Legends of the Old West - TOM HORN Ep. 4 | “Have Gun - Will Travel”

Episode Date: October 12, 2022

Tom Horn and his employer are infuriated by the results of a cattle rustling case. Shortly thereafter, a small rancher is murdered. Then another is murdered. Tom Horn becomes the primary suspect, but charging Tom with a crime is easier said than done. After the murders, Tom returns to Arizona to allow the heat to die down.  Join Black Barrel+ for ad-free episodes and bingeable seasons: blackbarrel.supportingcast.fm/join Apple users join Noiser+ for ad-free episodes and bingeable seasons. Click the Noiser+ banner on Apple or go to noiser.com/subscriptions to get started with a 7-day free trial. On YouTube, subscribe to LEGENDS+ for ad-free episodes and bingeable seasons: hit “Join” on the Legends YouTube homepage: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUVRfp5H1frBzTegq9qMNIQ For more details, visit our website www.blackbarrelmedia.com and check out our social media pages. We’re @OldWestPodcast on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The hot part of the Johnson County War wound down in 1893, and Tom Horn's job as an undercover Pinkerton operative wound down with it. The next year, Tom quit the Pinkertons, or he was fired, depending on who you believe. But he stayed in Wyoming and went to work for the Big Ranchers as a range detective. He had been posing as a range detective while he was undercover for the Pinkertons, but now he held the job out in the open. For a while in 1894, he played by the rules and tried to bring rustlers to justice through the court system. But after a case where Tom caught five rustlers red-handed and then watched four of the five walk free, he decided he was done with legal remedies. In 1895, Tom Horn announced he was open for business.

Tom Horn announced he was open for business. He spread the word amongst the big Wyoming cattle ranchers and cattle companies that he would eliminate cattle rustlers at the bargain price of $500 per person. Many ranchers claimed, at least publicly, that they weren't interested. But others thought it was a good deal. Tom was still working for the Swan Land and Cattle Company, and he was based at the Two Bar Ranch. But the ranch manager was opposed to using violence to solve the rustling problem. Even after the court case in 1894, this should have been a slam dunk against the rustlers.

The ranch manager still wanted to work within the confines of the law, which was morally and legally the right call. The manager didn't want a hired gun patrolling the range and shooting people on the spot, even if they were guilty. But Tom had a different view, and his job with the Swan Company was not exclusive. Before long, the manager of the Iron Mountain Ranch Company came calling. Unlike his counterpart at Swan, the manager at Iron Mountain had no trouble asking Tom to take decisive action against rustlers, or suspected rustlers. The phrase that would be prevalent 70 years later during the Vietnam War and quoted in the movie Apocalypse Now was, terminate with extreme prejudice. But whichever phrase you wanted to use, it happened in the summer and fall of 1895.

Two small ranchers found themselves in the crosshairs of Tom Horn, literally and figuratively. And that was a deadly place to be. From Black Barrel Media, this is Legends of the Old West. I'm your host, Chris Wimmer. In this season, we're telling the complex and controversial story of Tom Horn, range detective, Pinkerton agent, and hired gun.

This is Episode 4, Have Gun, Will Travel. Travel. The Iron Mountain Ranch Company was based in Laramie County, not far from the Two Bar Ranch that was Tom Horn's headquarters. The man who ran Iron Mountain was a well-known local rancher named John Coble. He and his brother Bob moved from Nebraska to Wyoming and started the company. Iron Mountain owned four separate ranches and grazed an estimated 6,000 head of cattle. John Coble had once been in partnership with a wealthy British aristocrat named Sir Horace Plunkett. Sir Horace had dabbled in the cattle business but eventually sold out to Coble. Sir Horace had dabbled in the cattle business, but eventually sold out to Coble. Coble was known to be eccentric, and some of his eccentric ways may have come from Sir Horace.

