- Hellsgate rancher: They call this country Hell's Gate. When my dad came in here, it was nothing but a bunch of savage Indians. And Jesuits. Old Thomas Jefferson said that he was a warrior so his son could be a farmer, so *his* son could be a poet. And I raise cattle so my son can be a merchant, so his son can move to Newport, Rhode Island and buy a sailboat and never see one of these bastard-ass sons of bitching mountains again.
- Si: Who was Thomas Jefferson?
- Hellsgate rancher: A guy back east.
- Jane Braxton: I forgot, you do have your whores, don't you?
- Tom Logan: Sure do. Like 'em, too.
- Jane Braxton: Well, I'll tell you something. If you want them more than you want me...
- Tom Logan: I keep telling you, I want them a lot. I don't want you at all.
- Jane Braxton: Well, why are you being so mean to me?
- Tom Logan: People have been neglecting to tell you what a nasty little bitch you are, and I'm just having to make up for their negligence. I just seem mean. I'm only being thorough.
- [Jane starts to cry]
- Tom Logan: Well, if you're gonna start that, I'm just gonna go home and shovel steer manure on the pansies.
- Jane Braxton: Why don't we just take a walk and we'll just talk about the Wild West and how to get the hell out of it!
- Tom Logan: I couldn't get no credit at the whorehouse, so I picked up this chubby little girl off some sodbuster's outfit.
- Tittle Tod: How was she?
- Tom Logan: About like a Swiss clock - same exact movement over and over again.
- Lee Clayton: Do you believe that life is like a mountain railroad, Mr La Frambois?
- Tittle Tod: All I know, Jim, is that - life is not like anything I ever seen before.
- Jane Braxton: We had a famous painter out here last year... did last scenes. That man must have painted ten squares miles of canvas... and not one human face! And I wish he could have been here to paint that boy, Sandy, hanging up there so decoratively against the mountains. Because his pink tongue and his white face would have just set off the green of Montana splendidly. I mean, it would have made the damnedest bank calendar you ever saw!
- Tom Logan: I understand you had to hang someone here.
- David Braxton: I did that.
- Tom Logan: Ah, that's tough. What was this, some kind of desperado?
- David Braxton: No, he was a thief... with probably a million good reasons for being on hard times. The main thing is that we put him out of his misery.
- Tom Logan: Regulator? Ain't that like a dry gulcher?
- Lee Clayton: Well, that's not the softest term you could use, I'd say.
- Tom Logan: Well, Regulator, correct me now if I'm wrong, isn't a regulator one of these boys that shoots people and don't never get near 'em?
- Lee Clayton: That's it.
- Cary: My aunt ran a laundry in St Paul. Got strangled by a Chinaman while she's washing her dog. It's easy to die. Easy!
- Tom Logan: This old boy in Wyoming, he sat down on the ground just to pull sandburs out of his trousers, and his skull just suddenly flew into pieces about the size of your thumbnail. That was the first time I ever heard the term "regulator".
- Tom Logan: This here tea's gonna get black as ink.
- Jane Braxton: We'll write somebody a letter with it.
- Tom Logan: Let's write your father a letter. Tell him that you're the prisoner of the chinee tea slavers.
- Lee Clayton: [singing] Life is like a mountain railway, With an engineer that's brave, We must make this run successful, From the cradle to the grave, Heed the curves, the fills, the tunnels, Never falter, never quail. Never quail! Keep your hand upon the throttle, And your eye upon the rail.
- Lee Clayton: I can track a bluebottle fly right up your nose. And I've taken to trackin' what people are thinkin'.
- [first lines]
- David Braxton: The first time I saw this country, it had buffalo grass and bluejoint up to the stirrups. By the second year, we had eight thousand Texas half-bred cattle and over three thousand five hundred volumes of English literature in my library.
- Pete Marker: Hell, we just cut out the unbranded stock and divided up even among outfits. There was no arguin' over mavericks like today.
- Sandy: You got it good today.
- David Braxton: Two percent annual loss then, now it's seven from rustling alone, not to mention winterkill, calving loss, miring down in the spring.
- David Braxton: This is my fourth frontier and I know how they run. I was in the California gold fields before I was eighteen, I was at the rush at Alder Gulch and I went with the grazing committee to South America. These long ropers in the Missouri Breaks are a mixed bag: barbers from Minneapolis, failed grangers, Scandinavian half-breeds, wolfers and woodcutters, dishonest apprentices, raftsmen, poisoners - you give them a chance and they'll waste everything!
- Calvin: A 44.40 in the brain pan would be my sentence for him. Now I don't know why don't want to go along with that, Tom!
- Tom Logan: The first time I met Sandy, he was rustling on his own. He had a stolen cavalry pony and he kept this dog. As soon as he would kill a steer, why he'd cut the brand off and feed it to the dog. So before they could get enough evidence to convict him, they'd have to lock that dog up and pick through his shit for a week before they could find the brand.
- Lee Clayton: Well, you're about the last of your kind, old man. If I was a better businessman than I am a man hunter, I'd put you in the circus.
