Sam Elliott has stated that this is his favorite movie of all the ones that he's been in.
2 years after the release of this film Sam Elliot and Buck Taylor would star in another western together, "Tombstone".
Barry Corbin (the stagecoach driver) is from Lamesa, Texas, which he refers to by name. That region - the Texas panhandle - was fiercely defended by the Comanches and would be such a danger to whites that it led to the establishment of the Goodnight-Loving Trail; a inconvenient but safe route for cattle drives that went from the south of that dangerous area, running due west to New Mexico and then north. The area was the site of a number of massacres of whites and of a major battle between the Indians and the army at the abandoned trading post of Adobe Walls. Oddly, Corbin pronounces the name of Lamesa in the Spanish style with a soft E, whereas the actual pronunciation is "la meesa".