[2] John Daly, the gang's leader and namesake, arrived in Aurora, Nevada, from California in the early 1860s as a hired gun and soon hooked up with "Three-Fingered Jack" McDowell.
The two ran an unsavory saloon and began operating an outlaw gang in the Nevada gold fields between Aurora and Carson City that used scare tactics and lynched those who resisted.
To make matters worse for the people of Aurora, many of its members, including John Daly, became City Marshals in the fall of 1863.
The next year, the local newspaper Esmeralda Star declared, "No sooner had the Marshal been sworn in than the worst villains that ever infested a civilized community were appointed policemen, and with but few exceptions they were composed of as hard a set [of] criminals [as] ever went unhung."
The Daly Gang retaliated by capturing Johnson, and afterwards either shot him dead or slit his throat, and by some accounts also set his body on fire.
This murder drove local authorities to arrest Daly and McDowell and their fellow bandit Masterson in their hideout in the Aurora Saloon and the sheriff to form a posse to capture another gang member, Buckley.
Daly had two houses and two or three lots in town at time of his hanging, including a cabin on the west side of Court St. south of Pine.
[5] One of Carberry's shootouts was his duel with fellow Daly gang member Vance, who had recently returned to Austin in August 1867.
Soon enough, Carberry brought his own pistol, and when he and Vance finally met face-to-face at Austin's main street, both immediately drew guns and commenced firing.