I, Tom Horn Read online

  My Apache woman, Nopal, Old Pedro's dark-faced daughter, would be waiting yet for her Talking Boy down there where the sun went winters. We would lay ourselves together like when we were young. I would tell her why it was that so many snows had melted since that last spring when I went away from her. She would make it all the same once more. The Apaches would be my people again. It would be like the old times, sweet and wild and safe.

  All a man had left to do in Cheyenne Jail was pass his secret testament to the young defense attorney who had promised to come for it this night. With the testament's burden lifted, its untold wrongs set right, lawful and square and written out by his own hand, Tom Horn had only to wait for his friends to get him free.

  Free and riding far, and far.

  Free and away forever free to Arizona and the old times.

  Just him and the wind and the wolf, lone three.

  Out there! out there!

  Stump Hill

  We came out of the woods, old Shed and me, and clambered up on the little rise where the old hickory stump was sentinel post to all I knew of the world at fourteen years of age. Me and the old dog just hunkered up there in the summer sun, soaking it all in. We were that kind of friends, Shed and me. Never had much need for hauling or tugging at one another. Nor talking neither.

  He just wheeled twice around in the grass, spread himself out belly to the warmth and likewise where I easy could reach him to put my feet up on him, and was snoring full tilt in about the time it took me to get backed up real good to the stump. I left him wheeze on whiles I made myself a Scotland County cheroot—corn shuck, shredded willow bark, dry tassel silk—and lit up. After I'd got over the coughing, I reared back and grunted happy as a pig turned out in pink clover.

  If this wasn't the life, it would answer meanwhile.

  Down below, Wyaconda Creek threw a loop about Stump Hill, then wandered off across Scotland County to spill into the Mississippi somewheres below Keokuk. Our six hundred acres lay both sides of the creek and both sides of the Keokuk road. It was in corn where the plow would bite deep enough but mostly ran to wild pasture and brush-choke lands like me and Shed loved. We were hunters, the both of us, and that northeast Missouri hill and woodland, when laced with a stream twisty and thick of cover as Wyaconda Creek, well, it was grand game country, and me and the old dog was the masters of it. Or at least all of it that we could see from Stump Hill that summer of 1874.

  Yonder, a good wagon ride, was Memphis, our county seat. A scad nearer we could make out Scotland School, where me and my seven brothers and sisters went for our learning. Well, they did. Most times that Shed and me set out for school, we would cut hot sign and away would go old Shed yapping and squalling and, well, naturally, he was my dog and I didn't want him lost.

  My sister Nancy, the one I liked, and who led our line of little Horns down the old road to the schoolhouse every day of its term, would beseech and holler after me that I knew father would hide me again.

  "Please, please, Tom!" she would call. "I cain't stand to see you whupt agin! Don't run off today." But it wasn't any good. She knew I would go.

  And I knew father would be waiting for me when I got back. You could trust father. He would never fail you.

  That's mainly the reason me and Shed would lay out in the brush three, four days at a stretch. Old Shed, he didn't relish seeing me shellacked with a harness strap any better than sister Nancy did. So when I would slip away to run wild for a spell, Shed he hung with me. It agonized him when I was lashed. He would actually yelp out like it was him taking the cuts.

  Once, when I was little, and father came at me, Shed took into him!

  That's the wherefor that Shed goes lame in the off forequarter; father liked to beat him to death, and would of I reckon. But mother came running up and prayered him off the dog. They were devout Campbellites both of them and when mother threw arms aloft and called on the Lord in Shed's behalf, my father left off kicking him and fell square down on his shinbones in the mud and manure of the barn lot and demanded in the name of Christ Jesus that God lead him to see the light fall on his son Tom and that damned traitorous old sheep dog, before he kilt them both.

  Shed and me lit out that time!

  It was the first trip I laid out overnight, and my mother wept in her apron for half an hour when we showed up scratching at the back door next night, after father had gone on to bed. She set and splinted Shed's leg but made me swear never to whisper who had done it. My father was a God-fearing man, but not foolishly much. You couldn't bank on him getting prayed out of something two times running.

