Cimarron Strip (TV Series)

The Battleground (1967)

Stuart Whitman: Marshal Jim Crown

Photos 

Quotes 

• [reading the question Dulcey wrote on a dime novel] 

  Marshal Jim Crown : Gunfighter, gambler, lawyer? No, Miss - Marshal.

• [Jim cocks his rifle] 

  William Payne : That's an ugly sound, Marshal.

  Marshal Jim Crown : It always has been.

  William Payne : But you don't even know me.

  Marshal Jim Crown : William Payne, the farmer's messiah.

  William Payne : Now you're beginning to understand.

  Marshal Jim Crown : Had a heel shot off. They tell the story that you can't back up.

  William Payne : That's it.

  Marshal Jim Crown : Took a chestful of lead goin' against a Winchester armed with principle.

  William Payne : That's a way to put it.

  Marshal Jim Crown : Guts and gall!

  William Payne : Now you know me.

• William Payne : Ten million acres across that river - the Cherokee Outlet, the last free homestead land left in America. Ten years we fought to open it, for our plows, for our homes. We've taken abuse, we've suffered abuse while the cattlemen squandered that land - land they don't even own, except by government lease. And now we're going to have it. We've done it. We've got a bill in Congress that's going to decide once and for all who owns it - cattlemen or us. They're votin' on that bill in Washington now and I'm not about to jeopardize it by violence and you know it.

  Marshal Jim Crown : Now you know me.

• Bear : Where'd they hide you?

  Marshal Jim Crown : Abilene.

  Bear : The devil!

  Marshal Jim Crown : Three year.

  Bear : You put the lid on Abilene?

  Marshal Jim Crown : Prettiest ice cream parlors you ever saw. Roller-skatin' every Friday night with a cowboy band.

• Marshal Jim Crown : Do you think you can track him?

  Angus MacGregor : You're talkin', man, to the laddie that taught the Sioux.

• Hardy Miller : I've got 80,000 head of cattle out here - any twenty worth more than you make in a year. I've got 340,000 acres of land - you couldn't ride it in a week... One hundred sixty men. I've had Congressmen to my house; the President of Mexico visit my ranch. You're warning me?

  Marshal Jim Crown : You and every other rancher in the Cherokee Outlet.

• Major Ben Covington : There's a field out there behind that hill, Marshal. Do you know what's in it?

  Marshal Jim Crown : No.

  Major Ben Covington : Neither do these farmers. There are four hundred stones out there, Marshal - dead boys with Kiowa arrows in there backs. Fifteen years of bloody Indian wars laying out the territory; making the peace. And do you know what they won for it? Meat once a month, the rest beans. Weaponry out-moded, fouled, a marksman couldn't hit a target. We're understaffed, we're underpaid, we've got recruits so green they don't know the difference between a Dahlgren mortar or a coehorn, or old men who have forgotten.

• Marshal Jim Crown : Where are they? Forty cowboys are going to chop those settlers into kindling if I don't have the men to stop them. Where are the sheriffs?

  Francis Wilde : Resigned - all five. No deputies available.

• Dulcey Coopersmith : What do you think?

  Marshal Jim Crown : Go home.

  Dulcey Coopersmith : This is my home.

  Marshal Jim Crown : With the finest lasses you'd want to see?

  Dulcey Coopersmith : I know what it was. I know what it is. There isn't a thing in the place that doesn't need fixing and the kitchen's horrible with dirt and grease and dust, but I know what it can be.

• Marshal Jim Crown : How old are you?

  Dulcey Coopersmith : Twenty.

  Marshal Jim Crown : Twenty? Nobody's twenty anymore.

  Dulcey Coopersmith : You're right, I lied - I'm eighteen. How old are you?

  Marshal Jim Crown : Thirty-five.

  Dulcey Coopersmith : Well... that isn't so bad.

• Marshal Jim Crown : Do you want to feed people and clean up behind them?

  Dulcey Coopersmith : But it would be mine! I've never owned something that was mine before. I have a future.

  Marshal Jim Crown : A future?

  Dulcey Coopersmith : Well, there'd be tables inside with linen and candles in bottles like these glowing ever so softly...

• [Jim smashes a bottle and thrusts the jagged edge at Dulcey] 

  Marshal Jim Crown : Look at it! That is the future here, Dulcey! It's vicious and it's raw. You're tryin' to feed sugar to a horse that's crazy and wild with fear and full of blind, stupid hate. They won't even want to see ya or know what you have to offer. Then one day, you're standing next to a fire or a shootin' or some liquored lout is tearin' up the town, and all at once they'll be standin' over you sayin' "I never saw she was there" but it will be done. No, you're going to be hurt around here, Dulcey, and no one's goin' to mean to do it.

  Dulcey Coopersmith : That can't happen.

  Marshal Jim Crown : Can't it?

  Dulcey Coopersmith : You're here.

• [Francis encourages Jim to market himself as a lawman] 

  Marshal Jim Crown : Doc Crown...

  Francis Wilde : The Legend of Cimarron!

  Marshal Jim Crown : Town Tamer of the West!

  Francis Wilde : Like Masterson...

  Marshal Jim Crown : Cartwright, Ben Thompson...

  Francis Wilde : Stoudenmire, Hickok...

  Marshal Jim Crown : Cartwright was a trigger-happy gun sharp, Ben Thompson was a drunken animal who'd kill on a dare, Stoudenmire liked to club Mexicans to death. They'd make the laws and they'd break 'em. They'd cheat, steal, lie - they trusted no one and no one trusted them. That's the stuff that makes legends. You want a legend? You're going to be part of it. I want deputies!

• Francis Wilde : Well, you, me and him. Us three. Could be worse.

  Marshal Jim Crown : It's gonna be.

• Bear : What's happened to you? We used to take on fifty of anything - men, grizzlies... You name me one time we ever lost!

  Marshal Jim Crown : Never, Bear.

  Bear : Well?

  Marshal Jim Crown : Not once. But what did we win?

• [Jim is not amused by Francis' newspaper article describing the exploits of Marshal 'Doc' Crown] 

  Francis Wilde : Well, that was the deal.

  Marshal Jim Crown : What deal?

  Francis Wilde : You said: I get a legend, you get a deputy.

• Marshal Jim Crown : And what about them farmers? What have they got to go back to? Nothin! They're hungry, broke, angry. What do you think they're gonna do when they sit around here, maybe for years? I'm gonna have every bad guy in the nation pourin' in here like leeches. Con men; jayhawkers; tinhorns; washed-up, red-eyed losers. I gotta jungle here and every son of a jackal's goin' to be callin', lookin' for the spoils!