Towards the close of the Summer of 1862, the band organized by Plummer having increased in numbers, he selected two points of rendezvous, as bases for their operations. These were called “shebangs.” They were enclosed by mountains, whose rugged fastnesses were available for refuge in case of attack.

One was located between Alpwai and Pataha creeks, on the road from Lewiston to Walla Walla, about twenty-five miles from the former, and the other at the foot of Craig’s Mountain, between Lewiston and Oro Fino, at a point where the main road was intersected by a trail for pack animals. The location of the latter was upon ground reserved by treaty to the Nez PercÉs Indians, and near a military post established for its protection. The chief of the tribe complained to the resident agent of the Indians, of the aggression. He laid the complaint before the commandant of the post, who treated it with neglect. The robbers occupied the spot without molestation, and when they abandoned it, it was of their own accord.

There were several smaller stations nearer to Walla Walla and Lewiston, which were occupied only as occasion might require. A close communication was established between these localities, by which the operations of each were speedily known to all. Plummer, meantime, while secretly directing the affairs of the shebangs and issuing orders continually to the men, contrived to ward off suspicion from himself, and preserve the appearance of a harmless and inoffensive citizen of Lewiston. His notoriety as a gambler was shared by so many better men, and by a great majority of the miners themselves, that it really protected him in his character as a robber. While, therefore, he was prying into the financial condition of those with whom his profession brought him in daily contact in town, he was at the same time informing his confederates at the shebangs of every departure which boded success to their enterprise.

Such of the population as were not, to a greater or less degree, involved in the gambling operations of the community, although perfectly cognizant of the designs of the robbers, were too insignificant in numbers to offer any active opposition. Being without organization, they hardly knew each other. Such was the state of feeling that, if a gambler or rough desired to possess any of the articles on sale by merchants or grocers, he entered a store, selected for himself the best the assortment afforded, and took it away with a request that it should be charged, or stated that some day when he was in luck he would pay for it. Rather than risk an affray, the dealer submitted to the imposition. Payment was generally made, the gamblers entertaining, among themselves, a standard of honor in such matters which it was considered disgraceful to violate.

The two roads upon which the shebangs were located were the only thoroughfares in the country, and not a day passed that they were not traversed by people in going to and returning from the interior mining camps, and in coming into and departing from the country. The number of robberies and murders committed by the banditti will never be known. Mysterious disappearances soon became of almost weekly occurrence. The danger which every man incurred of being robbed or killed was demonstrated by numerous escapes made by horsemen who had been assaulted and fired upon, and escaped by the fleetness of their horses. It was fully understood that whoever passed over either of these roads would have to run the gantlet in the neighborhood of the shebangs, and people generally went prepared. Crime was fearfully on the increase all through the secluded districts which separated the river from the distant mining camps. The country itself, about equally made up of mountains, foothills, caÑons, dense pine forests, lava beds, and deep river-channels, was as favorable for the commission of crime as for the concealment of its perpetrators.

The two shebangs swarmed with ruffians. On one occasion a party of half a dozen, while riding in the vicinity of Craig’s Mountain, were stopped by a volley from the shebang, which, being harmless, was returned. A number of well-mounted robbers started in pursuit. The party escaped by hard spurring, one of the number, to lighten his burden, throwing several large bags of gold dust into the grass. They were afterwards recovered. A butcher by the name of Harkness, of Oro Fino, was also assaulted, and fired upon, who owed his deliverance to the fleetness of his horse. Owners of pack trains never attempted to pass without force sufficient to intimidate the robbers.

