Neither one of us had much trust in the peaceful qualities of our fellowmen.  Seems to me most of the folks doing all the talk about peace and giving the other fellow the benefit of the doubt were folks setting back to home in cushy chairs with plenty of grub around and the police nearby to protect them.  Back there, men would set down safe of an evening and write about how cruel the poor Indian was being treated out west.  They never come upon the body of a friend who had been staked out on an ant hill or had a fire built on his stomach, nor had they stood off a charge of Indians.

Gold is never a simple thing.  Many a man has wished he had gold, but once he his it he finds trouble.  Gold causes folks to lose their right thinking and their common sense.

A man who expects to sire children doesn't want to appear the fool in front of them.  We Sacketts believed young folk should respect their elders, but their elders had to deserve respsect.

People who live in comfortable, settled towns with law-abiding citizens and a government to protect them, they never think of the men who came first, the ones who went through hell to build something.

To have killed men is not a thing of which one can be proud.  A man uses a gun when necessary, and not too often, or carelessly.

When a man takes up guns in fighting, somebody is going to get hurt.  Somehow folks mostly think it will be somebody else, but we're all vulnerable, and nobody has a free ride.  With guns you pay to learn, only sometimes you learn too late.

As a general run, motives weren't hard to understand there on the frontier.  Things were pretty cut and dried, and a body knew where he stood with folks.  He knew what his problems were, and the problems of those about him were about the same.  A man was too busy trying to stay alive and make some gain, to have time to think much about himself or get his feelings hurt.