The summer of 1901 was a hot one on the high plains of Wyoming.

Forty-one-year-old Tom Horn was still working as a range detective for John Cobal.

When Tom wasn't out patrolling the range, he lived on the Iron Mountain Ranch.

In July morning, Tom saddled his horse and supposedly at Cobal's request,

went to see a follocal sheep rancher named Kelsey Nichol was letting his sheep graze on Iron Mountain land.

Kelsey Nichol and John Cobal already had a history together and it wasn't good.

They were enemies long before sheep entered the picture.

The problems began as was the case with countless other homesteaders,

when Nichol filed for a homestead of 160 acres and then fenced off his land, just as the law allowed.

But Cobal had been using that land for his cattle, so he was not happy with his new neighbor

and went to tell him why. An argument between the two men escalated to the point where Nichol pulled

a knife and slashed John Cobal. Nichol went to jail for the assault and Cobal allegedly swore revenge.

A man described as a prominent citizen of Cheyenne told a reporter for the Denver Post.

Cobal hates Nichol like the devil hates holy water, but he never had an excuse to go after him until he,

Nichol, brought in all those sheep. In John Cobal's mind, a homestead near his ranch land was bad,

but when Kelsey Nichol started grazing 3000 sheep on that land, that was much worse.

Cobal was said to have been irate.

In general, over the past five or six years, relations had improved between big ranchers and small

ranchers, but the peace between them was brittle and could easily break. And John Cobal had a weapon

in Tom Horn. When there was a problem, it was probably easier just to unleash Tom rather than go

through the court system. And if there technically wasn't the problem, if Cobal or another big rancher

simply thought that a person was in the way and that person had not committed a crime,

...