th-century American Old West, spanning the two epochal societal and economic changes of the West that permeated the lives of the frontiersmen and women in all aspects of their contemporary life. However, nobody struggled to be accustomed to the changes more than the infamous Tom Horn, allegedly committed 17 killings as a hired gunman throughout the west, including the dramatic capturing of the legendary Apache warrior Geronimo due to his commendable knowledge of Indian languages and negotiation skills. And yet, Tom Horn was not the usual footless gunslinger killing people for leisure or money, hanging around at saloons, or roaming about the town just to get kicks for scaring the onlookers with that usual contrived look of machismo. He was always working or in search of working out in the field, self-employed or employed, riding the horse from one end of the frontier to the other end where guns were a means of law and life. Until the U.S, Census Bureau officially closed the Western Frontier, Horn had been working as a mercenary assassin for the cattle industry whose job was to ambush cattle rustlers hired by local cattle lords. And it was during this employment that Horn was accused of killing a young boy in Iron Mountain, Wyoming as a result of a growing feud between the cattle and sheep industries breaking all borders of rationality.

Whether Horn really killed the boy remains unresolved in consideration of a lack of substantial evidence, but upon my reading of the book in association with watching the selfsame movie, starring Steve McQueen as Tom Horn, I posit that Horn must have been framed for the murder of the boy because (1) he was always a lone wolf without attachments; (2) he had extensive working experiences of handling fugitives, criminals, and hostile natives as an expert marksman; and (3) he wasn’t as cunning and slick as others to protect himself from false accusations and other kinds of infamy.

In fact, Horn was a scapegoat for the changing social climate of the West in the transition from a lawless territory to a civilized society that slowly began to simulate the East Coast, where a man like Horn would be a subject of public farce, ridicule, and reprehension as an epitome of barbarity of man deprived of the common constraints of civilization retorting back to the old law of teeth for teeth and eye for eye. Horn’s glorious achievements as a dependable scout who guided the army through the unpatched perils trails packed full of unknown dangers to the frontier, a reliable bounty hunter who did his job well, and a good, conscientious employee obeying his employers were naught in the greedy minds of his cattle lords, and thus his existence was simply expendable just as another precarious serf who could be terminated for good at their wills.

Horn’s life was ended in the gallows generated by waters in a Wyoming prison on November 20, 1903. During his number days in a cell, Horn wrote his autobiography, Life of Tom Horn: Government Scout and Interpreter, published posthumously in 1904. Even Geronimo expressed his disbelief of Horn’s charges and the killing of the boy in a cold-blooded fashion. True that Tom Horn has become something of a Western saga with his larger-than-life figure. Nevertheless, he was not a fictional character but a real man who tried to make the best of his life in the wilderness of the West alone with what he had. I believe that had he been not a loner, he could have not been framed for the murder of the boy because something tells me that the cattle ranchers and his henchmen concocted the machination against Tom Horn and projected all their evil doings and horrible imaginings to this adventurous man as a scapegoat for exchanging their barbarous past of the 19th Century western frontier with a new zeitgeist of the 20th century civilized western society. For this, nobody sums up the tragedy of Tom Horns better than Elizabethan dramatist and poet Shakespeare: “As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods; they kill is for their sport.” This is why my resistance to the doctrine of Predestination is slowly leaning toward the truce for consideration.

[William Brown · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Charles River Editors sure have a knack for documenting history without a bunch of fluff and opinion. Other than the Steve McQueen movie about Horn, this is the only other exposure I've had to his life and legend. I didn't know he was such a braggart. This account was quick and enjoyable.

[Ray Cooke · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great

Couldn't put it down a good tale about a little known western man.
One more fantastic little history book from Charles River Editors.

[August Luedecke · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty weak! Not well written, would not read again.

[Sean Furey · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting, high-level glance into the life and legend of Tom Horn. I will seek out another, more in-depth bio, but this one was a good read.