The Wild Bunch or The Hole-In-The-Wall Gang

 

Outlwas camped inside the Hole-in-the-Wall

The Wild Bunch, or the Hole in the Wall Gang, was one of the last great outlaw gangs to terrorize the Old West. Butch Cassidy organized the gang, and membership changed as often as the wind, depending upon the specialties needed to perform the job at hand.

Butch’s friend, Elzy Lay, was the first member recruited into the gang. Other members included Harry Longabaugh, the Sundance Kid; Harvey Logan, alias Kid Curry; Ben Kilpatrick; Tom and Bill McCarty; Tom “Black Jack” Ketchum; Sam Ketchum; Bill Carver; and several others.

They made their hideout in the Hole in the Wall, a secret lair; lawmen dared not enter. “It is a spot where ten men can defy a thousand,” said a story in the Saint Paul Globe, “and one man can elude a hundred for months.”

“The only entrance and the only exit is the gorge through which the little stream rushes out again into the open lower country. Here, too, the walls rise abruptly, like the canyons in Colorado, and so narrow is the trail that not more than two horsemen may ride abreast.” All along the way, there are hideaways where one outlaw, armed with a shotgun, can make short work of a lone lawman or hold off a posse for days.

The outlaws would emerge from the Hole in the Wall—rob a bank or train—and dash back into hiding before a posse could catch sight of them.

Alfred T. Mahan The Naval Influencer Who Never Fought A Battle

Alfred Thayer Mahan spent most of his career talking about naval battles he never fought.

While many military thinkers built their reputations in combat, Mahan built his surrounded by books. He’d served in the Navy, but he’d never commanded a fleet in battle.

 

He studied the men who did.

 

At the Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island, Mahan developed a reputation as the guy who was always digging through history books. While other officers argued about ships and guns, Mahan wanted to know why some countries became powerful while others fell apart.

 

He kept running into the same answer.

 

Ships.

 

Not just warships. Merchant fleets. Ports. Naval bases. Trade routes. The whole machine.

Tom "Black Jack" Ketchum Arizona Bandit

 

Tom Ketchum was the second Black Jack to terrorize the Arizon Territory

Tom Ketchum was the second Black Jack to terrorize the Arizona Territory. The first was a fellow by the name of Worthington. Lawman Les Dowe said they were the “very image” of each other. Dowe said Ketchum was “an absolutely dead shot with rifle or revolver. His nerve was past all question.”

Tom Ketchum hooked up with his first partner in crime, Tom Sanders, while working for the Chiricahua Cattle Company in the Sulphur Springs Valley on the western slope of the Chiricahua Mountains. The pay was a hundred dollars a month, and to earn it, a man needed to be “as handy with a gun as with a rope or a branding iron.”

Tom Sanders was a real badass. Tom and his brother Charlie got shot up by a posse in Montana. They were captured, handcuffed together, and then escaped. His brother, Charlie, took a bullet and was killed in the shootout. Tom had no way out except to cut off his dead brother’s hand.

Ketchum and Sanders began their robbery streak around Sonora, Mexico, in 1891. They moved from town-to-town, robbing stores and anyplace else that looked like it might score them a few bucks. That got the locals riled up, and they soon found themselves racing out of town with a dozen Rurales hot on their ass, chasing them high into the mountains. The boys killed five of the Rurales in the fighting that day.

The Dalton Gang Is No More The Coffeyville Raid

 

The Dalton Gang flagged down the Atlantic Express with a red lantern

The Dalton Gang enjoyed a short-lived crime spree for about eighteen months, beginning in early 1890. The funny thing is, before turning outlaw, the three Dalton brothers—Grat, Bob, and Emmett — served as lawmen.

Their oldest brother, Frank Dalton, a United States Marshal, was shot and killed while trailing horse thieves through Oklahoma Territory in 1887. Then, brothers Bob, Grat, and Emmett turned outlaws in early 1890 after they had trouble collecting their pay for some law enforcement work they were involved in.

The Dalton Gang pulled off a handful of train robberies between 1891 and 1892.

The first train they robbed was the Atlantic Express on February 6, 1891. The boys flagged the train down with a red lantern they grabbed from the station agent. As soon as the train stopped, two men wearing long black masks stepped onto the locomotive and covered the engineer with Colt revolvers.

