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The Killing of William E. Lewis

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Post date December 31, 2021
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_{This post is a part of our series on Tom Horn – full collection of links at the bottom of the page.}

“whenever everything else fails, I have a system which never does.” -Tom Horn

No better man could have been better than Tom Horn to investigate the cattle thievery that was occurring northwest of Cheyenne along Horse Creek.

The years before and after the Langhoff episode reflected continuing problems with rustling for the cattleman. The Langhoff case of cattle theft, which resulted in only Louis Bath being jailed, was simply another in which the middle class and associated riffraff once again prevailed.

For years the courts had been lenient with cattle thieves. The Wyoming Stock Growers Association (WSGA) and large independent cattle ranchers had hired as brand inspectors and stock detectives reputable men like N. K. Boswell and W. C. Lykins – and others carrying dubious reputations — in an effort to gather evidence and arrest the thieves. However, their efforts were frustrated by juries that were often made up of the lower and middle classes — including rustlers — and by lenient judges. The judges, being elected, understandable played to their own electorates.
Thomas Sturgis, secretary of the Association had said in 1886,

Whenever a special case [of cattle stealing] comes to our notice, we always push it if the evidence is sufficient to get even a hearing before the proper authorities… [but] it is very difficult to get an indictment from a grand jury [even] with pretty definite evidence as to the guilt of the party charged with stealing cattle. Unfortunately, it is almost completely useless to bring matters to the court even after an indictment has been obtained and the evidence pretty well gathered. There seems to be a morbid sympathy with cattle thieves both on the bench and in the jury room….

As matters turned out, even hiring independent, private detectives to procure evidence of rustling to present in court was wasted effort. WSGA Secretary Thomas Adams, describing the frustrations and sorry financial situation in which the large outfits found themselves said:

It would be impossible for the Association… to undertake to bring the parties referred to, to justice. In the first place, we have no money at our disposal. In the second place, if we had the means to enter into any investigation of the matter, we would be obliged to act through private detectives. We already have tried this system, and have been thrown out of court and laughed at for our pains. Circumstances have forced cattlemen to look to themselves for protection outside of any association….

“Looking to themselves” meant taking whatever measures became necessary. William Lewis invited those measures upon himself….

The site of William Lewis’ murder (author’s photo).

More about Tom Horn:

Tom Horn (main page)

The Tom Horn Story (summary)

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April, 1895

_{This post is a part of our series on Tom Horn – full collection of links at the bottom of the page.}

“no better man could be found for the work”

Frank M. Canton, who had himself been a deputy U.S. marshal and sheriff of Johnson County and who subsequently lost an election to rustler sympathizer William “Red” Angus, is believed to be the murderer of John Tisdale in Johnson County. Tisdale was gunned down in a wagon as he drove toward home in December 1891. He was an honest homesteader who had gone to Buffalo to handle some business matters and purchase Christmas gifts for his wife and children.

Canton participated in the Johnson County Invasion in April 1892, siding with the cattlemen. That alliance added to the enmity the homesteading community had already developed toward him. He then moved to Oklahoma which, in terms of geography, provided him with a measure of safety from the homesteader/rustler element in central Wyoming.

Canton was working as an undersheriff in Pawnee County, Oklahoma Indian Territory. In 1895 he was in pursuit of John “Jack Smith” Tregoning, who had escaped from the penitentiary in Laramie on November 15, 1894.

Frank M. Canton and his family (Jim Gatchell Museum, Buffalo, WY)

Canton wrote to William A. Pinkerton in Chicago on April 7, 1895, asking for help from Pinkertons in the form of a man who would be a good tracker and sleuth.

On April 12, William Pinkerton replied:

I am in receipt of your very full and complete letter of April 7th and note contents. As we have not got the right kind of man for this rough work out there, I have referred the matter to Supt. McParland at Denver, sending him a copy of your letter. I was greatly pleased to hear from you and did not know of your change of place. I imagine that whoever goes out on this work will find it rather difficult to do and we have not got at this office available such a man as I feel satisfied would fill the bill in every particular.

