There are known to have been a hundred and two men killed by Plummer and his gang; how many were murdered without their fate ever being discovered can not be told.Plummer was the leader of the band, but, arch-hypocrite that he was, he managed to keep his own connection with it a secret.His position as sheriff gave him many advantages.He posed as being a silver-mine expert, among other things, and often would be called out to "expert" some new mine.That usually meant that he left town in order to commit some desperate robbery.The boldest outrages always required Plummer as the leader.Sometimes he would go away on the pretense of following some fugitive from justice.His horse, the fleetest in the country, often was found, laboring and sweating, at the rear of his house.That meant that Plummer had been away on some secret errand of his own.He was suspected many times, but nothing could be fastened upon him; or there lacked sufficient boldness and sufficient organization on the part of the law-and-order men to undertake his punishment.
We are not concerned with repeating thrilling tales, bloody almost beyond belief, and indicative of an incomprehensible depravity in human nature, so much as we are with the causes and effects of this wild civilization which raged here quite alone in the midst of one of the wildest of the western mountain regions.
It will best serve our purpose to retain in mind the twofold character of this population, and to remember that the frontier caught to itself not only ruffians and desperadoes, men undaunted by any risk, but also men possessed of a yet steadier personal courage and hardihood.There were men rough, coarse, brutal, murderous; but against them were other men self-reliant, stern, just, and resolved upon fair play.
That was indeed the touchstone of the entire civilization which followed upon the heels of these scenes of violence.It was fair play which really animated the great Montana Vigilante movement and which eventually cleaned up the merciless gang of Henry Plummer and his associates.The centers of civilization were far removed.The courts were powerless.In some cases even the machinery of the law was in the hands of these ruffians.But so violent were their deeds, so brutal, so murderous, so unfair, that slowly the indignation of the good men arose to the white-hot point of open resentment and of swift retribution.What the good men of the frontier loved most of all was justice.They now enforced justice in the only way left open to them.They did this as California earlier had done; and they did it so well that there was small need to repeat the lesson.
The actual extermination of the Henry Plummer band occurred rather promptly when the Vigilantes once got under way.One of the band by the name of Red Yager, in company with yet another by the name of Brown, had been concerned in the murder of Lloyd Magruder, a merchant of the Territory.The capture of these two followed closely upon the hanging of George Ives, also accused of more than one murder.Ives was an example of the degrading influence of the mines.He was a decent young man until he left his home in Wisconsin.He was in California from 1857 to 1858.
When he appeared in Idaho he seemed to have thrown off all restraint and to have become a common rowdy and desperado.It is said of him that "few men of his age ever had been guilty of so many fiendish crimes."Yager and Brown, knowing the fate which Ives had met, gave up hope when they fell into the hands of the newly organized Vigilantes.Brown was hanged; so was Yager; but Yager, before his death, made a full confession which put the Vigilantes in possession of information they had never yet been able to secure.Langford gives these names disclosed by Yager as follows:
"Henry Plummer was chief of the band; Bill Bunton, stool pigeon and second in command; George Brown, secretary; Sam Bunton, roadster; Cyrus Skinner, fence, spy, and roadster; George Shears, horse thief and roadster; Frank Parish, horse thief and roadster;Hayes Lyons, telegraph man and roadster; Bill Hunter, telegraph man and roadster; Ned Ray, council-room keeper at Bannack City;George Ives, Stephen Marshland, Dutch John (Wagner), Alex Carter, Whiskey Bill (Graves), Johnny Cooper, Buck Stinson, Mexican Franks Bob Zachary, Boone Helm, Clubfoot George (Lane), Billy Terwiliger, Gad Moore were roadsters." Practically all these were executed by the Vigilantes, with many others, and eventually the band of outlaws was entirely broken up.
Much has been written and much romanced about the conduct of these desperadoes when they met their fate.Some of them were brave and some proved cowards at the last.For a time, Plummer begged abjectly, his eyes streaming with tears.Suddenly he was smitten with remorse as the whole picture of his past life appeared before him.He promised everything, begged everything, if only life might be spared him--asked his captors to cut off his ears, to cut out his tongue, then strip him naked and banish him.At the very last, however, he seems to have become composed.
