(Marston escorted by Red Dead Redemption’s morally dubious government agents, Edgar Ross and Archer Fordham.)
In the dying West, the line between lawman and outlaw was a thin
one, and no one walked that line more ambiguously than the subject of
part three of our True West series of Red Dead Redemption historical
research insights, Tom Horn – the man who infamously remarked, "Killing
men is my speciality. I look at it as a business proposition, and I
think I have a corner on the market.”
Tom Horn was born in 1860 to a Missouri farming family, and an abusive
mother and father who routinely beat him to break him of what they
called his "Indian ways.” After a last world-class beating at his
dad’s hands that left him in bed for a week, the teenager ran away from home to make his own way.
Even as a child, Tom was a prodigious hunter of wild game; perhaps this
explains how, after living on his own a while, he landed in the US Army
as a teenaged army scout under the famous generals Nelson A. Miles and George Crook.
Rising through the ranks, he eventually played a lead role in the
capture and surrender of legendary Apache leader and warrior, Geronimo. (One
of the Old West’s most infamous good guys gone bad. Left: Tom Horn in
his earlier, and more reputable years. [Wyoming State Archives,
Department of State Parks and Cultural Resources]; Right: Horn’s
conviction as it appeared on the front page of the Rocky Mountain News,
October 25, 1902.)
Following a stint as a successful ranch hand and champion steer
wrestler, Horn next worked as a deputy sheriff in either Colorado or
Arizona (accounts differ) before being recruited by the Pinkerton Detective Agency,
the fearsome organization that revolutionized modern law enforcement
practices. Cold, calm, efficient and unstoppable once on the trail of
his targets, Horn was nevertheless pushed out of the Agency less than
five years later due to his persistent habit of scandalous killings
that made even the brutal and ruthless Pinkertons look bad. By the turn of the century, Horn finally did away with any pretense
of legal authority and began working as a freelance "Range
Detective”—in reality, a hitman for hire—taking $500 (or what would be
$13,000 in today’s dollars) from rich land and cattle barons in Wyoming
to hunt down and kill any cattle rustlers or agitators they wanted to
disappear. Horn was said to stalk his targets for days, learning their
habits and movements; posting up out of sight, Horn killed them with a
single shot to the head, then left a rock under their head as his
signature. While there was indeed an ugly rash of cattle theft in
Wyoming, Horn had an even uglier reputation as a stone-cold killer.
When Willie Nickell, the 14-year old son of a shepherd was found shot
to death, Horn was fingered for the murder by a local deputy and
quickly convicted by the outraged locals. Horn was made to weave his
own hanging rope during his last days. His last words before being
hung dead were said to be, "Hurry it up. I got nothing more to say.” (Left:
Outside his jail cell in a Wyoming prison; Right: Horn at the end of
his own rope, awaiting execution. [Wyoming State Archives, Department
of State Parks and Cultural Resources])
His legendary life and its corrupt end were immortalized on the big and small screen, first in the 1979 made-for-TV movie Mr. Horn (starring David Carradine as Horn) and the following year in the major motion picture Tom Horn,
where Steve McQueen portrayed the detective-turned-hitman. Historians
still dispute the legitimacy of the conviction but all agree, Tom Horn
was perfectly capable of such a killing and undoubtedly had committed
other murders for which he went unpunished.
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