Legends of the Old West - TOM HORN Ep. 2 | “Pinkerton Detective”

Episode Date: September 28, 2022

After Tom helps track some horse thieves, he receives a recommendation to join the Pinkerton National Detective Agency. He heads north to Colorado, and before long, he and the agency learn of a range war in Johnson County, Wyoming. The violence is escalating, and Tom Horn is the perfect man to go undercover. Join Black Barrel+ for ad-free episodes and bingeable seasons: blackbarrel.supportingcast.fm/join Apple users join Noiser+ for ad-free episodes and bingeable seasons. Click the Noiser+ banner on Apple or go to noiser.com/subscriptions to get started with a 7-day free trial. On YouTube, subscribe to LEGENDS+ for ad-free episodes and bingeable seasons: hit “Join” on the Legends YouTube homepage: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCUVRfp5H1frBzTegq9qMNIQ For more details, visit our website www.blackbarrelmedia.com and check out our social media pages. We’re @OldWestPodcast on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

There's a common expression that can be applied to almost any industry. It's probably most associated with the movie business, but it fits just about anywhere. The expression is, it's not what you know, it's who you know. In Tom Horn's case, it was both. He was a good scout, he was good with animals, and he had no problem with violence. That probably traces back to his childhood when his strict religious parents beat him regularly. As he grew older, he tried his hand at several different jobs, but he couldn't stick with any of them. Farming, ranching, mining, they were all too dull and boring.

He saw real action as a civilian with the military during the Apache Wars, and he seems to have enjoyed it. He kept trying to get rich as a miner, but he always moved away when something more exciting came along. In the late 1880s in Arizona, that thing was the Pleasant Valley War. The two most common stories about Tom Horn during the Pleasant Valley War revolve around killings. Lots of people, then and now, assume that Tom was responsible for the disappearance of Martin Blevins. Blevins was the father of a rough family from Texas who were known rustlers and lawbreakers. They were allied with the Graham family during the feud. On the other side of the feud was the

Tewksbury family. So when Blevins disappeared, everyone assumed the Tewksbury family had something to do with it. And if the Tewksburys did order or approve the murder of Martin Blevins, there was no better person to make him disappear than Tom Horn. There were no witnesses and there was no evidence to connect Tom to the disappearance, but Tom's skill set made him right for the job. The second story was that Tom may have assisted in the lynching of three other suspected rustlers. He allegedly did the job with Glenn Reynolds, a member of a local vigilante group who later became a sheriff. But again, no charges were brought against Tom or Glenn. If the suspects were actually cattle rustlers, then no one was going to kick up a fuss over

their loss. If they weren't, well, that was unfortunate, but sometimes unfortunate things happen. As Tom was about to learn, big cattle operations didn't really care one way or another about guilt. They cared about profits. And when Tom Horn became a Pinkerton agent and then a range detective, he became the perfect person to help them maintain their profits by eliminating their competition. And in classic Hollywood tradition, Tom got the job with the Pinkertons because he knew a guy who knew a guy who recommended him for the gig.

When Tom took that first step forward toward becoming a Pinkerton agent, his life changed forever. And so did the lives of lots of people he hadn't met yet. And very few of them changed for the better. From Black Barrel Media, this is Legends of the Old West. I'm your host, Chris Wimmer, and this season we're telling the complex and controversial story of Tom Horn, range detective, Pinkerton agent, and hired gun. This is Episode 2, Pinkerton Agent.

After Tom left Pleasant Valley around 1888 or 1889, he went back to his mining venture, but he soon gave up on it, apparently because he wasn't seeing a return on his investment. But over the past 10 years or so, he'd seen action in the Apache Wars and the Pleasant Valley War, and maybe he realized he could actually make a living with a gun. Rich ranchers always seemed to be ready to hire someone to, let's say, take care of problems. Ventures always seem to be ready to hire someone to, let's say, take care of problems. Tom Horn seemed to be happy to be that someone, and his motivation wasn't just money. Tom's former partner in one of his mining ventures, Bert Dunlap, said to a newspaper reporter,

Tom Horn was more down on thieves and thievery than any man I've ever known. And it was Bert who recommended Tom for a new job, one that put all his skills to use and ultimately led him to Wyoming. In January of 1890, Sheriff Doc Shores of Gunnison County, Colorado, tracked two horse thieves to the Arevipa Valley in Arizona. That was Tom's home base, and when the sheriff asked Tom's former mining partner, Bert Dunlap, for his help in locating the thieves, Bert told the sheriff to talk to Tom Horn. If the sheriff was trying to track thieves in the area, Tom was the best man to help him. Bert set up a meeting between Tom and the sheriff.