Tom Horn who used to be with our Denver office would be a good man for the place, and I will ask McParland to communicate with him and see if he cannot be got for the service and for the length of time you want him. He is not in our service now. You probably know of him. He is well acquainted all through the western country among cattle rustlers and all that class of men, and is a thorough horseman and plainsman in every sense of the word. I note particularly that you want to get Jack Treganing (sic.) who escaped from the Laramie penitentiary where you sent him for life and that he is down in that country. I should be very glad to hear of his capture….

James A. McParland wrote to Canton in Pawnee from Denver on April 13, discretely avoiding the mention of any names:

Yours of the 7th to Mr. W. A. Pinkerton has been forwarded to me with instructions that if any of the Operatives at this office who were capable of doing work of this kind were available that I should at once send him forward to you.
You are well aware that it will take a peculiar man to do this work, in fact a man as it were, to the Manor born. I have such men at this office but at the present time they are engaged on other operations. In fact I have three that could do this work or that I could detail upon it but at present they are unavailable and it is impossible for me to say when they would be at liberty. I know of a man although not working for me but I could recommend him as he formerly did work for me. I have not got his address at the present time but he is liable to write me at any time and as soon as he does I will suggest to him the fact that this matter is ready to be taken up and will have him communicate with you. I can guarantee the man. If he undertakes this matter no better man could be found for the work that you wish to have done. I, like you, would very much like to get hold of Tregoning as poor Henderson was an intimate friend of mine.

The “no better man” was, of course, Tom Horn.

More about Tom Horn:

Tom Horn (main page)

The Tom Horn Story (summary)

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1893: The Langhoff Gang

_{This post is a part of our series on Tom Horn – full collection of links at the bottom of the page.}

“there had been considerable cattle stealing”

From deputy U.S. marshal to stock detective and sometime-sheriff was not a big jump. It may have been that Tom Horn was first hired as a stock detective and graduated easily to deputy marshal, without leaving the first job.

When first hired by the Swan Land and Cattle Company, Tom Horn was based at the Two Bar Ranch. The Swan’s headquarters were and remain in Chugwater, thirty-five miles north of Cheyenne. The Two Bar home ranch is another twenty miles or so northwest of Chugwater, off and to the north of present?day Wyoming Highway 34.

The Swan’s other ranches, the Mule Shoe, TY, M Bar and 40 Bar, were major operating centers of one of the largest livestock operations in the history of the West, controlling over five hundred thousand acres of land and tens of thousands of cattle by 1885. The empire stretched from Sidney, Nebraska, ninety miles east of Cheyenne, to Rock River, Wyoming, ninety miles to the northwest.

The first documentation of Tom Horn’s work as a stock detective involved the Langhoffs, a small cattle outfit. He had been specifically directed to gather evidence that could be used to obtain legal convictions against rustlers like the Langhoffs. At the time, John Clay was manager of the Swan operations.

Ferdinand “Fred” Langhoff (WY State Archives).

Ferdinand Albert Langhoff (a derivative spelling of the original German “Langholf”) was born in Wisconsin in 1856. In 1869 he moved to the Dakota Territory and by 1878 was working as a cowhand in North Park, CO. His employer at the time was Charley Hutton, a pioneer Laramie Valley ranchman.

By 1880 he was in Wyoming, living at Dale Creek, fifteen miles south of Ames Monument to the west of Cheyenne. In 1882, he settled on the main Sybille Creek forty miles southwest of Wheatland and northwest of Iron Mountain. He was married to Evalina “Eva” Farrell, a woman from near the Little Laramie River whom he had married in 1881 at her family’s ranch in the Little Laramie Valley.
Eva’s father, a Civil War veteran, had moved to Wyoming shortly after the war. By 1870 he was one of the largest cattlemen in Albany County.

