“Stay put and don’t get brave! Anybody comes out this door will get his head blowed off.”
Dalton stepped through the door, followed by Wallace. On the street, passersby spotted their drawn guns and immediately ran for cover. By a fluke of timing, in that same moment, Town Marshal George Muckley and his deputy, Wally Stevens, emerged from the courthouse. Their attention drawn by the commotion, they saw the two men hurrying from the bank and the Knight brothers holding four horses in the alley. The Knight brothers, who had fled Longview after a string of petty robberies, were known to them on sight. On the instant, they realized the bank was being robbed.
The lawmen pulled their guns and opened fire. Muckley, hoping to spook the horses and prevent escape, let off three quick shots at the Knight brothers. One of the slugs caught Asa Knight in the chest and he fell spread-eagled in the alley. Deputy Stevens trained his fire on the two men scurrying along the boardwalk outside the bank. A bullet shattered the bank’s plate-glass window in an explosion of jagged shards.
Dalton and Wallace, firing as they ran, reached the entrance to the alley. Their shots were wild and for the most part pocked harmlessly into the front of the stone courthouse. But a wayward ball drilled the marshal through the bowels and he folded at the waist, then keeled over. Stevens dropped to one knee, stone chips flying all around him, and emptied his gun. A townsman passing the courthouse was caught in the crossfire and took a slug through the lungs. He toppled to the ground.
In the alley, Tim Knight fought to control the horses as he knelt to check on his brother. His face blanched with rage as he saw the sightless eyes and realized Asa was dead. He climbed to his feet, the horses’ reins clutched tightly in one fist, and winged a shot at Stevens on the courthouse steps. The deputy shucked spent cartridges and reloaded as a merchant opened fire with a rifle from the corner. Upstreet, in the opposite direction, a saloonkeeper armed with a sawed-off shotgun joined the fight.
Buckshot and lead whistling about their ears, Dalton and Wallace returned the fire. Wallace’s snap-shot singed the merchant’s coatsleeve and drove him back into his store. Dalton halted, took deliberate aim, and loosed a round to silence the shotgun. The saloonkeeper staggered backwards, arms windmilling, then dropped the scattergun and crashed to the boardwalk. Still leading the way, Dalton darted into the alley.
Tim Knight was already mounted. Holding the reins, he waited while Dalton and Wallace scrambled aboard their horses. Encumbered with the money sacks, the two men were forced to holster their pistols as they reined away. Knight covered their retreat, emptying his gun across the courthouse square. The three men spurred toward the end of the alley.
Deputy Stevens, his gun reloaded, got off one last shot. Then, as the outlaws disappeared, he stared around at the carnage with a stunned expression. The marshal lay dead at his feet, and the townsman caught in the crossfire was knotted in a grotesque heap. Across the street on the boardwalk, the saloonkeeper lay puddled in blood.
The courthouse square looked like a slaughterhouse.
CHAPTER 16
OUTLAW GANGS ROB TWO BANKS IN THREE DAYS
THE WILD BUNCH STRIKES MISSOURI AND TEXAS
The headline in the Guthrie Statesman covered the width of the front page. The dateline was May 22, 1890, and fully half the page was devoted to coverage of the robberies. In separate articles, the newspaper reported on the May 19 holdup in Missouri and the May 21 raid in Texas. An editorial by the publisher, enclosed in a black border, rendered a blistering attack on the U.S. marshal.
Evett Nix slammed the paper onto his desk. Lined up before him were Tilghman, Heck Thomas, and Chris Madsen. Upon news of the first robbery, he had recalled the three deputy marshals from their assignments in the Cherokee Strip. The telegraph report on the second holdup had arrived even as they rode into Guthrie late last night. Today, facing him across the desk, they waited for Nix’s tirade to subside.
None of the deputies responded as he paused to take a breath. Nor were they expected to respond, for Nix was clearly not finished with his harangue. He scooped the newspaper off the desk, balled it into a wad, and hurled it across the room. His features were mottled with anger.
“What happened?” he demanded. “Why were we caught flat-footed? Why weren’t you men on the case?”
“Maybe you forgot,” Thomas said with intended irony. “You sent us to play po-licemen in the Cherokee Strip. We were just a tad out of touch.”
Tilghman thought it a telling remark. In the four months since the Ingalls shootout, federal lawmen had been assigned to police the Cherokee Strip land rush, which brought over two hundred thousand settlers pouring into the Territory. During all that time, not a single lead had been uncovered as to the whereabouts of the gang. There was widespread speculation, particularly in the newspapers, that the Wild Bunch had quit Oklahoma Territory altogether. The federal marshals, Tilghman more so than most, were not wholly persuaded by the argument. Doolin’s wife, rumored to be with child, still lived in Ingalls, and showed no signs of leaving. That alone indicated Doolin had not gone far.
Over the last four months Tilghman had occasionally slipped out of the Cherokee Strip to scout Ingalls and the Dunn brothers’ ranch. His attempts to interrogate Doolin’s wife and her storekeeper father had proved to be an exercise in futility. Their attitude was polite but distant, and both of them denied any knowledge of Doolin’s whereabouts. The townspeople, fearing reprisals from men quick to kill, were even less willing to discuss the Wild Bunch. As