  I was thinking about that up there on Stump Hill. It kept me awake against the drowse of that late summer sun. That and keeping a weather eye out on the run of the Keokuk road, where it edged around the rise on the south, going on its way from the Mississippi River and Keokuk Landing, to Kansas City. Fact is, once past Memphis, it was called the Kansas City road. That was account of it carried a lot of travel out of Illinois, across the big river, going west to find new places out yonder. And, naturally, all of that kind of traffic was Kansas City bound. Kansas City was just plain the place to hit for, happen you were heading west. All the trails led out from there. Oregon. California. Santa Fe. Denver. Texas. Every one of them.

  It was the stirringest thing, short of hunting and laying out in the wild of nights, that I knew about in those parts. Seeing those big Murphies and Studebakers, and even some old Conestogas, rumbling and creaking over Wyaconda Bridge down below, would whirl up the blood in a dead man. And I was a far rifle shot from dying and only a boy, though already bigger than a sizable cut of the men I'd seen. You can risk a prime coon pelt against three rotten rabbit skins that my blood like to boilt at the view of those covered wagons rolling west.

  It made me wild to go with them.

  That's why me and old Shed hung up there on Stump Hill that late afternoon, before going home to get thrashed. It was to watch those folks coming down our road on their ways to out where the Indians were, and the wild horses and the buffalo herds and the soldiers and all of that. You could see troops moving on the road too. Long dusty lines of horse soldiers on the march. There was trouble with the redskins out there. The big war was nine, ten years over, that summer of 1874 when I was dreaming of the West. But the Indians didn't know it. They just kept warring and helling the white folks out there like to run the cavalry ragged.

  That was the greatest thing for me.

  Those Indians out there.

  Maybe it was true what my mother said, that I had "Injun ways" and was bound to see trouble because of it.

  Well, that didn't bother me. I couldn't wait to catch up to my fair share of such grief. Not ever, I couldn't.

  Matter of fact, another load of it was just then jouncing the bridge planks over Wyaconda Creek. Three big wagons under white canvas, lots of trailed and rear-tied livestock with them, and following up away behind, two kids about my own age dawdling along on an old bay mare that went spooky to her right and was certain to be moon-eyed on the offside or I would lose another coonskin.

  "Shedrick," I said, punching the old dog in the belly with my big toe, "yonder comes a couple of little pecker heads lagging behind. They got to be looking for trouble. Specially the big one."

  Old Shed tottered up and let out a half-livered "woof," as to say, well, if that's what they're looking for, they're looking for us, and away we went down Stump Hill to cut them off at Wyaconda Bridge.

  "Howdy," I said, grinning like a jackass. "Welcome to Missouri."

  The bigger boy stopped the old mare, still on Wyaconda Bridge. She nervoused around on him, first at the plank-rattle under her and second at me standing spraddled out in the middle of the road, my rifle butt grounded in the dirt like I'd seen a picture of Quantrill's Raiders stopping Kansas jayhawkers to rob them of their slaves they'd made free niggers of.

  But when the old bay swung about, she let me see that the emigrant boy had a nice 16-gauge bird gun in his hand that dangled down on
the offside where I didn't see it from up on the hill. He kind of gave this piece a little shift of its two barrels to let their muzzles look me over, and I stretched my grin another three teeth on each side.

  "Name's Tom Horn," I scrinched. "What's yourn?"

  "Git your ass out'n the way," he answered. "Elst I'll dust you with these quail-shot. You a robber?"

  I could see right off he was big-talking now. I had him scairt, bird gun or no bird gun. But scatter-guns are mean close up. "Hell no," I said. "I'm just out hunting pot meat. This here's our farm you're on. What you doing?"

  He brought the mare on off the bridge and I gave way as was proper. To make things decent, I leaned my rifle up against a fence post. He handed over the bird gun to his kid brother, who never said anything the entire time of what happened. He then slid off the mare and came over to me, where I had picked out a good grassy place just off the shoulder of the road.

