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 passenger 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 bloody
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 Connectic