- Si: Well, they sure killed Sandy. He was the only comedian in this outfit. Every outfit oughta have a comedian.
- Tom Logan: Boy, a couple of years ago they'd have put Sandy in Red Lodge penitentiary, weavin' bridles. Seems like there's somethin' new in the air.
- Jane Braxton: Maybe you can buy that Cannon Ranch, get started in the cattle business. With your attitude toward human life, you may yet get to be one of the barons of this prairie, and have your picture on page one, or page three, of the Chicago papers. And for your birthday you can have a big barrel of fresh oysters on ice, just the way the other hangmen up this way do.
- Jane Braxton: We're starved for news out here. All I ever hear about is grass.
- Tom Logan: What's the matter with grass?
- Jane Braxton: Samuel Johnson said "A blade of grass is a blade of grass... Tell me about a human being."
- Tom Logan: I don't understand that.
- Jane Braxton: It just means that Samuel Johnson was as bored as I am with nature.
- Tom Logan: Miss, I'm gonna take this opportunity to be just a little damn bit offended. Cause if there's anybody in this district who's got a right to think of themselves as wholesome companionship, why, it's yours truly.
- Jane Braxton: If you're such a wholesome companion, what were you doing at the whorehouse?
- Lee Clayton: You've got to give me some thoughts. I'm gonna turn my horse out. Then I'll wash my body. And, Miss, the only thing not on my diet would be the green top of the beet and okra. Ladies and gentlemen, excuse me, but I'm under a severe attack from a tooth.
- Jane Braxton: What do you want?
- Tom Logan: I mean, I know what it is when I want something.
- Jane Braxton: Oh, come on!
- Tom Logan: "Oh, come on" what?
- Jane Braxton: Why don't you just say what you mean?
- Tom Logan: This is what I mean.
- Jane Braxton: Do you want me?
- Tom Logan: What does that mean?
- Jane Braxton: I mean you're' me around on your damn horse. What have you got in mind?
- Tom Logan: Me?
- Jane Braxton: Sexual intercourse?
- Tom Logan: Oh, my...
- Jane Braxton: Well, all right. All right. Come on. Get down off your horse. Now, I'm not gonna have any hesitation from you. Not from a frequenter of whores. Now get down from your horse.
- Jane Braxton: Hello, Tom. I didn't think I'd find you here.
- Tom Logan: Why'd you think that?
- Jane Braxton: Cause I haven't seen you.
- Tom Logan: You thought I was gonna - come courtin', didn't ya?
- Jane Braxton: Maybe so.
- Tom Logan: You was too harsh to me last time. I never kick a dead horse, lady.
- Tom Logan: You're a lot nicer than you was before. Why is that?
- Jane Braxton: Well, you didn't come courtin' me like I figured you would, and - I'm...
- Tom Logan: You're what?
- Jane Braxton: I'm tryin' to revive your interest.
- Jane Braxton: Would you say that this is lewd conduct?
- Tom Logan: Well, I couldn't say for sure.
- Jane Braxton: My father has a library full of law books, cause he believes in the law. And he says that we haven't got any law up here yet.
- Tom Logan: What brings that to your mind?
- Jane Braxton: Because in one of those law books of his, there's a whole section on lewd conduct.
- Tom Logan: What about it?
- Jane Braxton: It's against the law. Are you an outlaw?
- Jane Braxton: Why do you have so many guns?
- Tom Logan: Because I'm a sportsman.
- Jane Braxton: Why do you have a sawed-off shotgun?
- Tom Logan: Well, because I'm a sawed-off sportsman.
- Jane Braxton: Something has sure started in my thinking and I don't know why we should go on if you're just gonna end up dead.
- Lee Clayton: [to Tom] You're smart. Farmers ain't smart. I don't know exactly where you came from or what you were doing, but I think you ought to go back to it, because you can't farm worth spit. Unless - unless you lost your nerve. In that case, cabbages is just what the doctor ordered. Is your nerve gone? Is your nerve gone?
- Tom Logan: I never carry a gun.
- Lee Clayton: I never wear a gun neither. Oh, once in a while I carry this little darlin' around. She's almost like a poem. You know, it's all hand-done. Etched, you know, scratched in silver. Oh, she's a beauty. Made for the president of Mexico. I diverted it for a hundred-dollar bill. But it doesn't shoot worth a damn. Some damn fool came along and filed off the top of the front sight. And you have to sort of play with it. It isn't easy.
- Lee Clayton: I'm about a quarter-ass horse thief. Anything to get some grits in my stomach. Not doin' too good at it neither. Otherwise I wouldn't be eatin' hare. I'd be in Dodge City, playin' with them big asses, drinkin' champagne.
- Lee Clayton: I believe that life is like a mountain railway, but not for the reasons in the song. I think life is like a mountain railway cause you don't have no idea what sleazy son of a bitch got his hand on the throttle.
- Lee Clayton: You ain't the first mental wizard I ever met, you know. I've met ranchers, outlaws, stock detectives who thought they was mental wizards like yourself.
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