Within a short period of time Fred and Eva had developed a substantial operation on 360 acres they owned outright. They were in the process of proving up on another 160 acres. They had three children.

Fred’s brother, Henry (Hank), had moved from Wisconsin with their mother and lived for a short period with Fred and Eva. Hank worked at times with young Gus Rosentreter for people moving into the Sybille Canyon valley. There was reason to believe that Hank and Fred did not get along, and Hank and their mother moved to another cabin nearby. Hank ended his own life in 1892 when he hanged himself in a shed on his brother’s place. Their mother died shortly thereafter.

The Langhoff spread, along with other homesteads that were springing up in the area, were located between large ranch operations in the Laramie Valley to the west and the vast Swan holdings to the east, primarily the Two Bar. Other substantial cattlemen also were situated near Langhoff’s outfit, including William L. “Billy” Clay, whose place lay to the southeast on Mule Creek.

Other early settlers on the Sybille included many whose names later turned up in the Tom Horn/Willie Nickell episode. The included Mike Fitzmorris and many of German descent: Rudolf and Raymond Henke; the Plaga brothers, Otto and Albion; and the Berner and Waechter clans, who all homesteaded there in the 1880s. To the southeast were the families of Jim Miller and Kels Nickell, the former on Spring Creek and the latter North Chugwater south of Clay.

Fred Langhoff was perhaps a focal point and an example of the larger struggle between the so-called cattle barons and more recently arriving homesteaders. The homesteaders who had legally filed on their land felt they had a right to use of the land and water resources. The big outfits believed otherwise, and did whatever they could to squeeze the “nesters” out. Their actions, including the lynching of Cattle Kate and Jim Averill in 1889, the lynching of Tom Waggoner shortly afterward and the Johnson County Invasion in April 1892 developed a spreading animosity toward them on the part of an increasing middle class.

Fred developed a reputation as a horse trader, but was arrested for horse theft in 1892. He had shipped twenty-six horses to Owensboro, KY in June 1892. His problem was that he did not own them. The owners included John C. Coble, a prominent cowman and two other major outfits.

The law pursued him to Kentucky, only to learn he had fled after selling the horses. A deputy sheriff remained in Kentucky to reacquire the horses, while a sheriff pursued Fred to Wisconsin. Fred was returned to Cheyenne to await prosecution. Also charged were Eva and two hired hands, Thomas Boucher and Louis Bath. Bath was the son of a prominent Laramie Valley family whose place was near the spread of the Farrells.

While Fred was engaging in casual or more serious thievery, and his neighbors, including Leslie Sommer, knew what was going on. Sommer wrote, “There were whispers that the Langhoffs’ prosperity far exceeded their visible livelihood”.

Fred’s log house and spread became a gathering place for various purposes. People from as far as Chicago and farther east arrived to take advantage of the horse-trading opportunities at the LF Bar, as his place was known. At first Fred’s business seemed to be legitimate, but as time went on there was talk that Fred seemed to do far better than one would expect, considering his modest start and assets.

There were other aspects of the Langhoff operation that attracted attention. It appeared that Eva’s charm and charms diverted customers away from obtaining a clear title to the horses they acquired. Leslie Sommer continued.

There were rumors of the lure Mrs. Langhoff had for the strangers that came within their gates with horses or cattle to sell. Some of these strangers, falling under her spell, fell so deeply in love with her they figured they had received value personally, regardless of the profitless deal they may have made on their business arrangements….

The 1892 incident with the stolen horse was the nadir of Fred’s questionable actions as things turned completely sour. Things had not been going well beforehand.

Hearsay indicated that earlier, a visitor, a Frenchman named Zu (or Susette), had a number of fancy horses for sale. He evidently had made some kind of a deal with the Langhoffs, since they had possession of his horses.

Susette disappeared from familiar haunts, after he had complained to the law about the rawness of the deal. It was later reported that he’d hanged himself in the area.

