A Lead Pipe Cinch

The strange marker at an outlaw grave.

After the failed Dalton Gang raid on Coffeyville, Kansas on October 5, 1892, local residents were angry. So they took the bodies of three of the outlaws—Bob and Grat Dalton and Bill Power—and dumped them in an unmarked grave at the local cemetery. Later, someone stuck a lead gas pipe into the ground where they were buried. Legend says it was the hitching rail that the outlaws used to tie up their horses. But they actually tied the horses to a wooden fence. The pipe apparently was junk from the alley where the shootout occurred.