Death of the Apache Kid

As Told by Frank Collinson

- Miles Gilbert

The Apache Kid

While I was researching material on buffalo hunters, the attached unpublished manuscript by “Frank” Collinson was found in the Lester B. Wood Collection of the Haley Memorial Library and Historical Center of Midland, Texas. Walter James “Frank” Collinson was born November 13, 1856, in Yorkshire, England. He came to America in 1872, and began working cattle in Texas and Nebraska. In the fall of 1874, he began skinning buffalo for Jim White and “Windy Bill” Russell. His hunting career is related in The Encyclopedia of Buffalo Hunters & Skinners, Volume I. He spent his last years living in El Paso where he died in 1943. He was a prolific writer and produced his autobiography and many magazine articles concerning his buffalo hunting and ranching days for Ranch Romances and True West magazines. He was associated with the WS Ranch in southwestern New Mexico, as was James H. Cook. The following is his account of the death of the renegade “Apache Kid.”