was robbed, the bandits supposedly being the Daltons. In June of the following year another Santa Fé train was robbed at Red Rock, in the Cherokee strip. The 'Frisco train was robbed at Vinita, Indian Territory. An epidemic of the old methods of the James and Younger bands seemed to have broken out in the new railway region of the Southwest. The next month the Missouri, Kansas and Texas train was held up at Adair, Indian Territory, and a general fight ensued between the robbers and the armed guard of the train, assisted by citizens of the town. A local physician was killed and several officers and citizens wounded, but none of the bandits was hurt, and they got away with a heavy loot of the express and baggage cars. At Wharton they had been less fortunate, for though they killed the station agent, they were rounded up and one of their men, Dan Bryant, was captured, later killing and being killed by United States deputy Ed. Short, as mentioned in an earlier chapter. Dick Broadwell joined the Dalton gang about now, and they nearly always had a few members besides those of their own family; their gang being made up and conducted on much the same lines of the James boys gang of Missouri, whose exploits
they imitated and used as text for their bolder deeds. In fact it was the boast of the leader, Bob Dalton, in the Coffeyville raid, that he was going to beat anything the James boys ever did: to rob two banks in one town at the same time.
Bank robbing was a side line of activity with the Daltons, but they did fairly well at it. They held up the bank at El Reno, at a time when no one was in the bank except the president's wife, and took $10,000, obliging the bank to suspend business. By this time the whole country was aroused against them, as it had been against the James and Younger boys. Pinkerton detectives had blanket commissions offered, and railway and express companies offered rewards running into the thousands. Each train across the Indian Nations was accompanied for months by a heavily armed guard concealed in the baggage and express cars. Passengers dreaded the journey across that country, and the slightest halt of the train for any cause was sure to bring to the lips of all the word of fear, "the Daltons!" It seems almost incredible of belief that, in these modern days of fast railway service, of the telegraph and of rapidly increasing settlements, the work of these men
could so long have been continued; but such, none the less, was the case. The law was powerless, and demonstrated its own unfitness to safeguard life and property, as so often it has in this country. And, as so often has been the case, outraged society at length took the law into its own hands and settled the matter.
The full tale of the Dalton robberies and murders will never be known, for the region in which they operated was reticent, having its own secrets to protect; but at last there came the climax in which the band was brought into the limelight of civilized publicity. They lived on the border of savagery and civilization. Now the press, the telegraph, the whole fabric of modern life, lay near at hand. Their last bold raid, therefore, in which they crossed from the country of reticence into that of garrulous news gathering, made them more famous than they had ever been before. The raid on Coffeyville, October 5, 1892, both established and ended their reputation as desperadoes of the border.
The rumor got out that the Daltons were down in the Nations, waiting for a chance to raid the town of Coffeyville, but the dreaded attack did not come off when it was expected. When it was delivered, therefore, it found the
town quite unprepared. Bob Dalton was the leader in this enterprise. Emmett did not want to go. He declared that too many people knew them in Coffeyville, and that the job would prove too big for them to handle. He consented to join the party, however, when he found Bob determined to make the attempt in any case. There were in the band at that time Bob, Emmett, and Grattan Dalton, Bill Powers and Dick Broadwell. These lay in rendezvous near Tulsa, in the Osage country, two days before the raid, and spent the night before in the timber on Onion creek, not far below town. They rode into Coffeyville at half-past nine the following morning. The street being somewhat torn up, they turned aside into an alley about a hundred yards from the main street, and, dismounting, tied their horses, which were thus left some distance from the banks, the First National and the bank of C. M. Condon & Co., which were the objects of their design.
Grattan Dalton, Dick Broadwell and Bill Powers stepped over to the Condon bank, which was occupied at the time by C. T. Carpenter, C. M. Ball, the cashier, and T. C. Babb, a bookkeeper. Grattan Dalton threw down his rifle on Carpenter, with the customary command to
put up his hands; the others being attended to by Powers and Broadwell. Producing a two-bushel sack, the leader ordered Carpenter to put all the cash into it, and the latter obeyed, placing three thousand dollars in silver and one thousand in currency in the sack. Grattan wanted the gold, and demanded that an inner safe inside the vault should be opened. The cashier, Ball, with a shifty falsehood, told him that they could not open that safe, for it was set on a time lock, and no one could open it before half-past nine o'clock. He told the outlaw that it was now twenty minutes after nine (although it was really twenty minutes of ten); and the latter said they could wait ten minutes. He was, however, uneasy, and was much of the mind to kill Ball on the spot, for he suspected treachery, and knew how dangerous any delay must be.
It was a daring thing to do—to sit down in the heart of a civilized city, in broad daylight and on the most public street, and wait for a time lock to open a burglar-proof safe. Daring as it was, it was foolish and futile. As the robbers stood uneasily guarding their prisoners, the alarm was spread. A moment later firing began, and the windows of the bank were splintered