Dark Command (1940)

Bob 'Shortcut' Seton: [to "Doc" before he makes his election speech] I gotta get outta here!

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Bob 'Shortcut' Seton: You know that girl I was staring at when all the ruckus started?
Fletcher 'Fletch' McCloud: Yeah.
Bob 'Shortcut' Seton: Well, who is she?
Fletcher 'Fletch' McCloud: Well, her name is Mary McCloud. Why?
Bob 'Shortcut' Seton: Well, I'll tell you. I think maybe I'll marry her.
Fletcher 'Fletch' McCloud: What ?
Bob 'Shortcut' Seton: Course if she'll have me, I mean. Fella wouldn't wanna marry anyone that didn't want him, naturally.
Fletcher 'Fletch' McCloud: Oh, naturally. Uh, you know her well?
Bob 'Shortcut' Seton: Naw, just seen her once or twice. Once she was on a horse, and...
Fletcher 'Fletch' McCloud: ...next time she was with a jackass.
[referring to Cantrell / Walter Pidgeon]
Bob 'Shortcut' Seton: He is, huh? Makes it easier, don't it?
Fletcher 'Fletch' McCloud: Practically a cinch. Say, you do things kinda sudden don't you?
Bob 'Shortcut' Seton: No, not exactly. But you see I got 'er figured out this way. If you LIKE someone - and you don't tell 'em right off - well, maybe all that time you wasted, she liked you, too. So... well, all that time's wasted, ain't it?
Fletcher 'Fletch' McCloud: Well, it IS the way you put it.

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Miss Mary McCloud: Now, will you please get to the point and tell me what you want?
Bob 'Shortcut' Seton: I want to marry you.
Miss Mary McCloud: You what?
Bob 'Shortcut' Seton: Well, I ain't got no job right now, but I figure to get one. And outside of a snort of hooch now and then, I got no bad habits.
Miss Mary McCloud: I'd say asking a perfect stranger to marry you is a very bad habit!

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The character of Will Cantrell is loosely based on the real life Confederate guerrilla leader William Quantrill. Like Cantrell, Quantrill was born in Ohio, taught school in Lawrence, Kansas, became a guerrilla fighter on the Confederate side and burnt Lawrence to the ground. However, the Confederacy eventually distanced itself from, and eventually disowned, him because of his band's propensity for executing prisoners, massacring civilians, looting and raping. The real Quantrill was killed in an ambush, beheaded by a Union cavalryman's saber, in Kentucky at the ripe old age of 27 instead of at the hands of Bob Seton.
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