The trial of Emmett Dalton, who was charged with murder in the first degree, was held in the splendid Montgomery County Courthouse of Independence, Kansas, 20 miles north of Coffeyville. The March 1893 trial followed the gang’s failed attempt to rob Coffeyville’s two banks at the same time on a balmy Wednesday morning, October 5, 1892. The raid on the banks left eight men dead — four outlaws and four Coffeyville defenders. Three citizens were also wounded in the fierce morning fray that lasted less than 15 minutes.

Subscribe Today

• Did you enjoy our article?
• Read more in Wild West magazine
• Subscribe online and save nearly 40%!!!
 

When the gunsmoke lifted from the streets and alleyway, 21-year-old Emmett lay on the ground, shot full of holes. In the dirt next to him was his expiring brother Bob, the 23-year-old leader of the ill-fated Dalton Gang. Emmett had been severely wounded by more than 20 bullets and buckshot. Nobody that day could have expected him to even stand trial. How could he possibly live long enough to do that?

Much has been written about the daring escapades of the Dalton Gang. Train robberies, horse-thieving and murders in California and Indian Territory and its fringes were attributed to the gang. Many of the accusations, however, went far beyond the capabilities, resources and time constraints of the night-riding bunch.

Bob and Emmett had been close. Bob had looked out for younger brother ‘Em’ ever since the days when Emmett had been a posseman for then U.S. Deputy Marshal Bob Dalton. Their older brother Grat had also served as a deputy and was wounded in the line of duty in 1889. Another deputy, brother Frank, had died a hero’s death in a shootout with some whiskey runners in 1887.

The days of marshaling were three years past for the Daltons, and now the days of outlawry were also over for the five audacious Dalton Gang members who had attempted to pull off the first double bank robbery in outlaw history. Four of their lives also suddenly ended.

Only moments before, Emmett had been on his horse with a grain sack stuffed with about $21,000 dollars of the First National Bank’s money. His right arm hung useless, shattered by a rifle bullet. His lower extremities were numbed from a bullet that had torn through his back hip and had exited through his groin, yet he was mounted and still had the strength to go on. Heavy rifle fire from townsmen sheltered in a hardware store, Isham Brothers & Mansur, was ripping and ricocheting down the east-west-running Slosson’s Alley. The intense gunfire had already cut down gang member Bill Power short of the horses. Grat Dalton, the oldest of the three participating Daltons, had just been killed by John Kloehr, secreted behind his livery stable fence adjoining the deadly alley. Kloehr and town barber Carey Seaman had shot Dick Broadwell, but that hadn’t stopped the determined outlaw from dashing away on his horse, only to fall dead on the outskirts of west Coffeyville. Among the dead and dying men in Slosson’s Alley was City Marshal Charles Connelly, a veteran of the Civil War, who had courageously stepped directly into the alley gunfight from a south side passage near the livery stable and was struck down immediately by gunfire. Grat Dalton was said to have shot the marshal, as he was the one nearest to where the lawman fell. But Connelly very well could have been hit by indiscriminate fire from the hardware store. Amid the carnage and gunsmoke, Emmett saw Bob go down, another victim of Kloehr’s deadly marksmanship.

Prior to the bloody alley shootout, the trio of Grat Dalton, Power and Broadwell had little success at the Condon Bank, being taken in by the ruse of nervy bank teller Charles Ball about a time lock on the already unlocked vault. When they left the bank under a hail of gunfire, they had only about $3,000 with them. Things had gone far better for Bob and Emmett at the First National Bank. With approximately $21,000 in hand, they tried to exit the front of the bank, but drew immediate fire from the aroused and rallying townsmen. They then slipped out the back door of the First National, with Bob providing covering fire for Emmett, who carried the loot in his left hand and his rifle in his right. Emmett always claimed that he fired no shots during the fight, and that is very likely a true statement because of the large grain sack of money that he carried. Effectively firing a Winchester lever-action rifle one-handed while on the run would have been difficult, if not impossible.

Help HistoryNet by bookmarking to