Lonesome Dove, Volume 2: Comanche Moon by Larry McMurtry

"I FEEL LIKE I've been around this ring once too often, Woodrow," Augustus said. "Don't you? The same governor we used to work for wants to send us after the same outlaw we ought to have killed way back when Inish Scull was our boss."

The governor he was referring to was E. M. Pease, one of the few able men willing to take the provisional governorship under the terms of a harsh Reconstruction; the outlaw in question was Blue Duck, whose band of murderers was making travel hazardous from the Sabine to the Big Wichita. The army was busy trying to subdue the few remaining free Comanches; the rangers were depleted in numbers and in spirit, but they were still the only force capable of dealing with general lawlessness of a magnitude likely to be beyond the scope of local sheriffs.