Old West Detective, Or Paid Assassin?

Horn's path from runaway child to convicted murderer centered around two things: his gun (symbol of power) and his horse (symbol of freedom). Horn, who immortalized himself in his posthumously-published autobiography (1904) that he wrote on death row in 1903, Life of Tom Horn: Government Scout and Interpreter,bounced between odd jobs his entire life, reportedly

Horn's path from runaway child to convicted murderer centered around two things: his gun (symbol of power) and his horse (symbol of freedom). Horn, who immortalized himself in his posthumously-published autobiography (1904) that he wrote on death row in 1903, Life of Tom Horn: Government Scout and Interpreter, bounced between odd jobs his entire life, reportedly murdering 17 people before being arrested in 1902 for the murder of 14-year-old Willie Nickell near Iron Mountain, Wyoming.

Horn, a 6-foot tall, 200+ pound guy in an era of 5-foot-6-inch men, was "not the type of man one liked to argue with," as the Sheriff of Gunnison County once said. As a teenager Horn set out from Missouri and made it through Kansas all the way to Sante Fe. He worked on the railroad for 26 days for $21, as a mail driver for $50 a month and "use of a rifle," a cattle wrangler in Arizona for $75 a month, and was ultimately hired as an Apache translator by Al Sieber, Chief of Scouts for the Army, who went on to call Horn "King of the Cowboys," per Goodreads. Horn also spoke German and Spanish, no doubt thanks to growing up in a bilingual family and community.

As soon as Horn accepted a job with the Pinkerton National Detective Agency in Colorado in 1891, his fateful path of violence apprehending horse and cattle thieves, train robbers, and murderers began.

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