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Apache Kid Apache Kid The boy who was never known by any other name to whites, but whose Apache name was Zenogalache, waited many years before taking his revenge, eventually murdering his father's killer near the Aravaipo River. At an early age the orphaned Kid was taken in at the San Carlos Indian Agency, New Mexico. Here the famous cavalry scout, Al Sieber, educated the boy and taught him the use of firearms and the codes of the military, later getting the Apache Kid an appointment as the first sergeant of the Apache Government Scouts, under the command of the U.S. Cavalry. The scouts served as agency policemen who made arrests among their own people. Following the murder of the old Indian who had killed the Kid's father, Sieber ordered the Apache Kid into San Carlos. He appeared with ten of his heavily armed men. When Sieber told other Indian policemen to take the group to the guardhouse, the kid ordered his men to fire on Sieber, and he was wounded in the leg before the band rode pell-mell from the agency. There was a price on the Kid's head ever after. In addition to the military, several scouts and gunmen joined in the hunt for the Kid, including the famous Tom Horn, later hanged for murder. The Kid and his band, increased to about thirty, rode for the Mexican border and en route stole a herd of horses from the Atchley Ranch near Table Mountain, killed a trapper, Bill Diehl, in his cabin, and tortured and murdered rancher Mike Grace as the desperados moved southward. For two years the Kid and his men eluded capture, but were finally taken and sentenced to death following a quick trial. The kid insisted that he was innocent of the Diehl and Grace killings, that others in his band had done the deeds. His plea reached President Grover Cleveland's ears and the chief executive granted him a pardon. As soon as he was released the Kid led another band on bloody raids through the territory, stopping freight wagons, murdering the drivers and taking the goods. Sheriff Glen Reynolds of Gila County, Arizona, led a huge posse after the Kid and managed to capture him. This time the Apache Kid was sent to prison for seven years. However, en route to the Yuma Prison, on November 1, 1889, the guards and their six prisoners camped near Riverside in the Pinal Mountains. The Kid and his men broke free and murdered his guards, Reynolds, and Bill Holmes. Another guard, Eugene Middleton, badly wounded, survived the Kid's wrath and limped into Globe, Arizona, to tell authorities how the Kid escaped after murdering the guards while they slept. After six of the Kid's band were captured and two were hanged (the other four committed suicide by strangling each other with their loin cloths while in their cell the morning before the execution), the Kid went on a murder rampage, killing several settlers. He attacked a prairie schooner in which a woman, her young son, and an infant were traveling to meet the woman's husband. The Kid stopped the covered wagon, shot the woman and boy to death but oddly spared the infant. This crime incensed the military and civilian population and hundreds set out to hunt down the killer Indian. One scout named Dupont abruptly came across the Kid on a trail in the Catalinas. Both men had single shot rifles and paused, staring at each other. Neither wanted to waste one shot and be at the mercy of the other so they dismounted, sat on rocks through the long day, glaring at each other while the sun beat down upon them. At dusk, the Kid stood up and grunted, "Me leaving." With that the killer mounted his horse and rode off while Dupont heaved a heavy sigh of relief. For several years the Kid and a small band of renegade Apache followers raided ranches and freight lines throughout New Mexico, Arizona and Northern Mexico, hiding out in the Mexican Sierra Madre Mountains. A price of $5,000 was placed on the Apache Kid's head but no one ever claimed the reward. Edward A. Clark, who had been the partner of Bill Diehl, continued to live on his horse ranch which the Kid raided several times, the last attack occurring in 1894 when the Kid and his men surrounded the ranch house and lay siege to Clark, his new partner, John Scanlon, and a visiting Englishman named Mercer. When night fell, Clark slipped out of the house and worked his way to the corral where he saw two Indians leading away his favorite horse. He fired two shots and at daybreak found the body of a squaw, the Kid's wife, and a trail of blood leading from the spot where the woman's corpse sprawled. Clark followed the trail of blood but it petered out in the rocks of the high hills. "It was the Kid all right," Clark later claimed. "He crawled away to die somewhere, I know." Supporting Clark's theory was a sudden silence from the Apache Kid. No more ranchers were raided or settlers and freightmen killed. The outlaw's trail ceased to exist. One account by Mrs. Tom Charles insists that a posse led by Charles Anderson trapped the Kid near Kingston on September 10, 1905, and shot him dead. Some later reports had it that the Apache Kid simply retired to his mountain hideout in Mexico and lived well into the twentieth century, dying of consumption sometime around 1910. This claim has never been substantiated.
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