- The Swede: Just as I expected. It is ordained from on high that you should put suffering in my path.
- Cullen Bohannan: Mmm. Best get to shoveling, then.
- [pushes past him]
- The Swede: I was right to put down in that well, just as now it is right that you set me to shoveling snow far away - in the wilderness, where my brethren freeze and starve.
- Cullen Bohannan: We pay enough to keep them fed.
- The Swede: It is what I have said. That to be tested by you is the making of my soul. You are God's instrument.
- Mei: I belong to them. That's why I hide.
- Cullen Bohannan: This is America, ain't nobody belongs to nobody. We fought a war over it.
- Mei: But we still Chinese.
- Chang: I want justice.
- Collis Huntington: It's not easy to know what that means. Frankly, Mr. Chang, I don't know what's possible.
- Chang: What's possible?
- [sitting down]
- Collis Huntington: A 20-year-old Chinaman gets on a boat in Guangdong, China. He sets sail with a Sze Yup Company flyer and a ticket for passage. He arrives in San Francisco, where a team of men herd him and a hundred others into freight cars that transport them to Cisco. In Cisco, another team loads the men into wagons. Then three days later, after traversing the Sierra Summit, they deliver those Chinamen to the railroad. Now neither you
- [Strobridge]
- Collis Huntington: , you
- [Bohannan]
- Collis Huntington: , or you
- [Huntington]
- Collis Huntington: have the capability to reproduce that impossible feat once, let alone 15,000 times. So when I ask for justice, I mean justice. The kind reserved for civilized men, free from the danger of a rope.
- The Swede: You have said what is in your heart, and what is true. But truth... truth does not always serve us. When it is... when it is so naked and hot, it will not allow us to... to enact God's will.
- [tears up Phineas' letter]
- [last lines]
- Cullen Bohannan: There won't be a trial. That'd be a waste of time. And they wouldn't be convicted, 'cause the only witnesses is you and Tao. And Chinamen ain't allowed to testify against white men under California law.
- Chang: So this is America.
- [abacus beads clacking]
- Chang: It may be the law, Mr. Bohannon, but it is not justice.
- Cullen Bohannan: No, it ain't. Them men will leave Truckee, and you're gonna let 'em. Do we understand each another?
- Chang: I think we understand each other very well.