Carbon County news., 1937-10-08

When this battle ended, IN
''Death Alley" lay three dead
men, another who was dying
(Marshal Connolly and the bad
1y wounded survivor of the BAN
dit gang, Emmett Dalton. Three
of the outlaws horses had also
been slain. In the whole fight,
which lasted only few minutes,
four bandits and four citizens
were killed and three citizens
and one bandit wounded. But in
those few minutes plenty of lead
had been whistling through the
air. No less than 80 bullet marks
were found on the front of the
Condor bank alone.
As soon as news of the bloody
encounter was flashed over the
surrounding country, the ubiqui-
tous "sightsteers" who always
rush to the scene of a tragedy
began pouring into the town, lit
orally by the trainload. The dead
bandits were lined up and photo
graphed to provide a souvenir"
of this historic occasion. Not
content with this, the more NOR
bid-rninded began cutting pieces
of cloth from the dead bandits
clothing and did not desist until
they had taken every stitch from
Bob Dalton.
Threats of Lynching.
The desperately wounded sur
vivor of the bandit gang was car
ried to the Office of Doctor Wells
over the drug store, across the
Plaza from the Condor bank.
There three doctors began dig
ging out of his back the buckshot
that had come from Carey Sea-
mans shotgun. Although it was
doubtful if he would live,>a mob
soon gathered with a rope and
threatened to lynch him, but
Doctor Wells and David Stewart
Elliott, editor of the Coffeyville
Journal, dissuaded them from
their purpose.
A week later Dalton was re-
moved on a cot from Coffeyville
to the county Jail at Independ-
ence. On March 8, 1893, he
pleaded guilty to a technical
charge Of murder in the second
degree and was sentenced to life
imprisonment in the state peni-
tentiary at Lansing, Kan. He
proved to be a model prisoner
during the next IA years, so when
his application for a commuta-
ton of sentence came up, many
state officials and newspaper edi-
tors urged that it be granted. AS
a result he was given a full par
don by Gov. E. w. Hoch on No
vernber 2, 1907.
From that time on there was
no more law-abiding citizen than
this former member of the "des-
perate Dalton Gang" In his
later years he made his home in
California, engaged in the real
estate business and prospered.
He also worked in motion pic
lures, both as a scenario writer
and actor and helped in produc-
ing film, Beyond the Law" 1t
was a perturbation of the deeds
of the Daltons-not to glorify
the careers of his bandit brothers
but to point out the moral OF
"crine never pays"
Return to COffeyvilIe
In 1881 Dalton returned to Cof-
feyville to visit old-time friends
and to care for the graves of his
two brothers who are buried
not far from the place where on
an autumn morning nearly 4OI
years earlier he had seen their
careers brought to an end in a
blaze of gunfire.
Macdonald also tells of the
scene when Emmett Dalton vis-
tied the graves of his brothers.
AS he gazed upon the little plot
of ground where they lie, he said,
"Well, it's a good place in which
to sleep the last long Sleep
Then pointing to the row OF
graves, he added: II challenge
the world to produce the history
of an outlaw who ever got any
thing out of it except that 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 ma
chine 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 as we did, but
it all ends the same way. The
biggest fool on earth is the one
who thinks that he can beat the
law, that crime can be made to
pay. It never paid and never
will, and that's the one big les
son of the Coffeyville raid" /