After a few days' march found ourselves once more in the camino real that led from Chihuahua to Zacatecas. All the frightful stories I had heard about robbers now began to flash upon my memory, which made me regard every man I encountered on the road with a very suspicious eye. As all travelers go armed, it is impossible to distinguish them from banditti; so that the unsuspecting traveler is very frequently set upon by the very man he had been consorting with in apparent good-fellowship, and either murdered on the spot, or dragged from his horse with the lazo, and plundered of all that is valuable about him.

Commerce of the Prairies (1831–1839), Chapter 21 - Trip from Chihuahua to Aguascalientes, in 1835 — Robbers