A 44.40 in the brain pan would be my sentence for him. Now I don't know why you don't want to go along with that, Tom!
The Missouri Breaks quotes
Page 1 of 2This is my fourth frontier and I know how they run. I was in the California gold fields before I was eighteen, I was at the rush at Alder Gulch and I went with the grazing committee to South America. These long ropers in the Missouri Breaks are a mixed bag: barbers from Minneapolis, failed grangers, Scandinavian half-breeds, wolfers and woodcutters, dishonest apprentices, raftsmen, poisoners - you give them a chance and they'll waste everything!
Damn, I don't know why they had to put Canada all the way up here.
The first time I saw this country, it had buffalo grass and bluejoint up to the stirrups. By the second year, we had eight thousand Texas half-bred cattle and over three thousand five hundred volumes of English literature in my library.
Hell, we just cut out the unbranded stock and divided up even among outfits. There was no arguin' over mavericks like today.
You got it good today.
Two percent annual loss then, now it's seven from rustling alone, not to mention winterkill, calving loss, miring down in the spring.
They call this country Hell's Gate. When my dad came in here, it was nothing but a bunch of savage Indians. And Jesuits. Old Thomas Jefferson said that he was a warrior so his son could be a farmer, so his son could be a poet. And I raise cattle so my son can be a merchant, so his son can move to Newport, Rhode Island and buy a sailboat and never see one of these bastard-ass sons of bitching mountains again.
Who was Thomas Jefferson?
A guy back east.
I forgot, you do have your whores, don't you?
Sure do. Like 'em, too.
Well, I'll tell you something. If you want them more than you want me...
I keep telling you, I want them a lot. I don't want you at all.
Well, why are you being so mean to me?
People have been neglecting to tell you what a nasty little bitch you are, and I'm just having to make up for their negligence.
I couldn't get no credit at the whorehouse, so I picked up this chubby little girl off some sodbuster's outfit.
How was she?
About like a Swiss clock... same exact movement over and over again.
I understand you had to hang someone here.
I did that.
Ah, that's tough. What was this, some kind of desperado?
No, he was a thief... with probably a million good reasons for being on hard times. The main thing is that we put him out of his misery.
Regulator? Ain't that like a dry gulcher?
Well, that's not the softest term you could use, I'd say.
Well, Regulator, correct me now if I'm wrong, isn't a regulator one of these boys that shoots people and don't never get near 'em?
That's it.
I'd like almost anythin' better 'n' bein' burnt up.
The closer you get to Canada, the more things'll eat your horse.
The first time I met Sandy, he was rustling on his own. He had a stolen cavalry pony and he kept this dog. As soon as he would kill a steer, why he'd cut the brand off and feed it to the dog. So before they could get enough evidence to convict him, they'd have to lock that dog up and pick through his shit for a week before they could find the brand.
We had a famous painter out here last year... did last scenes. That man must have painted ten squares miles of canvas... and not one human face! And I wish he could have been here to paint that boy, Sandy, hanging up there so decoratively against the mountains. Because his pink tongue and his white face would have just set off the green of Montana splendidly. I mean, it would have made the damnedest bank calendar you ever saw!