- Major Seth Adams: Well, Mr Transfuga, I figure I'm not entitled to know everything there is to know about you, any more than you are entitled to know everything there is to know about me.
- Cain Transfuga: How still it is.
- Major Seth Adams: You know nights in the desert are the best part of the trip. I swear I'd pitch my tent to live right here if it wasn't for the damn blasted days. The heat in the daytime out here is just infernal. I guess you know that, don't you.
- Cain Transfuga: But the nights are soft and blessed with winds. Night means rest after the long journey. Time for quiet and stars, sleep without dreams and the man at peace with himself.
- Major Seth Adams: Ah, I'll you right now, I'm not that man. The minute I close my eyes, I start fighting Indians and chasing mules. Fighting Indians and fording rivers. And fighting Indians and climbing mountains and fighting more Indians. You know, I wake up in the morning just about twice as tired as when I went to bed.
- Major Seth Adams: Well, Mr Charles B, what are we having for supper tonight?
- Charlie Wooster: Stew.
- Major Seth Adams: Stew? It's not stew. It looks like the same mucka muck we had last night.
- Charlie Wooster: Major, you're sure getting to be a fussy feeder.
- Major Seth Adams: How can the same thing be hash one night and stew the next?
- Charlie Wooster: By adding water.
- Major Seth Adams: And what are you gonna call it tomorrow night?
- Charlie Wooster: Soup.
- Major Seth Adams: Charlie, what are you trying to do? Stretch one piece of meat from Kansas to Californie?
- Charlie Wooster: All the years I bin with you, you never once come to me and said "Charlie, you're a good cook."
- Major Seth Adams: What do you want me to do, Charlie? Lie to you?
- Charlie Wooster: Well, from the looks of you, you ain't starving.
- Major Seth Adams: [looks down at his well-fed belly] Aw shuddup.
- Charlie Wooster: [as the major walks away] Getting fatter everyday.
- Major Seth Adams: What's that?
- Charlie Wooster: I hope it lasts another day
- [a quick lie as the Major readjusts his belly]
- Cain Transfuga: You're young and like so many young people very intolerant When you're older, if you live to be older, you'll accept life from any hand that can hold it out.
- Garth English: Who are you to preach to me?
- Mrs. Anderson, Cain Transfuga: He didn't even get as far as the Rockies. It was the cholera. Sometimes when I'm awake I think I hear him
- [her son]
- Mrs. Anderson, Cain Transfuga: and I get up to see. Oh, those are the worst moments.
- Cain Transfuga: I know. Darkness and emptiness, no comfort to be found.
- Mrs. Anderson: I pray to the Lord to be shown how to accept. I pray, the good Lord in his Infinite Mercy to tell me why a brokendown old woman and four broken down old mules are around here alone in the middle od the wilderness heading West.
- Cain Transfuga: How fortunate you are to believe in the Lord and his Infinite Mercy.
- Flint McCullough: You hold your tongue, Garth English. Or I will cut it out.
- Garth English: Well, just a minute.
- Flint McCullough: You're a troublemaker. You always have been a troublemaker. Have you any means of saving Major Adams' life? Hah. Of course you haven't.
- Garth English: That stuff he's cooking up is Indian medicine.
- Flint McCullough: Maybe Indians know more about medicine than you do. Did you ever stop to think of that?
- Major Seth Adams: [In his sickbed, recovering after the fever has broken] I feel just great. That's why I'm out chopping down trees.
- Elliott Garrison: First name's Elliott.
- Marilee Hamplar: I call very few people by their first names, Mr Garrison, and only after I've known them a long time.
- Elliott Garrison: [He laughs] Well, now, Marilee, I feel that I've known you, a very long time. You've done well, haven't ya? Marilee, married a fine gentleman with a silver spoon in his mouth. Nice to see how far you've come up in the world. Nice name, Marilee. It's much nicer than Maude. I think every girl should be allowed to, ah, pick her own name. Particularly if the old one has become a little, ah, unsavoury.
- Marilee Hamplar: You get out of here.
- Elliott Garrison: I was court phitographer at Elton, West Virginia, and I 'll be glad to show you samples of my work. Marilee. And I'll be glad to show your husband too. I enjoy photographing beautiful women, Marilee. Maybe you can pose for me again some time. We'll have a nice little talk.
- [Joe Hamplar arrives and a punch up ensues]
- Major Seth Adams: WOOSTER!
- Charlie Wooster: See, what'd I tell you. He's going to bellow himself into a relapse. Come on... Here we are, Major.
- Major Seth Adams: What in tarnation took you so long?
- Charlie Wooster: I've only been gone five minutes.
- Major Seth Adams: You've been gone seven minutes, don't you lie to me. Well, why don't you ask me how I am?
- Charlie Wooster: I wouldn't dare.
- Major Seth Adams: Damn blasted blockhead. Why don't you wear your glasses so you can see where you're going?
- Cain Transfuga: You get back in bed.
- Major Seth Adams: How can anyone stay in bed with that chowderhead driving like he does?
- Charlie Wooster: Oh boy. He's been a holy terror today.
- Major Seth Adams: I heard that.
- Cain Transfuga: Major Adams, for the moment, you are my patient. Now you get back in that bed where you belong, or you get up on that horse and lead the train.
- Major Seth Adams: This is your chance to lead people back to life. The past is gone and done. you can't change that. What really matters is the present and the future. What you're going to do from now on, that's what really matters.
- Cain Transfuga: You found me and fed me and clothed me. I told you my name was Cain Transfuga, transfuga being the Latin for deserter. And still I looked at the sun that nourishes every living thing and said, there is no God. And still I looked at the everlasting star and said there is no divine plan. Still I accepted your kindness and said this is man's kindness. And still I looked at the incredible order of the universe and said, a scientific accident.
- Marilee Hamplar: If I don't, there'll always be a shadow. Would you want to go through life running from a lie? Isn't it best to face it once and for all? I have to tell him. Even if I lose him, I have to tell him. If you run from the truth, then a lie can be seen to be true. I've got to face it it once and for all and have done with it.
- Cain Transfuga: The darkness has passed and true light now shineth.
- Major Seth Adams: And the words he said in parting would linger in our hearts after him, Lord watch over me and thee while we are absent one from the other.