- Shotgun Slade: This was my first visit to Grover's Bend, and if things didn't turn out right it might be my last. I was keeping an appointment with a gunslinger who hated me. And I guess he had reason to. You seldom make close friends by sending people to jail. And Mort Phillips had just finished serving five years, compliments of yours truly.
- Mort Phillips: Watching Billy shoot I get the notion that the ghost of my own hand had gone into him. Working the fingers. Snapping up the wrist.
- Mort Phillips: Waco tells me that Slade's gone all over town asking questions.
- Billy Rigg: Maybe it's time he got something besides answers.