Coble drove an expensive buggy instead of a wagon or riding a horse. He dressed in fancy suits and hosted lavish parties at his home in Cheyenne. He certainly looked more like a wealthy British aristocrat of the era than a rough-and-tumble rancher who was weathered from years of riding the range. As such, he didn't have much in common with Tom Horn, but they did agree on how to handle rustlers. John Coble approached Tom with a job offer, and Tom said yes. The two men formed a good working relationship and eventually a strong friendship. John's brother Bob said that John had lost faith in range detectives and had given up on hiring them. But when Tom Horn came along, his faith was restored.

John and Bob were both happy to have a man who could ride the range and look after their cattle and handle any rustling problems without bringing them to court. Tom and the Swan Land and Cattle Company had had a bad experience with a case of a known rustler named Eva Langhoff. They'd also had a bad experience with a husband and wife team who worked with Eva. Tom had arrested the husband and wife twice, but they were freed both times. Cases like those outraged Tom Horn and his new boss, John Coble. But ironically, the year the two men started working together, 1895,

the legal system in Wyoming improved. Cattle barons saw better results in their cases. Prosecutors were more willing to bring cases of cattle rustling to trial, and juries were more willing to convict. But Tom Horn and John Coble still liked to deal with rustlers quickly and decisively, and that was bad news for a British immigrant named William Lewis. Lewis owned a small ranch near both of Tom's employers, Iron Mountain and Swan Land and Cattle. By most accounts, Lewis really was a cattle rustler. John Clay, the ranch manager for the Swan Company, and John Coble, the managing partner of Iron Mountain, had each charged Lewis with rustling three separate times, once in 1893, then in 1894,

and again in early 1895. But the charges never stuck. To make the matter more frustrating, William Lewis, the cattle rustler, filed a $15,000 lawsuit against John Coble, the Swan Company, and the Laramie County Sheriff for false arrest. That was probably the final straw for the cattlemen. On August 3, 1895, a neighbor found William Lewis lying dead in his corral. He was killed by a single gunshot. A coroner's jury was convened at the scene and determined he had been murdered. was convened at the scene and determined he had been murdered.

The governor's office offered a $500 reward for information leading to the arrest of William Lewis's killer, but it did little to help the investigation. Lewis was not popular with his neighbors. An article in the Daily Sun, a Wyoming newspaper, read, all the people in a radius of 15 miles of Lewis's place say that they are glad that he is dead. The article went on to say that the $500 reward would not stir his former neighbors up to action in hunting his murderers. And they were right. There were no leads and no clues. When pressed on the status of the case by a local reporter, the sheriff of Laramie County said he had done his best to solve it, despite the fact that he was being sued by the victim. The sheriff said he didn't have the slightest clue who murdered William Lewis. The Daily Sun concluded that William Lewis's murder

would never be solved, but there was no question about who had the strongest motivation to commit the crime. Newspapers throughout the state accused the big cattle companies of taking the law into their own hands again, just as they had in Johnson County. Most agreed the killer was either someone who worked for the Swan Land and Cattle Company or Iron Mountain. There was speculation that John Clay, the ranch manager for Swan Land and Cattle, had changed his tune. He had always been against violence, but now people wondered if he had formed an alliance with John Coble of Iron Mountain and conspired to kill William Lewis. If any part of that speculation was true, it didn't take much imagination to guess the identity

of the person who probably pulled the trigger. And then, a new episode began. In early September 1895, a month after William Lewis was killed, Frederick Powell received an anonymous letter. Powell owned a small ranch near William Lewis, and like Lewis, Powell was suspected of cattle rustling. Also like Lewis, he was not popular with his neighbors. He had served time for burning down one of his neighbor's barns. A rancher who owned a big spread accused Powell of running a rustling and butchering operation. The rancher claimed he caught Powell red-handed with the remains of nine of his cattle. The meat was packed and ready to go to market. When the rancher brought the case to the attention of the county sheriff, the sheriff told him there was nothing he could do about it.