The other shebang was used as a receptacle for stolen horses. It was under the superintendence of a noted horse-thief by the name of Turner, who had been a partner in the business with Bill Bunton. Any member of the band, whose claim to recognition was founded upon success in any thieving or bloody enterprise, could leave his jaded steed here in exchange for a fresh one. A single incident will illustrate the manner in which many of the horses were obtained. A gentleman riding a beautiful young mare, on his way from Oregon to Oro Fino, while she was drinking from the stream near by, was suddenly confronted by a man, who claimed her as his property. Several persons were witnesses to the meeting. Drawing a bill of sale of the mare, from his pocket, which he had obtained five hundred miles away, he dismounted, and was about to prove his ownership, when the ruffian jumped into the saddle, and, seizing the bridle, rode rapidly away. The wayfarer called upon the by-standers to assist in the recapture of the animal, instead of which they knocked him down, stripped him of everything in his pockets, and told him to leave. He entered Lewiston utterly destitute.

No occupation in the northern mines tested the courage and honesty of men more severely than that of the Express riders. Their duties, in riding from camp to camp, frequently for hundreds of miles, where there was not a dwelling, carrying large amounts of treasure, made them objects of frequent attack. Tried men were selected for this business—men as well known for personal bravery as for their adroitness in the use of weapons in personal encounter. The notoriety of this class was sufficient as a general thing to protect them from attack, unless it could be made under every possible advantage. It is a remarkable fact, and speaks as little in favor of the courage of the desperadoes as in praise of the daring nobility of these early Express riders, that few of the latter were interrupted in the discharge of their dangerous duties. They were ever upon the alert. It was the work of an instant only, when attacked, for them to draw and discharge their revolvers, with deadly effect, and follow up the smallest advantage with the no less fatal bowie-knife. One man has been known in an encounter of this kind to kill four assailants and escape unharmed.

Tracy & Co., of Lewiston, had a pony express route from that town to Salmon River, a distance of seventy-five miles. Their messenger, whom we only know by the name of Mose, was a man of great intrepidity, and perfectly familiar with all the risks of his business. In single encounter he was understood to be more than a match for any man in the mountains. Some time in the early Fall of 1862 a plan was laid by Plummer and his associates to capture Mose. The place selected for the purpose was the trail crossing of White Bird Creek, at a distance of sixty miles from Lewiston and eighteen from Salmon River. At this point the creek runs between very abrupt banks densely covered with cottonwoods, rendering both descent and ascent tedious and difficult. The robbers, in anticipation of the arrival of Mose, as usual on a keen lope, after darkness had set in had felled a tree across the trail at a sufficient height to admit the passage of the horse, and at the same time strike the rider in the chest, and throw him suddenly from the saddle. They then intended to kill him and rob his cantinas, which it was supposed would contain several thousand dollars in gold dust. At Chapman’s ranche, near the crossing, Mose was told that several suspicious characters had been prowling in the neighborhood during the afternoon, and with that keen sense which had been educated to scent danger from afar, he at once comprehended the whole plot. Carefully descending the bank, he discovered the snare, and turning to the left avoided it, hurried through the creek, and ascending the opposite bank cast a look of derision back upon the foiled highwaymen. This fearless messenger continued in service long after this event, but his future trips were made under the escort of well-armed assistants.

Winters are nowhere more dreary than among the miners. Frost and snow bring their labors to an end, and for three or four months they either remain in their camps in a state of listless inactivity, or seek for occupation and enjoyment in the excesses of the nearest populous settlement. Hundreds of them actually squander during the season of winter all that they have obtained by the most severe toil during the rest of the year. With the terrible example before him, he must be a man of resolute will who can long refrain from embracing vice in all its forms.

Gambling becomes a favorite occupation, and whiskey a common beverage. The society of abandoned women lures him on, until every moral, social, and virtuous resolution is broken down, and the experience of a few months of such a life wholly unfits him for a return to his earlier pursuits. This is the experience of three-fourths of the young men who seek for fortune among the gold mines. Most of this class who had been occupied in placer digging during the summer and fall, at the first approach of cold forsook their mines, and crowded into Lewiston to spend the winter, bringing with them the hard earnings of their toil. Following in their wake came the professional gamblers and sports, and, mingling with the common mass, were the wretches who had reached the lowest depths of human depravity. A letter from one of the early settlers of Lewiston, written at the time, says: “Late in 1862 a large number congregated here to pass the winter. About seventy-five per cent of these were cut-throats, robbers, gamblers, and escaped convicts. Honest men were in a fearful minority, and dared not lisp of the arrest and punishment of criminals; the villains had their own way in everything.”

