The new diggings did not at first prove themselves, and the camp at Bannack, on Grasshopper Creek, was more prosperous. Henry Plummer, therefore, elected Bannack as his headquarters. Others of the loosely connected banditti began to drop into Bannack from other districts, and Plummer was soon surrounded by his clan and kin in crime. George Ives, Bill Mitchell, Charlie Reeves, Cy Skinner, and others began operations on the same lines which had so distinguished them at the earlier diggings, west of the range. In a few weeks Bannack was as bad as Lewiston or Florence had ever been. In fact, it became so bad that the Vigilantes began to show their teeth, although they confined their sentences to banishment. The black sheep and the white began now to be segregated. Plummer, shrewd to see the drift of opinion, saw that he must now play his hand out to the finish, that he could not now reform. He accordingly laid his plans to kill Jack Crawford, who was chosen as miners' sheriff. Plummer undertook one expedient after another to draw Crawford into a quarrel, in which he knew he could kill him; for Plummer's speed with the pistol had been proved when he killed Jack Cleveland, one of his own best gun-fighters. Rumor ran that he was the best pistol shot in the Rockies and as bad a man as the worst. Plummer thought that Crawford suspected him of belonging to the bandits, and so doomed him. Crawford was wary, and defeated three separate attempts to waylay and kill him, besides avoiding several quarrels that were thrust upon him by Plummer or his men. Dick Phleger, a friend of Crawford, was also marked by Plummer, who challenged him to fight with pistols, as he frequently had challenged Crawford. Phleger was a braver man than Crawford, but he declined the duel. Plummer would have killed them both. He only wanted the appearance of an "even break," with the later plea of "self-defence," which has shielded so many bad men from punishment for murder.