By this time, however, the authorities in Cheyenne had begun an investigation of the Langhoff operation’s more extensive activities. After a series of legal proceedings that ended in Eva’s being acquitted, Fred suddenly disappeared. He left Eva in charge of the ranch.

It was said that she graciously entertained the investigating committee that was trying to learn of Fred’s whereabouts, but coyly denied knowing where he might have gone.

More about Tom Horn:

Tom Horn (main page)

The Tom Horn Story (summary)

Other

A Pinkerton’s Agent

_{This post is a part of our series on Tom Horn – full collection of links at the bottom of the page.}

“not the type of man one liked to argue with.”

It wasn’t long before more adventure seemed to seek Tom Horn out.

Late in 1890 C. W. “Doc” Shores, a deputy U.S. marshal, sheriff of Gunnison County, Colorado, and part-time Pinkerton agent, was on the trail of thieves that had driven stolen Colorado horses into Arizona. In December he received a letter from the postmaster of Solomonville, in southeastern Arizona. The postmaster and his brother owned the Dunlap Brothers’ Ranch, where Tom Horn was foreman. Both he and Horn had seen the thieves who had been described on a “Wanted” poster that had been distributed in the region. Shores said, “Being in the cattle business himself [the postmaster] appreciated what I was doing and would have his foreman appointed as deputy sheriff to assist… in making the arrests. He praised Tom Horn highly as a capable cattleman, rodeo star, and a former Indian Scout.”

Shores answered Dunlap’s letter, and arranged to meet Tom at Willcox, forty miles south of Solomonville. They met in the lobby of the hotel where the Colorado sheriff stayed after arriving, and he described his new acquaintance as “a tall, dark?complected man with a black mustache…. He was around thirty years of age and presented an imposing figure of a man ?? deep?chested, lean?loined, and arrow?straight. He was wearing a plaid shirt, woolen trousers and high-heeled boots. A wide-brimmed sombrero covered his head.” Shores also said Horn had “black, shifty eyes.”

As they traveled by buckboard to the location where the horse thieves had been seen, the two lawmen became engaged in discussions on various matter. Shores further described his partner as an “interesting conversationalist… [but] not the type of man one liked to argue with.”
After capturing the two robbers without trouble, the two men went their separate ways. Shores wrote a letter to James McParland, superintendent of the Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency in Denver. He praised Horn’s work in helping him run down the horse thieves, and recommended that the Agency hire Tom as an agent.

Within months Tom Horn and his partners in an Arizona silver mine sold out. He went to Denver and, as he said, was “initiated into the mysteries of the Pinkerton institution.” His superintendent, McParland, asked him what he would do if he were put on a train robbery case. Tom told him simply that if he had the help of another good man, he would catch the robbers.
Around midnight on August 31, 1891, a train was robbed on the Denver and Rio Grande Railway between Cotopaxi and Texas Creek, roughly midway between Salida and Canon City on the Arkansas River. Horn was sent out on the job, and was told that his partner would be none other than “Doc” Shores. When Shores caught up with him, he:

… asked me how I was getting on. I told him I had struck the trail, but there were so many men scouring the country that I myself was being held up all the time; that I had been arrested twice in two days and taken in to Salida to be identified.
Eventually all the sheriff’s posses quit, and then Mr. W. A. Pinkerton and Mr. McParland told Shores and me to go at ’em. We took up the trail where I had left it several days before and we never left it till we got the robbers.

F. M. Ownbey, a Pinkerton’s who worked with Tom Horn (author’s photo, courtesy Al Carr).

The robbers went west across the Sangre de Cristo range in southern Colorado. They proceeded into an iron mining area and crossed back to the east side of the Sangre de Cristos at Mosca Pass, just southeast of present-day Great Sand Dunes National Monument. Horn and Shores then chased them through Huerfano Canon, out by Cucharas and east of Trinidad near the New Mexico line. The robbers dropped down into Clayton, N.M., and “got into a shooting scrape there in a gin mill. They then turned east again toward the ‘Neutral Strip’ and close to Beaver City, then across into… a place in Texas called Ochiltree” in the northeast part of the Texas Panhandle.

