When Bad Photos Are Bad: Tom horn at Embudos

August 19, 2011

When I was doing the Captain Emmett Crawford Classic Gunfight on the fight on the Devil's Backbone, I talked at length with author Larry Ball, who is doing a bio on Tom Horn. Larry told me that Horn was at Canyon de los Embudos for the iconic George Crook-Geronimo parlay where C.S. Fly took his immortal photographs. Larry said that Horn was just out of the classic scene and that part of his shirt can be seen. Oh, to be that close to immortality and miss it by one foot!

Larry said, Horn shows up with his Apache scouts in another long shot by Fly, and today, I was looking for another photo and ran across this Fly photo and I think it is the one Larry is referring to:

This is also at Embudos and I think that is Horn at top right, smack dab in the middle of his scouts. Here is a close-up, and although it's blurred, I think you can see by his stance that this is most likely Horn:

For comparison, here's Horn, several years earlier with a group of packers and scouts accompanying Gen. Crook into Mexico:

That's Tom Horn, third from left, kneeling, in what appears to be the same white shirt! Notice how cowboy he looks for that time. most of the other guys look like Victorian packers, but Horn is dang cowboy lookin'.

"If you see a frog on top of a fence post, he had help."
—Old Vaquero Saying