Sheriff Doc Shores said later that Tom made a good first impression. The sheriff described Tom as an imposing figure of a man. But there was one thing that gave the sheriff pause. Sheriff Shores said Tom had black, shifty eyes. Despite that disconcerting feature, Sheriff Shores temporarily deputized Tom to help find the horse thieves. It turned out that it wasn't very hard. Tom knew the two thieves, a pair of brothers named Joe and Will Kirkpatrick, and he knew where to find them. He led the sheriff to a makeshift mining camp, and he walked into a cook's shack where one of the

brothers was eating his supper. The brother, whichever one it was, had taken off his holster and gun while he ate. The holster was hanging from the back of his chair. Tom stepped into the shack, said hello to his old friend, then grabbed the holster and gun from the back of his chair. He placed the brother under arrest and handed him over to the sheriff. While the sheriff took his first prisoner into custody, Tom rode to a nearby ranch where he knew the other brother was working. Tom arrested the second brother without incident, though apparently there was quite a bit of yelling. The brother was said to have been furious and shouted, God damn you, Tom, I thought you were a friend of

mine. In the space of one day, Tom arrested both brothers and collected $50 for his efforts. Sheriff Doc Shores was so impressed with Tom that he encouraged him to go into law enforcement. The sheriff offered to recommend Tom to a friend of his up in Denver. The friend was the head of the Pinkerton Detective Agency's Denver office. Tom agreed to go to Colorado with the sheriff and meet with the Pinkerton representative. The Pinkerton agent was James McParland, and he was impressed with Tom right off the bat. McParland wanted to hire Tom, and he sent his recommendation all the way to the top, to William Pinkerton, one of the managing directors of the agency. William ran the agency with his

younger brother, Robert, the man who had tried and failed to catch Jesse James 15 years earlier. William and Robert had managed the agency since their father, the founder of the agency, Alan Pinkerton, passed away six years ago. As was customary, William checked up on Tom Horn and received glowing references from Tom's civilian friends and U.S. military officers in Arizona. With the background check complete, William officially hired Tom Horn as a Pinkerton agent and assigned him to the Denver office. Tom was now one small step away from joining a range war in Wyoming. As a podcast network, our first priority has always been audio and the stories we're able to share with you. But we also sell merch, and organizing that was made both possible and easy with Shopify. Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell and

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And it's not just us. Shopify powers 10% of all e-commerce in the U.S. Shopify is also the global force behind Allbirds, Rothy's, and Brooklinen, and millions of other entrepreneurs of every size across 175 countries. Because businesses that grow, grow with Shopify. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at shopify.com slash realm, all lowercase. Go to shopify.com slash r-e-a-l-m now to grow your business, no matter what stage you're in. Shopify.com slash realm. The Pinkerton National Detective Agency was established in Chicago in 1850 by Alan Pinkerton.

Pinkerton was a former deputy sheriff of Cook County, Illinois, the county where Chicago was located. In the beginning, most of the agency's work revolved around catching train robbers and trying to protect trains from getting robbed in the first place. trying to protect trains from getting robbed in the first place. In 1861, the Pinkertons thwarted a plot to assassinate President-elect Abraham Lincoln, which was supposed to take place during his train journey to Washington, D.C. The agent who was responsible for escorting Lincoln safely to the Capitol, interestingly enough, was a woman named Kate Warren. The Pinkerton agency, from its inception, welcomed women into its workforce, which was a woman named Kate Warren. The Pinkerton agency, from its inception, welcomed women into its workforce, which was a highly unusual practice at the time. During the Civil War,

both sides recognized women were excellent spies and undercover operatives. And after President Lincoln's experience on his way to Washington, he hired Alan Pinkerton to run the Union's entire spy network. After the Civil War, and let's say roughly for the first half of the Old West era, the 1860s and 1870s, the Pinkertons were mostly focused on stopping criminals. Now, sometimes they used extreme methods to do so, and methods that were not legal, but the intent was still to stop criminals like Jesse James. As the Old West era progressed into the 1880s and 1890s, a new job increasingly emerged for the Pinkertons, that of enforcer. Many times, the Pinkertons became a private army for hire for the rich and powerful. the Pinkertons became a private army for hire for the rich and powerful. By the early 1900s,