The robbers proceeded toward the Oklahoma Indian Territory, and entered it below Canadian City. They then came to the head of the Washita River and followed it downstream to their final destination.

The two Pinkertons men chased the robbers on horseback to Paul’s Valley, south of Oklahoma City, and more than three hundred miles from where they had first picked up the trail. At Washita station they located and captured one of them, Burt Curtis, in a house owned by a man named Wolfe. Shores hauled Curtis back to Denver, leaving Tom Horn to wait and see if the other would come back to Wolfe’s.

After several days of waiting on my part, he did come back, and as he came riding up to the house I stepped out and told him someone had come! He was ‘Peg Leg’ Watson, and considered by everyone in Colorado as a very desperate character. I had no trouble with him.

Early in the investigation, Horn and Shores had suspected that Joe McCoy, who was wanted in Canon City by the Fremont County, Colorado, sheriff for murder, was also a party to the Denver and Rio Grande robbery. That was not the case, but McCoy and his father, Dick, had been tried and convicted of murdering a stock detective. Joe escaped from jail before he was sentenced, and Dick was out on bail at the time of the Denver and Rio Grande incident. Dick’s ranch was across the river from the place where the train had been robbed, and it was natural that the lawmen would suspect him and his boys…

More about Tom Horn:

Tom Horn (main page)

The Tom Horn Story (summary)

Other

“Bound To See Trouble”

_{This post is a part of our series on Tom Horn – full collection of links at the bottom of the page.}

“ …anyone born in Missouri is bound to see trouble.”

There might not have been a worse time to be born, or into a family whose father had already created enough trouble for himself. And the baby’s instincts, seemingly already flowing through his veins, seem to have destined him for enough trials in the “fifteen ordinary lives” he felt he lived.

Tom Horn was born in northeast Missouri east of Scotland County’s seat, Memphis, on November 21, 1860 – “a troublesome time,” he said, “to be sure; and anyone born in Missouri is bound to see trouble – so says Bill Nye.”

Notwithstanding his parents’ troubles, when they left Ohio for Missouri in 1852, accompanied by Tom’s uncle, Martin C. Horn, and grandfather, Hartman, Mary purchased their first parcel of land. It was approximately 240 acres of rural farmland east of Memphis, in Harrison Township northeast of a small hamlet, Etna.

Mary Miller Horn, Tom Horn’s mother (author’s photo).

They invested a two hundred-dollar down payment and signed a mortgage for six hundred dollars. It is believed they purchased it in her name to shield it from their creditors in Ohio.

Tom Horn’s Birthplace, as it looked ca. 1903 and today (Author’s photos).

Northeast Missouri was neutral during the Civil War. As the war ebbed and flowed, locals tended to favor “the side of the uniform that was knocking at the front door,” one authority said. At one point during the war, a Confederate captain and enlisted man had stayed at the Horn home. After leaving, they were ambushed and the enlisted man was killed.

In 1869 Hartman was taken ill, and moved into the family home with Thomas, Mary and their family. They cared for him until his death in 1874. Thomas was named administrator of his estate, which was valued at $275.75.

Etna Cemetery, where Tom Horn’s grandfather and other family are buried.

The barn still standing at Tom Horn’s birthplace (author’s photos)

In 1874 they started selling some of their land to sons Charles and Martin. By 1876 their holdings had grown to 1,250 acres in the Etna area and were estimated to be worth over twenty thousand dollars. On January 16, 1884 they purchased four lots in the southeast part of Memphis for $1,700.

Young Tom was the child of a large family. At least one of Thomas’ and Mary’s children died at a young age; one son, whose name is not known, died on October 20, 1854 and is buried in the Dennis Church cemetery in Knox County, Ohio.

