"She sat across the table looking big-eyed at me and making me uneasy. When a talking woman sits quiet a man had better look at his hole card and kee… - Louis L'Amour

And that was the way it was in the old days before the country grew up and men put their guns away. Someday, and I hope it never comes, there may be a time when the Western hills are empty again and the land will go back to wilderness and the old, hard ways. Enemies may come into our country and times will have changed, but then the boys will come down from the old high hills and belt on their guns again. They can do it if they have to. The guns are hung up, the cows roam fat and lazy, but the old spirit is still there, just as it was when the longhorns came up the trail from Texas, and the boys washed the creeks for gold.

"From Elisha Comes to Red Horse:

"Now I can't claim to be what you'd call a religious man, yet I've a respect for religion, and when a man lives out his life under the sun and the stars, half the time riding alone over mountains and desert, then he usually has a religion although it may not be the usual variety.

"You killed Rice Wheeler," he said, "the Panhandle gunman. "He should have stayed in the Panhandle," I said."