Читать книгу Memory's Storehouse Unlocked, True Stories. Pioneer Days In Wetmore and Northeast Kansas онлайн

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While going up the mountain, the name of other notorious outlaws—the Daltons—was mentioned by my nephew, Sam Bristow, with whom I was riding. Sam owns “Dalton Mountain,” some sixty miles east of Fresno, California, where it is said those desperadoes were in hiding a long time ago.

The Dalton gang of bank robbers—following in the wake of the Jesse James gang whose hideout was in Missouri — operated mainly, I believe, in Kansas and the Indian Territory, in the late ‘80’s. At any rate, the Dalton bank robbers came to grief at Coffeyville in southern Kansas, with three of the gang killed by a sharp-shooting local hardware merchant, and law enforcement officers. Grat and Bob Dalton were killed. Emmett Dalton was badly shot up — was captured, convicted, and given a life sentence. President Theodore Roosevelt pardoned him. I have a faint recollection that sometime prior to the Coffeyville raid, the news dispatches stated that the Daltons—under assumed names—had shipped their horses to the Far west. And it is not at all improbable that our old-time Kansas and Indian Territory band of desperadoes rode their horses to the saddle-back near the top of my nephew’s 3500 foot mountain, from which eminence they could have guarded the approach in all directions.