June of the following year another Santa Fe train was robbed at Red
Rock, in the Cherokee strip. The 'Frisco train was robbed at Vinita,
Indian Territory. An epidemic of the old methods of the James and
Younger bands seemed to have broken out in the new railway region of the
Southwest. The next month the Missouri, Kansas and Texas train was held
up at Adair, Indian Territory, and a general fight ensued between the
robbers and the armed guard of the train, assisted by citizens of the
town. A local physician was killed and several officers and citizens
wounded, but none of the bandits was hurt, and they got away with a
heavy loot of the express and baggage cars. At Wharton they had been
less fortunate, for though they killed the station agent, they were
rounded up and one of their men, Dan Bryant, was captured, later killing
and being killed by United States deputy Ed. Short, as mentioned in an
earlier chapter. Dick Broadwell joined the Dalton gang about now, and
they nearly always had a few members besides those of their own family;
their gang being made up and conducted on much the same lines of the
James boys gang of Missouri, whose exploits they imitated and used as
text for their bolder deeds. In fact it was the boast of the leader, Bob
Dalton, in the Coffeyville raid, that he was going to beat anything the
James boys ever did: to rob two banks in one town at the same time.

Bank robbing was a side line of activity with the Daltons, but they did
fairly well at it. They held up the bank at El Reno, at a time when no
one was in the bank except the president's wife, and took $10,000,
obliging the bank to suspend business. By this time the whole country
was aroused against them, as it had been against the James and Younger
boys. Pinkerton detectives had blanket commissions offered, and railway
and express companies offered rewards running into the thousands. Each
train across the Indian Nations was accompanied for months by a heavily
armed guard concealed in the baggage and express cars. Passengers
dreaded the journey across that country, and the slightest halt of the
train for any cause was sure to bring to the lips of all the word of
fear, "the Daltons!" It seems almost incredible of belief that, in these
modern days of fast railway service, of the telegraph and of rapidly
increasing settlements, the work of these men could so long have been
continued; but such, none the less, was the case. The law was powerless,
and