The Story of the Outlaw by Emerson Hough (read aloud .txt) 📕

Plummer was born in Connecticut in 1837, and, until his departure as a young man for the West, he was all that might be expected of one brought up under the chastening influences of a New England home. He received a good education, and became a polished, affable, and gentlemanly appearing man. He was about five feet ten, possibly five feet eleven inches in height, and weighed about one hundred and sixty pounds, being rather slender in appearance. His face was handsome and his demeanor always frank and open, although he was quiet and did not often talk unless accosted. His voice was low and pleasant, and he had no bravado or swagger about him. His eye was light in color and singularly devoid of expression. Two features gave him a sinister look—his forehead, which was low and brutish, and his eye, which was cold and fish-like. His was a strong, well-keyed nervous organization. He was quick as a cat when in action, though apparently suave and easy in disposition. He was a good pistol shot, perhaps the best of all the desperadoes who infested Idaho and Montana at that time. Not even in his cups did he lose control of voice and eye and weapon. He was always ready—a cool, quiet, self-possessed, well-regulated killing machine.

At the date of Plummer's arrival in the mining country, the town of Lewiston, Idaho, was the emporium of a wide region then embraced under the name of Idaho Territory; the latter also including Montana at that time. Where his life had been spent previous to that is not known, but it is thought that he came over from California. Plummer set up as a gambler, and this gave him the key to the brotherhood of the bad. Gamblers usually stick together pretty closely, and institute a sort of free-masonry of their own; so that Plummer was not long in finding, among men of his own profession and their associates, a number of others whom he considered safe to take into his confidence. Every man accepted by Plummer was a murderer. He would have no weaklings. No one can tell how many victims his associates had had before they went into his alliance; but it is sure that novices in man-killing were not desired, nor any who had not been proved of nerve. Plummer soon had so many men that he set up a rendezvous at points on all the trails leading out from Lewiston to such mines as were producing any gold. One robbery followed another, until the band threw off all restraint and ran the towns as they liked, paying for what they took when they felt like it, and laughing at the protests of the minority of the population, which was placed in the hard strait of being in that country and unable to get out without being robbed. It was the intention to seize the property of every man who was there and who was not accepted as a member of the gang.

One killing after another occurred on the trails, and man after man was lost and never traced. Assaults were made upon many men who escaped, but no criminal could be located, and, indeed, there was no law by which any of them could be brought to book. The express riders were fired upon and robbed and the pack trains looted. No man expected to cross the mountain trails without meeting some of the robbers, and, when he did meet them, he expected to be killed if he made resistance, for they outnumbered the parties they attacked in nearly all instances. The outlaws were now indeed about three times as numerous as those not in sympathy with them.

Rendered desperate by this state of affairs, a few resolute citizens who wanted law and order found each other out at last and organized into a vigilance committee, remembering the success of the Vigilantes of California, whose work was still recent history. Plummer himself was among the first to join this embryonic vigilante movement, as was the case in so many other similar movements in other parts of the West, where the criminal joined the law-loving in order to find out what the latter intended to do. His address was such as to disarm completely all suspicion, and he had full knowledge of facts which enabled him to murder for vengeance as well as for gain.

After Oro Fino was worked out as a placer field, the prospectors located other grounds east of the Salmon River range, at Elk City and Florence, and soon Lewiston was forsaken, all the population trooping off over the mountains to the new fields. This broke up the vigilante movement in its infancy, and gave Plummer a longer lease of life for his plans. All those who had joined the vigilante movement were marked men. One after another they were murdered, none knew by whom, or why. Masked robbers were seen every day along the trails leading between one remote mining camp and another, but no one suspected Henry Plummer, who was serving well in his double rôle.

Meantime, additional placer grounds had been discovered a hundred and fifty miles south of Florence, on the Boise river, and some valuable strikes were also made far to the north, at the upper waters of the Beaverhead. All the towns to the westward were now abandoned, and the miners left Florence as madly as they had rushed to it from Oro Fino and Elk City. West Bannack and East Bannack were now all the cry. To these new points, as may be supposed, the organized band of robbers fled with the others. Plummer, who had tried Elk City, Deer Lodge, and other points, now appeared at Bannack.

