organization. There were now in the Montana fields many good men
such as the Stuart Brothers, Samuel T. Hauser, Walter Dance, and
others later well known in the State. These men were prominent in
the organization of the first miners' court, which had occasion
to try--and promptly to hang--Stillman and Jernigan, two ruffians
who had been in from the Salmon River mines only about four days
when they thus met retribution for their early crimes. An
associate of theirs, Arnett, had been killed while resisting
arrest. The reputation of Florence for lawlessness and bloodshed
was well known; and, as the outrages of the well-organized band
of desperadoes operating in Idaho might be expected to begin at
any time in Montana, a certain uneasiness existed among the
newcomers from the States.

Two more parties, likewise bound for Idaho and likewise baffled
by the Salmon River range, arrived at the Montana camps in the
same summer. Both these were from the Pike's Peak country in
Colorado. And in the autumn came a fifth--this one under military
protection, Captain James L. Fisk commanding, and having in the
party a number of settlers bound for Oregon as well as miners for
Idaho. This expedition arrived in the Prickly Pear Valley in
Montana on September 21, 1862, having left St. Paul on the 16th
of June, traveling by steamboat and wagon-train. While Captain
Fisk and his expedition pushed on to Walla Walla, nearly half of
the immigrants stayed to try their luck at placer-mining. But the
yield was not great and the distant Salmon River mines, their
original destination, still awaited them. Winter was approaching.
It was now too late in the season to reach the Salmon River
mines, five hundred miles across the mountains, and it was four
hundred miles to Salt Lake, the nearest supply post; therefore,