Everybody in Kingfisher has heard or read bout the Dalton boys and their career of outlawry so many times that the story is beginning to get old. But did you ever head that the ammunition for their last fatal raid at Coffeyville, Kansas, in 1891, was bought in a hardware store standing on the lots now occupied by The Times building?

Charles Kiefer, the man who advertised the "farm-at-auction" in the last issue of this paper, is authority for this information.  And he "got it straight," he says for he witnessed the transaction himself.  Kiefer was but a boy at that time-thirteen years old, but he says that he remembers the event very distinctly.  He was the only eyewitness.

The hardware store was housed in a tin building with a tin roof; he recalls, and a man named Smith was proprietor.  Kiefer was "sweeping out" on the morning when the Dalton boys, Bob, Emmett and Grat, entered the store.  The three outlaws with Bob as the spokesman, called for the ammunition in which they were of need, told the storekeeper that they would pay him as soon as they "cashed in" on the deal for which they were preparing, and then went away.

Several days later the gang was shot to pieces in a bank robbery at Coffeyville, Kansas.  Smith, the hardware man, ever got his pay. But in the three years prior to that time he had never lost a cent on ammunition and other merchandise sold to the Daltons for, I spite of their banditry, they were "good pay."  Smith has been dead for a number of years.

Kiefer says that while the Daltons were known by Kingfisher people to be outlaws, no one here feared them.  This was their hometown, but they practiced their trade elsewhere. The Kiefer family lived at that time next door to the old jail, which was located on East Roberts avenue.  On the corner where the Pennant filling station now stands, they operated a wagon shop.

Charles Kiefer, who has been living in California "off and on" for the past twenty-five years, will move there soon to make his permanent home.

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