The death of Hunter marked the bloody close of the reign of Plummer’s band. He was the last of that terrible organization to fall a victim to Vigilante justice. The retribution, almost Draconic in severity, administered to these daring freebooters had in no respect exceeded the demands of absolute justice. If the many acts I have narrated of their villainies were not sufficient to justify the extreme course pursued in their extermination, surely the unrevealed history, greater in enormity, and stained with the blood of a hundred or more additional victims, must remove all prejudices from the public mind against the voluntary tribunal of the Vigilantes. There was no other remedy. Practically, they had no law, but, if law had existed, it could not have afforded adequate redress. This was proven by the feeling of security consequent upon the destruction of the band. When the robbers were dead the people felt safe, not for themselves alone, but for their pursuits and their property. They could travel without fear. They had a reasonable assurance of safety in the transmission of money to the States, and in the arrival of property over the unguarded route from Salt Lake City. The crack of pistols had ceased, and they could walk the streets without constant exposure to danger. There was an omnipresent spirit of protection, akin to that omnipresent spirit of law which pervaded older civilized communities. Men of criminal instincts were cowed before the majesty of an outraged people’s wrath, and the very thought of crime became a terror to them. Young men who had learned to believe that the roughs were destined to rule, and who, under the influence of that guilty faith, were fast drifting into crime, shrunk appalled before the thorough work of the Vigilantes. Fear, more potent than conscience, forced even the worst of men to observe the requirements of civilized society, and a feeling of comparative security among all classes was the result. But the work was not all done. A few reckless spirits remained, who, when the excitement was over, forgot the lesson it taught, and returned to their old vocation. The Vigilantes preserved their organization, and, as we shall see in the subsequent pages of this history, meted out the sternest justice to all capital offenders.