the men should have a jury and should be provided with counsel.
They were all practically freed; and after that the roughs grew
bolder than ever. The Plummer band swore to kill every man who
had served in that court, whether as juryman or officer. So well
did they make good their threat that out of the twenty-seven men
thus engaged all but seven were either killed or driven out of
the country, nine being murdered outright. The man who had acted
as sheriff of this miners' court, Hank Crawford, was unceasingly
hounded by Plummer, who sought time and again to fix a quarrel on
him. Plummer was the best shot in the mountains at that time, and
he thought it would be easy for him to kill his man and enter the
usual plea of self-defense. By good fortune, however, Crawford
caught Plummer off his guard and fired upon him with a rifle,
breaking his right arm. Plummer's friends called in Dr. Glick,
the best physician in Bannack, to treat the wounded man, warning
him that if he told anything about the visit he would be shot
down. Glick held his peace, and later was obliged to attend many
of the wounded outlaws, who were always engaged in affairs with
firearms.

Of all these wild affrays, of the savage life which they denoted,
and of the stern ways in which retribution overtook the
desperadoes of the mines, there is no better historian than
Nathaniel P. Langford, a prominent citizen of the West, who
accompanied the overland expedition of 1862 and took part in the
earliest life of Montana. His work, "Vigilante Days and Ways," is
an invaluable contemporary record.

It is mentally difficult for us now fully to restore these
scenes, although the events occurred no earlier than the Civil