Wagon Train (TV Series)

The Horace Best Story (1960)

George Gobel: Horace Best

Photos 

Quotes 

• Major Seth Adams : A hundred wagons... that means that you've accepted responsibility for better than three hundred lives and you'd better not let 'em down, either.

  Horace Best : I'll do my best.

  Major Seth Adams : That's all any man can ask of you, but you know so many times the best is just not good enough. When you think of all the people, 75 or a 100 of 'em who are gonna die when the cholera hits your camp without you knowin' it's comin'... and that Indian war party that comes down off the high hills, their screams splinter the night and their arrows set fire to it... you say, "Well, I did my best." That's what you say to all those silent dead, "I did my best."

• [last lines] 

  [Breaking the "fourth wall", Horace Best looks directly at the camera and speaks to the viewing audience] 

  Horace Best : You know, for one awful moment there, I thought I'd figured everything all wrong, and I really was gonna have to go out west. Now, you know, I didn't come outta the hills to get into no whoop-de-do in the sagebrush. All I wanted was to make an honest dollar and be partners with cousin Seth. An' it took a heap o' doin', but in the end everythin' worked out just fine.