More about Tom Horn:

Tom Horn (main page)

The Tom Horn Story (summary)

Other

“Troublesome”

_{This post is a part of our series on Tom Horn – full collection of links at the bottom of the page.}

“Troublesome.” It was a word Tom Horn himself used, first to describe the times at his birth and his early years, and later to describe Willie Nickell’s father. It was appropriate.

His father’s – and grandfather’s – troubles, of their own making, started in the 1840s in Ohio, where both Tom’s father and mother were born. Father Thomas Horn was born in Knox County in 1825, and mother Mary Ann Miller was born in Coshocton County in 1831.

Thomas’ father, Hartman Horn, was born in Washington County, Pennsylvania, in 1794 and was a descendant of German immigrants who had settled in that part of Pennsylvania.

Years after Thomas and Mary had secretly left Ohio for Scotland County, Missouri in 1852, a former partner of Thomas found and continued legal action against him. On November 21, 1867 John Thompson filed suit against him at the Scotland County Circuit Court for $1,650. He had entered a bill in chancery in 1851 in the Knox County Court of Common Pleas in Mt. Vernon against Horn and others, requesting settlement of a dispute that dated to a transaction in October 1849, when Horn was still living there.

Thompson’s suit alleged that Horn and he had been partners in a deal to buy cattle in Knox County and drive them to Baltimore, sell them, and split the proceeds. Hartman Horn, Elijah Patterson and Harris Thompson, John’s brother were part of the arrangement.

Thomas Horn was to buy cattle but had to borrow a thousand dollars from the Knox County Bank in Mt. Vernon in order to finance the deal. He had proposed that Thompson borrow a similar amount and that each provide a guarantor. The arrangement proceeded; Thompson’s guarantor was Harris, while Horn’s was Hartman. The idea was that Thompson’s experience in the cattle business would be of major importance, “to some extent offsetting skill capital”, but that both would give equal attention to the project. The loan, a “Bill of Exchange,” was procured at the Bank of Baltimore, Maryland. The entire cost of the cattle plus expenses of the drive to Baltimore was $1,927.93 plus a few small expenses paid in Baltimore by Horn.

Horn left the cattle with a man “by the name of Gregory,” according to the Knox County court records. Gregory was to sell the cattle, and deposit the money to an account Horn had set up in his own name at the Bank of Baltimore. The cattle were sold for $2,110.72, and Gregory deposited the amount to Horn’s account.

Horn, together with his father and Elijah Patterson, then withdrew the money, the bank having failed to encumber it. Thompson claimed that Horn next purchased a drove of hogs that Hartman and Patterson were already feeding; Thomas drove them to the East, sold them and loaned the proceeds to his father and Patterson. Apparently Thomas Horn’s plot was to shield the money from John Thompson by having Hartman and Patterson become indebted to him – a plot that implies that the three had together set it up in advance….

More about Tom Horn:

Tom Horn (main page)

The Tom Horn Story (summary)

Other

Innocent!

_{This post is a part of our series on Tom Horn – full collection of links at the bottom of the page.}

“Innocent!”

The word rang out like a gunshot in the crowded Cheyenne courtroom in September 1993, almost a hundred years after Tom Horn’s hanging for first-degree murder.

Light is fading on the early Twentieth Century, but even as that light dims it has become more apparent as time passes that Tom Horn was not the killer of Willie Nickell on July 18, 1901. It took a hundred years to exonerate him, if only in a mock trial at the same locale where he was convicted.

There were no witnesses to Willie’s murder. At the first trial — the only trial that really mattered — the prosecution had an alcohol-induced “confession,” weak circumstantial evidence and perjured testimony.

Tom Horn had been in the general area at the time of the murder. He had been at the neighboring Miller ranch, the homestead of a family who had been feuding with Willie Nickell’s, the previous morning. Other questionable scraps of circumstantial evidence were added to the mixture.

