She was a comely young woman and not without prospects. Therefore it was heartbreaking to her mother that she would enter into marriage with William Munny, a known thief and murderer, a man of notoriously vicious and intemperate disposition. When she died, it was not at his hands as her mother might have suspected, but of smallpox. That was 1878.

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But in the genre, as both a movie and a conscious addition to the ongoing celluloid Western mythology, the film is a masterpiece, a stunning and awe-inspiring statement. — Louis Black

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— You remember that drover I shot through the mouth and his teeth came out the back of his head?
— …
— I think about him now and again. He didn’t do anything to deserve to get shot. At least nothin’ I could remember when I sobered up.
— You were crazy, Will.
— Yeah, no one liked me. Mountain boys all thought I was gonna shoot ’em out of pure meanness.
— Well, you ain’t like that no more.
— That’s right. I’m just a fella now.