The vigilantes of Montana; Or, popular justice in the Rocky Mountains / Being a correct and impartial narrative of the chase, trial, capture and execution of Henry Plummer's road agent band, together with accounts of the lives and crimes of many of the robbers and desperadoes, the whole being interspersed with sketches of life in the mining camps of the "Far West"

A first-hand account of frontier vigilantism that recounts the pursuit, trial, capture, and execution of an organized band of road agents, while profiling many alleged robbers and desperadoes. Interwoven with these episodes are sketches of mining-camp life, describing social conditions, widespread vice, and the fragile exercise of law in newly settled regions. The narrator explains the formation and actions of vigilance committees as responses to violence and theft, arguing their necessity and fairness, and contrasts the camp’s rough, precarious order with more settled communities to explain why extralegal measures arose.