And then Powell received the anonymous letter. It read, Mr. Powell, this is your third and last warning. There are three things for you to do. Quit killing other people's cattle, or be killed yourself, or leave the county at once. Fred Powell didn't live in Laramie County, where Tom Horn was based,

but the sheriff of Laramie County heard about the letter, and he knew it was not a hoax. He rode to Powell's ranch and warned him to move away with his wife and young son, or he would likely be killed. Powell chose not to move, or at least not fast enough. On September 10th, just over a month after William Lewis's murder, Powell was shot to death. But this time there was a witness to the shooting, a man named Andrew Ross, who was helping Powell put up hay when the shot rang out and Powell dropped dead to the ground. Ross tried to help Powell, but it was too late. Ross spotted a mail carrier in the distance

and ran to tell him what happened so that the mail carrier could alert the sheriff. Later, the sheriff determined the shot was fired from a hill about 250 feet from the victim. The only clue was a boot print left by the killer, who had apparently walked down to make sure Powell was dead after Ross ran off to catch the mail carrier. The boot print was a size 8, and because it was sunk fairly deep into the sand, the killer was thought to be a big man. It was also a clean shot, straight to the heart. The killer was an impressive marksman to have made a shot like that from such a distance. meant to have made a shot like that from such a distance. As a podcast network, our first priority has always been audio and the stories we're able to share with you.

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The local sheriff said he had a good idea of who was responsible, but the evidence was extremely thin. idea of who was responsible, but the evidence was extremely thin. It seemed logical that John Coble of Iron Mountain put up the money, and his range detective, Tom Horn, who was still going by Tom Hale, fired the fatal shot. A month after the murder of Fred Powell, a district judge seated a special grand jury in Cheyenne to investigate the murders of Powell and Lewis. The decision was apparently a coordinated effort with the governor's office. The governor was understandably fearful that another range war might be heating up and he wanted to stop it before it exploded. The sheriff of Laramie County began serving subpoenas to witnesses. John Coble and Tom Horn were ordered to appear,

but it was reported that serving Tom Horn with a subpoena wasn't easy. On the day Tom learned the subpoenas were going out, he decided to take a trip to the northern part of Wyoming. Eventually, Tom was tracked down and served, but plenty of people found his behavior questionable. John Coble and Tom Horn did appear at a hearing, but the jury didn't ask them any questions. We won't get too deep into the details of the confusing American legal system,

but a grand jury is a special group of people who are asked to listen to evidence in a case and decide if someone should be charged with a crime. It's a very different process from a jury trial, where the jury decides if the accused is guilty or not guilty. In a grand jury proceeding, the jury members can ask questions of people who are called to testify. In this case, the men of the grand jury decided they didn't have any questions for Coble or Horn, so neither man was called to the stand to testify. That was a big chance for both men to talk on the record.

The judge assured the jury that their deliberations would be secret, and if they voted to charge either man with a crime, those discussions and the votes would also be secret. But even then, it must have seemed like a hell of a risk to the men of the jury. But that's not to say that the hearing was a total loss. Fred Powell's widow Mary testified. She said she had seen Tom Horn following her husband three years earlier during the investigation into Eva Langhoff. Mary Powell said Tom had been watching her husband from a distance, but her testimony was really thin. From a distance, she couldn't be positive that the man was Tom Horn,

and it was three years ago, and the passage of time called her memory into question. The last hope for the prosecutor rested on Fred's nine-year-old son, Billy. Billy's mother, Mary, testified on her son's behalf, and she told the grand jury that her husband sent Billy on an errand to William Lewis' ranch. Billy Powell said that as he approached Lewis' ranch, two men jumped out from behind some bushes holding rifles. When they realized Billy was not who they were looking for,

they hastily retreated. William Lewis was murdered soon after that encounter. A few days later, Billy saw one of those same men hiding near their farm just a few days before his father was killed. During a break in the proceedings, Mary Powell and her son Billy were standing outside the courthouse when she felt Billy grab her skirt. The boy then hid behind her, and when she looked down to see what was wrong, she could see terror in Billy's eyes. The boy whispered to his mother that he had just spotted the same man he had seen at their ranch before his father was killed. The frightened boy pointed the man out to his mother, and it was, of course, Tom Horn. The prosecutor had done all he could. Now he had to hope the jury would vote to indict John Coble and Tom Horn for murder. Otherwise, it was over.

