Richard F. Burton - "The Book of the Thousand Nights and a Night, Volume 7"

Ferdinand Raimund - "Der Diamant des Geisterkoenigs"

William A. Williams - "The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved"

John Morley - "Critical Miscellanies, Volume I (of 3)"

Annual Bibliography of Commonwealth Literature 2007
This paper argues that discourses of love in Ghanaian market literature for youth offer a view into complex negotiations of agency and empowerment. Drawing on Deborah Durham's notion of youth as "social `shifters'" and Francis Nyamnjoh's conception of the "interconnectedness" of agency, I take Ghanaian market literature as one specific case of how African literature for youth foregrounds questions of continuity and change as African societies enter into increasingly complex global relations. In this literature for youth, received notions of love, often constructed out of impressions from American pop and hip hop music, carry new notions of agency that compete with existing "domesticated" forms. Authors like Ike Tandoh and Evelyn Tay employ discourses of love to offer youth alternative avenues for empowerment in a context of socio-economic disenfranchizement. In a creative process of "straddling", this writing both reveals and reproduces the contradictions that obtain in youth configurations of agency.

The Cross Cut

C >> Courtney Ryley Cooper >> The Cross Cut




Still eighty miles away, the range was sharply outlined to Fairchild,
from the ragged hump of Pikes Peak far to the south, on up to where the
gradual lowering of the mighty upheaval slid away into Wyoming. Eighty
miles, yet they were clear with the clearness that only altitudinous
country can bring; alluring, fascinating, beckoning to him until his
being rebelled against the comparative slowness of the train, and the
minutes passed in a dragging, long-drawn-out sequence that was almost
an agony to Robert Fairchild.

Hours! The hills came closer. Still closer; then, when it seemed that
the train must plunge straight into them, they drew away again, as
though through some optical illusion, and brooded in the background, as
the long, transcontinental train began to bang over the frogs and
switches as it made its entrance into Denver. Fairchild went through
the long chute and to a ticket window of the Union Station.

"When can I get a train for Ohadi?"

The ticket seller smiled. "You can't get one."

"But the map shows that a railroad runs there--"

"Ran there, you mean," chaffed the clerk.

"The best you can do is get to Forks Creek and walk the rest of the
way. That's a narrow-gauge line, and Clear Creek 's been on a rampage.
It took out about two hundred feet of trestle, and there won't be a
train into Ohadi for a week."

The disappointment on Fairchild's face was more than apparent, almost
boyish in its depression. The ticket seller leaned closer to the
wicket.

"Stranger out here?"

"Very much of one."

"In a hurry to get to Ohadi?"

"Yes."

"Then you can go uptown and hire a taxi--they 've got big cars for
mountain work and there are good roads all the way. It 'll cost
fifteen or twenty dollars. Or--"

Fairchild smiled. "Give me the other system if you 've got one. I 'm
not terribly long on cash--for taxis."

"Certainly. I was just going to tell you about it. No use spending
that money if you 've got a little pep, and it is n't a matter of life
or death. Go up to the Central Loop--anybody can direct you--and catch
a street car for Golden. That eats up fifteen miles and leaves just
twenty-three miles more. Then ask somebody to point out the road over
Mount Lookout. Machines go along there every few minutes--no trouble
at all to catch a ride. You 'll be in Ohadi in no time."

Fairchild obeyed the instructions, and in the baggage room rechecked
his trunk to follow him, lightening his traveling bag at the same time
until it carried only necessities. A luncheon, then the street car.
Three quarters of an hour later, he began the five-mile trudge up the
broad, smooth, carefully groomed automobile highway which masters Mount
Lookout. A rumbling sound behind him, then as he stepped to one side,
a grimy truck driver leaned out to shout as he passed:

"Want a lift? Hop on! Can't stop--too much grade."

A running leap, and Fairchild seated himself on the tailboard of the
truck, swinging his legs and looking out over the fading plains as the
truck roared and clattered upward along the twisting mountain road.

