The execution of Ives had a terrifying effect upon the ruffian horde, though a few of them put a bold face upon the matter and were as loud in their threats as ever. The prominent actors in that drama were singled out for slaughter, but no serious instance of personal assault occurred. The ruffians felt secure, as long as they were unknown, and the only revelation yet made was insufficient to implicate any of them with the numerous murders and robberies that had been committed. Facts had appeared upon the trial, making it probable that Carter was accessory to the murder of Tiebalt. The assassination of Dillingham was unavenged. Either of these causes, in the excited state of the public mind, was sufficient to remind the people that the work they had to perform was but just begun. If what they had done was right, it would be wrong to permit others equally guilty to escape. Carter, Stinson, and Lyons must be punished. This spontaneity of thought brought a few of the citizens of Virginia and Nevada into consultation the day following the execution; and before the close of the succeeding day, a league was entered into, in which all classes of the community united, for the punishment of crime and the protection of the people. Before the organization of this committee was completed, a fresh impulse was given to the public indignation on receipt of intelligence that Lloyd Magruder, a merchant of Elk City, and the independent Democratic candidate for Congress, who had been trading in Virginia City during the fall, had, while on his return to his home, with four others, been cruelly murdered and robbed by a number of the gang, in the Bitter Root Mountains. Full particulars of this terrible tragedy will be given in the two following chapters. Magruder was very popular with the people of Virginia City. The committee went to work immediately. Twenty-four of them, well mounted, and provisioned for a long ride, started in pursuit of Carter. That villain, accompanied by William Bunton, Graves, and several others, in anticipation of arrest, left as soon as the trial of Ives was over, for the west side of the range. The pursuers followed on his trail as rapidly as possible, into the Deer Lodge Valley. While riding down the valley, the vanguard of the scouts met Erastus Yager, who from the redness of his hair and whiskers was familiarly called “Red.” He informed them that Carter and his companions were lying drunk at Cottonwood (since Deer Lodge City), and that they avowed themselves good for at least thirty of any men that might be sent to arrest them.