Riding a stolen horse, and committing another
murder in the course of his travels, this perfect
gentleman found his way to Montana, and
obtained in the new settlement the office of
sheriff, charging himself, as a Jonathan Wild of
the West, with the duties of thief-catcher.

Plummer found his way to Bannack with
an old acquaintance, one Jack Cleveland,
just after the discovery of the gold there.
Its discoverer, "together with Rodolph
Dorsett, was murdered by Charley Kelly." In the
winter of eighteen sixty-two, 'three, the fame
of Bannack was spread widely. It was the
first mining camp of any importance established
on the east of the Rocky Mountains, and by
the spring of eighteen 'sixty-three there were a
thousand people in it; including nearly all the
ruffians who had played their game out in the
older settlements. Of these Henry Plummer
was the master spirit. His friend, Jack
Cleveland, who murdered a man on his way in,
often said when drunk that Plummer was "his
meat." He gave himself, among the roughs in
the new camp, airs of a chief. One day when
he was thus bragging in a saloon, Plummer
said, with the customary garnish, "I am tired
of this," and began firing at him. When
wounded he fell to his knees, wildly grasping
at his pistol, and said, "Plummer, you won't
shoot me when I'm down." His messmate
replied, "No, get up," and as he staggered
to his feet, continued shooting till he killed
him. A man was at the time being shaved in
the saloon, and "shooting scrapes" were so
much matters of course, that the man who was
being shaved sat still in his chair, and the
barber went on with his shaving. Another
shooting scrape. George Ives, who afterwards
distinguished himself as a road agent, or
highwayman, talked in the street with his
friend George Carrhart, and, disliking his
conversation, said, in the usual emphatic style,
"I'll shoot you." As they did not happen to
have revolvers in their pockets, Ives stepped
into a grocery store to get one, while Carrhart
went for his into his own cabin. The friends
fired at each other without effect till there
remained only one shot, and that was in the
sixth barrel of Carrhart's revolver, which
accordingly he fired into his friend's back. Ives
staggered towards the shop for another loaded
pistol, but his friend made off. These gentlemen
having recovered their tempers, lived
together as messmates during the rest of the
winter. But, after all, Carrhart's death came
of a shooting scrape. Two gentlemen in a
saloon having quarrelled over a game of poker,
began firing at one another, and when they had
emptied their revolvers were unhurt. But it
was found that "Buz Cavan's dog, Toodles,"
which was under the table, had three balls in
his body, and that George Carrhart, who had
been asleep on a bench, had been accidentally
shot through the bowels.

Haze Lyons, afterwards an eminent road
agent, owed three or four hundred dollars, as a
board bill, to a citizen of Bannack. One morning
when he was known to have won a great
deal of money at the gambling table over night,
he was asked for the money; but his creditor
was told, emphatically, " If you ask me for that
again, I'll make it unhealthy for you." Buck
Stinson, who also distinguished himself as a
road agent, owed some money to a man, whom
he saw chiding his boy for a fault. He interfered
at once, and when he was told that it was
a duty to see that the boy did not go wrong,
this moralist thrust his revolver at his creditor's
face and saying, " I don't like you, anyhow,"
would have fired if he had not been baulked by
the ensuing struggle. Now, when Plummer
was "honourably acquitted" of the murder of
his friend Cleveland, because Cleveland's
language had been irritating; and when a certain
Charley Reeves and Bill Moore had been found
guilty of firing into an adjacent camp of friendly
Indians for the pleasure of killing natives, and,
by eleven to one, the jury had decided against
punishment of death; the desperadoes of the
camp began to feel and make themselves at
home. It was a common thing for two men,
one a ruffian and one a fair supporter of order,
to come to a clear understanding that one had
to kill the other as soon as, in mountain phrase,
he could "get the drop on him." Men received
visitors with the distinct knowledge that they
came to commit murder, if they could pull out
a revolver fast enough to take their victim
unawares. They knew that they were watched for
in the streets, and that sometimes a room might
be taken in the opposite house from which to
shoot them as they sat at their own doors.

But such plots, in the braggart air of the
mining camp, were never secret. On each side
there would be a dozen men aiding, abetting,
cautioning and watching for the stealthy issue
of the open feud. The result of a tedious
stalking of each other by Henry Plummer and
one Hank Crawford, an honest man, was that
Plummer was shot in the right arm, the ball
lodging in the wrist joint, where it was found after
his death, brightened by constant friction, and
spoiling the use of his pistol hand, with which
he had been an unerring marksman. By
constant practice he became a good left-handed
shot, but never regained his old character for
deadly precision. What are men to do who are
thus planted in an out-post of civilisation,
gathered there in accordance with natural laws,
but having little help of any other laws to aid
them in contest with the worst difficulty of
their situation, the overpowering temptation
offered by it to the wildest Ishmaels of the
continent? In Montana, law was tried and failed.
The one man of the jury who dared to vote
sentence of death against the murderers of
friendly Indians was himself notoriously marked
out for assassination. He saved his life for a
time by constant watchfulness, pulling out his
bowie knife and picking up a stick to whittle,
if he met Plummer in the street, and a few
months afterwards he left Montana. When
he left an attack on his party was planned by
the road agents, with Mr. Plummer at their
head; but that also was foiled. In attacks upon
the coaches and other convoys of treasure and