they were deep into the union wars that happened across the country when American workers organized for better wages and working conditions. Rich business owners hired the Pinkertons to break up the unions by whatever means necessary. After lots of high-profile violent encounters, the agency's reputation was severely damaged. And trust me, we have a whole show planned about the Pinkertons because so many of you have requested their stories, but it's a massive project and it's working slowly in the background. For now, the trouble in and around the agency took a big step forward in the 1890s, at the same time Tom Horn was hired. Working out of the Denver office, Tom conducted investigations and started tracking outlaws throughout the West. And, just as he had while working for the military, he began to build a solid reputation for himself. After returning from a successful mission to capture some train robbers, Tom's boss,

James McParland, handed him an important assignment, and one that was right up Tom's alley. There was a range war in northern Wyoming, in and around Johnson County. Range wars of various sizes and scales had been happening for years all over the country, but the one in Johnson County would become the most well-known. The western side of the county featured the Bighorn Mountains and the heavy timber and rivers that were associated with them. The eastern side of the county was all prairie, and that was the heart of the problem. A group of wealthy ranchers had formed the Wyoming Stock Growers Association, or the WSGA. They had enormous power in the state and even on a national level.

Not long after Tom Horn was hired by the Pinkertons, some men who represented the Wyoming stock growers visited Tom's boss in Denver. They requested the agency's assistance in ridding them of a rampant cattle rustling problem, or what they claimed was a rampant cattle rustling problem. But there was a lot more to the story. It's believed that Tom's boss, who probably had the blessing of the head of the agency, William Pinkerton, agreed to be of service. The representatives of the WSGA told Tom's boss that operatives would have to work covertly.

The public was not supposed to know that the operatives were Pinkertons or that they were hired by the wealthy ranchers. The agent, or agents, would be asked to do things that were unethical, immoral, and slightly illegal. And before long, it would get much worse than that. In the late 1800s, range wars popped up on the western frontier like brush fires and spread just as fast. For many years, cattle ranchers all across the west had been getting rich by grazing their massive herds on open federal land. It was free for the cattlemen to use that land, which meant it cost the cattlemen nothing to feed and water their stock. It was certainly faster and easier to get rich and build an empire when you didn't have to pay for food or water for your animals. After a while, the cattlemen began to

think of the open range as their land. It wasn't, it still belonged to the federal government, but the cattlemen had been using it as their own for so long that they took on a sense of ownership. After the Civil War, the demand for beef all over the country was so high that a select group of ranchers in different states rose into the top tier of cattlemen, and the term cattle baron was coined. And the problems began soon afterward. Legally speaking, it started with the Homestead Act of 1862. After the Civil War, people raced to claim their part of the vast American landscape, and that put them into direct conflict with the cattle barons.

The Homestead Act was designed to encourage Americans from the East to head West as part of America's westward expansion. During the Old West era, from about 1865 to 1900, hundreds of thousands of people headed west. Some wanted to strike it rich in the mines. Others wanted to build ranches or farms. The Homestead Act allowed people to claim 160 acres of land, with or near a water source. If they lived and worked on the land for five years, they owned it. From the point of view of the cattle barons, that was bad enough. All these homesteaders were flooding into the territories and claiming land that the barons had been using as open ranges to graze their cattle. But something else made it

worse. Barbed wire fences. Homesteaders were also allowed, by law, to cordon off their plots of land with barbed wire fencing, and most of them did. Barbed wire, which was first patented in 1867, was cheap and effective and it completely changed the landscape of the West, both literally and figuratively. As barbed wire fences became more prevalent, the cattle barons' free-roaming cattle were gradually cut off from the land and water that they used to use for free. Obviously, the barons weren't happy. One of their first responses was to employ men who were called range detectives, or stock detectives. On the surface, these men were supposed to stop cattle thieves and watch out for any

other unlawful activity near the cattle baron's operation. And some range detectives did exactly that. But on a deeper level, many became enforcers for the cattle barons. Their jobs were to harass the homesteaders who put up barbed wire fences and forced them to leave. If a detective had to, he could accuse the homesteader of cattle rustling. Framing innocent people for crimes was not off the table, and neither was cold-blooded murder, if nothing else worked. After the fact, the dead man could be accused of cattle rustling, and it would justify the killing. Tom Horn was the perfect fit for a range detective.

