- Flint McCullough: We're now travelling as high as the Rockies as our route will take us. I never pass through here without thinking of Jim Bridger and all the stories he used to tell about the mountain men. This is a strange, remote part of the world. Only a certain breed of men live here, be they Indian or White.
- Penelope Huntington: I've been hungering for someting all my life not knowing what it was. Now I see it all before me. The wonderful smell of pine trees, and cedar and firs, giant mountains holding up the sky, it's all familiar to me. I've such a sense of well-being. I'm home at last.
- Flint McCullough: Well, I hope you find what you're hungering for. Most people seldom do.
- Penelope Huntington: Haven't you?
- Flint McCullough: No. No. I keep riding up the mountains hoping I'll find a home. But I always have an urgency to keep riding towards the horizon.
- Sgt. Bart Huntington: A man gets ready for the sight of his own flesh and blood. Could you bring her here, Ruddy? Could you do that for me?
- Sgt. Bart Huntington: Clay'll go with you, won't you, boy?
- Cpl. Clay Taylor: Of course I will.
- Ruddy Blaine: You better put on your buckskins.
- Flint McCullough: There's only one route for wagons through this part of the Rockies and we'll follow it closely. Check all the landmarks every mile of the way. It's the most dangerous stretch of wilderness between St Joe and San Fransisco. It's Shoshone country but, this time of year, other tribes prowl the forest. Utes ride up from the South, sometimes find trading posts willing to give them guns and whiskey in exchange for Government goods. and then a reign of terror sweeps the countryside until the firewater runs out.
- Charlie Wooster: Who do I always have to stay back with the women and children all the time? People are beginning to call me Homebody Charlie, Homebody Charlie, that's what they call me.
- Bill Hawks: We have to keep you in a safe place. You know every time an Indian sees that brush on your face, he gets an itchy finger.
- Charlie Wooster: I want to see the Path of the Serpent.
- Flint McCullough: I'm glad I met you, Ruddy.
- Ruddy Blaine: You see old Bridger, you tell him we met up. And tell him he did a fine job on you.
- Flint McCullough: Jeff Bridger says Ruddy Blaine is the greatest mountain man alive.
- Penelope Huntington: What's the matter?
- Flint McCullough: Oh, it's just the sound.
- Penelope Huntington: What sound?
- Flint McCullough: The sound of the forest.
- Penelope Huntington: But there isn't any sounds at all.
- Flint McCullough: There's a pattern to the sound of the forest and, if anything breaks it, it's a warning.
- Penelope Huntington: What kind of warning?
- Flint McCullough: To keep your eyes open. I'm going to ride up front and have a look around.
- Flint McCullough: Ruddy Blaine? The Devil you are.
- Ruddy Blaine: No, the Devil I ain't. Ruddy Blaine's who I am and no kin to the Devil. This here's Corporal Clay Taylor.
- Flint McCullough: Taylor. I'm glad to meet you. I'm Flint McCullough.
- Ruddy Blaine: McCullough? Bridger raised a cub named McCullough.
- Flint McCullough: That'd be me.
- Ruddy Blaine: Now I'm glad to meet you.
- Ruddy Blaine: I figure I can make it in two. Over the Path of the Serpent.
- Flint McCullough: Do you think that's going to be safe for the girl?
- Ruddy Blaine: I ain't one to deny she'd be better off with you. But if she wants to see her Pa alive, she's gotta chance it.
- Flint McCullough: What about the Utes?
- Ruddy Blaine: We scouted both sides of the river. There ain't no sign of them now.
- Penelope Huntington: Do you see what the Serpent is doing to him?
- Ruddy Blaine: He's doing what any other Indian would do. It's the spoils of war. Ain't never very pretty.
- Bill Hawks: [They watch the wisps of smoke signals on the top of the opposing mountain] This is their part of the country. Every time we make a move, we send them a message.
- Penelope Huntington: Sounds in the forest, isn't it?
- Bill Hawks: Leave the horses? Ruddy, we won't make any time at all on foot.
- Ruddy Blaine: We'll be a lot harder to find on foot though than on horseback.
- Cpl. Clay Taylor: I was born here too.
- Penelope Huntington: You must feel as I do.
- Cpl. Clay Taylor: Well, I lived here all my life but I never took notice of the shining mountain until today.
