ught 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 War. "Life in
Bannack at this time," says Langford, "was perfect isolation from the
rest of the world. Napoleon was not more of an exile on St. Helena than
a newly arrived immigrant from the States in this region of lakes
and mountains. All the great battles of the season of 1862--Antietam,
Fredericksburg, Second Bull Run--all the exciting debates of Congress,
and the more exciting combats at sea, first became known to us on the
arrival of newspapers and letters in the spring of 1863."

The Territory of Idaho, which included Montana and nearly all Wyoming,
was organized March 3, 1863. Previous to that time western Montana and
Idaho formed a part of Washington Territory, of which Olympia was the
capital, and Montana, east of the mountains, belonged to the Territory
of Dakota, of which the capital was Yankton, on the Missouri. Langford
makes clear the political uncertainties of the time, the difficulty
of enforcing the laws, and narrates the circumstances which led to the
erection in 1864 of the new Territory of Montana, comprising the limits
of the present State. *

* The Acts of Congress organizing Territories and admitting
States are milestones in the occupation of this last West. On the eve of
the Civil War, Kansas was admitted into the Union; during the war, the
Territori