- Dr. Elizabeth Arnold: Willie killed Mike and took Lola. They call it marriage by capture. The mother knew that and told her to go.
- Injured Poolroom Patron: That damned redskin tried to kill me! What kind of town is this? That's my blood. He tried to kill me!
- Deputy Sheriff Christopher 'Coop' Cooper: If he tried, you'd be dead.
- Dr. Elizabeth Arnold: I use you the way you use me and if you weren't a fool playing sheriff in a dusty market town you'd know that. You'd know something!
- Deputy Sheriff Christopher 'Coop' Cooper: Who do you think you are?
- Dr. Elizabeth Arnold: Elizabeth Arnold - A.B., Radcliffe; Anthropologist, Smithsonian; M.D., Johns Hopkins! Who are you?
- Willie Boy: Don't feel sad. I didn't hate him. One way of the other you die in the end. They won't catch us, Lola. They won't even try. Nobody gives a damn what Indians do. Nobody.
- Deputy Sheriff Christopher 'Coop' Cooper: [Deputy Sheriff Coop explains what happened to Dr. Elizabeth Arnold after killing Willie Boy] I gave him his change. He didn't want it. He didn't have no bullets in his gun.
- Title Card: In the summer of 1909, a member of the oldest American minority, a Paiute Indian named Willie Boy, became the center of an extraordinary historical event. This is what happened in the deserts of California.
- [first lines]
- Tom: Did you see that crazy Calvert go by?
- Willie Boy: Ate his dust.
- Tom: When did you get back to Banning, Willie Boy?
- Willie Boy: Five o'clock freight.
- Tom: Goin' to the fiesta?
- Willie Boy: Is that where you're goin', Tom?
- Tom: Trailin' Mr. Calvert with a tow just in case he breaks down - or breaks his neck.
- Willie Boy: Well, I guess that's where I'm goin'.
- Tom: Mr. Calvert said you been a foreman on a ranch in Victorville for a while.
- Willie Boy: Yep.
- Tom: I hear a white woman owned it.
- Willie Boy: You heard right.
- Tom: And you left?
- Willie Boy: Husband come home.
- Willie Boy: I didn't think they'd want me that bad. Maybe they're like me. Maybe it's you they want.
- George Hacker: What's he doin' along if he don't want to catch him?
- Charlie Newcombe: Willie didn't even have a gun when he went for that girl of his and I don't want to see him lynched by some poolroom bum or some politician like you - and I'm tellin' you whether you like it or not, Judge.
- Lola: Willie, are you going to kill them?
- Willie Boy: If I have to.
- Lola: What do you mean, "If you have to?"
- Willie Boy: I mean if they keep comin'.
- Lola: But they're white, Willie. They'll shoot forever.
- Willie Boy: How long is that? Less than you think.
- Lola: It's crazy, Willie! You can't win. You can't beat them, Willie, ever.
- Willie Boy: Maybe... maybe. But they'll know I was here.
- Lola: It's Charlie Newcomb.
- Willie Boy: Maybe they put a few dollars on my head and he needs a new guitar.
- Deputy Sheriff Christopher 'Coop' Cooper: I've never seen you in Eastern war paint before.
- Dr. Elizabeth Arnold: I need their help with the President. They're more likely to help their own kind.
- Deputy Sheriff Christopher 'Coop' Cooper: Well, you're their kind.
- Charlie Newcombe: You keep pushin' him and he's gonna start killin' for real and all this bull they're makin' up is going to come true.
- [last lines]
- Sheriff Frank Wilson: We've got nothing to show. What the hell's the matter with you? Goddammit, Coop, people have got to see something!
- Deputy Sheriff Christopher 'Coop' Cooper: Tell 'em we're all out of souvenirs.
- George Hacker: I'll tell you what democracy is. You take that Indian over here. We let him come and go, just as he pleases. Just as if he still owned this country. Just as if he was white and a man! That's what I call democracy. Real democracy!
- Dr. Elizabeth Arnold: I don't want you here tonight.
- Deputy Sheriff Christopher 'Coop' Cooper: I know you don't want me here. But, here I am. So, let me in. You know it don't matter what you say. You know that. So, come on. Let me in.
- Deputy Sheriff Christopher 'Coop' Cooper: You're just gonna hang around here, motherin' these Indians until you're sick and tired of it. And then you go off somewhere, I don't know, Europe, the East, some damn place lookin' for somebody else to save. What's that got to do with me? You just want me to say I love you or somethin'. Words. Somethin' to make you feel nice and comfortable and happy. That don't have nothin' to do with me.
- Dr. Elizabeth Arnold: You couldn't make anyone happy! You can't even make yourself into a man killing Indians, like your father, that great Western, murdering Marshall!
- Deputy Sheriff Christopher 'Coop' Cooper: My father doesn't have nothin' to do with anything.
- Dr. Elizabeth Arnold: That's all gone now. All you can do is humiliate me!
- Deputy Sheriff Christopher 'Coop' Cooper: You can always say no.
- Dr. Elizabeth Arnold: How could I resist you? You're brutal, coarse, violent, like a wolf in a cage!
- Sheriff Frank Wilson: Do everything right and regular. We don't want that bitch writing Washington again about her lousy Indians.
- Dr. Elizabeth Arnold: Coop, you've got to go after Willie and bring Lola back. I know she doesn't want to be a desert squaw.
- Deputy Sheriff Christopher 'Coop' Cooper: This posse couldn't catch a dog in the streets. And they're not going to catch Willie unless he wants it. I say he ain't our business, he's Indian business. And the hell with it.
- Willie Boy: What did I do that I should die in a white man's prison? You tell me? What did any of us do? What was wrong with us? Nothing. Nothing! Just color.
