The Story of the Outlaw Part 3

law came the regularly organized legal machinery of the older states, modified by local conditions, and irretrievably blended with a politics more corrupt than any known before or since. Men were busy in picking up raw gold from the earth, and they paid small attention to courts and government. The law became an unbridled instrument of evil. Judges of the courts openly confiscated the property of their enemies, or sentenced them with no reference to the principles of justice, with as great disregard for life and liberty as was ever known in the Revolutionary days of France. Against this manner of government presently arose the organizations of the law-abiding, the justice-loving, and these took the law into their own stern hands. The executive officers of the law, the sheriffs and constables, were in league to kill and confiscate; and against these the new agency of the actual law made war, const.i.tuting themselves into an arm of essential government, and openly called themselves Vigilantes. In turn criminals used the cloak of the Vigilantes to cover their own deeds of lawlessness and violence. The Vigilantes purged themselves of the false members, and carried their own t.i.tle of opprobrium, the "stranglers," with unconcern or pride. They grew in numbers, the love of justice their lodestone, until at one time they numbered more than five thousand in the city of San Francisco alone, and held that community in a grip of lawlessness, or law, as you shall choose to term it. They set at defiance the chief executive of the state, erected an armed castle of their own, seized upon the arms of the militia, defied the government of the United States and even the United States army! They were, as you shall choose to call them, criminals, or great and n.o.ble men. Seek as you may to-day, you will never know the full roster of their names, although they made no concealment of their ident.i.ty; and no one, to this day, has ever been able to determine who took the first step in their organization. They began their labors in California at a time when there had been more than two thousand murders--five hundred in one year--and not five legal executions. Their task included the erection of a fit structure of the law, and, incidentally, the destruction of a corrupt and unworthy structure claiming the t.i.tle of the law. In this strange, swift panorama there is all the story of the social system, all the picture of the building of that temple of the law which, as Americans, we now revere, or, at times, still despise and desecrate.

At first the average gold seeker concerned himself little with law, because he intended to make his fortune quickly and then hasten back East to his former home; yet, as early as the winter of 1849, there was elected a legislature which met at San Jose, a Senate of sixteen members and an a.s.sembly of thirty-six. In this election the new American vote was in evidence. The miners had already tired of the semi-military phase of their government, and had met and adopted a state const.i.tution. The legislature enacted one hundred and forty new laws in two months, and abolished all former laws; and then, satisfied with its labors, it left the enforcement of the laws, in the good old American fas.h.i.+on, to whomsoever might take an interest in the matter.[D] This is our custom even to-day. Our great cities of the East are practically all governed, so far as they are governed at all, by civic leagues, civic federations, citizens' leagues, business men's a.s.sociations--all protests at non-enforcement of the law. This protest in '49 and on the Pacific coast took a sterner form.

[Footnote D: Tuthill: "History of California."]

At one time the city of San Francisco had three separate and distinct city councils, each claiming to be the only legal one. In spite of the new state organization, the law was much a matter of go as you please.

Under such conditions it was no wonder that outlawry began to show its head in bold and well-organized forms. A party of ruffians, who called themselves the "Hounds," banded together to run all foreigners out of the rich camps, and to take their diggings over for themselves. A number of Chileans were beaten or shot, and their property was confiscated or destroyed. This was not in accordance with the saving grace of American justice, which devoted to a man that which he had earned. A counter organization was promptly formed, and the "Hounds" found themselves confronted with two hundred "special constables," each with a good rifle. A ma.s.s meeting sat as a court, and twenty of the "Hounds" were tried, ten of them receiving sentences that never were enforced, but which had the desired effect. So now, while far to the eastward the Congress was hotly arguing the question of the admission of California as a state, she was beginning to show an interest in law and justice when aroused thereto.

It was difficult material out of which to build a civilized community.

