- Gil Favor: Dependin' on where you come from, you call steers brush splitters, cactus boomers, critters, rawhides, scalawags, or baccas. The drovers whose job it is to get 'em where they're goin' call 'em beeves. I'm one of those drovers. We've been pushin' this herd for almost five hundred miles, and it's still nearly twice that to Sedalia, Missouri. My name's Gil Favor, trail boss.
- Gil Favor: Mrs Bradley, I don't mean to butt in. A lot of women have had to face the fact their men weren't coming back from the war.
- Martha Bradley: Other women didn't get a letter from their husband four years after he was supposed to die, Mr Favor, a letter with no postmark, slipped under the door at night as though whoever delivered it was afraid to do it.
- Victor Laurier: That was before the war. Everything was better then. Jonah, you think I made a mistake?
- Jonah: It is not for me to say, sir.
- Victor Laurier: Oh yes. I should have not come to America. I should not have brought money with me. And I should not have put money on a losing cause.
- Jonah: Tes, sir.
- Francois: You obeyed your heart, that's what counts.
- Somers: Mr Favor, when your men found me, it might have looked as if I was running away. I wasn't. So help me, I wasn't. I was trying to go for help. I didn't know where to go for it. I didn't even know if there was help to be found. That's why I escaped. To find somebody, not to run away.
- Pete Nolan: You know, Mr Laurier, if your cotton wasn't so scrawny, I'd think I was down Louisana way.
- Victor Laurier: If it wasn't for a lost cause, so would I. It's short fibre but quite resilient. To think of it, this camp, a few years ago, there was nothing here but desolation. Now there's a plantation. From this
- [raw cotton]
- Victor Laurier: to this
- [making fabric on the loom]
- Victor Laurier: to this
- [his suit]
- Victor Laurier: , I just made a quarter of a million dollars.
- Gil Favor: You've convinced me I'm in the wrong business.
- Victor Laurier: You don't think you ever deceived me, do you? I had you followed you all the time. Perhaps you are wondering why I didn't put you in the cave with the others. If you were Northern trash, I would. But you are Southeners, you deserve a decent fate.
- Victor Laurier: Where are you going?
- Mike Anderson: What difference does it make where a dead man go?
- Victor Laurier: I will not be spoken to in this way.
- Mike Anderson: How do you think those men are going speak to you?