That's what he was usually called when he was working in Wyoming, range detective or stock detective. But at least for some of his time in the Johnson County area, he was a Pinkerton operative who posed as a range detective. He was sent in to help the cattle barons retake the open ranges that they considered their own. open ranges that they considered their own. Big cattle operations in Johnson County started with a wealthy British cattleman named Morriton Frewen. He owned land in Texas, but in the spring of 1881, he ordered his herds driven north to Wyoming to graze. It soon became a common practice among big cattle ranchers in Texas. Huge cattle herds relocated to Wyoming when winter had passed and fresh spring grass began to blanket the land. The cattle could then spend the summer grazing on wide-open land and using the Powder River as a water source. Soon, ranchers moved

their entire operations to Wyoming, and the Powder River Range featured 200,000 head of cattle or more. For the first few years, everything went well. The cattle barons were getting richer, and the large numbers of cowboys had plenty of work. But the good times were about to come to an end. faites vos achats tout en travaillant, en mangeant ou même en écoutant ce balado, alors vous connaissez et aimez l'excitation du magasinage. Mais avez-vous ce frisson d'obtenir le meilleur deal? Les membres de Rakuten, eux, oui. Ils magasinent les marques qu'ils aiment et font d'importantes économies, en plus des remises en argent. Et vous pouvez aussi commencer à gagner des remises en argent dans vos magasins préférés, comme Old Navy, Best Buy et Expedia, et même cumuler les ventes et les remises en argent. C'est facile Sous-titrage Société Radio-Canada The problems began when two very dry summers were followed by two extremely harsh winters. From 1885 to 1887, the weather dramatically reduced the grass that was available for grazing throughout

the Powder River Range, and by that time, the range had become dangerously overgrazed. Large-scale ranchers and cattle companies, all members of the Wyoming Stock Growers Association, lost countless head of cattle. The cattle that survived were undernourished, which meant a severe drop in price when they were sold at market. As profits dropped, the effects were felt by the workers. The WSGA abolished free winter meals for their cowhands and cut salaries by $5 a month, which in those days was a sizable reduction in pay. In protest, the cowboys went on strike. Eventually, they got their wages and their free winter meals back, but the victory was short-lived. The winter of 1887 was the coldest and harshest in years, and thousands more head of cattle were lost. Many ranchers were

ruined. Those who survived laid off droves of their cowhands. Johnson County suddenly had an unemployment problem, but the laid-off cowboys found a solution, and it only heightened the larger problem. The cowboys who had lost their jobs filed for homesteads and began to raise their own cattle and other livestock. They joined hundreds of homesteaders who had already staked own cattle and other livestock. They joined hundreds of homesteaders who had already staked claims along the Powder River and throughout the range. So now,

the big ranchers were competing against new homesteaders whom they hated just on principle and their former employees. And then the barbed wire fences started going up, and that infuriated the big ranchers even more. So the Wyoming stock growers came up with a plan. If it worked, it would solve their problem with homesteaders and other small-time ranchers, whom they called nesters. The plan started with tactics that were mild, relatively speaking, and it worked its way up to solutions that were extreme. The problem for the cattle barons was that the law was clearly on the side of the homesteaders. Under the Homestead Act of 1862, the homesteaders had

every right to fence off their land. But, of course, there was a law against theft, and theft of cattle, more commonly known as cattle rustling, was one of the most serious crimes in the West. So, the cattle barons claimed they were being robbed blind and their livelihoods were being threatened. And this was where the range detectives or stock detectives like Tom Horn came in. They helped investigate, in quotation marks, the claims made by the cattle barons. Luckily for the homesteaders, Johnson County law enforcement and local judges saw right through the scheme.

Lawmen and judges knew that the claims of the cattle barons were greatly exaggerated and were mostly just excuses for the big ranchers to drive out the small ranchers. For that reason, even though cattle rustling was, in general, a serious offense, those who were accused of cattle rustling by the WSGA were rarely prosecuted, and that prompted the cattle barons to add conspiracy to their false narrative. Cattle barons accused the sheriff, his deputies, and local judges of corruption and working with the small ranchers to hurt the big ranchers. So after all the local back and forth happened, the Wyoming stock growers looked beyond Wyoming for help. They sent representatives to Denver to

