Return to Coffeyville

The Overlook

By Tom Clavin

“The Overlook” appears every Wednesday at tomclavin.substack.com. If you enjoy the column, please "like" it and let me know what you think by commenting (check out previous ones while you're at it). All support is appreciated. Don't forget to hit the ‘Subscribe’ button – it’s free!

          [This week sees the publication of the trade paperback edition of The Last Outlaws: The Desperate Final Days of the Dalton Gang. It’s the rip-snortin’ story of the Dalton brothers and how they robbed banks and trains in the late 1880s into the ‘90s. To whet your appetite, here is how the book’s Prologue.]

The event, like the Wild West itself, was a distant memory. But Emmett Dalton was about to turn 60 and the ailments were piling up. If he did not set foot in Coffeyville now, most likely he never would. And some of the people, especially the survivors of that deadly day of almost 40 years ago, still wanted a display of atonement. Emmett could do that. A part of him even wanted to, though deep down he believed all the years in prison was plenty of punishment.

          To be honest – which could be difficult for him at times – Emmett enjoyed the attention. His return to Coffeyville generated headlines. As the Kansas City Star would report in its April 29, 1931, edition: “Emmett Dalton, leader of the notorious Dalton gang that thirty-nine years ago was the terror of the Southwest, returned Sunday to revisit the scenes of his career as an outlaw.” He was certainly not the leader, Bob was, but close enough.

          Emmett had a practical and somber reason too. Otherwise, it would appear unseemly after all this time to just pass through the town in southeast Kansas where in October 1892 eight men had been shot to death. There could still be grieving widows and children, even mothers here. Two of those murdered men had been his older brothers Bob and Grat. Ever since, they had lain with Bill Power in a common grave in the city’s Elmwood Cemetery. Even more of an insult, the only marker the grave had was a length of lead gas pipe. Today, when Emmett got there, he expected to find the handsome marker he had paid good money to create.

          As he stood on the sidewalk in the center of Coffeyville, two men approached him. “How do you do, Emmett,” said one of them. He identified himself as E.W. Morgan, and he had been 11 years old on that blood-soaked day in October 1892. The other was Charles Gump. He was 72 now, and as he extended his hand, he told Emmett that it had been struck by a bullet during the gun battle. “But no hard feelings,” Gump cheerfully assured him.

          It occurred to Emmett that just by still being alive and the last of the Dalton Gang, he was a celebrity to these people. And still a source of wonder, given that the last time he had been in Coffeyville he had been shot 23 times.  Sure, it did not hurt that Emmett and his wife, Julia, had driven east from their home in Hollywood, and he was indeed in the motion picture business, where he was encountering many more bandits than back in his outlaw days.

Ironically, gangster movies were all the rage now. As Emmett and Julia were preparing for their trip, people were lining up in Los Angeles to see the young actor Jimmy Cagney in The Public Enemy. Emmett looked the part of a Hollywood producer. He noted the two men admiring his fresh-bought blue suit and the sharp crease of his trousers.

As he released Gump’s hand the pain in his own arm returned, and the citizens could see it on Emmett’s face. “The old wounds bother me a lot,” he explained. “You know, during the event” – he did not like the word “raid” or “robbery” – “one of the bullets was planted right there in my arm. It shattered the bone some. The doctors wanted to cut the arm off, but I was only a kid and hotheaded, and I told them that if I was going to die, as they said I was, I would be buried all together.”

He could not stop talking. “It has never healed. It is an open sore yet and I have to bandage it every morning.” He grinned at the gathering crowd. “Outside of that I’m all right.”

Someone shouted out, “Are you rich?”

          “It depends on what you call rich,” Emmett replied, further warming up to being the center of attention. “If you mean a million, we haven’t got it. But we are comfortable. One thing you can say, I’ve made more money in two or three years of real estate deals than the Dalton gang ever made in all years of our deviltry.”

