Word of the day: pistolero

The word of the day is pistolero:

1. a member of an armed band of roving mounted bandits.
2. a gunman or hired killer.

(http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/pistolero)

"One account describes how a single shipment of 7,771 bars left the city in 1549, four years after the lode's discovery.  Each bar was about 99 percent silver and weighed more than eighty pounds...  Each llama could carry only three or four bars...  The shipment required more than two thousand of the beasts.  They were watched by more than a thousand Indian guards who in turn were watched by squads of Spanish pistoleros."

 - Charles Mann, 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created