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Mrs. Dalton’s Boys, part 8

© Mary Trotter Kion

The gun battle that resulted after the Dalton Gang's attempt to rob two banks at once in Coffeyville, Kansas on October 5, 1892 was over. It had lasted a mere ten minutes. Bob Dalton, who had led the gang, was dead. His brother Grattan was dead. Their two partners, Dick Broadwell and Bill Powers, were also dead. Emmett Dalton, alone, though seriously wounded, was the only surviving member of the immediate group.

Emmett was first carried to the drugstore. Later he was moved to a hotel where guards were posted. The law feared there might be a lynching or that any members of the Dalton Gang that had not been involved in the twin robbery might be prowling around, fixing to attempt to rescue Emmett.

It wasn't long before Coffeyville was bulging with folks who had come to town by horseback, buckboard, train or any other means, just to get in on the excitement. It was not excitement that one lone woman looked for as she entered Coffeyville. Adeline Dalton came to be at the side of her son, Emmett. One other faithful woman came to Emmett's side. Julia Johnson, his boyhood sweetheart, took Emmett's hand and promised to wait for him. Julia kept her promise.

Emmett Dalton took five months to heal before he was well enough to stand trial. To the murder charge set before him he pleaded guilty. He was sentenced to life imprisonment in the Kansas Penitentiary. It seemed that his mother, Adeline, and his sweetheart, Julia, would have a long wait before they had their boy and their lover back.

But Emmett Dalton was a model prisoner while behind bars. He was rewarded by being released from prison fourteen years after he had been locked up. It seems he had become a changed man.

Perhaps Emmett Dalton had changed. For many years after his release from prison he wrote and lectured on the subject of how futile a life of crime was. Eventually, he became a successful building contractor in Southern California. And true to her word, Julia Johnson had waited for his release. They were married and remained together until Emmett Dalton died on July 13, 1937.

Of Adeline Dalton's other son, Bill, it was either fate or luck that caused his arrest in California. If not for that, he too very well could have been with the gang in Coffeyville. But it seems that what took place in Coffeyville made little impression on Bill Dalton. He joined Bill Doolin in robbing trains and banks. The outlaw life ended for both Doolin and Bill Dalton in 1895. Bill saw the dark hand of death in September of that year in a gun battle. Doolin died, also in a gun battle, four months later.

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