bed, Sieber directed a scout detail of twenty men under Lt. Watson to take the trail from San Carlos." Deputy Sheriff Jerry Ryan took Reynolds' place upon learning of his death, but because the escape occurred in Pinal County, Sheriff Jerry Fryer assumed command of the investigation. Sheriff Ryan telegraphed a Captain Bullis at San Carlos who in turn notified General Nelson A. Miles. Over the next several months, until October 1890, American militias, bounty hunters, and United States Army troops searched the Arizona desert for the escaped prisoners, all of whom were eventually caught or killed except the Kid. Between 1889 and 1894, several murders and skirmishes occurred between settlers and Apaches, most of which were blamed on the Apache Kid and his friend Massai, another former army scout who was said to have been killed by a posse in September 1906. At one point the bounty hunter Mickey Free told Al Sieber that he had trailed the Kid for three months before killing him and carving a tattoo of the letter "W" as proof. The "W" had been tattooed in blue ink on the foreheads of about 100 San Carlos Apaches before the army introduced a new identification system. The Kid is not known to have had a tattoo like this but Mickey Free, who knew the Kid personally, said he did. In 1890, some Mexican Rurales killed an Apache and recovered Sheriff Reynolds' pistol and watch, initially leading them to believe they had killed the Kid. But the dead man was said to be much older than the Kid. In 1896, John Horton Slaughter also claimed to have killed the Apache Kid in the Sierra Madre of Chihuahua, Mexico, where Apache bands were still holding out as late as 1915. But because Slaughter had crossed the international border, he kept quiet about the incident out of fear of getting into trouble with his superiors. A native named Wallapai Clark also said he shot the Kid while he was trying to steal his horse from a corral, and in 1899, the colonel of the Rurales, Emilio Kosterlitzky, claimed the same when his men killed three Apaches. In 1924, after a band of Apaches crossed into Arizona to raid for horses, the Kid’s nephew, Private Joe Adley of Fort Huachuca, confided to Lieutenant John H. Healy of the 10th Cavalry that the Apache Kid was still alive in Mexico.