"Yes here," continued the Professor, nodding down at the Yards as they began to flow by beneath, "here's where the Trail comes to its end at last, along with the American Cowboy who used to live on it and by it. No matter how virtuous he's kept his name, how many evildoers he's managed to get by undamaged, how he's done by his horses, what girls he has chastely kissed, serenaded by guitar, or gone out and raised hallelujah with, it's all back there in the traildust now and none of it matters, for down there you'll find the wet convergence and finale of his drought-struck tale and thankless calling, Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show stood on its head—spectators invisible and silent, nothing to be commemorated, the only weapons in view being Blitz Instruments and Wackett Punches to knock the animals out with, along with the blades everybody is packing, of course, and the rodeo clowns jabber on in some incomprehensible lingo not to distract the beast but rather to heighten and maintain its attention to the single task at hand, bringing it down to those last few gates, the stunning-devices waiting inside, the butchering and blood just beyond the last chute—and the cowboy with him. Here."
* * * * * * * * * *
"the Yards"
Raising cattle was once an adventure, an experience, and a way of life but it has been eradicated and replaced by the brutal streamlined efficiency of American capitalism. As seen earlier from a different overhead view as the Chums entered Chicago, the freedom of the open range has been reduced to a labyrinth of tight corridors leading directly to the "last chute" in Chicago's Stockyard, or "Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show stood on its head."
"the Trail"
Heino's metaphor for time. As a trail is a journey with a destination, time is as well. Time has brought the open expanse of the frontier to its culmination at the killing yards of Chicago. Much like the way the Yards funnels the cattle through a narrow path to their ultimate and pre-written doom, with no alternate paths, no choices, no surprise endings but the one (a surprise only to the cattle, one after the other, in turn), time funnels each of us into narrower and narrower paths. When the frontier was young, everything was wide open and free, a cornucopia of choice and possibility. But time eventually tightens its grip and choices slough away, paths close, trails disappear, until we feel we're left with one unending path toward the Wackett Punch, the blade, and the chute. The frontier was America's youth, it's possibility, it's freedom. But that time has ended. America's youth is over. Time to grow up.
"Here."
This is really just part of the next sentence where Heino is going to hand something to Lew!
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