Amazed at the expression of an opinion so much stronger than my own, I at once decided to reject the advice of the League, rather than incur the responsibility of recommending so dangerous a person for the office. Plummer heard of it, and lost no time in asking an explanation, affecting to believe that I had promised to recommend him. We sat down upon an ox-shoeing frame, and talked over the whole matter. He had his pistol in his belt. I was unarmed. He said many provoking things, and used many oaths and epithets, in his attempt to provoke a quarrel, but all to no purpose. Finding that no excuse would be given him for a resort to violence, he arose, and as we parted, said,
“Langford, you’ll be sorry for this before the matter ends. I’ve always been your friend, but from this time on, I’m your enemy; and when I say this, I mean it in more ways than one.”
These were the closing words of our last conversation. We met afterwards, but never spoke.
During that fall I was engaged in purchasing lumber at Bannack to sell at Virginia City, where no sawmills had yet been put in operation. The business required frequent trips between the two places; and the ride of seventy miles through a lonely country, whose surface alternated with cañons, ravines, foothills, and mountains, afforded such ample opportunity for secret robbery and murder, that it required considerable ingenuity to throw the villains off the track. With the threat of Plummer hanging over me to be executed upon the first favorable opportunity, my position was by no means an enviable one. I would send forward the loaded teams, which were four days on the trip, and on the morning of the fourth would follow, mounted on a good horse, and arrive in Virginia City the same evening. On my arrival my horse was immediately put in charge of a rancher, or person who made the care of horses a specialty. He would send it with a herd to a convenient grass range, where it would feed in the care of herders night and day until wanted. Then it was brought into town and delivered at the office of the rancher. The order for a horse was given the night before it was wanted, in order to have the animal ready the following morning.
George Ives, who turned out to be one of the most desperate of the gang of robbers, was the rancher’s clerk at Virginia City. Whenever application was made for a horse, unless the applicant was on his guard, Ives could, by a careless inquiry, learn his destination. By communicating this to his confederates, they could pursue and rob, or kill the rider without delay or suspicion. To escape this system of espionage it was my custom, when ready to leave for Bannack or elsewhere, to send an order by a friend to the rancher or Ives, requesting him to let the bearer have the horse to go to some point which I designated, in an opposite direction from my actual destination. The friend would receive and mount the horse, and ride out of town, beyond observation, where I would meet him and go on my way. Thirty journeys of this kind were safely made between Virginia City and Bannack during the fall, none, however, without the precaution of carrying a pair of revolvers in my cantinas, and a double-barrelled gun across my saddle.
During a brief stay in Omaha several years ago, I met with Dr. Leavitt, who was a resident of Bannack while Plummer dwelt there. He related the following incident, which is repeated here, for the insight it affords of Plummer’s malignancy.
“One night in October, 1863,” said the doctor, “I was walking along the roadway of Main Street in Bannack. The moon, obscured by clouds, shed a dim light, by which I could see for a few yards quite distinctly. As I passed your boarding-house, my attention was attracted by a noise at my left. I stopped, and on close observation saw a dark object under the window. My curiosity was excited to know what it could be. Judge of my surprise on approaching it to behold a man with a revolver in his hand, on his knees at the window, peering into the room through a space of less than an inch between the curtain and the window casing. I watched him unobserved for some seconds. Disturbed by my approach, he sprang to his feet and darted around the corner of the building—but not so rapidly as to escape recognition.
“‘Why, Plummer,’ I exclaimed, ‘what in the world are you doing there?’
“Seeing that he was known, he came forward, laughing, and replied,
“‘I was trying to play a joke on my friend Langford. He and Gillette board here, and I heard their voices.’