- Gil Favor: On a trail drive, you pick your men to be at least as smart as the cows. The cows know enough to drink up when there's water, to stop and eat when there's food. The men can do that, too, but the rest of their thinking - man or beast - I'm supposed to do for 'em, whether I do it right or not. My name's Gil Favor, trail boss.
- Illora Calvin: Thank you, Mr Favor, we'll be there. And perhaps we'll thinking of a way to repay you for your kindness.
- Wishbone: Find out if she's got a sister, will ya? Not for me. Mushy's face is beginning to break out.
- Rowdy Yates: Boss, I'm sorry. I thought they were good people, really.
- Gil Favor: Not they, Rowdy. You thought the girl was good people. Now, mount up, you gotta start tracking those good people. But mind, just track 'em. Don't tangle with them.
- Rowdy Yates: After what they've done, you don't want me to stop them if I catch up to them?
- Gil Favor: What's you have in mind? Shootin' in amongst women and children?
- Melissa Calvin: And that's not the only one. There's dozens of them. Can't see for the mustard weed.
- Rowdy Yates: Sure gotta thank you... Ma'am.
- Illora Calvin: Surely with all that cattle you have some horses to spare.
- Gil Favor: But not enough. I can't move a herd with worn-out horses. I need every single mount I've got.
- Farmer: We've got women and children, mister. You wanna see them starve.
- Jacob Calvin: Listen. You stay clear of those cowhands. They're like sailors. Courting a woman comes easy to them. But they don't stay put for very long.
- Melissa Calvin: Yes, Pa.
- Illora Calvin: I have some of my jewelry hidden under the little trees at the top of the trees. Come help me get it.
- Melissa Calvin: Well, you never said anything about it.
- Illora Calvin: If I had, Jacob would have sold it for another well.
- Rowdy Yates: First time I've seen a jail with no doors on it.
- Jacob Calvin: No, it's not a good way to live with or without doors.
- Jacob Calvin: The Army had no further use for it after the war. But I did. In my mind I could see the corn and wheat standing higher than any man. I couldn't afford the property alone so I went out and gathered these folks and talked them into sharing the land with me.
- Melissa Calvin: We have no milk or sugar.
- Illora Calvin: We have nothing. I used to have a lot of beautiful things. But they're all gone. Sold to buy empty holes in the ground.
- Jacob Calvin: You'll get them all back.
- Illora Calvin: When? Your promises don't have long to live.
- Illora Calvin: Bit late for conscience, isn't it? When you married me and dragged me to this wilderness to rot, that was the time for you to have a conscience.
- Wishbone: Now didn't I tell you to stay close to me? I didn't bring you up as a louse to have you bashed into mule meat.
- Melissa Calvin: My foot.
- Rowdy Yates: Just looking at it. Must be broken.
- Melissa Calvin: It hurts.
- Rowdy Yates: You're lucky it isn't your head.
- Melissa Calvin: Please don't be mad at me.
- Rowdy Yates: I'm not mad. you don't get mad at horse thieves, you hang them.
- Jacob Calvin: I'll send the money as soon as the crop's in.
- Gil Favor: Well, well, we best get moving. 'Bye, Miss Calvin.
- Melissa Calvin: 'Bye.
- Rowdy Yates: You, er, you don't have to send the money, Mr Calvin. We'll pick it up on our way back.
- Gil Favor: Rowdy!
- Rowdy Yates: Oh, ah, in the Spring.
- Jacob Calvin: Illora isn't as bad a woman as she seems to be, Mr Favor.
- Gil Favor: I'm afraid that depends on which side you're on.
- Jacob Calvin: It's living in this valley. She isn't cut out for it. She's a Castillian.
- Gil Favor: She's Spanish?
- [He must have had his eyes and his mind firmly closed the night before when she danced, but no, he'd been watching her]
- Jacob Calvin: She's got distant relations out in California. They one of those Spanish land grants. That's where she wanted me to take her. But it's not the same when someone gives you your life like a gift. If a man gotta build a life, he's gotta do it on his own. That's what she can't understand.
- Jacob Calvin: I tried. The Good Lord knows I tried to give everybody what I thought was good. Somewhere along the line, I failed. You get to a point where there's no turning back. Who's to judge where that point is.