One after another reports continued to come of placers discovered here and there in the upper Rockies. Among all these, the strikes on Gold Creek proved to be the most extensive and valuable. A few Eastern men, almost by accident, had found fair "pay" there, and returned to that locality when they found themselves unable to get across the snow-covered mountains to Florence. These few men at the Gold Creek diggings got large additions from expeditions made up in Denver and bound for Florence, who also were unable to get across the Salmon River mountains. Yet others came out in the summer of 1862, by way of the upper plains and the Missouri river, so that the accident of the season, so to speak, turned aside the traffic intended to reach Florence into quite another region. This fact, as events proved, had much to do with the later fate of Henry Plummer and his associates.

These Eastern men were different from those who had been schooled in the mines of the Pacific Slope. They still clung to law and order; and they did not propose to be robbed. The first news of the strikes brought over the advance guard of the roughs who had been running the other camps; and, as soon as these were unmasked by acts of their own, the little advance guard of civilization shot one of them, Arnett, and hung two others, Jernigan and Spillman. This was the real beginning of a permanent vigilante force in Montana. It afforded perhaps the only known instance of a man being buried with a six-shooter in one hand and a hand of cards in the other. Arnett was killed in a game of cards, and died with his death grip thus fixed.

The new diggings did not at first prove themselves, and the camp at Bannack, on Grasshopper Creek, was more prosperous. Henry Plummer, therefore, elected Bannack as his headquarters. Others of the loosely connected banditti began to drop into Bannack from other districts, and Plummer was soon surrounded by his clan and kin in crime. George Ives, Bill Mitchell, Charlie Reeves, Cy Skinner, and others began operations on the same lines which had so distinguished them at the earlier diggings, west of the range. In a few weeks Bannack was as bad as Lewiston or Florence had ever been. In fact, it became so bad that the Vigilantes began to show their teeth, although they confined their sentences to banishment. The black sheep and the white began now to be segregated.

Plummer, shrewd to see the drift of opinion, saw that he must now play his hand out to the finish, that he could not now reform. He accordingly laid his plans to kill Jack Crawford, who was chosen as miners' sheriff. Plummer undertook one expedient after another to draw Crawford into a quarrel, in which he knew he could kill him; for Plummer's speed with the pistol had been proved when he killed Jack Cleveland, one of his own best gun-fighters. Rumor ran that he was the best pistol shot in the Rockies and as bad a man as the worst. Plummer thought that Crawford suspected him of belonging to the bandits, and so doomed him. Crawford was wary, and defeated three separate attempts to waylay and kill him, besides avoiding several quarrels that were thrust upon him by Plummer or his men. Dick Phleger, a friend of Crawford, was also marked by Plummer, who challenged him to fight with pistols, as he frequently had challenged Crawford. Phleger was a braver man than Crawford, but he declined the duel. Plummer would have killed them both. He only wanted the appearance of an "even break," with the later plea of "self-defence," which has shielded so many bad men from punishment for murder.

Plummer now tried treachery, and told Crawford they would be friends. All the time he was hunting a chance to kill him. At length he held Crawford up in a restaurant, and stood waiting for him with a rifle. A friend handed Crawford a rifle, and the latter slipped up and took a shot from the corner of the house at Plummer, who was across the street. The ball struck Plummer's right arm and tore it to pieces. Crawford missed him with a second shot, and Plummer walked back to his own cabin. Here he had a long siege with his wound, refusing to allow his arm to be amputated, since he knew he might as well be dead as so crippled. He finally recovered, although the ball was never removed and the bone never knit. The ball lodged in his wrist and was found there after his death, worn smooth as silver by the action of the bones. Crawford escaped down the Missouri river, to which he fled at Fort Benton. He never came back to the country. Plummer went on practising with the six-shooter with his left hand, and became a very good left-hand shot. He knew that his only safety lay in his skill with weapons.

Plummer's physician was Dr. Glick, who operated under cover of a shotgun, and with the cheerful assurance that if he killed Plummer by accident, he himself would be killed. After that Glick dressed the wounds of more than one outlaw, but dared not tell of it. Plummer admitted to him at last that these were his men and told Glick he would kill him if he ever breathed a word of this confidence. So the knowledge of the existence of the banditti was known to one man for a long time.

As to Bannack, it was one of the wildest camps ever known in any land. Pistol fire was heard incessantly, and one victim