The hardest population of the entire world was there; men savage or civilized by tradition, heathen or Christian once at least, but now all Californian. Wealth was the one common thing. The average daily return in the work of mining ranged from twenty to thirty dollars, and no man might tell when his fortune might be made by a blow of a pick. Some nuggets of gold weighing twenty-five pounds were discovered. In certain diggings men picked pure gold from the rock crevices with a spoon or a knife point. As to values, they were guessed at, the only currency being gold dust or nuggets. Prodigality was universal. All the gamblers of the world met in vulture concourse. There was little in the way of home; of women almost none. Life was as cheap as gold dust. Let those who liked bother about statehood and government and politics; the average man was too busy digging and spending gold to trouble over such matters. The most shameless men were those found in public office. Wealth and commerce waxed great, but law and civilization languished. The times were ripening for the growth of some system of law which would offer proper protection to life and property. The measure of this need may be seen from the figures of the production of gold. From 1848 to 1856 California produced between five hundred and six hundred million dollars in virgin gold. What wonder the courts were weak; and what wonder the Vigilantes became strong!

There were in California three distinct Vigilante movements, those of 1849, 1851, and 1856, the earliest applying rather to the outlying mining camps than to the city of San Francisco. In 1851, seeing that the courts made no attempt to punish criminals, a committee was formed which did much toward enforcing respect for the principles of justice, if not of law. On June 11 they hanged John Jenkins for robbing a store. A month later they hanged James Stuart for murdering a sheriff. In August of the same summer they took out of jail and hanged Whittaker and McKenzie, Australian ex-convicts, whom they had tried and sentenced, but who had been rescued by the officers of the law. Two weeks later this committee disbanded. They paid no attention to the many killings that were going on over land t.i.tles and the like, but confined themselves to punis.h.i.+ng men who had committed intolerable crimes. Theft was as serious as murder, perhaps more so, in the creed of the time and place. The list of murders reached appalling dimensions. The times were sadly out of joint.

The legislature was corrupt, graft was rampant--though then unknown by that name--and the entire social body was restless, discontented, and uneasy. Politics had become a fine art. The judiciary, lazy and corrupt, was held in contempt. The dockets of the courts were full, and little was done to clear them effectively. Criminals did as they liked and went unwhipped of justice. It was truly a day of violence and license.

Once more the sober and law-loving men of California sent abroad word, and again the Vigilantes a.s.sembled. In 1853 they hanged two Mexicans for horse stealing, and also a bartender who had shot a citizen near Shasta.

At Jackson they hanged another Mexican for horse stealing, and at Volcano, in 1854, they hanged a man named Macy for stabbing an old and helpless man. In this instance vengeance was very swift, for the murderer was executed within half an hour after his deed. The haste caused certain criticism when, in the same month one Johnson was hanged for stabbing a man named Montgomery, at Iowa Hill, who later recovered.

At Los Angeles three men were sentenced to death by the local court, but the Supreme Court issued a stay for two of them, Brown and Lee. The people a.s.serted that all must die together, and the mayor of the city was of the same mind. The third man, Alvitre, was hanged legally on January 12, 1855. On that day the mayor resigned his office to join the Vigilantes. Brown was taken out of jail and hanged in spite of the decision of the Supreme Court. The people were out-running the law. That same month they hanged another murderer for killing the treasurer of Tuolumne county. In the following month they hanged three more cattle thieves in Contra Costa county, and followed this by hanging a horse thief in Oakland. A larger affair threatened in the following summer, when thirty-six Mexicans were arrested for killing a party of Americans.

For a time it was proposed to hang all thirty-six, but sober counsel prevailed and only three were hanged; this after formal jury trial.

Unknown bandits waylaid and killed Isaac B. Wall and T. S. Williamson of Monterey, and, that same month U. S. Marshal William H. Richardson was shot by Charles Cora in the streets of San Francisco. The people grumbled. There was no certainty that justice would ever reach these offenders. The reputation of the state was ruined, not by the acts of the Vigilantes, but by those of unscrupulous and unprincipled men in office and upon the bench. The government was run by gamblers, ruffians, and thugs. The good men of the state began to prepare for a general movement of purification and the installation of an actual law. The great Vigilante movement of 1856 was the result.

The immediate cause of this last organization was the murder of James King, editor of the _Bulletin_, by James P. Casey. Casey, after shooting King, was hurried off to jail by his own friends, and there was protected by a display of military force. King lingered for six days after he was shot, and the state of public opinion was ominous. Cora, who had killed Marshal Richardson, had never been punished, and there seemed no likelihood that Casey would be. The local press was divided.

