- Deputy Del Stark: To come in here, how do I justify that? How do I say to myself, it was one of those things, Del. And forget about it?
- Reverend Spencer: Is that what you want? To blot it from your memory, as if it had never happened?
- Deputy Del Stark: I want to feel good again. About myself, about my work. Instead I feel...
- Reverend Spencer: You feel damned.
- Deputy Del Stark: Am I damned, reverend? Am I!
- Reverend Spencer: I don't believe you are.
- Deputy Del Stark: Well, how do I know?
- Reverend Spencer: Do you want to be forgiven? I can forgive you. But when you start asking me for proof
- [shakes his head]
- Deputy Del Stark: Then you offer me nothing.
- Reverend Spencer: I offer you all that there is. Faith.
- Deputy Del Stark: Faith doesn't tell me it was right to shoot up a church. I need a sign.
- Reverend Spencer: Oh, a miracle?
- Deputy Del Stark: If you want to call it that. I have to know.
- Reverend Spencer: The answer is still the same.
- Deputy Del Stark: Faith? In God? Well, I have faith in God, reverend. The question in my mind is - how does He feel about me?
- Pat Gilroy: Those men have defiled...
- Reverend Spencer: You have defiled, sir, you have profaned! Or do you think godliness begins on Sunday morning and ends outside on the church steps with a handshake and a courteous 'good sermon, reverend?'
- Pat Gilroy: I did what I thought was right.
- Reverend Spencer: You have publicly bared the soul of another human being.
- Pat Gilroy: Is that wrong?
- Reverend Spencer: When you find only the evil you went looking for, yes. And when you manufacture that evil for the sake of selling a few newspapers, it is more than wrong, Mr. Gilroy. You have committed the true sacrilege.
- Pat Gilroy: This is my church!
- Reverend Spencer: And I am your minister. And I tell you that a church is wood, and bricks, and mortar. It can be built and destroyed and built again. And it has been destroyed, and built again, since time began, and it has survived. Because a church belongs to the people, Mr. Gilroy. But the soul of a man belongs to God - and it is sacred.
- Deputy J.D. Smith: What do you want to do now, Frank?
- Marshal Frank Ragan: Del made the play. We'll see it through. Give them their thirty minutes.
- Deputy Del Stark: He was wrong, JD.
- Deputy J.D. Smith: What makes you so sure? They still got two hostages.
- Deputy Del Stark: Two live hostages.
- Deputy J.D. Smith: Hmm, for a while.
- Deputy Del Stark: I won't buy that. There isn't any reason for the Bartons to kill them now.
- Deputy J.D. Smith: That was Clarence and Jim Barton. What makes you think men like that need a reason, huh?
- Deputy Del Stark: I wanted to kill 'em and I didn't care how. And what's worse, I didn't care where. And that's what I've come to, marshal. Can you tell me where I've got left to go?
- Marshal Frank Ragan: You go back out and patrol the territory and try not to make the same mistake again.
- Deputy Del Stark: I won't make the same mistake again, because I'm through! With the badge, and the gun, and everything that goes with it!
- Marshal Frank Ragan: And with self pity?
- Deputy Vance Porter: Beans. Breakfast beans, lunch beans, dinner beans. There's a whole town out there crammed full of steaks, and ham, and eggs. Only our money ain't any good in Crystal Springs.
- Deputy J.D. Smith: Shouldn't have got yourself shot, Frank. You inconvenience your deputies.
- Deputy J.D. Smith: Well, if it ain't the absentee lawman. Where were you when the shooting started, Sheriff?
- Pat Gilroy: Hello, Marshal. I have the story here, but not the name. Who's it going to be, Stark or Smith? They're both only five letters. Marshal, I know the Governor's on his way to the capitol, but I could intercept him with a telegram. Now you make me ask him for the name, it's liable to come back R-a-g-a-n.
- Marshal Frank Ragan: Now you hear me, Gilroy...
- Pat Gilroy: Let go of me!
- Marshal Frank Ragan: I'm goin' say this one time only: I believe in free speech, and a free press...
- Pat Gilroy: I said let go of me!
- Marshal Frank Ragan: But you set one line of type or so much as one word about any of my men, before I give you the go-ahead, I'll teach you a freedom you never even heard of. I'll come back and free that head of yours from that scrawny neck.
- Marshal Frank Ragan: Alright. I'll go as far as the edge of town with you.
- Deputy Del Stark: Why don't you come all the way?
- Marshal Frank Ragan: I've wanted to, many times. But if we all throw away our badges, the Barton's wouldn't just cease to exist. They'd multiply, like disease, 'til they'd infected all of us.