Cooke’s Canyon Ambush

August 27, 1861 The Ake-Wadsworth wagon train, en route from Tucson, Arizona, to Texas, leaves the abandoned Mimbres River Stage Station at first light, heading east toward Cooke’s Canyon in southwestern New Mexico. German butcher Eugene Zimmer warned the party, the night before, that a large group of Apaches were in the canyon and had killed his men and stolen all of his cattle. But Grundy Ake and William Wadsworth, the leaders of the train, are suspicious of the German’s motives and sus