“No, thank you, Plummer,” he replied, laughing, “I’m not looking around for any one to shoot this morning, and have no special regard for any one who is. If you are, and you really want to shoot, you’d better turn loose.”
It so happened that at the time of this conversation, Crawford, armed for the purpose, was searching for Plummer, with the intention of shooting him. As is usual on all such occasions, friends interfered to prevent a collision, but Crawford, believing that either he or Plummer must die on their next meeting, gave no heed to their advice. When this was understood by Plummer’s friends, they resorted to various devices to throw Crawford off his guard. At one time they told him that Plummer was about to leave town. This only made him the more watchful. Plummer, meantime, was careful to have one or more friends constantly in his company, so that Crawford could not fire at him without endangering the lives of others. This situation of affairs between the two men continued for several days. The entire community was prepared to hear of the death of one or both at any moment, and each was now encouraged in his purpose by his friends. Plummer was frequently seen near the butcher shop, but never alone. He finally disappeared, and sent a friend to Crawford with the proposition that they should drop all hostile intentions and meet as strangers.
“Tell Plummer,” said Crawford, “that the trick is too shallow. I know him. His word of honor, so repeatedly broken, I regard no more than the wind. He or I must die or leave the camp.”
Soon after this, one of Crawford’s friends discovered that Plummer and his friends had laid a plan to shoot him in his own doorway, under cover of a house directly opposite, and told Crawford of it. While Crawford was on the lookout, a woman living in a cabin in the rear of the Bannack Restaurant called to him to come and get a cup of coffee. While he was drinking it, Frank Ray approached him, and telling him that Plummer was searching for him, placed in his hands Buz Cavan’s double-barrelled rifle. At this moment, Plummer, armed with a similar weapon, came up on the opposite side of the street, and stopping in front of the door, with one foot elevated and resting upon a spoke of a wagon-wheel, placed his rifle across his knee, his right fore-arm lying horizontally along the stock, which he grasped as if prepared to fire at a moment’s notice. Crawford’s friends urged him to improve that opportunity to shoot him. He went out quickly, and resting the rifle across a log projecting from the corner of the cabin, shot Plummer in the right arm, the ball entering at the elbow, and lodging in the wrist.
“Fire away, you cowardly ruffian,” shouted Plummer, straightening himself and facing Crawford.
Crawford fired a second time, but the ball missed; and Plummer walked down to his cabin, carrying his gun, and followed by several of his friends.
Crawford knew that Plummer’s friends would kill him, unless he outwitted them on his escape from the country. He left for Fort Benton immediately, travelling the entire distance of two hundred and eighty miles by a trail that only those who had passed over it could trace. He was followed by three roughs, but arrived at the Fort in advance of them, where he was protected by Mr. Dawson, the factor at the post. He remained there until spring, and then took passage on a Mackinaw boat to the States.
Crawford’s friends, and the miners generally, who had regarded this quarrel as a personal difficulty between him and Plummer, rejoiced at his escape. It had terminated injuriously, as they felt, to the party who was most in fault, and they were glad the result was no worse. Few knew or ever suspected that it had any deeper origin than the frequent collisions incident to Crawford’s attendance upon Cleveland, after he was shot, and his action as sheriff at the trial of Moore and Reeves. Had it been understood at this time that the roughs had not only decreed the death of Crawford, but of every other man who participated in that trial, the people would have placed themselves on a war footing, and organized themselves to resist the encroachments of the ruffians, which finally left them no other alternative. So fully did they carry out their avowed purposes, that, within five months after the trial, not more than seven of the twenty-seven men who participated in it as judge, prosecutor, sheriff, witnesses, and jurors, were left alive in the Territory. Eight or nine are known to have been killed by some of the band, and others fled to avoid a like fate.
Plummer’s wound was very severe. The ball entered at the elbow. Passing down the arm, it broke each bone in two places. Dr. Glick, the surgeon in attendance upon him, after a careful examination of the wound, was of the opinion that amputation of the member alone could save his life. The ball could not be found, and the arm swelled to thrice its natural size, and the passage made by the ball was filled for its entire length with bony spiculæ.
Plummer had in a previous affray lost the ready use of his other hand, and knowing that the loss of this arm would necessarily deprive him of his position of chief among the roughs, and that his life depended upon his skill in drawing his revolver,—as he had numerous enemies, who would endeavor to kill him but for the advantage which this skill gave him,—declared that he might as well die as lose his arm. He peremptorily refused to consent to the operation, but insisted that the ball must be found and removed.