Horn Aplenty

July 18-19

Day two in Cheyenne was a week day, so we got into the state museum. 

Before that, though, Joanna wanted to get her nails done. We went to the nail salon in the local Wal-Mart. 

While Joanna was being filed and polished, I walked the grocery aisles. I bought apples, avocados, and bananas for smoothies, which is what we generally have for lunch. 

It think it’s purification before we launch into dinners that are usually built around beef or other red meat. The food is better out here than I expected, but so far in our experience, has been limited in diversity.

The beer is good, though. 

The state museum has exhibits on Amerindians and the emigrant trails, of course, but also on coal mining, animals, the construction of the Capitol building, and other specialties of the region. 

It has a case that contains Tom Horn’s shoes. Horn apparently gave them to a judge the night before he was hanged. That is, before Horn was hanged, not the judge. 

Horn was an Indian fighter who became a hired gunfighter and claimed he was a stock detective, a private eye hired to stop rustlers. He took part in a range war near Cheyenne and was convicted of killing a 14-year-old boy in the rival group. Exit Tom Horn.

He is one of Wyoming’s favorite bad boys. There is, though, a photo of another famous Wyoming bandit, Butch Cassidy, near the entrance to the museum.

The samples of Indian beadwork in the museum are fascinating. There is a cradleboard with an intricate rose pattern rendered in glass beads that is almost realistic.

A pair of cowboy boots is completely covered in beadwork. I have no idea how that was done.

Fossils are also big business out here. At one time, this was prime dinosaur territory. Did Adam and Eve hunt dinosaurs out here? I haven’t found any Creationists to ask about that. But dinosaur bones have been fossilized all over the place.

The Wyoming coal deposits are fossilized swamps where the dinosaurs used to roam.

After an hour or two of museum strolling, we were bushed and went back to the hotel to rest. Joanna is fascinated by the Republican National Convention, so we had that on the TV.

We went back downstairs for dinner. I had a basic hamburger. Joanna had an interesting dish of brandied chicken. The brandy is fired and turned into a sauce. 

Joanna offered me a sample. It was remarkably good—surprisingly so, because the chicken was cooked without skin or bone. It was even tender. 

I wish they had a Mayor of Old Town up here. The beers at the hotel are bottled, mostly canned. Those I drank tonight were good, but all save one were the same as last night. 

The only experiment was a brown ale from the Black Tooth Brewing of Sheridan, Wyo. For some reason (because it’s Wyoming, I guess) it’s called Saddle Bronc. OK, but like a lot of browns, a little too sweet for my taste.

Tuesday morning, the 19th, we wanted to clear out of the hotel before they started testing the fire alarms. We had been warned that it would begin around noon in the tower with the guest rooms.

But we were given an even more urgent reason to get going when a nose pad fell off Joanna’s glasses.

A Google search turned up a one-hour service called Quick Draw Optical. 

Yes, really. I’m sending photographic evidence.

The lady at the store took about two minutes to replace the broken pad with a new one.

We went back to the state museum to revisit a few of the exhibits, mainly Old West stuff, Indian artwork, and fossils this time. 

Tom Horn’s shoes, by the way, are in the same case with a revolver that “was shot out of the hand of Al Smith by Joe LeFores during the Hole-in-the-Wall fight in 1897.”

I think that’s a reference to Joe Lefors, the deputy marshal who arrested Horn.

Our next stop was the Laramie County Courthouse. It stands on the site of the older courthouse and jail where Tom Horn was tried and hanged.

The town has occasional displays in the shape of large cowboy boots decorated by local artists. West Orange, N.J., has a similar program involving lightbulbs because Edison’s lab was there. Didn’t New York have one involving, for some reason, cows?

One in front of the state museum uses a motif that takes parts of designs from old Wyoming license plates. The one in front of the courthouse is devoted to Tom Horn. You’re surprised, right?

There is a Tom Horn exhibit on the second floor of the new courthouse. It consists of archive photos and a brief recap of the events leading up to the trial and execution. 

You could consider this an official account, because it’s in a courthouse and was approved by a judge. Even this version admits there is reasonable doubt that Horn killed the 14-year-old son of a sheepherder. The exhibit, we read, is a matter of feet from where the gallows stood.

Lefors, the deputy marshall, interviewed Horn when he was drunk and had the conversation transcribed. I have not yet found the text of the transcript, but it is described as a meandering drunken boast. 

The marshall’s office was behind one of the bay windows of a building that now houses the Wyoming Home furniture store on the Lincoln Highway.

Definitely one of my favorite roads. There is always something curious on it whenever I have traveled it.

Dinner was at the Albany Restaurant, Bar, and Liquormart, at the foot of Capitol Street, across from the depot.

We were just about to go in when we heard a few gunshots and knew the Gunslinger show was in progress. They were going to hang a guy (I don’t know why) and drew the jury from the audience. 

The marshal showed up and said it was illegal. “But he showed up for a gun fight dressed like that.” The marshal offered to shoot him.

Instead, they gave him a straw cowboy hat to make him look more Western, T-shirt and Bermuda shorts notwithstanding.

Back at the Albany, Joanna had some very good fried chicken, and I opted for seasoned pork chops, a little on the salty side, but still good.

The New Belgium 1554 black ale tastes very much like Guinness. I had a Guinness, too, to compare.

We went across the street to the Accomplice bar in the depot. They give you a key card that you put in a slot over the tap, and you can pour your own beer.

We tried four or five brews, two or three ounces at a time. The best of the lot were the Epic Tart N Juicy IPA (which I had the day before), Left Hand Brewing’s Sawtooth Amber, and Coal Creek rye IPA.

I’m not usually fond of rye ales, but this one was very good. I think the heavy hopping of an IPA balanced the strange bitterness of the rye.

I’m back at the room now with a couple of IPAs that I picked up at the bar downstairs. I just finished the Odell IPA out of Fort Collins and am about to attack the Black Tooth Brewing Co.’s Hot Streak, from Sheridan, Wyoming.

The local beers here are all adequate to damned good. These two are close to the good end of the spectrum.

So like Santa Claus says, a good beer to all and to all a good night.

Harry