The religious papers, the _Pacific_ and the _Christian Advocate_, both openly declared that Casey ought to be hanged. The clergy took up the matter sternly, and one minister of the Gospel, Rev. J. A. Benton, of Sacramento, gave utterance to this remarkable but well-grounded statement: "_A people can be justified in recalling delegated power and resuming its exercise._" Before we hasten to criticize sweepingly under the term "mob law" such work as this of the Vigilantes, it will be well for us to weigh that utterance, and to apply it to conditions of our own times; to-day is well-nigh as dangerous to American liberties as were the wilder days of California.

Now, summoned by some unknown command, armed men appeared in the streets of San Francisco, twenty-four companies in all, with perhaps fifty men in each company. The Vigilantes had organized again. They brought a cannon and placed it against the jail gate, and demanded that Casey be surrendered to them. There was no help for it, and Casey went away handcuffed, to face a court where political influence would mean nothing. An hour later the murderer Cora was taken from his cell, and was hastened away to join Casey in the headquarters building of the Vigilantes. A company of armed and silent men marched on each side of the carriage containing the prisoner. The two men were tried in formal session of the Committee, each having counsel, and all evidence being carefully weighed.

King died on May 20, 1856, and on May 22d was buried with popular honors, a long procession of citizens following the body to the cemetery. A popular subscription was started, and in a brief time over thirty thousand dollars was raised for the benefit of his widow and children. When the long procession filed back into the city, it was to witness, swinging from a beam projecting from a window of Committee headquarters, the bodies of Casey and Cora.

The Committee now arrested two more men, not for a capital crime, but for one which lay back of a long series of capital crimes--the stuffing of ballot-boxes and other election frauds. These men were Billy Mulligan and the prize-fighter known as Yankee Sullivan. Although advised that he would have a fair trial and that the death penalty would not be pa.s.sed upon him, Yankee Sullivan committed suicide in his cell. The entire party of lawyers and judges were arrayed against the Committee, naturally enough. Judge Terry, of the Supreme Court, issued a writ of _habeas corpus_ for Mulligan. The Committee ignored the sheriff who was sent to serve the writ. They cleared the streets in front of headquarters, established six cannon in front of their rooms, put loaded swivels on top of the roof and mounted a guard of a hundred riflemen.

They brought bedding and provisions to their quarters, mounted a huge triangle on the roof for a signal to their men all over the city, arranged the interior of their rooms in the form of a court and, in short, set themselves up as the law, openly defying their own Supreme Court of the state. So far from being afraid of the vengeance of the law, they arrested two more men for election frauds, Chas. P. Duane and "Woolly" Kearney. All their prisoners were guarded in cells within the headquarters building.

The opposition to the Committee now organized in turn under the name of the "Law and Order Men," and held a public meeting. This was numerously attended by members of the Vigilante Committee, whose books were now open for enrollment. Not even the criticism of their own friends stayed these men in their resolution. They went even further. Governor Johnson issued a proclamation to them to disband and disperse. They paid no more attention to this than they had to Judge Terry's writ of _habeas corpus_. The governor threatened them with the militia, but it was not enough to frighten them. General Sherman resigned his command in the state militia, and counseled moderation at so dangerous a time. Many of the militia turned in their rifles to the Committee, which got other arms from vessels in the harbor, and from carelessly guarded armories.

Halting at no responsibility, a band of the Committee even boarded a schooner which was carrying down a cargo of rifles from the governor to General Howard at San Francisco, and seized the entire lot. Shortly after this they confiscated a second s.h.i.+pment which the governor was sending down from Sacramento in the same way; thus seizing property of the federal government. If there was such a crime as high treason, they committed it, and did so openly and without hesitation. Governor Johnson contented himself with drawing up a statement of the situation, which was sent down to President Pierce at Was.h.i.+ngton, with the request that he instruct naval officers on the Pacific station to supply arms to the State of California, which had been despoiled by certain of its citizens. President Pierce turned over the matter to his attorney-general, Caleb Cus.h.i.+ng, who rendered an opinion saying that Governor Johnson had not yet exhausted the state remedies, and that the United States government could not interfere.

Little remained for the Committee to do to show its resolution to act as the State _pro tempore_. That little it now proceeded to do by practically suspending the Supreme Court of California. In making an arrest of a witness wanted by the Committee, Sterling A. Hopkins, one of the policemen retained for work by the Committee, was stabbed in the throat by Judge Terry, of the Supreme Bench, who was very bitter against all members of the Committee. It was supposed that the wound would prove fatal, and at once the Committee sounded the call for general a.s.sembly.

