THE ARREST AND EXECUTION OF HENRY PLUMMER, THE ROAD AGENT CHIEF, BUCK
STINSON AND NED RAY.
United there that trio died,
By deeds of crime and blood allied.
At dusk, three horses were brought into town, belonging severally and
respectively to the three marauders so often mentioned, Plummer,
Stinson and Ray. It was truly conjectured that they had determined
to leave the country, and it was at once settled that they should
be arrested that night. Parties were detailed for the work. Those
entrusted with the duty, performed it admirably. Plummer was undressing
when taken at his house. His pistol (a self-cocking weapon) was broken
and useless. Had he been armed, resistance would have been futile;
for he was seized the moment the door was opened in answer to the
knocking from without. Stinson was arrested at Toland’s, where he was
spending the evening. He would willingly have done a little firing,
but his captors were too quick for him. Ray was lying on a gaming
table, when seized. The three details marched their men to a given
point, en route to the gallows. Here a halt was made. The leader of the
Vigilantes and some others, who wished to save all unnecessary hard
feeling, were sitting in a cabin, designing not to speak to Plummer,
with whom they were so well acquainted. A halt was made, however, and,
at the door, appeared Plummer. The light was extinguished; when the
party moved on, but soon halted. The crisis had come. Seeing that the
circumstances were such as admitted of neither vacillation nor delay,
the citizen leader, summoning his friends, went up to the party and
gave the military command, “Company! forward--march!” This was at once
obeyed. A rope taken from a noted functionary’s bed had been mislaid
and could not be found. A nigger boy was sent off for some of that
highly necessary, but unpleasant remedy for crime, and the bearer made
such good time that some hundreds of feet of hempen neck-tie were on
the ground before the arrival of the party at the gallows. On the
road, Plummer heard the voice and recognized the person of the leader.
He came to him and begged for his life; but was told, “It is useless
for you to beg for your life; that affair is settled and cannot be
altered. You are to be hanged. You cannot feel harder about it than I
do; but I cannot help it, if I would.” Ned Ray, clothed with curses
as with a garment, actually tried fighting, but found that he was in
the wrong company for such demonstrations; and Buck Stinson made the
air ring with the blasphemous and filthy expletives which he used in
addressing his captors. Plummer exhausted every argument and plea that
his imagination could suggest, in order to induce his captors to spare
his life. He begged to be chained down in the meanest cabin; offered to
leave the country forever; wanted a jury trial; implored time to settle
his affairs; asked to see his sister-in-law, and, falling on his knees,
with tears and sighs declared to God that he was too wicked to die. He
confessed his numerous murders and crimes, and seemed almost frantic at
the prospect of death.
The first rope being thrown over the cross-beam, and the noose being
rove, the order was given to “Bring up Ned Ray.” This desperado was run
up with curses on his lips. Being loosely pinioned, he got his fingers
between the rope and his neck, and thus prolonged his misery.
Buck Stinson saw his comrade robber swinging in the death agony, and
blubbered out, “There goes poor Ed Ray.” Scant mercy had he shown to
his numerous victims. By a sudden twist of his head at the moment of
his elevation, the knot slipped under his chin, and he was some minutes
dying.
The order to “Bring up Plummer” was then passed and repeated; but no
one stirred. The leader went over to this PERFECT GENTLEMAN, as his
friends called him, and was met by a request to “Give a man time to
pray.” Well knowing that Plummer relied for a rescue upon other than
Divine aid, he said briefly and decidedly, “Certainly; but let him say
his prayers up here.” Finding all efforts to avoid death were useless,
Plummer rose and said no more prayers. Standing under the gallows which
he had erected for the execution of Horan, this second Haman slipped
off his neck-tie and threw it over his shoulder to a young friend who
had boarded at his house, and who believed him innocent of crime,
saying as he tossed it to him, “Here is something to remember me by.”
In the extremity of his grief, the young man threw himself weeping and
wailing, upon the ground. Plummer requested that the men would give
him a good drop, which was done, as far as circumstances permitted, by
hoisting him up as high as possible, in their arms, and letting him
fall suddenly. He died quickly and without much struggle.
It was necessary to seize Ned Ray’s hand and by a violent effort to
draw his fingers from between the noose and his neck before he died.
Probably he was the last to expire, of the guilty trio.
The news of a man’s being hanged flies faster than any other
intelligence, in a Western country, and several had gathered round the
gallows on that fatal Sabbath evening--many of them friends of the Road
Agents. The spectators were allowed to come up to a certain point, and
were then halted by the guard, who refused permission either to depart
or to approach nearer than the “dead line,” on pain of their being
instantly shot.
The weather was intensely cold; but the party stood for a long time
round the bodies of the suspended malefactors, determined that rescue
should be impossible.
Loud groans and cries uttered in the vicinity, attracted their
attention, and a small squad started in the direction from which
the sound proceeded. The detachment soon met Madam Hall, a noted
courtezan--the mistress of Ned Ray--who was “Making night hideous”
with her doleful wailings. Being at once stopped, she began inquiring
for her paramour, and was thus informed of his fate, “Well if you must
know, he is hung.” A volcanic eruption of oaths and abuse was her reply
to this information; but the men were on “short time,” and escorted her
towards her dwelling without superfluous display of courtesy. Having
arrived at the brow of a short descent, at the foot of which stood her
cabin, STERN necessity compelled a rapid and final progress in that
direction.
Soon after, the party formed and returned to town, leaving the corpses
stiffening in the icy blast. The bodies were eventually cut down by
the friends of the Road Agents and buried. The “Reign of Terror,” in
Bannack, was over.