The young man started towards Bannack, and as soon as he was out of sight of the robbers, rode his horse at its utmost speed.

He finally reached Colonel Sanders’s house on what was known as “Yankee Flat,” not, however, until he had been thrown from his horse, while crossing a mining ditch, and had lain on the ground for a period of time which he could not himself determine, being unconscious.

He told his story of having met the robbers, and further stated that he knew the parties who had “held him up,” particularly one of them, who had held a revolver at his head and who seemed to be a leader among them, and this man was Henry Plummer.

Mrs. Sanders then went with him to the house of Chief Justice Edgerton, where he related again the story of his meeting the highwaymen, and was cautioned to say nothing about it.

As the party whom Colonel Sanders had started to find and travel with had been found going in an opposite direction, and engaged as highway robbers, it naturally excited and alarmed his family, and the result was that they, finding a team which had come into town late that night, procured the horses, and mounted Gridley and Brown and sent them to the Rattlesnake ranche to find the colonel. The next morning Plummer and all the men who had gone with him were in town, appearing as unconcerned as if nothing unusual had occurred.

Colonel Sanders did not at first share Tilden’s belief concerning the personnel of the troop of robbers and his identification of Plummer, but nevertheless, as a precautionary measure, he admonished Tilden not to communicate his beliefs to any one, assuring him that if his conjectures were correct, and an expression of them should ever reach Plummer’s ears, it would go hard with him. Two or three days thereafter, Plummer approached Tilden, and gazing fixedly upon him, abruptly asked if he had any clew by which the robbers could be identified. Tilden, though greatly frightened by this inquiry, gave him an answer which allayed whatever suspicion the wary robber might have entertained. But Tilden himself, in relating the incident to his friends, never wavered in his convictions. There were many among the better class of citizens of Bannack who had for a long time suspected Plummer, and believed him to have been engaged in numerous murders and highway robberies, which were of such frequent occurrence as to scarcely cause comment; and when it was determined on the afternoon of January 10, 1864, that Plummer should be hanged, Tilden was sent for and related his story in detail, which convinced all who heard it of Plummer’s guilt.

Within sixty days after Colonel Sanders’s adventure at the Rattlesnake ranche, he was the sole survivor of the party there assembled, the others having been executed by the Vigilance Committee, and Plummer and his associates in the attempted robbery of Hauser and myself had met the same fate.

But little is known of Gallagher’s early history. He was born near Ogdensburg, New York. He was at Iowa Point, Doniphan County, Kansas, in October, 1859, and in Denver from 1862 till early in 1863. At this latter place he killed a man in an affray, and fled, next making his appearance in the Beaverhead mines. During the Summer of 1863, he shot at and badly wounded a blacksmith by the name of Temple, for interfering to prevent a dog-fight. After this he became uneasy, and finally determined upon leaving the country, and started for Utah. On the Dry Creek divide he met George Ives, who persuaded him to return to Virginia City, and join Plummer’s band.

CHAPTER XXVIII
ROBBERY OF MOODY’S TRAIN

One cold morning, a few days after the attempted robbery of Mr. Hauser and the writer, a train of three wagons, with a pack train in company, left Virginia City for Salt Lake City. Milton S. Moody, the owner of the wagons, had been engaged in freighting between the latter place and the mines ever since their first discovery. His route on the present trip lay through Black Tail Deer, Beaverhead, and Dry Creek cañons, so named after the several streams by which they are traversed. Bannack was left twenty miles to the right of the southern angle in the road at Beaverhead Cañon, and except three or four ranches, there were no settlers on the route.