Thousands of people, lured by their discoveries, had nearly worked out the placers of Oro Fino during the Summer of 1861. The Pacific world, alive to the importance of a region which promised such great additions to its wealth, kept up a stream of emigration to the placers, which exhausted all the sources of supply more rapidly than they could be filled. The world was there in miniature. Meantime the indomitable prospector kept in the van. Crossing the Salmon River range, he soon unveiled the riches of those placers which afterwards became known as Florence and Elk City. They were immediately occupied by thousands,—and other thousands of the far East, thrilled with the story of their richness, were on their way to the new El Dorado. An hegira similar to that of 1849 again took place across the plains. Lewiston was no longer the base of operations. Among the earliest of those to abandon it for a point more favorable to the prosecution of their enterprise, were the banditti which had so long held its inhabitants in fear. Supplied with horses from the shebang on the Walla Walla road, they departed from Lewiston in small parties, intending to recommence operations at a place afterwards to be selected, in the mountains of the interior. The daring, adventurous, and courageous elements of character are necessarily developed and brought into frequent action in a mining country; and whenever these are found in combination with high moral principle, they are held in continual fear by men of criminal life. One bold, honest man will demoralize the guilty designs of a host of rascals. Nothing was so much dreaded by Plummer’s murderous gang as the possible organization of a Vigilance Committee; and any man who favored it was marked for early destruction. Such a man was Patrick Ford, the keeper of a saloon in Lewiston. Ford was an active man in his own business,—eager in the pursuit of gain, but entirely upright in his dealings, and the open and avowed enemy of the roughs. He, more than any other member of the community, had urged the people of Lewiston to unite for their protection, and hang every suspected individual in the place; and he taunted them with cowardice when they disbanded without punishing the known murderers of Hiltebrant. As fearless as he was uncompromising, he denounced the ruffians in person, and warned them that a time would come ere long when they would meet their deserts at the hands of an outraged people. He did not conceal from them his intention of following in the track of the prosperous miner, lead where it might,—which purpose they resolved to prevent. His death they regarded as necessary to their future prosperity. Having ascertained that he intended to leave Lewiston with a half-dozen dancing girls for the saloon he had established at Oro Fino, they laid a plan to insult him and involve him in a quarrel on his arrival at their shebang, and kill him. Ford was admonished of the design, which he foiled by avoiding the shebang.