Henry Plummer, the most important captain of these cutthroats of the mountains, had a hundred or more men in his widely scattered criminal confederacy. More than one hundred murders were committed by these banditti in the space of three years. Many others were, without doubt, committed and never traced. Dead bodies were common in those hills, and often were unidentified. The wanderer from the States usually kept his own counsel. None knew who his family might be; and that family, missing a member who disappeared into the maw of the great West of that day of danger, might never know the fate of the one mysteriously vanished. These robbers 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_.