Tom Horn, a legendary frontier scout and tracker who helped capture
Geronimo, is a drifter in the disappearing Western frontier at the turn of the twentieth century. The story begins as he rides into a small town and encounters prizefighter
Jim Corbett. Horn ends up in a livery stable, unconscious and badly bruised. Cattle rancher John Coble finds Horn in the livery and offers him the use of his ranch to recuperate. He also offers him work investigating and deterring cattle rustlers who steal from the grazing association to which he belongs. Coble implies that the association will support Horn in implementing vigilante justice and also receives U.S. marshal Joe Belle's informal approval at an association picnic. Horn accepts the offer at the picnic and also becomes acquainted with Glendolene, the local schoolteacher. Calling himself a "stock detective," as Coble told him to do, Horn confronts cowboys at an auction. After giving them fair warning, he goes on a one-man crusade to kill or otherwise drive off anyone who rustles the cattle of his benefactors. Horn's methods are brutal but effective. The cattle rustling stops. After a public gunfight, the local townspeople become alarmed at his violent nature, and public opinion turns against him. The large cattle ranchers realize that, although he is doing exactly what they hired him to do, his tactics will ultimately tarnish their image, so they begin to plot his demise. Marshal Belle, who has political ambitions, also wants Horn out of the way. Their conspiracy is set in motion when a young boy tending sheep, the bane of cattle ranchers, is shot by a .45–60, the same caliber rifle that Tom Horn is known to use. Horn is slow to realize that he is being set up. Proud and convinced of his own innocence, he refuses to leave the county or avoid town. Glendolene and Coble warn him to be careful, but Horn ignores the warning. Joe Belle coaxes Horn from a saloon back to his office, where a newspaperman transcribing their conversation is hidden in the next room. Horn does not admit to the young boy's murder and is incredulous that a rifle such as his could have made the shot at the great distance that Belle asserts. Horn states, "If I'd have killed that kid, it would have been the best shot I ever made and the dirtiest trick I ever done." Based on this conversation, Horn is taken prisoner. Unable to come and go freely into his beloved hills, Horn seems lost and reminisces. He breaks out of jail and attempts to flee. He is recaptured and convicted based on the testimony of the newspaperman who skewed the conversation between Belle and Horn into an admission of guilt. As his execution nears, Horn accepts his fate and remains resolved in the moments before he is hanged. ==Cast==