- Christopher Hale: What's the matter with you?
- Charlie Wooster: You remember the Basker and McDonald wagon train?
- Christopher Hale: Well, certainly, I remember. What about it?
- Charlie Wooster: It happened right here where we're standing. The Apaches scalped every last one of 'em. Makes the chills run down my back just to think about it.
- Christopher Hale: That was years ago, Charlie.
- Charlie Wooster: Yeah, but they say all them spirits are floating around here, every last one of 'em.
- Christopher Hale: You don't believe those old prairie tales, do you?
- Charlie Wooster: I keep telling myself I don't. But my bones tell me I'm a liar.
- Charlie Wooster: If the rest of 'em are like that Conlin fellow, it'll be like jumping into bed of prickly cactus pears.
- Bill Hawks: You and trouble ain't strangers, Charlie. What's so different about this?
- Charlie Wooster: Well, there's all kinds of trouble, big and little kinds. The kind you can handle and the kind you walk away from.
- Cooper Smith: I'm Cooper Smith. It's Miss, isn't it?
- Danna Bannon: Yes, though I trust not forever.
- Cooper Smith: Well, I'm sure that's one thing you don't have to worry about. You mind telling me what made you folks think you could cross this country with equipment like this?
- Danna Bannon: We were told we could.
- Cooper Smith: Well, whoever told you was a flatout liar.
- Danna Bannon: We thought the same.
- Brian Conlin: I wasn't always the man you see here now. And I take no pride in the man I have become. When they drive a man to the wall, they won't give him a chance. But when they won't let him pick himself out of the muck, he changes. And he fights back any way he can.
- Cooper Smith: I don't get it, Chris, I don't get it at all. We saved their hides, offer to help them. For all the thanks we get, you'd think we came here to cheat and rob them blind.
- Christopher Hale: Well, that's what they do think.
- Cooper Smith: What do you mean?
- Christopher Hale: Does the word NINA having any special meaning to you, Coop?
- Cooper Smith: No, just that it's a girl's name.
- Christopher Hale: Yes, it is that. When I was back East, I saw it used differently. It was in the want ad section of all the newspapers, in the employment offices, all over the city. And it was even in the public schools for children.
- Cooper Smith: What does it mean, Chris?
- Christopher Hale: No Irish need apply. NINA.
- Brian Conlin: You've got a heavy punch. Feel like a wagon's run over me.
- Cooper Smith: Must be the same one that's backed over me.
- Christopher Hale: Out here, people don't trouble themselves with the way a man dresses, the way he talks, even the way he thinks. They worry about more important things, how to stay alive, for instance. All they ask is that you pull your fair share of the load. You do that and you will find what you're looking for out here.