The city went into two hostile camps, Terry and his friend, Dr. Ashe, taking refuge in the armory where the "Law and Order" faction kept their arms. The members of the Vigilante Committee besieged this place, and presently took charge of Terry and Ashe, as prisoners. Then the scouts of the Committee went out after the arms of all the armories belonging to the governor and the "Law and Order" men who supported him, the lawyers and politicians who felt that their functions were being usurped. Two thousand rifles were taken, and the opposing party was left without arms. The entire state, so to speak, was now in the hands of the "Committee of Vigilance," a body of men, quiet, law-loving, law-enforcing, but of course technically traitors and criminals. The parallel of this situation has never existed elsewhere in American history.

Had Hopkins died the probability is that Judge Terry would have been hanged by the Committee, but fortunately he did not die. Terry lay a prisoner in the cell a.s.signed him at the Committee's rooms for seven weeks, by which time Hopkins had recovered from the wound given him by Terry. The case became one of national interest, and tirades against "the Stranglers" were not lacking; but the Committee went on enrolling men. And it did not open its doors for its prisoners, although appeal was made to Congress in Terry's behalf--an appeal which was referred to the Committee on Judiciary, and so buried.

Terry was finally released, much to the regret of many of the Committee, who thought he should have been punished. The executive committee called together the board of delegates, and issued a statement showing that death and banishment were the only penalties optional with them. Death they could not inflict, because Hopkins had recovered; and banishment they thought impractical at that time, as it might prolong discussion indefinitely, and enforce a longer term in service than the Committee cared for. It was the earnest wish of all to disband at the first moment that they considered their state and city fit to take care of themselves, and the sacredness of the ballot-box again insured. To a.s.sure this latter fact, they had arrayed themselves against the federal government, as certainly they had against the state government.

The Committee now hanged two more murderers--Hetherington and Brace--the former a gambler from St. Louis, the latter a youth of New York parentage, twenty-one years of age, but hardened enough to curse volubly upon the scaffold. By the middle of August, 1856, they had no more prisoners in charge, and were ready to turn the city over to its own system of government. Their report, published in the following fall, showed they had hanged four men and banished many others, besides frightening out of the country a large criminal population that did not tarry for arrest and trial.

If opinion was divided to some extent in San Francisco, where those stirring deeds occurred, the sentiment of the outlying communities of California was almost a unit in favor of the Vigilantes, and their action received the sincere flattery of imitation, as half a score of criminals learned to their sorrow on impromptu scaffolds. There was no large general organization in any other community, however. After a time some of the banished men came back, and many damage suits were argued later in the courts; but small satisfaction came to those claimants, and few men who knew of the deeds of the "Committee of Vigilance" ever cared to discuss them. Indeed it was practically certain that any man who ever served on a Western vigilance committee finished his life with sealed lips. Had he ventured to talk of what he knew he would have met contempt or something harsher.

A political capital was made out of the situation in San Francisco. The "Committee of Vigilance" felt that it had now concluded its work and was ready to go back to civil life. On August 18, 1856, the Committee marched openly in review through the streets of the city, five thousand one hundred and thirty-seven men in line, with three companies of artillery, eighteen cannon, a company of dragoons, and a medical staff of forty odd physicians. There were in this body one hundred and fifty men who had served in the old Committee in 1851. After the parade the men halted, the a.s.semblage broke up into companies, the companies into groups; and thus, quietly, with no vaunting of themselves and no concealment of their acts, there pa.s.sed away one of the most singular and significant organizations of American citizens ever known. They did this with the quiet a.s.sertion that if their services were again needed, they would again a.s.semble; and they printed a statement covering their actions in detail, showing to any fair-minded man that what they had done was indeed for the good of the whole community, which had been wronged by those whom it had elected to power, those who had set themselves up as masters where they had been chosen as servants.

