While the events I have just recorded were in progress at Bannack, the Vigilantes of Virginia City were not inactive. Alder Gulch had been the stronghold of the roughs ever since its discovery. Nearly all their predatory expeditions had been fitted out there. Being much the largest, richest, and most populous mining camp in the Territory, the opportunities it afforded for robbery were more frequent and promising, and less liable to discovery, than either Bannack or Deer Lodge. It was also filled with saloons, hurdy-gurdies, bagnios, and gambling-rooms, all of which were necessities in the lives of these free rangers of the mountains. At the time of which I write there was a population of at least twelve thousand, scattered through the various settlements from Junction to Summit, a distance of twelve miles. It was essentially a cosmopolitan community,—American in preponderance, but liberally sprinkled with people from all the nations of Europe. Some were going, and others coming, every day. Gold dust was abundant, and freedom from social and moral restraint characterized all classes, to an extent bordering upon criminal license. The Vigilantes, more than ever, after it was decided to execute Plummer, comprehended the necessity for prompt and vigorous measures, as that event of itself would be the signal for all the guilty followers of that chief to fly the Territory. Accordingly, having ascertained that six of the robber band were still remaining in Virginia City, the Executive Committee decided upon effectual means for their immediate arrest. On the thirteenth day of January, three days after Plummer was executed, an order was quietly made for the Vigilantes to assemble at night in sufficient force to surround the city. Not a man was to be permitted to leave the city after the line of guards was established. Bill Hunter, one of the six marked for capture, suspecting the plot, effected his escape by crawling beyond the pickets in a drain ditch. The city was encircled, after nightfall, by more than five hundred armed men, so quietly that none within, except the Vigilantes, knew of it until the next morning. All that long winter night, while that cordon of iron men was quietly stretching along the heights overlooking the city, the Executive Committee sat in council, deliberating upon the evidences of guilt against the men enmeshed in their toils. At the same time another small band was assembled around a faro table in the chamber of a gambling saloon. Jack Gallagher suddenly broke the silence of the game with the remark, “While we are here betting, those Vigilantes are passing sentence of death upon us.” Wonderful prescience! He little knew or realized the truth which this observation had for him and his comrades in iniquity.