- Sheriff Ernie Backwater: Well let's get him to the undertaker and I'll buy a beer.
- Paladin: Ernie. Whiskey.
- Sheriff Ernie Backwater: Then you pay.
- Sheriff Ernie Backwater: Most men lie to themselves about something. That they're stronger than they are, or faster than they are. Well, I lie about standing on my own two feet. I never asked another man's help or ever will. Do you wanna come?
- Paladin: My pleasure.
- Sheriff Ernie Backwater: I thank you for that but it won't be a pleasure. He'll probably kill us both. He's like a storm, or pestilence, or drought.
- Paladin: A force of nature, huh?
- Sheriff Ernie Backwater: Like a force of nature, savage, fiercesome. The Comanches have a name for the kind of Texas man who took this part of the country away from the Mexicans, drove the Apaches into the Cherakawas, and the Comanches into the State Plains. You know what it is?
- Paladin: Ameri fore.
- Sheriff Ernie Backwater: Savage American.
- Paladin: Savage American? That's not really a good translation. It's more like, like American primitive.
- Sheriff Ernie Backwater: Pay's $3 a day. Raise your right hand.
- Will Tybee: I might lose my temper. And when I lose my temper, I sometimes act like a fool. I don't want to do that so close to dying.
- Paladin: I think I'm beginning to yearn for things pastoral. Trees tall and green, scrape the sky when the wind blows. Clouds, white, and fat.
- Maggie: Well, for that I could qualify meself.
- Paladin: Open spaces, vast, empty, untouched.
- Maggie: Are you tired of people, Mr Paladin, sir?
- Paladin: Most of them, Maggie.
- Will Tybee: What's the matter, Ernie, you afraid I'd chew through them?
- Sheriff Ernie Backwater: No, just that you might get desperate and tear the tree up by the roots, or break the chain in half.
- Paladin: I think I'm beginning to yearn for things pastoral. Trees tall, green, scraping the sky when the wind blows, and clouds white and fat.
- Maggie: Well, for that I could qualify myself.
- Paladin: Open spaces, vast, empty, untouched
- Maggie: Are yah tired of people, Mr Paladin, sir?
- Paladin: Most of them, Maggie.