- Zebedee Titus: What I told him and what he rit in there might not be the same thing and I wouldn't know that if I hadn't read it, now would I, boy?
- Barnaby West: You mean you never read your own book?
- Christopher Hale: There is one other thing the mountain men are noted for besides their exploits and that is the stories they tell about their exploits. They are the originators of the tall tale.
- Zebedee Titus: I wouldn't expect you Johnny Greens to notice that. You wouldn't notice that. You wouldn't notice, for instance, that them pilgrims come by different trails and you'd sure never notice that most of them trails come together just before they cross the Divide at South Pass.
- Christopher Hale: Who'd you think was going to deal with the Indians? Who'd you think was going to handle the fur trade? Who'd you think was going to do the hunting so that the post would have fresh meat?
- Major John Hanley Jr.: I had a terrible time getting him to put his uniform aside and retire. He had a strong notion that the Army just couldn't get along without him.
- Zebedee Titus: Maybe he was just afraid that they'd find out that they could.
- Major John Hanley Jr.: The stories he
- [his father Colonel Hanley Senior]
- Major John Hanley Jr.: used to tell about Zebedee Titus. Greatest scout that ever lived he said. I do believe the Civil War would've gone the other way if it hadn't been for old Zebedee Titus and men like him.
- Zebedee Titus: Well, now, er, ah.
- Major John Hanley Jr.: Said you could see better with your naked eyes than he could with his best pair of fieldglasses.
- Barnaby West: Which story do you want to hear first? How about the time you and Jim Bridger discovered the Great Salt Lake? And Old Gabe tasted the water and said it was saltier than an ocean?
- Zebedee Titus: Well, er, ah. That weren't exactly true. I remember old Gabe, he spat the water out of his mouth and he said, Zebedee, you can bet your sweet Bess, that's what I called my rifle, you can bet your sweet Bess, that we've come clear to the shores of the Pacific. 'Cos we found out later it weren't true.
- Barnaby West: Or I can read how you became the greatest bear hunter alive. How you shot 82 of them in one year.
- Zebedee Titus: Well, er, ah. That ain't exactly true.
- Zebedee Titus: Well, there's a lot of ways I can be insulted but money was never important enough to be one of them. Besides it's a long spell since I climbed one of those California mountains and had me a long look at that Pacific Ocean.
- Mr. Parsons: Now, look, Zeb. It's 20 years since I asked you to work for me. That's a long time ago. And it's a long, long ways from here to Missouri and back.
- Zebedee Titus: Don't you tell me how further it is to Missouri. I helped blaze that trail.
- Mr. Parsons: I know that.
- Zebedee Titus: Those wagons out there followed my footsteps to get all the way here, footsteps I made in 1812. So don't you go telling me nothing.
- Mr. Parsons: I'm not trying to. 1812 was a long time ago.
- Zebedee Titus: That trail ain't changed a bit.
- Mr. Parsons: You have, Zeb.
- Christopher Hale: I never doubted you, Duke.
- Duke Shannon: You sure sounded like you did.
- Christopher Hale: And you got mad, didn't you?
- Duke Shannon: How'd you expect me to get?
- Christopher Hale: Mad. You'll get over it. Have you any idea what it would mean to an old man like that to be told he was through. That, after all his wonderful accomplishments, the people that owed him the most, were ready to throw him on the woodpile. And we owe him a great deal. This whole country does. I just don't want to be the one to break his heart.
- Barnaby West: I see you sent Coop to check up on him, Bill, didn't you?
- Bill Hawks: We had to be sure. Y'know the Commanche been wearing their paint lately. Don't you understand?
- Barnaby West: Yeah, I understand. Just like those men at the fort, that Mr Parsons and Major Hanley, they didn't trust Zeb either. But at least they didn't pretend to. And sneak up behind his back and check up on him. I'm sorry I brought him here in the first place.
- Zebedee Titus: I can hear you. I can't see ya, but I can hear ya. And I can smell you too. Where are you. Damn blast you hornrey hide. Come on and show yourself.
- Barnaby West: Aw, gee. Anyone would be proud to make the acquaintance of the manwho's done all the things you have, Mr Titus.
- Zebedee Titus: You claim to know all about me, do you?
- Barnaby West: Almost everybody in the whole world's read about you, not stories like you just told though. Almost wore my copy out, I've read it so many times.
- Zebedee Titus: Let me see that thing.
- Barnaby West: Soon as I heard you were here, I went and got my book. I'm with the wagon train that's camped right outside the fort. I'd sure appreciate it if you wrote your name on the front of my book, right across the front here.
- Zebedee Titus: What for?
- Barnaby West: Nobody's gonna believe I ever met you unless I can show them where you wrote your name. Here I brought a pencil too.
- Christopher Hale: [Voice over by the Wagon Master] He was an old man, almost the last of those breed of pathfinders, the trailblazers of the Great West, those expert woodsmen who were the hunters and fur trappers, known as the mountain men. The mountain men who opened up the West to immigrants from the East and proved that it was possible for wagons to cross the Continental Divide. No wagon train would have reached the Pacific Ocean if the mountain men hadn't been there first, seeking fresh trapping grounds. And now the fur trade bonanza is gone but to the grateful immigrants moving West, the names of these fearless trailblazers will never die. For the chroniclers of the era, Washington Irving, Ned Buntlines, rendered them unimperishable, names like Jim Bridger, William Sublette, Davy Crockett, Jedidiah Smith, Kit Carson, and this one, Zebedee Titus.
- Christopher Hale: [to Charlie] You're not going to get any older if you don't tend to sitting on that seat.
- Barnaby West: [Reading from the book] Unquestionably Zebedee Titus will long be remembered for the part he played in the exploration of the Great West. No man surpassed him as a guide and few will equal him. In his mind he carries an accurate map of the whole West, its streams, its mountains, its obstacles. He had and still has incredible endurance. Yet for all his rough and gruiff exterior, Zebedee Titus is a sensitive man who can feel very deeply any loss of confidence inhim or in his judgement of the wilderness. For he is a part of its vastness. A truly remarkable man. Zebedee Titus, a man never to be lost to history or to his country.