Wyoming Wildflowers: The Beginning by Patricia McLinn Read Free Book Online Page A

more spread out. Every year some neighbors put lights on this tree, using a whole lot of extension cords. I don’t think they can even see it from their place, but if you drive by, or if I’m riding that section, there it is, all the colors shining, out there all by itself.”
    “That’s . . . that’s wonderful, Ed.” She wanted to kiss him. She wanted . . . him. “A wreath on the front door.”
    “What?”
    He sounded off-balance at her blurted words. Thank God, she wasn’t alone.
    “A wreath on the front door. That’s what tells me Christmas is coming at home. Not made from snowberry though.” Her brightness was nearly too much to bear. “Now it’s your turn.”
    “A bow on the truck, I guess.”
    Curiosity dialed the brightness in her voice back toward reality. “You put a bow on your truck? Inside or out?”
    “On the front grill mostly. Sometimes on the rearview mirror. Mom puts them on.”
    “I like that.” Maybe she would have something in common with his mother. Not that they’d ever meet. “Mailing cards to friends,” she said quickly.
    ”Calling Merry Christmas at anybody you pass by on the road.”
    “Carolers going door to door.”
    “Doors too far apart. So barn dance where everybody sings together.”
    “Like what happened when our bus broke down. That’s nice.”
    “Yeah, it is. In the old days, it took so long to get anywhere, people came from all over and stayed a night or two. They’d dance ’til dawn on the last day, then start traveling. Now folks come for the evening. Except, one year when I was a kid, there was a storm, and everybody stayed over, and all us kids wanted to do it every year. But it’s not very practical.”
    “I suppose not.”
    “You’re not wishing for the old days are you?” he asked. “Because forget the nostalgia, it was a heck of a lot of work.”
    “I know. And, no, I’m not wishing for the old days. Not all parts of them, only . . . community, I guess.”
    “We’ve got that in Knighton. Suppose you have to when there aren’t a lot of people. Most folks are pretty self-reliant, but some jobs need more hands, so it’s good to have neighbors to count on. I never thought about it as anything special until college, when I realized my life had been different from some of the other kids’.”
    They had tonight
.
    “Where is Knighton?”
    “Eastern slope of the Big Horns — Big Horn Mountains,” he elaborated, apparently reading her blankness. “You know anything about Wyoming?”
    She searched her memory. “Sort of square. Uh, Yellowstone Park? Cheyenne?”
    “Not near either one,” he said cheerfully. “Yellowstone’s the northwest corner. If you cut the box of Wyoming into four, Cheyenne’s in the southeast quadrant. Knighton would be on the west side of the northeast quarter, ‘bout halfway down.”
    “What’s it like?”
    She wanted him to keep talking, while she considered something she had never before considered. Making love with a man she couldn’t have a future with. A man who would leave when this weekend was over.
    Tonight
. . . Would she dare . . . ?
    “Not much there.”
    “There must be something there. Tell me.”
    “Okay. There’s a main street — called Main Street. Buildings like the library and courthouse, a couple of churches, and what’s now an elementary school are from the ’20s, built from native stone. Then there’s the cafe and other places built of wood.
    “The town started with a log building at a crossroads. A sort of bar — what they called a roadhouse in the early days. Pretty rough. Cowboys and rustlers and cardsharks, all together. A few other businesses started to serve the roadhouse’s customers. Livery stable, general store, and a bawdy house run by the ancestor of one of the town’s most upright citizens.” He grinned. “Everybody acts like nobody knows, but everybody does.”
    Despite the distraction of her other thoughts, he’d caught her attention.
    “As more folks moved in,