Higher, higher, while the truck labored along the grade, and while the
buildings in Golden below shrank smaller and smaller. The reservoir
lake in the center of the town, a broad expanse of water only a short
time before, began to take on the appearance of some great, blue-white
diamond glistening in the sun. Gradually a stream outlined itself in
living topography upon a map which seemed as large as the world itself.
Denver, fifteen miles away, came into view, its streets showing like
seams in a well-sewn garment, the sun, even at this distance, striking
a sheen from the golden dome of the capitol building. Higher! The
chortling truck gasped at the curves and tugged on the straightaway,
but Robert Fairchild had ceased to hear. His every attention was
centered on the tremendous stage unfolded before him, the vast
stretches of the plains rolling away beneath, even into Kansas and
Wyoming and Nebraska, hundreds of miles away, plains where once the
buffalo had roamed in great, shaggy herds, where once the emigrant
trains had made their slow, rocking progress into a Land of Heart's
Desire; and he began to understand something of the vastness of life,
the great scope of ambition; new things to a man whose world, until two
weeks before, had been the four chalky walls of an office.

Cool breezes from pine-fringed gulches brushed his cheek and smoothed
away the burning touch of a glaring sun; the truck turned into the
hairpin curves of the steep ascent, giving him a glimpse of deep
valleys, green from the touch of flowing streams, of great clefts with
their vari-hued splotches of granite, and on beyond, mound after mound
of pine-clothed hills, fringing the peaks of eternal snow, far away.
The blood suddenly grew hot in Fairchild's veins; he whistled, he
repressed a wild, spasmodic desire to shout. The spirit that had been
the spirit of the determined men of the emigrant trains was his now; he
remembered that he was traveling slowly toward a fight--against whom,
or what, he knew not--but he welcomed it just the same. The exaltation
of rarefied atmosphere was in his brain; dingy offices were gone
forever. He was free; and for the first time in his life, he
appreciated the meaning of the word.

Upward, still upward! The town below became merely a checkerboard
thing, the lake a dot of gleaming silver, the stream a scintillating
ribbon stretching off into the foothills. A turn, and they skirted a
tremendous valley, its slopes falling away in sheer descents from the
roadway. A darkened, moist stretch of road, fringed by pines, then a
jogging journey over rolling table-land. At last came a voice from the
driver's seat, and Fairchild turned like a man suddenly awakened.

"Turn off up here at Genesee Mountain. Which way do you go?"

"Trying to get to Ohadi." Fairchild shouted it above the roar of the
engine. The driver waved a hand forward.

"Keep to the main road. Drop off when I make the turn. You 'll pick
up another ride soon. Plenty of chances."

"Thanks for the lift."

"Aw, forget it."

The truck wheeled from the main road and chugged away, leaving
Fairchild afoot, making as much progress as possible toward his goal
until good fortune should bring a swifter means of locomotion. A
half-mile he walked, studying the constant changes of the scenery
before him, the slopes and rises, the smooth valleys and jagged crags
above, the clouds as they drifted low upon the higher peaks, shielding
them from view for a moment, then disappearing. Then suddenly he
wheeled. Behind him sounded the swift droning of a motor, cut-out
open, as it rushed forward along the road,--and the noise told a story
of speed.

Far at the brow of a steep hill it appeared, seeming to hang in space
for an instant before leaping downward. Rushing, plunging, once
skidding dangerously at a small curve, it made the descent, bumped over
a bridge, was lost for a second in the pines, then sped toward him, a
big touring car, with a small, resolute figure clinging to the wheel.
The quarter of a mile changed to a furlong, the furlong to a hundred
yards,--then, with a report like a revolver shot, the machine suddenly
slewed in drunken fashion far to one side of the road, hung dangerously
over the steep cliff an instant, righted itself, swayed forward and
stopped, barely twenty-five yards away. Staring, Robert Fairchild saw
that a small, trim figure had leaped forth and was waving excitedly to
him, and he ran forward.