  "Ain't doing nothing," he scowled at me. "And this here ain't anybody's farm; it's public road."

  "Where we're a-standing is Horn land."

  The Illinois boy spit on the grass and evil-eyed me. He was a big younker. Bigger even than me. And he looked able. But us Indians had our tricks.

  "Listen," I said, "you like land?"

  He stared at me like my brains was smooth, then answered, sort of puzzled, "Sure, that's why we're heading west. Land is all pa talks about."

  "Why," I smiled, "no need to go all that ways. I can give you a couple of acres of your own, right here and now. You want 'em?"

  He sobered over it a minute, as slow kids will, and said, "Well, I swan. Sure. Give 'em to me."

  I did. Got him perfect, too. I was always quick as a buttered cat. He didn't know what happened to him. All he knew was that he was one minute going to get rich on giveaway land and the next was down in the dirt grabbing for his crotch and bawling like a just-cut bull calf.

  "You needn't beller so," I told him, leaning over so's he could hear me good. "You got your two achers, didn't you? Hah! hah!"

  I naturally knew he wasn't going to die, but didn't think to give myself the same guarantee.

  Whiles I was still scrooched down crowing over him, I took a belt from the rear that like to spilt those smooth brains of mine down twixt my shoulder wings. It was the damn little kid down off the mare and hammering me with the buttstock of the shotgun. Only his short swing and poor grip of the barrels saved me. I managed to wobble up off my hunkers before he laid my head open. The minute he saw he hadn't killed me, he took off, squirting dust like a stomped-out cottontail.

  But they had my dander up now.

  I was aiming to gallop him down and kick the, well, whale the tar out of him, leastways. Then to naturally pry him loose of the damned shotgun before he kilt somebody with it. Howsomever, I didn't anymore than get gathered together for the first jump after him when the big kid left off groping his parts, picked up a stone the size of a Rocky Ford mushmelon, and caught me in the side of the neck with it, full fly.

  I couldn't breathe for a minute, nor get my throatbone to go up or down. Then I got a whiff of my wind, and we went at it, mid-rut of the Keokuk road, ripping away at one another like two bear cubs caught inside the same beehive.

  Pretty quick he saw that I was using him up faster than he was me. Right off, he give a yell for the kid with the 16-gauge. The little turd came a-racing back and set to thumping me with the gun butt again. Before long I was seeing things fuzzy, and the two of them were like to whumping me right on down into the horse apples of the Keokuk road, when yonder came old Shed. He never could abide seeing me on the bottom, and I sure didn't auger it with him this time. "Hie on!" I yelled, the same as when we would chivvy the old sow and her pigs out of mother's collard greens. "Grab and holdt!"

  Well, Shed he grabbed and held and shook and nipped and bit away so swift, those Illinois peckoes didn't know what had lit upon them. They peeled off of me like skin off a roast snake. I was laughing even though it hurt something fierce when I did it. They made so much dust digging out of there that me and old Shed didn't even know where they'd gone till way too late.

  I was still yockering and yahooing after them when up out of the cloud they'd raised departing, here they came again up on that old bay mare. The big kid had the gun now, and he never said a word but just leveled it down and triggered it off and like to blowed out poor Shed's whole belly, with me still laughing.

  They were gone, then, clumping the old mare on west to catch up to their wagons. I gathered up old Shed and bore him home. I had him still alive out in the stockbarn when dark came down and father come in from cultivating the south forty, where I'd been told to be with him the day long.

  He didn't say anything about missing the work. Not then he didn't. That was for saving, and savoring.

  He just said, "Who done that to your dog," and I answered him who had, and he went in the house and got his hat and coat and took the spring-bed wagon and the sorrel team and went on the jingle-trot for Memphis.

  It was way late when he came back.

