It just looks like some folks will resort to almost any expedient to get on the front pages of the newspapers. Now you take this here guy up at Albuquerque, New Mexico, who married what purported to be “Cattle Annie,” the ceremony being performed while they were up in an airplane, and he calls himself Jack Dalton of Oklahoma outlaw fame.
His name may be Jack Dalton, but he sho as hell ain’t the Jack Dalton who lead his gang into that old bank in Coffeeville away back yonder in 1892, because that Jack Dalton was killed that day deader’n a door-nail. I see where this old boy says it was in 1896, and that the whole gang was rounded up and sent to the penitentiary for life. Just shows what he knows about the affair, for this here gang, all but Emmett Dalton, had been dead four years in 1896.
I handed the dispatches about that little Coffeeville party for the Phoenix Gazette at the time and as I remember it, Jack Dalton and a brother, with Powers and Broadwell were all shot down by the sheriff’s deputies and armed citizens. Emmett Dalton was the only one to escape. He was later captured and sent up for life, but in 14 1/2 years was pardoned by Governor Hoch of Kansas. Emmett lectured on the “Evils of Crime” for a while and finally settled here in Los Angeles, where he lives at present engaged as a builder and contractor, with his home at 1928 Hillhurst avenue.
He is the only living member of that gang and he stated to a Los Angeles newspaper reporter the other day that he had never even heard of this Jack Dalton, who ought to read up on the history of the Dalton gang before he poses as the one-time leader, who has been dead for about 37 years.
In closing his remarks, Emmett said: “I have no more use for guns now than I have for fakers, and it hurts my feelin’s to have my friends calling me up and kidding me about my kinship to this Jack Dalton feller.” — Frank M. King