- Indian Tracker: You'll never catch Willie, Sheriff. He's like a cloud.
- Willie Boy: Now we have everything. Your father's gun. Fifteen dollars from the Old Lady. My Uncle's colt. And my father's ghost shirt.
- Newman: You know, I've been out here 30 years and I never had any trouble with the Indians. With the Spaniards, yes, rustlers and the rattlesnakes. I hate to think of a man like Calvert kickin' off because of a dumb Cigar Store Indian.
- Lola: If I stay with you, you'll die. What are we doing, Willie? What's going to happen?
- Willie Boy: I don't know.
- Lola: They're going to kill you.
- Lola: Willie! I don't want you to die. I can't live if you die. I don't want you to die. I'll never leave you. I'm your wife.
- Lola: Why do you want trouble?
- Willie Boy: It goes with you.
- Lola: I'm not worth it.
- Willie Boy: You bet.
- Lola: Here comes your trouble - my father and my brothers.
- Old Mike: I told you before - I'll shoot you. Don't you believe me, Willie Boy?
- Willie Boy: I believe you, Mike. Last time I run off with it. This time I'm askin' you.
- Old Mike: I can't hear you.
- Willie Boy: Well, you'd better.
- Ray Calvert: That's the way to be born if you gotta be born, Coop. Boston money, smart and snotty, everything comin' to you. The superintendent of this here Indian reservation has got the finest legs I've ever seen on man or beast. It's too bad she don't like you, Coop. There's gold in them hills.
- Deputy Sheriff Christopher 'Coop' Cooper: I'll live.
- First Poolroom Patron: Any of you boys ridin' up to Riverside for the parade?
- George Hacker: I wouldn't budge my butt to see President Taft. Why should I?
- Second Poolroom Patron: The President's gonna feel pretty bad about that, Hack.
- Deputy Sheriff Christopher 'Coop' Cooper: Out! I'm not about to waste my night in jail with you. Get your rig and get the hell out of the county.
- Meathead: That's damn white of you, Sheriff.
- Deputy Sheriff Christopher 'Coop' Cooper: Frank, I need a coroner down here right away.
- Sheriff Frank Wilson: Who got killed?
- Deputy Sheriff Christopher 'Coop' Cooper: Some Indian. The killer's run away with his daughter.
- Deputy Sheriff Christopher 'Coop' Cooper: What the hell's he want to go to Palm Springs for? What's he got there but some lungers livin' in tents and some Indians he don't know. He should be headin' to Twenty-Nine Palms where he can get help. He should be headed up the Dry Morengo Pass.
- Judge Benby: I think you send that man home, Sheriff.
- Deputy Sheriff Christopher 'Coop' Cooper: You're not mayor yet, Judge. You're just runnin' - the same as Willie.
- Sheriff Frank Wilson: What I'm tryin' to say is that federal agents were watchin' when McKinley was gunned down in Buffalo by a lone assassin. Anybody can kill the President if they want to. They don't even need a good reason. They don't even need to be smart. All they need to be is willing. Now people back East don't understand guns, but nobody believes that. Out West, we've learned to live with 'em. Presidential assasination will not happen in this town like it happened to President McKinley.
- Sheriff Frank Wilson: Would you boys like to see the Presidential suite?
- Deputy Sheriff Christopher 'Coop' Cooper: I think the gentlemen would like to see the bar. The orange juice is on the house; the bourbon is on Sheriff Wilson.
- Sheriff Frank Wilson: Bad news, Coop, real bad!
- Deputy Sheriff Christopher 'Coop' Cooper: Like what?
- Sheriff Frank Wilson: Willie Boy and a band of Paiutes ambushed the posse.
- Deputy Sheriff Christopher 'Coop' Cooper: How do you know?
- Sheriff Frank Wilson: What do you mean, "How do I know?" It's on the Western Union from Whitewater Station.
- Deputy Sheriff Christopher 'Coop' Cooper: How many got it?
- Sheriff Frank Wilson: Ray Calvert's dead. Two or three others - we don't know. Those newshounds are burning up the wires and they're pulling you and me right in the middle along side of the President. And those sons-of-bitches are in there gettin' half drunk on my whiskey!
- Dexter: Is there any danger to Riverside? What about the President's train? How could a couple of hundred Indians get the idea they could overthrow the government of the United States? And where is Ruby Mountain?
- Deputy Sheriff Christopher 'Coop' Cooper: Where it always has been.
- Deputy Sheriff Christopher 'Coop' Cooper: My father got it from a horse thief in a Ludlow saloon that was so drunk he couldn't even stand up.
- Newman: Indian wasn't it?
- Deputy Sheriff Christopher 'Coop' Cooper: Half and half.
- Newman: Well, it don't make sense.
- Deputy Sheriff Christopher 'Coop' Cooper: Maybe that's the sense it makes.
- Deputy Sheriff Christopher 'Coop' Cooper: Same signal for you.
- Harry: Suppose you get a knife in your gut so I don't hear no shots at all?
- Deputy Sheriff Christopher 'Coop' Cooper: You'll hear me grunt.
- Meathead: Alright, boys, get it and go. We don't want no revival meetin' here. What you doin' with these Sunday school redskins, Willie? Got the religion?
- Willie Boy: What you got, Meathead? Death Valley Juice?
- Meathead: Hell, no. White man's whiskey. I got real confidence in it. I didn't make it. I stole it. Buyin'?
- Willie Boy: I'm waitin' to see how long it takes to kill. How much?
- Meathead: A dollar.
- [Willie pays a dollar, takes a bottle, leaves and Meathead says under his breath]
- Meathead: Indian bastard.