His first glance had proclaimed it a boy; the second had told a
different story. A girl--dressed in far different fashion from Robert
Fairchild's limited specifications of feminine garb--she caused him to
gasp in surprise, then to stop and stare. Again she waved a hand and
stamped a foot excitedly; a vehement little thing in a snug, whipcord
riding habit and a checkered cap pulled tight over closely braided
hair, she awaited him with all the impatience of impetuous womanhood.

"For goodness' sake, come here!" she called, as he still stood gaping.
"I 'll give you five dollars. Hurry!"

Fairchild managed to voice the fact that he would be willing to help
without remuneration, as he hurried forward, still staring at her, a
vibrant little thing with dark-brown wisps of hair which had been blown
from beneath her cap straying about equally dark-brown, snapping eyes
and caressing the corners of tightly pressed, momentarily impatient
lips. Only a second she hesitated, then dived for the tonneau, jerking
with all her strength at the heavy seat cushion, as he stepped to the
running board beside her.

"Can't get this dinged thing up!" she panted. "Always sticks when you
're in a hurry. That's it! Jerk it. Thanks! Here!" She reached
forward and a small, sun-tanned hand grasped a greasy jack, "Slide
under the back axle and put this jack in place, will you? And rush it!
I 've got to change a tire in nothing flat! Hurry!"

Fairchild, almost before he knew it, found himself under the rear of
the car, fussing with a refractory lifting jack and trying to keep his
eyes from the view of trimly clad, brown-shod little feet, as they
pattered about at the side of the car, hurried to the running board,
then stopped as wrenches and a hammer clattered to the ground. Then
one shoe was raised, to press tight against a wheel; metal touched
metal, a feminine gasp sounded as strength was exerted in vain, then
eddying dust as the foot stamped, accompanied by an exasperated
ejaculation.

"Ding these old lugs! They 're rusted! Got that jack in place yet?"

"Yes! I'm raising the car now."

"Oh, please hurry." There was pleading in the tone now. "Please!"

The car creaked upward. Out came Fairchild, brushing the dust from his
clothes. But already the girl was pressing the lug wrench into his
hands.

"Don't mind that dirt," came her exclamation. "I 'll--I 'll give you
some extra money to get your suit cleaned. Loosen those lugs, while I
get the spare tire off the back. And for goodness' sake, please hurry!"

Astonishment had taken away speech for Fairchild. He could only
wonder--and obey. Swiftly he twirled the wrench while lug after lug
fell to the ground, and while the girl, struggling with a tire
seemingly almost as big as herself, trundled the spare into position to
await the transfer. As for Fairchild, he was in the midst of a task
which he had seen performed far more times than he had done it himself.
He strove to remove the blown-out shoe with the cap still screwed on
the valve stem; he fussed and swore under his breath, and panted, while
behind him a girl in whipcord riding habit and close-pulled cap
fidgeted first on one tan-clad foot, then on the other, anxiously
watching the road behind her and calling constantly for speed.

At last the job was finished, the girl fastening the useless shoe
behind the machine while Fairchild tightened the last of the lugs.
Then as he straightened, a small figure shot to his side, took the
wrench from his hand and sent it, with the other tools, clattering into
the tonneau. A tiny hand went into a pocket, something that crinkled
was shoved into the man's grasp, and while he stood there gasping, she
leaped to the driver's seat, slammed the door, spun the starter until
it whined, and with open cutout roaring again, was off and away,
rocking down the mountain side, around a curve and out of sight--while
Fairchild merely stood there, staring wonderingly at a ten-dollar bill!

A noise from the rear, growing louder, and the amazed man turned to see
a second machine, filled with men, careening toward him. Fifty feet
away the brakes creaked, and the big automobile came to a skidding,
dust-throwing stop. A sun-browned man in a Stetson hat, metal badge
gleaming from beneath his coat, leaned forth.

"Which way did he go?"

