The Wild West is usually told as sheriffs versus bandits, but the Dalton brothers wore the badge before they robbed the trains. Born into a family of 15 children whose mother, Adeline Younger, was aunt to Cole and Jim Younger, the Daltons first followed their older brother Frank, a respected deputy U.S. marshal killed by whiskey bootleggers in 1887. Grat and Bob took up his work, and Emmett guarded prisoners, but the fee-based marshal system paid nothing unless a fugitive reached court, and the brothers began stealing horses to survive.

This episode follows the slide into full-time crime: the 1891 Southern Pacific robbery in California, Grat's trial sabotaged by a defense attorney secretly on the railroad's payroll, his jailbreak using a saw blade hidden with soap and soot, and a Christmas Eve ambush he escaped on a stolen plow horse. It co ...