A Stout Cord And A Good Drop

Larger-than-life characters and the drama of gold-rush days in Bannack, Montana Territory, come to life in this suspenseful, fact-based historical novel. While the Civil War raged in the East, a war of a different kind was being played out in the new settlements of the Wild West--a war for political power and for control over the vast wealth of the new territories. The noose and gallows were the weapons of that war, wielded in the name of law and order by future senators, governors, lawmen, and copper barons.
Revealed through the eyes of five young men caught up in the Montana Vigilantes' hanging of the infamous sheriff Henry Plummer, A Stout Cord and a Good Drop offers fresh perspectives on one of the most intriguing periods in western history.


"A Stout Cord and a Good Drop" portrays the lawless era of Montana's gold rush through the eyes of five young men swept up in the drama and controversy of those lawless days in the early 1860s. While the Civil War raged in the East, a war of a different kind--for control over the population of and government over the new Montana Territory--was played out in the dirt streets of mining towns and empty byways and tree-filled gulches between them. The formation of the Montana Vigilance Committee and their attempts to control the diverse population of the booming region is the backbone of this dramatic tale of intrigue in the Old West.