Frontier Justice (Part 4 of 4)

There were several photographs taken that morning.  The first had some of the Coffeyville defenders awkwardly holding the lifeless bodies of Bob and Grat Dalton upright.  Someone suggested it might be easier if they arranged some boards from the Long Bell Lumber Company on a hayrack so that the corpses could be laid prone.  Good idea.  That would offer the photographer an empty background and a flawless pose for the outlaws.

The bandits’ arms were folded across their abdomens, their wrists bound, and the bodies dragged to the hayrack where they were hoisted up to lay side by side, appearing much like the trophies taken during a big game hunt.  Only these weren’t hunting trophies.  These were the corpses of would-be bank robbers Bill Powers, Bob and Grat Dalton, and Dick Broadwell.  The first photo was a bit morbid, the bandits’ clothes tousled, their mouths agape, their glazed eyes dull and unseeing, the vacant stare of death.  Someone apparently suggested that, for the sake of decency, their clothes should be straightened, their mouths closed, and their eyelids shut.  In the next photo, the four appeared more asleep than dead, in that deep slumber from which they would never awaken.

Despite his broken arm, Dick Broadwell had come the closest to a “clean” getaway.  Shot a time or two as he stumbled down the alley, he managed to reach his horse, untether it, and mount, but just as he was about to ride off, he took another bullet from John Kloehr’s Winchester and a load of buckshot from Carey Seamen’s shotgun.  Somehow Broadwell managed to stay mounted and spurred his horse on.  No doubt many thought momentarily that he had gotten away, but they found his body shortly thereafter laying on the side of the road at the edge of town, his horse quietly grazing nearby.

Bill Powers managed to stagger to his horse as well, but he had been riddled by the hail of bullets that filled the alley and could never gather enough strength to mount.  He would die lying a few feet from his horse.

Grat Dalton got no farther than the back door of Slossen’s Drug Store where he tried to take refuge just as Marshal Connelly burst into the alley from between buildings anxious to subdue the robbers.  Grat ambushed him, shooting the marshal in the back.  John Kloehr, was right behind the marshal and sealed Grat’s fate with a bullet through his throat that broke his neck and paralyzed the man.

Bob Dalton got only about halfway through the alley before enough bullets sat him down on a stack of cobblestones piled, ironically, behind the town jail.  He was in bad shape, barely conscious, his mind rapidly fading, firing his rifle wildly in no particular direction until a slug from John Kloehr’s Winchester silenced him.

That left Emmett Dalton.  Peppered as he was by bullets, he not only managed to reach his horse and mount, he probably could have followed Broadwell out of town to freedom but instead turned his horse toward the gunfire attempting to rescue brother Bob.  But it was no use.  Bob was too far gone.  Emmett had to let his brother slip away.  Before he could turn his horse to spur away, he took a double load of buckshot from the barrels of Seaman’s shotgun and toppled to the ground.

With photographs taken, the corpses were dragged to the town jail where they would spend the night.  The following afternoon they were laid in black-lacquered coffins and buried in a mass grave in Elmwood Cemetery south of town, the grave marked only with the post they had tethered their horses to that fateful morning.  Dick Broadwell’s remains would be exhumed by family for reburial elsewhere, but the remains of the other three rest side by side in their mass grave to this day.

In the Dalton’s wake four townspeople were dead: Marshal Connelly, shot in the back by Grat Dalton, George Cubine and Charles Brown, both bootmakers, and Lucias Baldwin a store clerk, all shot near the First National Bank by Bob Dalton during his and Emmett’s dash for their horses.  Several others were wounded, one seriously.  That was banker Tom Ayers who took a bullet in the face from Bob’s Winchester.  Everyone expected the man to die, but like Emmett Dalton he somehow survived.  All joking aside, Doc Wells must have been an exceptionally good doctor to nurse both men back to health.  Emmett spent the next fourteen years in the State Penitentiary in Lansing for his part in the robbery.  All the money was recovered.

The Daltons also unintentionally left the stuff of legend.  Like so many towns in the Midwest, Coffeyville was a peaceful town, its residents interested only in creating a good place to settle, making a decent and honest living by operating a business or working a farm nearby, maybe raising a family.  They had no interest in fame or notoriety.  Had those bandits not shown up that October morning, few outside of the region would ever have heard of Coffeyville.  And had the townspeople stood docilely by while the robbers rode off with their life savings, few outside the region would have taken much notice.  While the plan to rob two banks at the same time was newsworthy, what made this story memorable was the stand that the townspeople made.  Too often lawbreakers escape justice.  In Coffeyville the townspeople dealt the outlaws a form of frontier justice that even the most hardened criminal could readily understand.