They forced the fireman to grab his pick-ax and dragged him to the door of the express car. They ordered the agent to open the door. When he refused, they busted down the door. In the commotion, the robbers shot and killed fireman George Radliff. The agent jumped through the window and escaped into the brush. With him went any hope the Daltons had of getting at the money in the safe. Unfortunately, in their rush to rob the train, the gang had forgotten to bring dynamite.

Belle Starr Was A Sure Shot And A Murderess

 

Belle Starr carried messages for the Confederates during the Civil War

Belle Starr was “a sure shot and murderess, who never forgot an injury nor forgave a foe.” She said she never killed a man she didn’t have to, adding, “Wouldn’t you kill rather than to be killed?”

Belle Starr was born in Carthage, Missouri, on February 3, 1846. Her father was a Southern sympathizer, and her brother rode with Quantrill’s Raiders. As a young girl, Belle carried messages for her brother and met up with Jesse James and the Younger brothers.

Rumors persist about an affair with Cole Younger, but the chances that it happened are exceedingly slim. She married his cousin, Bruce Younger, in 1880, but that union lasted only a few weeks. In 1866, Belle married James Reed, another outlaw who rode with Quantrill during the Civil War. In 1868, she gave birth to her first child, Rosie Lee (better known as Pearl). In 1870, Reed was on the run for killing the man who murdered his brother.

On November 19, 1873, Jim Reed and Belle Starr robbed a Creek Indian, Watt Greyson, of $30,000 in gold and paper currency. Belle said, “Mrs. Greyson began to cry as soon as she saw us, screaming loudly for help. I approached her bed, placed my revolver on her forehead, and said: ‘One word more and I will blow your brains out.’”

Doolin-Dalton Gang

 

Bill Dalton

The Doolin-Dalton Gang was formed from the remnants of the Dalton Gang after their failed raid on the Coffeyville, Kansas Bank in October 1892.

The gang comprised Bill Dalton, Bill Doolin, George “Bitter Creek” Newcomb, William “Tulsa Jack” Blake, Charley Pierce, and a negro named Israel Carr. Bill Doolin was the acknowledged leader, but “the negro Carr was said to have killed more men than all the rest of the gang put together.” He was one mean son-of-a-bitch. Over time, the gang included Dan “Dynamite Dick” Clifton, “Arkansas Tom” Jones, and several others.

Bill Dalton wasn’t part of the original Dalton Gang. Before 1892, he led a respectable life in California, where he ranched and served two terms in the California legislature. However, after his brothers got wiped out in the Coffeyville Bank raid, Bill Dalton decided it was time to shake things up a bit. He robbed his first train outside of Los Angeles, California, in 1891. Then, in 1892, he joined Bill Doolin’s gang and began a short-lived reign of terror throughout Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Kansas.

Bill Doolin was something of an enigma in Oklahoma Territory. Several newspapers published stories that made him out to be a “Robin Hood” type character. Jack Dodsworth, a spy sent to infiltrate the gang, told a story about a man the gang robbed. Doolin took $35 from him but asked the man what he intended to do with the money.

Bynamite Dick Clifton The Most Killed Outlaw In The American West

 

Killing Dan “Dynamite Dick” Clifton was a popular pastime among western newspaper editors who were quicker to print a story than to run a fact check. As a result, Wikipedia calls him “the most killed outlaw in the American West.” There’s no denying it. Just about every western newspaper published between 1895 and 1897 carried the gory details of Dynamite Dick “biting the big one”—going out with guns blazing, Winchester balls tearing through his body, leaving nothing but a blood-drenched carcass laying in the desert.

But no sooner would you read about his death than he was robbing another bank, another train, or getting all shot up again. If he were alive today, “Dynamite Dick” would be “Kenny” on South Park or a popular victim in dozens of video games.

Legend has it Clifton got the name “Dynamite Dick” because he got a kick out of boring holes in his cartridges and filling them with dynamite. When they exploded, it made a hell of a ruckus and took a deadly toll on anyone or anything that crossed its path.

“Dynamite Dick” joined the Doolin-Dalton gang, or Wild Bunch, shortly after the original Dalton Gang had been wiped out in the Coffeyville Bank raid.