- [first lines]
- Lt. Rod Blake: Oh, hello. I'm Rod Blake, chief investigator for the Nevada state troopers. You know, every occupation has its specialized tools. This is a pike pole, part of a lumberman's equipment. Made of hardwood, it has this long steel spike in the end. It's an extremely useful tool when you're wrangling logs... it's also a very dangerous weapon in a fight. You'll meet the pike pole again in a story called, "Excitement at Milltown".
- Myrna Carlson: Would you like one of my sandwiches?
- Lt. Rod Blake: No thanks.
- Myrna Carlson: Oh, but I insist! It you don't, I'll tell my father.
- Lt. Rod Blake: You'll get me fired, I suppose
- Myrna Carlson: It's a perfectly wonderful arrangement... Father runs the mill and *I* run Father.
- [discussing Loomis' daughter, Myrna]
- Mr. Carlson: I don't know what to do with her.
- Lt. Rod Blake: How long has it been since she's had a good spanking?
- [Rod has just given Myrna the benefit of his amateur psychoanalytical abilities]
- Myrna Carlson: Do you read palms, too?
- Lt. Rod Blake: I read faces better.
- [last lines]
- Lt. Rod Blake: [narrating] Byron once said that "Hatred is the madness of the heart." Ella Westover wasn't out of her mind, but it was a thin line that separated insanity from the acts of a woman ignored.