A Bullet for Your Troubles

Maps & Graphics by Gus Walker

Based on the research of John Langellier,
Jack McPhee, Larry Ball, Chip Carlson, Grace McClure,
Diana Allen Kouris and Linda Wommac

Tom Horn vs Isam Dart: A Cold Killing

It’s cold, just after dawn in Colorado’s Brown’s* Park area when Isham “Isam” Dart comes out of his cabin, dressed heavy with long underwear, a couple of shirts and a jacket. That may protect him from the elements—but it won’t stop a bullet.

*Editor’s note: Historians prefer Brown’s Park, while the USGS has adopted Browns Park. True West style is Brown’s Park.

 

 

Dart is holed up with six of his friends; all believe they are marked for death by a gunman hired to—depending on your viewpoint—clear the area of rustlers or intimidate small ranchers into abandoning their land. Dart, a former slave, probably qualifies on both counts. He and others have gotten anonymous notes telling them to get out … or else. And they take the threats seriously. Three months earlier, their pal Matt Rash was shot dead in his cabin after receiving a similar message.  You might say everyone is nervous.

Dart and George Bassett lead the way as the group heads toward the corral, about 100 yards away. But they don’t get far. A single shot rings out, and Dart pitches over, from a bullet to the chest, dead before he hits the ground. The other six men turn tail and sprint back to the cabin. They spend the rest of the day fingering their guns and sneaking peeks outside through peepholes in the log walls.

They finally go outside the next day. Dart’s body lies where he fell. They make their way around the area. When they reach a section of fence south of the corral, they find a couple of .30-.30 rifle shells. Farther down, they discover horse tracks. They follow the trail, but not very far. The cowboys have no intention of running into the assassin.

They know who he is: a tall, athletic man with shifty black eyes and no sense of fear. He calls himself Hicks. But a number of folks already know that his real name is Tom Horn.

 

 

 

 

The Dart Dossier

 

• Isam was born in Guadalupe, Texas, in 1858. It is not known if his parents Cyrus and Indianna were slaves or free Blacks.
• Considered an excellent horseman and cowboy.
• Joined a cattle drive as a drover from Texas to Wyoming in 1881.
• Was indicted in Sweet-water County, Wyoming, in September 1888 on three counts of illegally branding others’ cattle. A deputy sheriff traveled to Browns Park and arrested him. Charges were dropped in Sweetwater.
• Lived with the Bassett family of Brown’s Park for several years in the 1890s, despite having his own ranch. He became quite close with the famed Bassett sisters, Josie and “Queen” Ann.
• Acquainted with Butch Cassidy, Elzy Lay and other members of the Wild Bunch who were frequent visitors to the Bassett place. No evidence supports Dart ever rode with the outlaws.
• Member of posse that captured outlaw Harry Tracy in February 1898, after Tracy killed Brown’s Park rancher Valentine Hoy.
• Accused of killing pal Matt Rash in July 1900 by the real assassin, Tom Horn. Nobody believed the charge—especially after Horn gunned down Dart.

 

The Leadup

 

The Brown’s Park conflict was something of an extension of the Johnson County War. Big ranchers took on small cattlemen over control of land—in this case, large tracts of open grasslands in Brown’s Park.

The big boys, especially Ora Haley’s Two Bar outfit, allowed their cattle to roam into that area, even pushing on to some of the small ranches themselves. The upstarts responded by shooting some of the offending cows—or claiming them as their own. Haley and his cohorts were incensed and accused the small ranchers of rustling (and, in truth, a number of known outlaws roamed Brown’s Park). When the big ranchers became convinced that they wouldn’t find justice from law enforcement or in the courts, they took things into their own hands—and hired Tom Horn.

Author Chip Carlson’s research indicates that the Two Bar provided horses and supplies. Horn was paid $500 per killing.

 

Aftermath: Odds & Ends

On October 4, 1900—the day after he was killed—Isam Dart was laid to rest in an isolated spot on Cold Spring Mountain, near his cabin. The grave is still there, surrounded by a wooden fence in a grove of aspen trees, not far from North Highway 72.

The Two Bar Ranch, Tom Horn’s employ-
er and one of the last great cattle empires in the U.S., was sold in 1911. In the mid-1960s, its headquarters and several buildings became part of the Brown’s Park National Wildlife Refuge. Most of those structures are still standing.

For Horn himself, no bad deed went unpunished.  Sure, he was never arrested or tried in the killings of Matt Rash and Isam Dart, but the reputation that came from those murders helped bring him down. On July 18, 1901, teenager Willie Nickell was shot from ambush near his home northwest of Cheyenne, Wyoming. Horn was in the area at the time, and the assassination bore striking similarities to his modus operandi. Investigators immediately focused on him. Horn pretty much put the noose around his own neck, drunkenly admitting to the crime to Deputy U.S. Marshal Joe LeFors (and a couple of stenographers) and then talking too much when he was under cross examination during the trial. Even though he recanted the confession, Horn was convicted and went to the gallows on November 20, 1903. More recent research into the Nickell murder—especially by Larry Ball—indicates that Horn was guilty in that case. Tom Horn’s road to justice was a bit convoluted, but he finally paid his debt to society.

Recommended Reads: Chip Carlson’s Blood on the Moon (High Plains Press); Larry D. Ball’s Tom Horn in Life and Legend (University of Oklahoma Press); Grace McClure’s Bassett Women (Swallow Press); Diana Allen Kouris’s Nighthawk Rising: A Biography of Accused Cattle Rustler Queen Ann Bassett of Brown’s Park (High Plains Press); and Linda Wommack’s Ann Bassett: Colorado’s Cattle Queen (Caxton Press) and Growing Up with the Wild Bunch: The Story of Pioneer Legend Josie Bassett (TwoDot).