The "Committee of Vigilance" of San Francisco was made up of men from all walks of life and all political parties. It had any amount of money at its command that it required, for its members were of the best and most influential citizens. It maintained, during its existence, quarters unique in their way, serving as arms-room, trial court, fortress, and prison. It was not a mob, but a grave and orderly band of men, and its deliberations were formal and exact, its labors being divided among proper sub-committees and boards. The quarters were kept open day and night, always ready for swift action, if necessary. It had an executive committee, which upon occasion conferred with a board of delegates composed of three men from each subdivision of the general body. The executive committee consisted of thirty-three members, and its decision was final; but it could not enforce a death penalty except on a two-thirds vote of those present. It had a prosecuting attorney, and it tried no prisoner without a.s.signing to him competent counsel. It had also a police force, with a chief of police and a sheriff with several deputies. In short, it took over the government, and was indeed the government, munic.i.p.al and state in one. Recent as was its life, its deeds to-day are well-nigh forgotten. Though opinion may be still divided in certain quarters, California need not be ashamed of this "Committee of Vigilance." She should be proud of it, for it was largely through its unthanked and dangerous safeguarding of the public interests that California gained her social system of to-day.

In all the history of American desperadoism and of the movements which have checked it, there is no page more worth study than this from the story of the great Golden State. The moral is a sane, clean, and strong one. The creed of the "Committee of Vigilance" is one which we might well learn to-day; and its practice would leave us with more dignity of character than we can claim, so long as we content ourselves merely with outcry and criticism, with sweeping accusation of our unfaithful public servants, and without seeing that they are punished. There is nothing but manhood and freedom and justice in the covenant of the Committee.

That covenant all American citizens should be ready to sign and live up to: "We do bind ourselves each unto the other by a solemn oath to do and perform every just and lawful act for the maintenance of law and order, _and to sustain the laws when faithfully and properly administered_. But we are determined that no thief, burglar, incendiary, a.s.sa.s.sin, _ballot-box stuffer or other disturber of the peace_, shall escape punishment, either by quibbles of the law, the carelessness of the police or a laxity of those who pretend to administer justice."

What a man earns, that is his--such was the lesson of California.

Self-government is our right as a people--that is what the Vigilantes said. When the laws failed of execution, then it was the people's right to resume the power that they had delegated, or which had been usurped from them--that is their statement as quoted by one of the ablest of many historians of this movement. The people might withdraw authority when faithless servants used it to thwart justice--that was what the Vigilantes preached. It is good doctrine to-day.

Chapter VI

The Outlaw of the Mountains--_The Gold Stampedes of the '60's_--_Armed Bandits of the Mountain Mining Camps_.

The greatest of American gold stampedes, and perhaps the greatest of the world, not even excepting that of Australia, was that following upon the discovery of gold in California. For twenty years all the West was mad for gold. No other way would serve but the digging of wealth directly from the soil. Agriculture was too slow, commerce too tame, to satisfy the bold population of the frontier. The history of the first struggle for mining claims in California--one stampede after another, as this, that and the other "strike" was reported in new localities--was repeated all over the vast region of the auriferous mountain lands lying between the plains and California, which were swiftly prospected by men who had now learned well the prospector's trade. The gold-hunters lapped back on their own trails, and, no longer content with California, began to prospect lower Oregon, upper Idaho, and Western Montana. Walla Walla was a supply point for a time. Florence was a great mountain market, and Lewiston. One district after another sprang into prominence, to fade away after a year or two of feverish life. The placers near Bannack caught a wild set of men, who surged back from California. Oro Fino was a temporary capital; then the fabulously rich placer which made Alder Gulch one of the quickly perished but still unforgotten diggings.

The flat valley of this latter gulch housed several "towns," but was really for a dozen miles a continuous string of miners' cabins. The city of Helena is built on the tailings of these placer was.h.i.+ngs, and its streets are literally paved with gold even to-day. Here in 1863, while the great conflict between North and South was raging, a great community of wild men, not organized into anything fit to be called society, divided and fought bitterly for control of the apparently exhaustless wealth which came pouring from the virgin mines. These clas.h.i.+ng factions repeated, in intensified form, the history of California. They were even more utterly cut off from all the world. Letters and papers from the states had to reach the mountains by way of California, via the Horn or the Isthmus. Touch with the older civilization was utterly lost; of law there was none.

Upon the social horizon now appeared the sinister figure of the trained desperado, the professional bad man. The business of outlawry was turned into a profession, one highly organized, relatively safe and extremely lucrative. There was wealth to be had for the asking or the taking. Each miner had his buckskin purse filled with native gold. This dust was like all other dust. It could not be traced nor identified; and the old saying, "'Twas mine, 'tis his," might here of all places in the world most easily become true. Checks, drafts, currency as we know it now, all the means by which civilized men keep record of their property transactions, were unknown. The gold-scales established the only currency, and each man was his own banker, obliged to be his own peace officer, and the defender of his own property.