The linchpin for the prosecution was a questionable “confession” given by a drunken Tom Horn to a federal officer operating out of his jurisdiction, Joe LeFors. The conversation was recorded, but only in part, by a legal reporter who, together with a deputy sheriff, was a witness. LeFors had planted them for a single purpose – to “cinch” Tom Horn. LeFors himself acknowledged that he was operating under the instructions of the district attorney, Walter Stoll, whose own ambitions perhaps exceeded Joe LeFors’. His apparent obsession with winning a conviction gained him reelection to office.

The prosecution had, as well, a jury tainted with prejudice against Tom Horn’s employers and the power they represented and had misused. And it had an elected judge presiding, who himself had a clouded history, and whose rulings and instructions to the jury were anything but impartial. His ambitions led to election to a seat on the Wyoming Supreme Court.

Tom Horn had a legal defense team whose work in 1902 was described by the lawyer who represented him in the retrial as the “worst he had ever studied.” And Tom Horn’s own foolish statements in cross examination, driven by an ego that Walter Stoll played as if on a musical instrument, helped drive one of the nails into his own coffin.

The three shots that rang out in an early summer morning in 1901 near remote Iron Mountain, Wyoming were more than mere gunfire. They were, figuratively, the sound of a hammer driving final nails into the coffin of a Wyoming cattle business as it had existed for over thirty years.

Willie Nickell was the second fourteen-year-old Iron Mountain boy to die of gunshot wounds within a few months.

The Nickell family at their homestead, Willie at right.

In the spring Frank Miller, son of hostile neighbor Jim Miller, had died when a shotgun in a spring wagon in which he and a younger sister were playing accidentally discharged. The sister, Maude, carried the buckshot and scars from her wounds the rest of her life. It was stated that Jim Miller placed the blame for Frank’s death solely on Willie Nickell’s father, and that he swore that if the law did not avenge the death, he would.

Willie Nickell had saddled his father’s horse at six thirty the morning of July 18, 1901. He was going to try to find a man to replace a sheepherder who was quitting his father’s employ. Kels, Willie’s father, had ordered Willie to find the man who had ridden through the area looking for work. The unwitting order led to Willie’s death.

Willie mounted the bay and headed from the family cabin northwest of Cheyenne toward wire gate three-quarters of a mile to the west. Reaching the gate, he dismounted, led the horse through and turned to loop the gate closed.

Three shots rang out. Two followed in quick succession, then a pause, and then another. Two reached their mark. They smashed into the boy’s left back, and exited. Blood sprayed on the gate, the ground and the post, a tree now lying today at the site. Willie stumbled sixty-five feet toward home before he dropped facedown on the rough granite gravel. Blood seeped from the exit wounds.

Someone, no doubt the killer, rolled Willie’s body over and pulled open his shirt.
The reverberations of that gunfire through the Wyoming hills signaled the beginning of a long search for Willie Nickell’s killer. And they marked perhaps the largest setback, one of several that began with the lynching of Ellen “Cattle Kate” Watson in 1888, for the so-called cattle barons’ and their fiefdoms. They, along with the industrial, railroad and mining barons, were unwilling players in the drama of economic and social changes marking an evolution in America from an agrarian to an industrial society.

Historic court in session (author’s photo)

Two years, three months and two days after Willie Nickell’s assassination Tom Horn strangled to death in a hangman’s noose in the Laramie County jail on November 20, 1903. He would have been forty-three years old the next day.

Tom Horn’s execution may symbolically mark the passing of the Old West in Wyoming, poignantly described in the forward of Owen Wister’s The Virginian, written while Tom was in jail in 1902:

It is a vanished world…. A transition has followed the horseman of the plains; a shapeless state, a condition of men and manners unlovely as that bald moment in the year when winter is gone and spring not come, and the face of nature is ugly….

The controversy over whether Tom Horn “shot that kid… the best shot that I ever made and the dirtiest trick I ever done,” his so-called confession, trial and failed appeals still rages on in Wyoming almost a century later.

More about Tom Horn:

Tom Horn (main page)

The Tom Horn Story (summary)