- Susan Parker: Do you have a good cook?
- Rowdy Yates: Well, Wishbone. None of us have starved to death, if that's what you mean.
- Rowdy Yates: What's the trouble?
- Pete Nolan: There ain't none. Land's as flat as the palm of your hand, it's well watered and green.
- Gil Favor: Stop it, Pete. You're breaking Rowdy's heart.
- Rowdy Yates: Well, I dunno. It just ain't natural, everything going so easy.
- Gil Favor: I keep lookin' at them, the herd and the drovers. Which is more important? Beeves are worth $20 a head when we get to Sedalia, Missouri. And the drovers? I can't sell 'em. Most of 'em won't be here when we get to Sedalia. It's a thing I get to thinking of on a drive. Who's worth more? Cattle or drovers who get 'em there. And I'm one of the drovers. My name's Gil Favor, trail boss.
- Wishbone: Go on, Mushy, you can have the first taste. Well?
- Mushy: It's real good, only it tastes terrible.
- Jim Quince: Here, let me try that.
- [after a swig, he spits it out]
- Jim Quince: Darn stuff, break a man from the habit of drinking.
- Wishbone: Well, you two just ain't got the taste for champagne. That ain't champagne. That's bottle fire.
- [And he throws it towards the stream, Matt Holden's warning comes too late as there is an almighty, earthmoving, explosion]
- Wishbone: STAMPEDE!
- Rowdy Yates: The wrong one's wearing the pants in the Parker family.
- Gil Favor: It's the nitro that bothers me, not the pants.
- Jim Quince: Tell me something. Just what is this champagne.
- Wishbone: Your ignorance astonishes me, Quince.
- Jim Quince: Well, all right. But what's champagne?
- Wishbone: Well, well, it's wine, that's what it is.
- Jim Quince: WINE? Then why don't they call it wine?
- Wishbone: Well, because it's champagne. Now what is it that YOU want?
- Mushy: I just wanted to ask you, what's champagne?
- Gil Favor: What happens when we get to Benton's Crossing?
- Susan Parker: Someone's waiting with a barge. I don't know what happens to you when we get there.
- Rowdy Yates: Isn't there some other way you could have gotten what you want out of life? You're a pretty woman. You coulda gotten it without being caught up in all of this.
- Susan Parker: How would you know what I want?
- Rowdy Yates: Money, ain't it?
- Susan Parker: It's a part of it. A small part of it.
- Gil Favor: I don't get it. Stealing a load of nitroglycerine, switching it into champagne bottles, carting it all over the country. Sure doesn't seem like the way you like to do things.
- Matt Holden: And how do you figure I'd do things?
- Gil Favor: Hit fast, get away fast. Stagecoaches, banks.
- Matt Holden: You're right. You get the money that way. Not the other thing.
- Gil Favor: What other things?
- [Matt looks back at Mrs Parker]
- Susan Parker: Money's only the beginning. I want power and possession.
- Gil Favor: Holden's a pretty big price to pay for it.
- James Parker: I prefer water. I've already preferred water. But you, you were always the champagne type, weren't you? I was an engineer, I was trusted. What am I now? A thief, a fugitive, a sick man riding a wagon bound for nowhere.
- Susan Parker: Your bandage needs changing.
- James Parker: My life needs changing. But I don't have to worry about that. You and Holden'll take care of that, won't you.
- Pete Nolan: We saw the explosion and figured you'd opened another bottle.
- Gil Favor: Yeah, that champagne is pretty heady stuff.