On October 12, 1895, the jury entered the courtroom and the foreman read their written statement out loud. It was concise and came as no surprise. It said, We are unable to find sufficient evidence upon which to find an indictment. The Rocky Mountain News, a newspaper that was no friend to the Cattle Barons, wrote, The Cattle Barons of Laramie County and their henchmen have a right to be jubilant. The paper went on to accuse them of terrorizing both jurors and witnesses. This was reinforced by the Laramie County prosecutor, who stated that the jurors told him personally that they were afraid to tell what they knew or vote to indict. A short time later, while Tom got drunk in saloons in Cheyenne and Laramie, he was heard boasting about killing Lewis and Powell. At that point, Tom Horn was likely one

of the most hated and feared men in Wyoming, and after the mountain of bad press recently, it was probably time for him to leave. The cattle barons decided it would be smart to stop killing people for a while. A cattleman who was a friend of John Coble said to send Tom Horn away. The cattleman said that Tom had such a devil of a stink about him that I advised him to pull him off the range. Eventually, John Coble decided to do it. He told Tom that it was time to take his Winchester and move on. But anyone who knows this story

knows that Tom Horn's time in Wyoming was only halfway done. The worst was yet to come. After leaving Wyoming, it was no surprise that Tom went back to Arizona. Ironically, he was welcomed back as a conquering hero. His old friend and mining partner, Bert Dunlap, immediately gave Tom a job as foreman on his ranch. The Sulphur Valley News wrote an article on Tom's return that said, no cowboy is better known in southern Arizona. And it went on to announce that Tom was working for Burt Dunlap on the Western Reserve Ranch.

But Tom's tenure as Dunlap's foreman didn't last long. When Tom learned the U.S. military was about to begin another campaign against the Apache who had fled to northern Mexico, he wanted in. against the Apache who had fled to northern Mexico, he wanted in. The mission appeared to be one last attempt to kill or capture a notorious scout-turned-outlaw called the Apache Kid. Tom knew the Kid from their time in the military ten years earlier. While Tom had participated in the Pleasant Valley War and then worked as a Pinkerton and then worked as a range detective in Wyoming, the Apache Kid was raising hell in Arizona.

Back in 1887, Tom had recently left his job with the military and was working as a deputy sheriff in Gila County for his old friend Glenn Reynolds. At that time, the Apache Kid was still working for the cavalry and living on the San Carlos Reservation. He was a part-time scout, part-time policeman on the reservation. But in May of 1887, he got into a fight with an Apache scout who was widely respected. The kid killed the scout. A gunfight followed, and the kid shot Tom's former mentor, Al Cyber, in the foot. The injury left Cyber badly maimed.

The kid and his men escaped the reservation. When they passed through Arevipa Canyon, the kid made a lifelong enemy of Tom Horn. The kid stole Tom Horn's prized horse. The theft was bad enough, just on general principle. Tom hated thieves of all kinds, which dated back to his first attempt to start a ranch, and rustlers stole all his stock. But this theft was made worse by the fact

that Tom had been using the horse to enter rodeo events. He had been building a name for himself with his cowboy skills. He won steer roping contests and wowed rodeo goers with impressive bronc riding performances. He was earning decent money, and news of his abilities supposedly reached world famous showman Buffalo Bill Cody. But then Tom lost his horse to the Apache Kid, and three of his men eventually surrendered and were taken before a district judge in Globe, Arizona, where they were charged and convicted for the assault on Al Cyber. After a lengthy and complicated battle between the federal courts and the territorial courts

in Arizona, the Apache Kid and his men were convicted and sentenced to seven years at the notorious Yuma Prison. On November 1, 1889, Sheriff Glenn Reynolds and Deputy William Holmes began escorting the Kid and eight other prisoners to a train station. The two lawmen had to cover 90 miles of territory to deliver the prisoners to the train that would take them to Yuma Prison. Tom Horn, who was also a deputy at the time, claimed that he would have been on the trip, but Sheriff Reynolds allowed him to enter a

