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Show The Chimney 102 flowers-pink, pastel blue, and lemon yellow petals cut from s t i f f sheets of paper and bound together with wire. Two flags, the Swedish above the American, furled below the bouquet. "Ho there," called Langley, patting his horse's mane. "Could you t e l l me about your chimney, s i r . Fool's gold, eh?" He chuckled. The large-boned man bent further into the d i r t and his work of turning the earth over and over, never letting a clump rest, sifting i t through his fingers into a fine black powder. Mr. Langley's usual sense of convention would have demanded his departure had curiosity not bested custom. In between trains, he had ridden on his borrowed horse through the sprawling settlement of Salt Lake City. He had gazed at the rising granite spires of the Mormon Temple and the beetle-backed roundness of the newly-completed Tabernacle. He had assessed the townspeople, assuming that they were the Saints he had heard of as they drove past him in stylish phaetons or open wagons f i l l e d with garden produce. He had also wondered at the groups of women-friends or plural wives? But nothing intrigued him as much as this man at the corner of Third Street East and Second Street South who had a golden chimney, a red picket fence decorated with calico bows, and who wouldn't look in any direction except at the ground. The man seemed out of synchronization with the bustle and industry that had been so evident elsewhere. His property stood apart from that world as well. Langley's attention was drawn to the front door of the house and to the pane of glass that had been pastiched with white paper doilies. Cut lace shapes of hearts, flowers, and flying birds interlocked into an intricate shade |