Escape from the Historical Record
Few figures in Arizona history have drifted as far from the actual historical record as the Apache Kid. Newspapers, dime novels, and decades of scary campfire stories turned him into a phantom outlaw that bore little resemblance to the man. However, the man behind the name, Haskay-bay-nay-ntayl, began as something else: an Army scout who rose under Al Sieber, the Chief of Scouts, and who was trusted with responsibility at the Apache reservation in San Carlos, AZ.
The Kid’s Trouble Begins in the Way of Many Young Men
His trouble began in June 1887, when he made some questionable choices regarding a traditional alcoholic Apache drink called Tulapai and a connected confrontation at San Carlos ended with gunfire and Sieber’s ankle shattered. The Kid fled, was later convicted, and was retried in Globe in the fall of 1889. He drew seven years in Yuma Territorial Prison. On November 2, 1889, while the prisoners were being transported, they overpowered their guards. Sheriff Glenn Reynolds was killed, and the Kid vanished into the territory’s mythology. A reward went unclaimed, and no one ever settled what became of him.
Readers of The Rim Country will know Reynolds as a participant in Pleasant Valley’s own troubles, so his death echoes with others from the violence of 1887. It is interesting that as was frequently the case in the story of Pleasant Valley, compromised men often went on to positions in law enforcement.
The Apache Kid in The Rim Country novels
In the third book of The Rim Country, I include a connection with the Apache Kid, but my intent is to approach his story from an unexpected angle.
He never appears on the page. The story reaches Nora Callahan by way of her Apache friend, Tall Reed, who stops at Nora’s door in the fall of 1890 on her way to consult a wise Navajo woman in Chinle. Tall Reed knew the young man before the headlines began. What troubles her is what his story is doing to San Carlos, particularly to people who had no part in it. She talks about a fire in the canyon country that no one can command, only answer once it has finished burning.
Nora recognizes that description. She has lived through a range war and watched the damage settle into a community. The chapter gives her no solution. She leaves her ledger blank, goes back to her mules, and eventually walks out to a broken fence to talk it over with the valley’s itinerant preacher, Elias Rodgers.
I chose that approach because the Apache Kid has been told mostly from the outside, by sheriffs, newspapers, and the legend itself. I wanted the story to be told from the unique context of the people who lived alongside him and uniquely feared his vengeance, and I wanted to connect their loss to the valley’s own.
The scene is fiction, and Tall Reed and Nora are my inventions. The history around them is not. If you’d like to see how the Apache Kid’s shadow reaches the Rim Country, you’ll find him in The Rim Country – Book Three, due to be released in Spring of 2027.
Find The Rim Country Series
Until then you can find Book One HERE and Book Two will be released before Christmas.
Blog Entries about other Historical Figures in this Series
Other Links of Interest:
BOOK REVIEWS by Tod Newman
POSTS ABOUT SELF PUBLISHING by Tod Newman
VIDEO discussing the Series
BUY The Rim Country: Book One “The Invitation” by W. Tod Newman.
THOUGHTS on the dysfunction of the Old West
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