Wagon Train (TV Series)

The Zebedee Titus Story (1964)

Michael Burns: Barnaby West

Quotes 

• Zebedee Titus : What I told him and what he rit in there might not be the same thing and I wouldn't know that if I hadn't read it, now would I, boy?

  Barnaby West : You mean you never read your own book?

• Barnaby West : Which story do you want to hear first? How about the time you and Jim Bridger discovered the Great Salt Lake? And Old Gabe tasted the water and said it was saltier than an ocean?

  Zebedee Titus : Well, er, ah. That weren't exactly true. I remember old Gabe, he spat the water out of his mouth and he said, Zebedee, you can bet your sweet Bess, that's what I called my rifle, you can bet your sweet Bess, that we've come clear to the shores of the Pacific. 'Cos we found out later it weren't true.

  Barnaby West : Or I can read how you became the greatest bear hunter alive. How you shot 82 of them in one year.

  Zebedee Titus : Well, er, ah. That ain't exactly true.

• Barnaby West : I see you sent Coop to check up on him, Bill, didn't you?

  Bill Hawks : We had to be sure. Y'know the Commanche been wearing their paint lately. Don't you understand?

  Barnaby West : Yeah, I understand. Just like those men at the fort, that Mr Parsons and Major Hanley, they didn't trust Zeb either. But at least they didn't pretend to. And sneak up behind his back and check up on him. I'm sorry I brought him here in the first place.

• Barnaby West : Aw, gee. Anyone would be proud to make the acquaintance of the manwho's done all the things you have, Mr Titus.

  Zebedee Titus : You claim to know all about me, do you?

  Barnaby West : Almost everybody in the whole world's read about you, not stories like you just told though. Almost wore my copy out, I've read it so many times.

  Zebedee Titus : Let me see that thing.

  Barnaby West : Soon as I heard you were here, I went and got my book. I'm with the wagon train that's camped right outside the fort. I'd sure appreciate it if you wrote your name on the front of my book, right across the front here.

  Zebedee Titus : What for?

  Barnaby West : Nobody's gonna believe I ever met you unless I can show them where you wrote your name. Here I brought a pencil too.

• Barnaby West : [Reading from the book]  Unquestionably Zebedee Titus will long be remembered for the part he played in the exploration of the Great West. No man surpassed him as a guide and few will equal him. In his mind he carries an accurate map of the whole West, its streams, its mountains, its obstacles. He had and still has incredible endurance. Yet for all his rough and gruiff exterior, Zebedee Titus is a sensitive man who can feel very deeply any loss of confidence inhim or in his judgement of the wilderness. For he is a part of its vastness. A truly remarkable man. Zebedee Titus, a man never to be lost to history or to his country.