"He?" Robert Fairchild stared.

"Yeh. Did n't a man just pass here in an automobile? Where'd he
go--straight on the main road or off on the circuit trail?"

"It--it was n't a man."

"Not a man?" The four occupants of the machine stared at him. "Don't
try to bull us that it was a woman."

"Oh, no--no--of course not." Fairchild had found his senses. "But it
was n't a man. It--it was a boy, just about fifteen years old."

"Sure?"

"Oh, yes--" Fairchild was swimming in deep water now. "I got a good
look at him. He--he took that road off to the left."

It was the opposite one to which the hurrying fugitive in whipcord had
taken. There was doubt in the interrogator's eyes.

"Sure of that?" he queried. "I 'm the sheriff of Arapahoe County.
That's an auto bandit ahead of us. We--"

"Well, I would n't swear to it. There was another machine ahead, and I
lost 'em both for a second down there by the turn. I did n't see the
other again, but I did get a glimpse of one off on that side road. It
looked like the car that passed me. That's all I know."

"Probably him, all right." The voice came from the tonneau. "Maybe he
figured to give us the slip and get back to Denver. You did n't notice
the license number?" This to Fairchild. That bewildered person shook
his head.

"No. Did n't you?"

"Could n't--covered with dust when we first took the trail and never
got close enough afterward. But it was the same car--that's almost a
cinch."

"Let's go!" The sheriff was pressing a foot on the accelerator. Down
the hill went the car, to skid, then to make a short turn on to the
road which led away from the scent, leaving behind a man standing in
the middle of the road, staring at a ten-dollar bill,--and wondering
why he had lied!




CHAPTER IV

Wonderment which got nowhere. The sheriff's car returned before
Fairchild reached the bottom of the grade, and again stopped to survey
the scene of defeat, while Fairchild once more told his story, deleting
items which, to him, appeared unnecessary for consumption by officers
of the law. Carefully the sheriff surveyed the winding road before him
and scratched his head.

"Don't guess it would have made much difference which way he went,"
came ruefully at last, "I never saw a fellow turn loose with so much
speed on a mountain road. We never could have caught him!"

"Dangerous character?" Fairchild hardly knew why he asked the
question. The sheriff smiled grimly.

"If it was the fellow we were after, he was plenty dangerous. We were
trailing him on word from Denver--described the car and said he 'd
pulled a daylight hold-up on a pay-wagon for the Smelter Company--so
when the car went through Golden, we took up the trail a couple of
blocks behind. He kept the same speed for a little while until one of
my deputies got a little anxious and took a shot at a tire. Man, how
he turned on the juice! I thought that thing was a jack rabbit the way
it went up the hill! We never had a chance after that!"

"And you 're sure it was the same person?"

The sheriff toyed with the gear shift.

"You never can be sure about nothing in this business," came finally.
"But there 's this to think about: if that fellow was n't guilty of
something, why did he run?"

"It might have been a kid in a stolen machine," came from the back seat.

"If it was, we 've got to wait until we get a report on it. I guess
it's us back to the office."

The automobile went its way then, and Fairchild his, still wondering;
the sheriff's question, with a different gender, recurring again and
again:

"If she was n't guilty of something, why did she run?"

And why had she? More, why had she been willing to give ten dollars in
payment for the mere changing of a tire? And why had she not offered
some explanation of it all? It was a problem which almost wiped out
for Robert Fairchild the zest of the new life into which he was going,
the great gamble he was about to take. And so thoroughly did it
engross him that it was not until a truck had come to a full stop
behind him, and a driver mingled a shout with the tooting of his horn,
that he turned to allow its passage.

"Did n't hear you, old man," he apologized. "Could you give a fellow a
lift?"

"Guess so." It was friendly, even though a bit disgruntled; "hop on."

