likely may be
seen from the fact that for a decade or more preceding the great rushes
of the land grabbers, the exploits of the James and Younger boys in
train and bank robbing had filled all the country with the belief that
the law could be defied successfully through a long term of years. The
Cook boys acted upon this basis, until at length marshals shot them
both, killed one and sent the remnants of the other to the penitentiary.

Since it would be impossible to go into any detailed mention of the
scores and hundreds of desperadoes who have at different times been
produced by the Nations, it may be sufficient to give a few of the
salient features of the careers of the band which, as well as any, may
be called typical of the Indian Nations brand of desperadoism--the once
notorious Dalton boys.

The Dalton family lived in lower Kansas, near Coffeyville, which was
situated almost directly upon the border of the Nations. They engaged in
farming, and indeed two of the family were respectable farmers near
Coffeyville within the last three or four years. The mother of the
family still lives near Oklahoma City, where she secured a good claim at
the time of the opening of the Oklahoma lands to white settlement. The
father, Lewis Dalton, was a Kentucky man and served in the Mexican war.
He later moved to Jackson county, Missouri, near the home of the
notorious James and Younger boys, and in 1851 married Adelaide Younger,
they removing some years later from Missouri to Kansas. Thirteen
children were born to them, nine sons and four daughters. Charles,
Henry, Littleton and Coleman Dalton were respected and quiet citizens.
All the boys had nerve, and many of them reached office as deputy
marshals. Franklin Dalton was killed while serving as deputy United
States marshal near Fort Smith, in 1887, his brother Bob being a member
of the same posse at the time his fight was made with a band of horse
thieves who resisted arrest. Grattan Dalton, after the death of his
brother Franklin, was made a deputy United States marshal, after the
curious but efficient Western fashion of setting dangerous men to work
at catching dangerous men. He and his posse in 1888 went after a bad
Indian, who, in the melee, shot Grattan in the arm and escaped. Grattan
later served as United States deputy marshal in Muskogee district, where
the courts certainly needed men of stern courage as executives, for they
had to deal with the most desperate and fearless c