Classicly

The Desire of the Moth; and the Come On is a western story written by Eugene Manlove Rhodes,  an American writer, nicknamed the "cowboy chronicler".

Excerpts:

It was a tidy step to Prescott—say, as far as from Philadelphia to Savannah, or from Richmond to Augusta; but John Wesley had made many such rides in the Odyssey of his wonder years. Some of them had been made in haste. But there was no haste now. Sam Bass, his corn-fed sorrel, was hardly less sleek and sturdy than at the start, though a third of the way was behind him. Pringle rode by easy stages, and where he found himself pleased, there he tarried for a space.