meet with the Pinkertons. The Pinkertons decided that Tom Horn was the perfect man to act as a hired gun for the WSGA. As a range detective for the cattle barons, Tom was supposed to track the movements of suspected rustlers. If he caught a rustler red-handed, he usually had his boss's blessing to take care of the matter right then and there. That meant shooting the rustler, or hanging him, or simply making him disappear. Those options were certainly faster, easier, and more decisive than capturing the rustler and hoping for punishment from a sheriff or a judge or a jury. Juries were always tricky. They were usually made up of homesteaders and small ranchers, and they hated cattle rustlers, but they hated the cattle barons even more. Lots of big ranchers didn't want to take the chance that a rustler, or more often an accused rustler, would go free because of a jury trial. In 1889, people around Johnson County began to

learn just how serious the cattle barons were about reclaiming the open range. Ella Watson was tall, dark-haired, and strong. She had married an abusive husband when she was 18 and then left him when she was in her early 20s. She met James Averill at his store along the Sweetwater River in Johnson County in 1886. She helped him run his dry goods store, and she filed a claim for 160 acres of land through the Homestead Act. By 1888, Jim had a claim right next to Ella's, and they might have been married. Sometimes they're referred to as husband and wife. Sometimes they're just referred to as partners, which could mean a personal relationship or a business relationship. partners, which could mean a personal relationship or a business relationship. Either way, they had two plots of land and they were starting a ranch. But their land was coveted by the big ranchers

because it had once been part of the open range that made the ranchers rich. So, rumors started spreading about Cattle Kate, as they called Ella, and her husband Jim. Kate, as they called Ella, and her husband Jim. Ella and Jim were accused of receiving stolen cattle at their ranch, not stealing them, just receiving them. On July 20, 1889, six men kidnapped Ella and Jim and dragged them down to the Sweetwater River. The posse lynched Ella and Jim, supposedly hanging them from the same tree limb. Some initial reports pitched it as a righteous act. Two known cattle thieves had received the justice they deserved. Much later, it was determined that they were almost certainly innocent. In an amazing example of a newspaper headline of the time, one paper put it like this,

blaspheming border beauty barbarously boosted branch word. Homesteaders and locals from the town of Buffalo, the Johnson County seat, were outraged and shocked. Lynching rustlers was nothing new, but hanging a woman was unheard of. Members of the WSGA just shrugged. A grand jury was convened, but there were no witnesses, so no one was charged with a crime. It's probably impossible to point to one specific incident and say, that's the beginning of the Johnson County War. But the lynching of Cattle Kate and Jim Averill is either a good place to start, or a good place to start the serious escalation. No one knows exactly when Tom Horn became involved in the

conflict, but the next set of murders is heavily speculated to be his first in the Johnson County War. Two and a half years after the lynching of Cattle Kate and Jim Averill, the Wyoming Stock Growers Association accused two more small ranchers of cattle rustling. Orly Jones and John Tisdale were ambushed, shot, and killed in December 1891. An eyewitness described the killer as tall, rangy, and wearing dark clothing. That description fit a former Johnson County Sheriff named Frank Canton, who was known to be an ally of the Cattle Barons and the WSGA. Canton had a reputation of a man who was capable of committing two cold-blooded murders to collect a bounty, but he was never charged with a crime. The description from the eyewitnesses also sounded like Tom Horn,

and as the bodies started to pile up in Johnson County, and many were associated with Tom Horn, it became easier to look back on the murders of Orly Jones and John Tisdale and believe that they were Tom's first in the Johnson County War. war. Next time on Legends of the Old West, the Johnson County War ramps up. The Wyoming stock growers make a hit list of people they want removed, and they hire gunmen like Tom Horn to help them. Tom has a falling out with the Pinkertons, but stays in Wyoming as a private mercenary for two major cattle operations. That's next week on Legends of the Old West. And members of our Black Barrel Plus program don't have to wait week to week.

They receive the entire season to binge all at once with no commercials. Sign up now through the link in the show notes or on our website, blackbarrelmedia.com. Memberships begin at just $5 per month. This series was researched and written by Michael Byrne. Original music by Rob Valliere. Copy editing by me, Chris Wimmer, and I'm your host and producer. If you enjoyed the show, please leave us a rating and a review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening. Check out our website, blackbarrelmedia.com for more details and join review on Apple Podcasts or wherever you're listening. Check out our website, blackbarrelmedia.com for more details and join us on social media. We're at Old West Podcast on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Thanks for listening.