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. They'd drop in on these little fellers and pass
'em a couple of twenties and make themselves solid for life. Afterward
they used 'em for stoppin' places.

"They'd pull off a couple of hold-ups, then they'd ride off to one of
these squatter places and lay up for ten days, maybe, drinkin' and
feedin' up themselves and their hosses. That was the only way they was
ever caught. They was killed off by each other, fighting about the
split-up, or something like that.

"But now and then a gang held together long enough to raise so much hell
that they got known from one end of the range to the other. Mostly they
held together because they had a leader who knew how to handle 'em and
who kept 'em under his thumb. That was the way with old Piotto.

"He had five men under him. They was all hell-benders who had ridden the
range alone and had their share of fights and killings, which there
wasn't one of 'em that wouldn't have been good enough to go leader in
any other crew, but they had to knuckle under to old Piotto. He was a
great gunman and he was pretty good in scheming up ways of dodging the
law and picking the best booty. He had these five men, and then he had
his daughter, Joan. She was better'n two ordinary men herself.

"Three years that gang held together and got rich--fair rich. They made
it so fast they couldn't even gamble the stuff away. About a thousand
times, I guess posses went out after Piotto, but they never came back
with a trace of 'em; they never got within shootin' distance. Finally
Piotto got so confident that he started raidin' ranches and carryin' off
members of well-off ranchers to hold for ransom. That was the easiest
way of maki