And Fairchild hopped, once more to sit on the tailboard, swinging his
legs, but this time his eyes saw the ever-changing scenery without
noticing it. In spite of himself, Fairchild found himself constantly
staring at a vision of a pretty girl in a riding habit, with dark-brown
hair straying about equally dark-brown eyes, almost frenzied in her
efforts to change a tire in time to elude a pursuing sheriff. Some
way, it all did n't blend. Pretty girls, no doubt, could commit
infractions of the law just as easily as ones less gifted with good
looks. Yet if this particular pretty girl had held up a pay wagon, why
did n't the telephoned notice from Denver state the fact, instead of
referring to her as a man? And if she had n't committed some sort of
depredation against the law, why on earth was she willing to part with
ten dollars, merely to save a few moments in changing a tire and thus
elude a sheriff? If there had been nothing wrong, could not a moment
of explanation have satisfied any one of the fact? Anyway, were n't
the officers looking for a man instead of for a woman? And yet:

"If she was n't guilty of something, why did she run?"

It was too much for any one, and Fairchild knew it. Yet he clung
grimly to the mystery as the truck clattered on, mile after mile, while
the broad road led along the sides of the hills, finally to dip
downward and run beside the bubbling Clear Creek,--clear no longer in
the memory of the oldest inhabitant; but soiled by the silica from ore
deposits that, churned and rechurned, gave to the stream a whitish,
almost milk-like character, as it twisted in and out of the tortuous
canon on its turbulent journey to the sea. But Fairchild failed to
notice either that or the fact that ancient, age-whitened water wheels
had begun to appear here and there, where gulch miners, seekers after
gold in the silt of the creek's bed, had abandoned them years before;
that now and then upon the hills showed the gaunt scars of mine
openings,--reminders of dreams of a day long past; or even the more
important fact that in the distance, softened by the mellowing rays of
a dying sun, a small town gradually was coming into view. A mile more,
then the truck stopped with a jerk.

"Where you bound for, pardner?"

Fairchild turned absently, then grinned in embarrassment.

"Ohadi."

"That's it, straight ahead. I turn off here. Stranger?"

"Yep."

"Miner?"

Fairchild shrugged his shoulders and nodded noncommittally. The truck
driver toyed with his wheel.

"Just thought I 'd ask. Plenty of work around here for single and
double jackers. Things are beginning to look up a bit--at least in
silver. Gold mines ain't doing much yet--but there 's a good deal
happening with the white stuff."

"Thanks. Do you know a good place to stop?"

"Yeh. Mother Howard's Boarding House. Everybody goes there, sooner or
later. You 'll see it on the left-hand side of the street before you
get to the main block. Good old girl; knows how to treat anybody in
the mining game from operators on down. She was here when mining was
mining!"

Which was enough recommendation for Mother Howard. Fairchild lifted
his bag from the rear of the vehicle, waved a farewell to the driver
and started into the village. And then--for once--the vision of the
girl departed, momentarily, to give place to other thoughts, other
pictures, of a day long gone.

The sun was slanting low, throwing deep shadows from the hills into the
little valley with its chattering, milk-white stream, softening the
scars of the mountains with their great refuse dumps; reminders of
hopes of twenty years before and as bare of vegetation as in the days
when the pick and gad and drill of the prospector tore the rock loose
from its hiding place under the surface of the ground. Nature, in the
mountainous country, resents any outrage against her dignity; the scars
never heal; the mine dumps of a score of years ago remain the same,
without a single shrub or weed or blade of grass growing in the big
heaps of rocky refuse to shield them.

But now it was all softened and aglow with sunset. The deep red
buildings of the Argonaut tunnel--a great, criss-crossing hole through
the hills that once connected with more than thirty mines and their
feverish activities--were denuded of their rust and lack of repair.
The steam from the air-compressing engine, furnishing the necessary
motive power for the drills that still worked in the hills, curled
upward in billowy, rainbow-like coloring. The scrub pines of the
almost barren mountains took on a fluffier, softer tone; the jutting
rocks melted away into their own shadows, it was a picture of peace and
of memories.

