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.