Kid Nears End of His Trail of Blood
But at last the end of his career of robbery and bloodshed is approaching. The opportunity that Clark has been waiting all these years is nigh at hand. The Apache Kid’s race is about run. Clark had been away from home, and when returning, on February 4, 1894, passing by the house of Emmerson, a neighbor, about a mile from his own home, he noticed the tracks of three Indians about the house, and going inside, found they had robbed it of its contents. Going on home, he found his partner, Scanlan, whom the Indians had not disturbed, and said to him, “Scanlan, your old friend the Kid has been around again.”
Soon after, Clark, taking his gun, went out of the house for the purpose of “scouting the country around” and seeing whether he might get sight of the Indians. Going to the top of a peak near by, where he could overlook the surrounding country without unduly exposing himself, he awaited events, not realizing what an approaching one should mean to himself, and to an old enemy on whom he had vowed vengeance for the death of his old-time partner, and that this event would mark an era in a life ever filled with its dangers, not one of which had ever been shirked, but always bravely met. The opportunity for which he had waited, and in his way—a way probably familiar only to the “old scout”—had prayed for, was but a few short hours away. The language of his prayers, except for its fervency, may not have been up to the orthodox standard, but he knew what he wanted, and in asking for it used the language with which he was familiar—the language of the desert and the mountain, the camp-fire and the trail.