- Ruddy Blaine: The Indians got a saying. They say when a baby is born, first opens its eyes and sees the shining mountains, he'll never be happy no other place.
- Penelope Huntington: The shining mountains? What a beautiful name. Why would anyone want to call them the Rockies?
- Ruddy Blaine: Oh, I don't know. I guess, maybe 'cause they're old, tough and cranky. I call them a lot worse in my time.
- Cpl. Clay Taylor: But, tell me, you've had experience. You're an older man.
- Bill Hawks: [He is taken aback, he's not yet 40] Well, Clay, the older you get and the more experienced, the more you find that age and experience doesn't get you to know about women.
- Cpl. Clay Taylor: Yeah? Well, that's pretty depressing.
- Bill Hawks: Ah, no, it isn't. I find that it feels kinda good to think, that no matter how old I get, that someday I might feel like you again.
- Cpl. Clay Taylor: Absolutely miserable.
- Bill Hawks: Absolutely.
- Ruddy Blaine: Well, if I'd had the love of someone like your Ma, I'd, ah, I'd have lived in Timbuktu.
- Ruddy Blaine: No, the forest is my home.
- Penelope Huntington: In a cabin?
- Ruddy Blaine: Hah. I was always going to build a cabin. I just never got 'round to it. Maybe if i was married it would have been different. As it is, the older I get the more four walls sort of squeeze me in.
- Penelope Huntington: You never married?
- Ruddy Blaine: Oh dear girl. Some men is husband material and some ain't. No, I took the big, old sky, wind, mountains for me.
- Bill Hawks: You mean she's beautiful?
- Cpl. Clay Taylor: You think so?
- Bill Hawks: Yeah, in a brotherly way.
- Cpl. Clay Taylor: I'm glad that's all it is.
- Ruddy Blaine: You must be going out of your mind with pain. Now I want you to stop it. You know I ain't suitable for her. I'm a mountain man, a trailblazer.
- Sgt. Bart Huntington: The devils come back to finish us. We drove them off. Orders came to abandon the fort, move onto McConnell's Garrison. Told 'em not to take me. I'd wait, to see my daughter. You brought her, Ruddy, didn't you? You didn't fail me?
- Ruddy Blaine: No. I brought her. You know the sight I gotta walk her through? With Bennington and Brown and Charlie and Hills standing around out there.
- Sgt. Bart Huntington: It was the Lieutenant's inspiration. We put your old comrades out to keep the watch for you, he said. The blasted Utes are so full of liquor, they'll think the fort's still manned... It's a grim joke.
- Cpl. Clay Taylor: A week ago I stood in the same spot, looked up at those same hills. I never loved a woman nor hated a man. Now here I am, burying comrades of a week ago. Torn in two with love and hate, hoping for the death of a man that's been like a father to me. All because I want the love of a woman I didn't even know a week ago.
- Bill Hawks: I realise this isn't the time you tell you, Clay. But the world doesn't begin and end with one person. You're at the age to fall in love again. You will.
- Cpl. Clay Taylor: Well, I'm not as cynical as you are.
- Bill Hawks: It's like you said yourself, you're not as old.
- Penelope Huntington: I know how you spent your life in the mountains. And I know how little place a wife has in where you've lived. But if you'd honour my father's wishes, I'll try to learn your ways and not be a burden.
- Ruddy Blaine: You don't know what you're saying. That's kinda opening the doorways of heaven. I'll live and die for her, Bart.
- Penelope Huntington: And I for you.
- Cpl. Clay Taylor: The world suddenly glowed with excitement and fire, and the world was Penelope. I'm sorry but why'd yer make me tell ya. Now it's been said, it's always going to be between us.
- Ruddy Blaine: Thank you, boy. He darn near had me.
- Cpl. Clay Taylor: You'd have done the same for me.
- Bill Hawks: Said he wants to go as far as Denver with the wagon train to that Army Post. Wants a change of duty.
- Ruddy Blaine: He wants it? Why would he want that?
- Bill Hawks: You raised him, Ruddy. You know him better than anybody else.
- Ruddy Blaine: Clay, have you quarelled with that girl?
- Cpl. Clay Taylor: No.
- Ruddy Blaine: I feel there's something wrong between ya.
- Cpl. Clay Taylor: There's nothing.
- Ruddy Blaine: I feel there is.
- Cpl. Clay Taylor: Look, we've hardly spoken. How could we have quarrelled?