Henry Plummer: A Novel

There was a time when murderers and highwaymen were believed by honest folk to be in the majority, and when even to whisper of suspicion meant death to the whisperer. No trail was safe. Men mysteriously disappeared. Miners, with their hard-earned wealth, left the camps for their homes and were never heard of again. Sheriff and outlaw Henry Plummer needed no introduction to the citizens of Montana Territory in the mid-nineteenth century. And well into the twentieth century, Frank Bird Linderman sought out the stories of the people who knew Plummer–and ultimately hanged him. In 1920 Linderman completed a novel about Plummer’s life, but it was rejected by publisher after publisher. They felt that it showed too much fidelity to historical truth for a public increasingly enamored of western dime novels. Eighty years later, Linderman’s lively interpretation of one of Montana’s most enduring legends is being published for the first time. Plummer scarcely resembled the model sheriffs of movie and television westerns.Coolly calculating, he used his position as sheriff of Bannack during Montana Territory’s first gold rush to organize a band of road agents who systematically robbed and murdered miners in remote areas. The highwaymen became so brazen that the miners felt compelled to band together and wage a vigorous lynch-law campaign to restore order. In 1864 these vigilantes caught up with Plummer and delivered their own brand of justice. Frank Bird Linderman (1869-1938) is the highly acclaimed author of the following works, all available in Bison Books editions: Indian Old-Man Stories, Indian Why Stories, Kootenai Why Stories, The Montana Stories of Frank B. Linderman, Old Man Coyote, Plenty-coups, and Pretty-shield. Sarah Waller Hatfield is Linderman’s granddaughter.