steer-roping contest in Phoenix. So, Tom wasn't present for what happened next. present for what happened next. During the 90-mile trip to the train station, the Apache Kid and his men hatched an escape plan. They spoke in their native language, and Sheriff Reynolds and Deputy Holmes didn't know what they were saying. On November 2nd, the second day of the trip, the Apache Kid and the others attacked the lawman and a third man who was also on the journey. One of the Apaches shot and killed Sheriff Reynolds. Deputy Holmes apparently died of a heart attack during the fight, and the third man was shot in the head, but he survived. The Apaches escaped, and the fight was eventually dubbed the Kelvin Grade Massacre. Eight of the nine Apaches were later caught, but the kid stayed free.

Tom Horn lamented his absence. If he had been there, he might have helped stop the attack. He told a reporter, I won the steer roping event, but it came at a heavy cost. The problem with Tom's story was that the steer roping event happened two weeks before the prisoner transfer. In theory, he should have been able to join the convoy. But with many chapters of Tom Horne's life, the full truth is hard to know. Why did he lie about the rodeo event? Why didn't he join the sheriff and the other deputy on a mission that everyone knew was dangerous?

Unfortunately, there are no good answers. Over the next few years, while Tom worked in the range wars in Wyoming, the Apache Kid was linked to numerous crimes including rape, murder, and cattle rustling. But by that time, he had become a ghost who could be blamed for anything. Multiple people claimed they killed the kid, but none of the reports could be verified. So, in 1896, not long after Tom Horn returned to Arizona, he offered to join the Army's final campaign against the Apache. Colonel Edwin Sumner Jr. was going to lead the expedition,

and if that last name sounds familiar, it's because it's connected to the story of Billy the Kid. Colonel Sumner's father was a lifelong military man. In the early 1850s, Sumner Sr. was the military governor of newly acquired New Mexico territory. Mexico Territory. In the mid-1860s, the army built a fort in eastern New Mexico and named it Fort Sumner in honor of Edwin Sumner Sr. When the fort closed in 1868, a wealthy landowner named Lucian Maxwell bought the land and the buildings. Soon, the old fort became the small town of Fort Sumner and the home base of Billy the Kid. In May of 1896, long after the story of Billy the Kid had ended, a detachment of soldiers fought a small group of Apaches in what was called the Guadalupe Canyon Fight.

The soldiers scattered the Apaches and wounded at least a couple of them, but none were caught or verified as killed. There were a couple prominent Apache warriors in the small group, but neither was the Apache Kid. The next month, in June of 1896, Tom Horn joined the soldiers as chief of scouts. There were patrols down into Mexico in June, July, and August of 1896, but they didn't amount to much, and there were no sightings of the Apache Kid. No one knows for sure what happened to the Kid. For all intents and purposes, he disappeared after his escape in 1889. For Tom Horn, his second stint as a scout for the Army ended in September 1896. It was an underwhelming campaign, but it was not the last of Tom Horn's

career. Another American war was brewing, this time in Cuba, and Tom still had unfinished business in Wyoming. There was plenty more fighting in store at the turn of the century. Next time on Legends of the Old West, Tom Horn's story grows more complex as he demonstrates unquestioned bravery in Cuba during the Spanish-American War. And then he joins the hunt for the last two world-famous outlaws of the Old West era, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. That's next week on Legends of the Old West. Cassidy, and the Sundance Kid. That's next week on Legends of the Old West. And members of our Black Barrel Plus program don't have to wait week to week.

They receive the entire season to binge all at once with no commercials. Sign up now through the link in the show notes or on our website blackbarrelmedia.com. Memberships begin at just $5 per month. This series was researched and written by Michael Byrne. Original music by Rob Valliere. Copy editing by me, Chris Wimmer, and I'm your host and producer. If you enjoyed the show, please leave us a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening. Check out our website, BlackBarrelMedia.com, for more details, and join us on social media. We're at Old West Podcast on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Thanks for listening.

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