I record the following as an incident which will better illustrate the condition of society than anything I can write. A gambler named Kirby borrowed of another a revolver. Secretly withdrawing the charges from it, an hour later he returned it, and requested the owner to lend him a few ounces of gold dust, which request was declined. Knowing that he had the money, Kirby, enraged at the refusal, put the muzzle of a loaded revolver to the temple of the other, and blew out his brains. No arrest was attempted. The cold-blooded, mid-day murderer walked the streets of the town during the entire winter, mingled in the sports, and escaped unwhipped of justice. Three years afterward he was arrested in Oregon, and turned over to the Idaho authorities, upon the requisition of Governor Lyon, but no witnesses appearing against him he was suffered to go at large.

In a state of society where the majority of the people depend upon vicious pursuits for a livelihood, want and destitution are the natural elements. Increase of crime in all its forms follows. All through the Winter of 1861–62, and until returns began to come in from the mines the following Spring, Lewiston was daily and nightly a theatre where the entire calendar of crime was exhibited in epitome. Murders were frequent; robberies and thefts constant; gambling, debauchery, drunkenness, and all their attendant evils, openly flaunted in the face of day in defiance of law. Money and food were so scarce that robbery with the sporting community became an actual necessity. How to protect themselves against it sorely taxed the wit and tried the courage of the unfortunate property holders. Canvas walls offered slight resistance to determined thieves, and life was not protected by them from murderous bullets. An exemplification is furnished in the following incident:

A German named Hiltebrant kept a saloon in a large canvas building in the centre of the town. It was the principal rendezvous for the Germans, and a popular retail establishment. Hiltebrant was known to possess a considerable amount of coin and gold dust, which the roughs resolved to appropriate. The barriers in the way involved only the possible murder of the owner and two friends who occupied a large bed in the front of the saloon. Between twelve and one o’clock in one of the coldest nights of the first week of January, the door was suddenly broken from its hinges, and a volley of balls fired in the direction of the bed. Hiltebrant was instantly killed. His two companions, after returning the fire of the ruffians, seized the treasure and escaped. One of the villains was wounded in the finger. When the firing ceased, the robbers coolly entered the building, lighted a candle, and proceeded to search for the money. Finding none they departed, uttering curses upon their ill-fortune, not, however, until several citizens appeared upon the scene, and witnessed the enormity of their crime. The murderers passed fearlessly and unconcernedly through the crowd, no effort being made to arrest them, lest a rescue might be attempted, which would prove fatal to all concerned, and possibly result in the burning of the town. The next day, however, a meeting of the citizens was held, for the avowed purpose of punishing the murderers, and devising measures to arrest the further progress of crime.

This was the first effort at self-protection made by the people. The moment was a trying one. All knew that the roughs were in the majority, and no one was bold enough to recommend open resistance to their encroachments, for fear of consequences. Henry Plummer took an active part in the proceedings, depicting with fervid eloquence “the horrors of anarchy” and solemnly warning the people to “take no steps that might bring disgrace and obloquy upon their rising young city.” Known as a gambler only, and suspected by few of any darker associations, his winning manner had the effect to squelch in its inception the initiatory movement, which at no distant period was to burst forth and whelm him, with hundreds of his bloody associates, in its avenging vortex.

The brother of the murdered Hiltebrant was in business at this time at the Oro Fino mines. Hearing of the murder, he openly avowed the intention of going immediately to Lewiston to bring the authors to justice. The banditti sent him a message that he would not live to get there, which had the effect to daunt him from his purpose, and the assassins, for the time, escaped punishment.