As usual, it was Bob’s idea. He was contemplating both the past and the future to figure out the present. The past, to him, was not the larger picture of the Wild West but a family history that prominently included the raid by the James brothers and his Younger cousins on the bank up in Minnesota. That the escapade up north had failed miserably did not deter Bob. Instead, he saw a Coffeyville caper as a golden opportunity to erase that stain on his mother’s side of the family with an even more audacious raid. As a bonus, a successful adventure would elevate the Dalton Gang into the realm of legend.
He would be proved right, but not the way he had envisioned.
What the immediate future held for the gang was not glory but an inability to get away with daring heists. There were fewer loyal friends to help hide them and more lawmen than ever. Bob kept hearing that Heck Thomas and his posse were right behind them. Everyone in Oklahoma knew that Heck was fearless and sure not a quitter. What made sense to Bob was one quick, profitable score and it was adios.
Emmett noted, “For a day or so Bob was unusually quiet and taciturn. I knew he was studying out some problem. Finally he turned suddenly one afternoon and said to all of us: ‘Come on, we’re going to Coffeyville.’”
He explained to Grat and Emmett and the others that trains were now too risky and the brothers needed a big enough score to get away and stay away, wherever that might be—though he did mention South America. A disadvantage of Coffeyville was the Dalton family members were known there. However, an overriding advantage was that there was not one but two banks in the prosperous town. Bob’s bold plan: “We can take the C. M. Condon and the First National Bank at the same time. That ought to give us enough to get out all right.”
He added: “No one is going to get hurt.”
Speaking more to Grat and Emmett than Bill Power and Dick Broadwell, Bob reminded them of the family connection to the Younger brothers. According to him, the Coffeyville raid would be at least as dramatic as the Northfield strike, and a good outcome would ease the pain of that 1876 debacle—although Bob was the only member of the Dalton gang who felt any pain at all. Perhaps Grat and Emmett would allow that with the Younger brothers still in prison, hearing about a successful Coffeyville raid committed by their literally younger cousins might give them some comfort.
And apparently, by this time, the Dalton brothers had bought into the myth that they were sort of Robin Hoods, stealing from the rich railroad robber barons and distributing the proceeds—well, some of them—to the local folks who needed it most. As Emmett described, “It was nothing for me to go into a country store, get a few things which probably called for thirty or forty dollars and leave one hundred dollars or two hundred dollars with the store-keeper. Lots of these poor fellows scratching out a meager existence needed the money. I only hope it did them more good than it would have done the express company.”
Just imagine what the profits from busting two banks could do.
A mystery has endured for over 130 years as to why the Dalton Gang by early October had dwindled to the three Dalton brothers and Power and Broadwell. Left behind when this quintet took to the trail were Bitter Creek Newcomb, Charley Pierce, and Bill Doolin. What happened to them?
Over time, there have been as many theories as gang members. To the Doolin biographer Bailey Hanes, the huge reward offered for the gang’s capture was a factor: “In view of this development, the Daltons felt the gang should be streamlined for the sake of mobility. Furthermore, some of the members were dissatisfied with their share of the loot. They also felt that Bill Doolin was headstrong and unruly at times, and of late he, too, was dissatisfied with the cut the Daltons gave him.”
Another possibility was the three men thought Bob’s plan was daft. Did it make a whole lot of sense to be among people who might recognize you, rob two banks, and commit the crime in broad daylight?
“And why not Bill Doolin?” Robert Barr Smith speculates. “By all accounts Doolin was a cool hand in a tight place, a smart, tough gunman who, as the saying went, ‘would do to take along’ on any raid.” But, he adds, “Doolin may have been left behind simply because Bob did not trust him.”
As far back as the Lelietta robbery, Doolin had ridden into Wagoner to have a photograph taken—one for him, and a copy sent to a girl he liked in Ingalls. It was passed around there until finding its way into the hands of the lawman Charles LeFlore, who now had confirmation that Doolin was a member of the Dalton Gang. Who knows what kind of loose end Doolin could be in Coffeyville?
Or, as Barr further muses, “Although others describe Doolin as reckless and foolhardy, even he might have been daunted by the prospect of invading a populous town where three of the gang members were well known. Doolin may or may not have been ‘levelheaded,’ but he was far from stupid. And so, when the gang was cut down to five, Doolin may already have decided he wanted no part of Coffeyville.”
According to Emmett’s curious explanation, Bob made the decision to leave the three other members of the gang behind because “they had seemingly gotten so they did not like to ride too long at a time and were too prone to lie around their friends, after they had made a little raise.”