And it had been here that Thornton Fairchild, back in the nineties, had
dreamed his dreams and fought his fight. It had been here--somewhere
in one of the innumerable canons that led away from the little town on
every side--that Thornton Fairchild had followed the direction of
"float ore" to its resting place, to pursue the vagrant vein through
the hills, to find it at last, to gloat over it in his letters to
Beamish and then to--what?

A sudden cramping caught the son's heart, and it pounded with something
akin to fear. The old foreboding of his father's letter had come upon
him, the mysterious thread of that elusive, intangible Thing, great
enough to break the will and resistance of a strong man and turn him
into a weakling--silent, white-haired--sitting by a window, waiting for
death. What had it been? Why had it come upon his father? How could
it be fought? All so suddenly, Robert Fairchild had realized that he
was in the country of the invisible enemy, there to struggle against it
without the slightest knowledge of what it was or how it could be
combated. His forehead felt suddenly damp and cold. He brushed away
the beady perspiration with a gesture almost of anger, then with a look
of relief, turned in at a small white gate toward a big, rambling
building which proclaimed itself, by the sign on the door, to be Mother
Howard's Boarding House.

A moment of waiting, then he faced a gray-haired, kindly faced woman,
who stared at him with wide-open eyes as she stood, hands on hips,
before him.

"Don't you tell me I don't know you!" she burst forth at last.

"I 'm afraid you don't."

"Don't I?" Mother Howard cocked her head. "If you ain't a Fairchild, I
'll never feed another miner corned beef and cabbage as long as I live.
Ain't you now?" she persisted, "ain't you a Fairchild?"

The man laughed in spite of himself. "You guessed it."

"You 're Thornton Fairchild's boy!" She had reached out for his
handbag, and then, bustling about him, drew him into the big "parlor"
with its old-fashioned, plush-covered chairs, its picture album, its
glass-covered statuary on the old, onyx mantel. "Did n't I know you
the minute I saw you? Land, you're the picture of your dad! Sakes
alive, how is he?"

There was a moment of silence. Fairchild found himself suddenly
halting and boyish as he stood before her.

"He 's--he 's gone, Mrs. Howard."

"Dead?" She put up both hands. "It don't seem possible. And me
remembering him looking just like you, full of life and strong and--"

"Our pictures of him are a good deal different. I--I guess you knew
him when everything was all right for him. Things were different after
he got home again."

Mother Howard looked quickly about her, then with a swift motion closed
the door.

"Son," she asked in a low voice, "did n't he ever get over it?"

"It?" Fairchild felt that he stood on the threshold of discoveries.
"What do you mean?"

"Didn't he ever tell you anything, Son?"

"No. I--"

"Well, there was n't any need to." But Mother Howard's sudden
embarrassment, her change of color, told Fairchild it was n't the
truth. "He just had a little bad luck out here, that was all.
His--his mine pinched out just when he thought he 'd struck it rich--or
something like that."

"Are you sure that is the truth?"

For a second they faced each other, Robert Fairchild serious and
intent, Mother Howard looking at him with eyes defiant, yet
compassionate. Suddenly they twinkled, the lips broke from their
straight line into a smile, and a kindly old hand reached out to take
him by the arm.

"Don't you stand there and try to tell Mother Howard she don't know
what she 's talking about!" came in tones of mock severity. "Hear me?
Now, you get up them steps and wash up for dinner. Take the first room
on the right. It's a nice, cheery place. And get that dust and grime
off of you. The dinner bell will ring in about fifteen minutes, and
they 's always a rush for the food. So hurry!"

In his room, Fairchild tried not to think. His brain was becoming too
crammed with queries, with strange happenings and with the aggravating
mysticisms of the life into which his father's death had thrown him to
permit clearness of vision. Even in Mother Howard, he had not been
able to escape it; she told all too plainly, both by her actions and
her words, that she knew something of the mystery of the past,--and had
falsified to keep the knowledge from him.

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