The quote I'd like to share comes from a different story, entitled "The Governors of Wyoming." Here the misguided but earnest anti-ranching activist Wade Walls (I don't think "eco-terrorist" is a term he uses, but others would) prepares to spend an evening cutting fences. He aims to release the cows, which he despises and hopes die in the road or at very least cause the rancher some headache with the round up and fence mending. As Wade explains to an accomplice, "It's not so much the logic of the act, it's the action of the act, the point made."
Another accomplice, this one a little fed up with her part in the deal, quizzes Walls over diner:
"Wade," said Renti, "do you work for a real estate developer?"
"For god's sake, no. What gave you that idea?"
"You want to get rid of the cows, right? I mean, isn't that what it comes down to, cows or subdivisions? I mean, what happens to a ranch once the stock is gone? Development, right? What else is there? I mean, what are you trying to do?" Contempt came out of her like water from a firehose.
"I want to bring it back," he said. His voice swelled with professional passion. "I want it to be like it was, all the fences and cows gone."
Proulx lets Wade wax on in a perfectly executed and obviously well-rehearsed polemic, but its music is flat to Renti's ear. After Walls finishes his speech, Renti says:
"Yeah. Why don't you blow up a meatpacker then instead of hammering ranchers? Why don't you wreck Florida ranchers? I bet there's more beef comes out of Florida than the west."
She walked out of the room with a haunchy slouch, not waiting to hear him say that western beef was the pivot point on which it all turned, that the battleground was the ruined land that belonged to the People.
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