Now our desperado appeared, the man who had killed his man, or, more likely, several men, and who had not been held sternly to an accounting for his acts; the man with the six-shooter and the skill to use it more swiftly and accurately than the average man; the man with the mind which did not scruple at murder. He found much to encourage him, little to oppose him. "The crowd from both East and West had now arrived. The town was full of gold-hunters. Expectation lighted up the countenance of every new-comer. Few had yet realized the utter despair of failure in a mining camp. In the presence of vice in all its forms, men who were staid and exemplary at home laid aside their morality like a useless garment, and yielded to the seductive influences spread for their ruin.

The gambling-shops and hurdy-gurdy saloons--beheld for the first time by many of these fortune-seekers--lured them on step by step, until many of them abandoned all thought of the object they had in pursuit for lives of shameful and criminal indulgence. The condition of society thus produced was fatal to all attempts at organization, either for protection or good order."

Yet the same condition made opportunity for those who did not wish to see a society established. Wherever the law-abiding did not organize, the bandits did; and the strength of their party, the breadth and boldness of its operations, and the length of time it carried on its unmolested operations, form one of the most extraordinary incidents in American history. They killed, robbed, and terrorized over hundreds of miles of mountain country, for years setting at defiance all attempts at their restraint. They recognized no command except that of their "chief," whose t.i.tle was always open to contest, and who gained his own position only by being more skilful, more bloodthirsty, and more unscrupulous than his fellows.

Henry Plummer, the most important captain of these cutthroats of the mountains, had a hundred or more men in his widely scattered criminal confederacy. More than one hundred murders were committed by these banditti in the s.p.a.ce of three years. Many others were, without doubt, committed and never traced. Dead bodies were common in those hills, and often were unidentified. The wanderer from the States usually kept his own counsel. None knew who his family might be; and that family, missing a member who disappeared into the maw of the great West of that day of danger, might never know the fate of the one mysteriously vanished.

These robbers had their confederates scattered in all ranks of life.

Plummer himself was sheriff of his county, and had confederates in deputies or city marshals. This was a strange feature of this old desperadoism in the West--it paraded often in the guise of the law. We shall find further instances of this same phenomenon. Employes, friends, officials--there was none that one might trust. The organization of the robbers even extended to the stage lines, and a regular system of communication existed by which the allies advised each other when and where such and such a pa.s.senger was going, with such and such an amount of gold upon him. The holding up of the stage was something regularly expected, and the traveler who had any money or valuables drew a long breath when he reached a region where there was really a protecting law.

Men were shot down in the streets on little or no provocation, and the murderer boasted of his crime and defied punishment. The dance-halls were run day and night. The drinking of whiskey, and, moreover, bad whiskey, was a thing universal. Vice was everywhere and virtue was not.

Those few who had an aim and an ambition in life were long in the minority and, in the welter of a general license, they might not recognize each other and join hands. Murder and pillage ruled, until at length the spirit of law and order, born anew of necessity, grew and gained power as it did in most early communities of the West. How these things in time took place may best be seen by reference to the b.l.o.o.d.y biographies of some of the most reckless desperadoes ever seen in any land.

Chapter VII

Henry Plummer--_A Northern Bad Man_--_The Head of the Robber Band in the Montana Mining Country_--_A Man of Brains and Ability, but a Cold-Blooded Murderer_.

Henry Plummer was for several years in the early '60's the "chief" of the widely extended band of robbers and murderers who kept the placer-mining fields of Montana and Idaho in a state of terror. Posing part of the time as an officer of the law, he was all the time the leader in the reign of lawlessness. He was always ready for combat, and he so relied upon his own skill that he would even give his antagonist the advantage--or just enough advantage to leave himself sure to kill him. His victims in duels of this sort were many, and, as to his victims in cold-blooded robbery, in which death wiped out the record, no one will ever know the list.

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 inst.i.tute a sort of free-masonry of their own; so that Plummer was not long in finding, among men of his own profession and their a.s.sociates, 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 a.s.sociates 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. a.s.saults 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.