Tom Horn arrived in Wyoming during the Range Wars of the 1890s. He hired on as a stock detective with the Swan Land and Cattle Company located about 50 miles northwest of Cheyenne, Wyoming to scare would-be ranchers and farmers out of the Iron Mountain area. The cattle ranchers didn’t take kindly to sheepmen or homesteader’s who built homes in the middle of grazing land. While in this employment, Horn was supposedly responsible for eliminating a number of cattle rustlers in the area. Some true and some perhaps tall tales on Tom’s part.

Horn saw himself as a benefactor of society. Getting rid of cattle thieves was considered to him on a par with killing a wolf or a coyote. For each cattle rustler he shot, he would charge the cattlemen $500 and, of course, receive their admiration. It was about this time that he was reported to have said that, “killing men is my specialty. I look at it as a business proposition, and I think I have a corner on the market.” His trademark was a large rock, which he placed beneath the dead man’s head.

In 1901 Horn was accused of the murder of a fourteen year old boy named Willie Nickell. Horn said he had mistaken the boy for his father who was trying to bring sheep into the Wyoming cattle ranges. Horn’s demise came when he was arrested after bragging about the killing to the deputy U.S. Marshall while drinking. He was convicted by a jury in Cheyenne and sentenced to hang.

Horn escaped from the Cheyenne jail but was promptly recaptured. During his final days in jail he spent his time weaving the rope that would hang him in November of 1903 at the age of 42. His death ended the era of the “Outlaw West” in Wyoming, putting an end to gunfighters. road agents and rustlers.

Tom Horn is buried in the Old Pioneer Cemetery, which is part of the Columbia Cemetery in Boulder, Colorado. A reprieve came in 1993 when forensic experts and Amnesty International staged a retrial in which Horn was found not guilty—too late to actually do him any good.