  I snuck over from nursing Shed at the barn and peep-tommed into the kitchen window. Mother was washing the blood off father and patching him up with bed sheets and carbolated coongrease. He was a fearsome sight, but I knew he had won. After a bit, he said to mother, "They won't gutshoot no boy's dog no more." I don't think she ever got more than that about his going to the emigrant wagon grounds outside the county seat of Memphis, Scotland County, Missouri, and whipping five grown men with nothing but his bare knuckles and sodbuster boots. Or about his leaving all five either unconscious or flat down in the mule marbles puking up their blood. And only explaining to their poor wives and other weeping womenfolk that it was for "what was did to my boy's dog."

  That's all he ever said to them, or to my mother, that anybody remembered.

  I wish he had said something to me.

  Or me to him.

  Maybe a lot of things would have come different than they did. But my father was a strange man, and I was his own-son. Somehow, we never got it out.

  I don't recollect when old Shed died. I had gone back to the barn and laid with him in the hay of the front stall. I dozed off, and when I came around again it was just tingeing gray daylight outside, and he had crope over to me and put his head on my flung-out arm and gone without a whimper to rouse or fret me.

  There was still no light in the house. I took up the draggled body. Toted old Shed like that clean to the top of Stump Hill. There, I put him under where he could feel the sun and have the wind heldt off his back by the old hickory stub. And where he could peer down on Wyaconda Creek, the rattly plank bridge, Keokuk road, and all of it that used to be his and mine. But specially his. It was his favored place.

  I knew he would want to wait up there for me.

  One day I would come back for him, and me and Shed would go on over the far side of Stump Hill and see what lay yonder past the creek. We'd always said we would. Meanwhile, he would be safe and snug and not hurting anymore, nor fearful.

  "Old Shed," I whispered. "Hie on—!"

  And I took up the shovel and went on back down the hill. It was the prettiest morning of the summer. Old Shed had picked a good day.

  Sam Griggs

  With Shedrick gone, I was down to one friend; which was Sam Griggs.

  Sam lived on the next farm up the road toward the county seat, and was a boy of my own age and of about a similar heft. We were like as pod-peas excepting that Sam was a trace fitter. I never could whip Sam Griggs.

  It was not from failing to try.

  I expect I tackled Sam on an average of two, three times a week, all summer long, every summer of all the years we both was heldt prisoner by the Scotland School. If I ever once put him down, it was in my slumbers. Sam had muscles made of mule-whang. He was raspy as a bobcat. That boy would fight a buzz saw with a willow-switch. He would give a bear the first chomp and outrip him three bites to one. There wasn't one good-sized, chesty farm lad in Scotland County that
he hadn't tamed down into a regular teacher's pet, saving for a single, smoothbrain exception—me.

  I just had it mortised-and-glued in my thick head that Tom Horn could lick Sam Griggs.

  I was certain I could one day make him spit an eyetooth or bleed a shirtfront from his own nose. My poor mother used to despair of it "Tom," she would heave out with a big sigh. "Don't you never learn nothing? Ain't it in you to wisen-up just onct?"

  Then she would box my ears, which had just come home still ringing from getting hammered on by old Sam Griggs. Naturally that would ire me into running off into the woods again. And that would get the butthide beat off of me by father, when I tried sneaking back home after dark.

  Anyhow, Sam stayed my friend. So it seemed only sensible to me, trudging down Stump Hill and trying to cipher out in my mind where I might go to tell somebody about Old Shed, that I thought of Sam Griggs.

  Matter of gospel, it wasn't Sam I thought of firstly.

  It was his brute-dumb dog named Sandy.

  That animal was the prize-poorest critter ever I see to use his head. The onliest way he could tell a skunk and a squirrel apart was that one of them couldn't climb a tree. And he never could get it straight which one. He would always come home upwind and full of wood pussy reek, no matter how hard Sam tried to learn him proper. I used to wonder how that dog had sense enough to lick his butt.

  Shed could have given a tenth his brains to Sandy and still been smarter than him by forty rods. I used to put it to Sam Griggs that way, too. Fair is fair, I'd say. You got to grant what's so. But Sam was willful as a moonblind mule and would never admit it. We had some of our liveliest scrapes over it. Which they all wound up the same way, somehow: Sam was right.