Tom Horn: Last of the Bad Men

“The last great folk tale of the last American frontier”—that’s how Jay Monaghan describes the crimson career of Tom Horn, defender of property rights, soldier of fortune, range detective, professional killer. Tom Horn, who had chased after Geronimo and ridden the trains as a Pinkerton operative, was drawn to wherever the action was—ultimately to Wyoming as a hired gun for the cattle barons. Finally he went too far—and paid at the end of a rope in 1903. For years afterward, whenever a man was found murdered on the high plains, people said, “Somebody tom-horned that fellow.”