          He reached out his good arm. “Just say that whatever I’ve got I owe to my wife, the most wonderful woman in the world. Come here, Julia.” She stepped closer. The newspapers would describe her as “a refined and charming woman with graying hair.”

          A young man with a notebook and pencil leaned in and queried, “Is this Julia, the sweetheart of your boyhood you tell so much about in your book?”

          “This is she,” he answered. “This trip we are making now is our second honeymoon. After we leave here we are going to drive to her old house in Oklahoma.”

          The Julia portrayed in his books was an invention, but few if any in Coffeyville knew that. Emmett had ceased caring much about the past a long time ago. The thousands of days and nights in the penitentiary had helped with that.

          The young reporter followed them to the Elmwood Cemetery. Emmett realized there really was not much to be done. Even if he was willing to get on his hands and knees, he had not brought any grave-tending implements. But more important, the new marker was where it was supposed be. It listed in descending order Bob Dalton, Grat Dalton, Bill Power, and Oct. 5, 1892. During the installation, workers had not removed the length of pipe.

Emmett doubted any kin remained who cared about Power. At least for Dick Broadwell, family had carted his lead-filled body away a couple of days after the event.

          “Poor Bob,” he murmured, gazing at the granite headstone. “He was the finest figure on horseback I have ever seen. He was the bravest, coolest man I have ever known, both as a United States deputy marshal and as an outlaw. Between Bob and me was a bond of wonderful affection; I would have died for him. There he lies.” After taking a step to one side, Emmett added, “Poor Grat. Here he sleeps, an aimless, discontented boy who grew into a fierce fighting man.”

          No one mentioned Frank Dalton. He was the good brother, the deputy marshal who had died heroically. His grave was at the Elmwood Cemetery too. But Emmett avoided it. He had barely known Frank but he had ridden with Grat and Bob. And probably best not to let the others here compare Frank’s handsome headstone to the rather plain one of the outlaw brothers.

Emmett also thought of his brother Bill. He should be lying here as well because surely what had happened in Coffeyville killed him too. Instead, Bill Dalton occupied a lonely piece of ground a couple of thousand miles away, with not even his wife nearby. He had been the last of the Dalton outlaws.

Emmett was giving the reporter what he wanted – and, conveniently, it was the truth. As cloudy images drifted through his mind of shooting and shouting and desperately trying to haul his dead brother Bob up onto his horse, Emmett told the young man, “I am the last survivor of the old-time frontier outlaw, and I, too, am doomed to die as all those others did, from a bullet, for this bullet wound in my arm will carry me off one of these days.”

As he stepped slowly away from the grave, he added, “I challenge the world to produce the history of an outlaw who ever got anything out of it except that” -- pointing to the new marker -- “or else to be huddled in a prison cell. And that goes for the modern bandit of the skyscraper frontier of our big cities, too. The machine gun may help them get away with it a little better and the motor car may help them in making an escape better than to ride on horseback, but it all ends the same way. The biggest fool on earth is the one who thinks crime can be made to pay. It never paid and it never will, and that’s the one big lesson of the Coffeyville” . . . he finally added, “raid.”

Emmett glanced at his wife, and Julia’s expression indicated he may have already gone too far and he ought to stop. Just as well because suddenly Emmett felt all of his years and a chill despite the late-April sun as he recalled two forever-intertwined days. One was in November 1887 when he was 16 years old and his mother and her younger children received the news about Frank and the Daltons’ hopes for a law-abiding life were suddenly and cruelly dashed. The other day was directly connected: October 5, 1892, when the Dalton Gang attempted the most daring robbery of the American West . . . and all but one died trying.

He took Julia’s arm and they began walking toward the cemetery gates. For the last of the Daltons, there now was an urgency to leave the past behind.

Tom Clavin is the bestselling author/co-author of 25 books, including Bandit Heaven, which will be published by St. Martin’s Press in October. Please go to your local bookstore or to Bookshop.org, Amazon.com, BN.com, or tomclavin.com to pre-order a copy.