Perhaps Bob was being sensible that the gang be streamlined to five members who could strike fast, ride out faster, hide out well, and keep their mouths shut until it was time to leave the region altogether. Still, given how big this job looked to be, why not spend a little more time casing Coffeyville, and the banks in particular?
That was what Emmett suggested. But Bob nixed that idea, fearing Emmett would be recognized and that would tip off too many people in town—most notably, the marshal—that the Daltons were near and could be up to something.
The rumors of lawmen closing in were certainly accurate. Deputy Marshal Chris Madsen was heading his own posse, one of perhaps a dozen stalking the Daltons from all directions. But Heck Thomas was indeed the most troubling. As Fred Dodge would write in his Under Cover for Wells Fargo memoir, Heck “was a man that was known to always get his man—sometimes dead but he got him.” Emmett routinely referred to Heck as the gang’s “nemesis,” so if he and his posse were nearby, there was no time for a deliberate reconnaissance.
Indeed, according to Dodge’s recollections, he and Heck may have been only a day behind the Dalton Gang. He reported that they had found where the Dalton brothers and their two comrades had camped the night of October 3. They did not know that Coffeyville was their destination, but they believed if they pushed on in the direction the gang appeared to be going, they would catch up.
The Daltons knew there could be no delay. That first week in October, they steered their horses toward southeast Kansas. “Soon we found ourselves back in familiar neighborhoods,” Emmett reported. “We came near to Kingfisher where our mother was. I know I wanted to take a chance and see her again.” However, he was outvoted by Grat and Bob.
Stick to the back trail: “It was a case of ride about all day and night just as we saw fit and as the weather and country indicated. We kept away from all settlements, dropping in on some friend now and then for a meal. Out on the plains or in the hills and mountains when worried by the suspected proximity of a posse, a few long draws of a pipe or cigarette was often more consoling than anything else we could think of.”
Bob had also devised an escape plan. It involved paying Amos Burton, who the Daltons knew as “a typical Texas negro cowboy,” to find and purchase a sturdy wagon and good horses, then fill it with food and ammunition. Burton was to drive it out to a designated location in the Cherokee Strip and wait for the gang there. “We figured that we would be able to lose, in the Osage hills, any posse which followed us out of Coffeyville after the raid, then we would get in our covered wagon.” The less recognizable Broadwell and Power would sit up front and say they were on a horse-trading trip while the three brothers stayed hidden in the wagon.
By this point, Bob had concluded that he and Grat and Emmett would winter in a secure hiding spot, then in the spring head northwest, eventually to Seattle. From there, they would sail to South America. What Power and Broadwell did was up to them.
On the morning of October 4, the bandits mounted their horses and set off for Coffeyville. They wanted to enter the city in the morning, so later that day, they stopped to make camp in timber at the headwaters of Hickory Creek some twelve miles from Coffeyville. Then Bob decided this was too far away from the target, so they packed up and rode closer, making camp at the Onion Creek bottoms. This site was about a mile and a half southwest of Coffeyville.
The Daltons knew the land they set a dry camp up on belonged to a family named Davis and was as secure a location as any other, with lawmen not welcome. As their horses munched on the corn they had “borrowed” from a nearby farm, the men noted that the air was turning cooler. Soon enough, there would be the first frost of the season in southeast Kansas.
That evening, after a no-frills supper of hard-boiled eggs and biscuits, and while sipping whiskey and hoping to become drowsy enough to sleep, Bob and the four other men went over the bold plan one more time. The target for Bob and Emmett would be the First National Bank, and Grat, Power, and Broadwell would go across the street and enter the Condon Bank. Bob knew of a hitching post in front of the C. M. Condon building where their horses could be kept close by.
Inside the banks, the thieves would make short work of guards or any other resistance, get the vaults open—presumably, rifle muzzles inches from faces would be as persuasive in a bank as they had been on the trains—stuff as much loot as they could into sacks, hustle out to their horses, and gallop off before the first alarm sounded. By the time a posse was put together, the gang would be long gone.
They slept fitfully and were up with the sun. They fed their horses again and ate what they could keep down, then at 8:45, they saddled and mounted up. Bob and Grat each held empty sacks they expected to fill with cash.
“On to Coffeyville!” Bob called out with a laugh. “This is the last trick!”
With less enthusiasm, Emmett echoed, “The last trick.” But then, seeing Bob turn his coat collar up against the chill of the October morning, he joked, “Just wait till we get to Coffeyville, Bob. You won’t need any coat ’cause it’s going to be hotter than hell.”
Emmett would later comment, “Both of us were unwittingly telling the tragic truth.”