The marshals have us by the throat.

In the old days a sheriff that outlived his term was probably crooked and runnin' hand in hand with the long-riders." "Long-riders ?" queried Bard.
"Fellers that got tired of workin' and took to ridin' for their livin'.
Mostly they worked in little gangs of five and six.

They was called long-riders, I guess, partly because they was in the saddle all the time, and partly because they done their jobs so far apart.

They'd ride into Eldara and blow up the safe in the bank one day, for instance, and five days later they'd be two hundred and fifty miles away stoppin' a train at Lewis Station.
"They never hung around no one part of the country and that made it hard as hell to run 'em down--that and because they had the best hosses that money could buy.

They had friends, too, strung out all over--squatters and the like of that.