By good fortune, however, Crawford caught Plummer off his guard and fired upon him with a rifle, breaking his right arm.

Plummer's friends called in Dr.Glick, the best physician in Bannack, to treat the wounded man, warning him that if he told anything about the visit he would be shot down.

Glick held his peace, and later was obliged to attend many of the wounded outlaws, who were always engaged in affairs with firearms.
Of all these wild affrays, of the savage life which they denoted, and of the stern ways in which retribution overtook the desperadoes of the mines, there is no better historian than Nathaniel P.Langford, a prominent citizen of the West, who accompanied the overland expedition of 1862 and took part in the earliest life of Montana.

His work, "Vigilante Days and Ways," is an invaluable contemporary record.
It is mentally difficult for us now fully to restore these scenes, although the events occurred no earlier than the Civil War.

"Life in Bannack at this time," says Langford, "was perfect isolation from the rest of the world.