BOOK THREE: The Clash
Chapter I
I
On the open prairie outside the growing city of Broncho, in the heart of the cattle country, the Mounted Police held their Queen's Birthday sports.
Mrs. MacFarlane, not long made wife of Inspector MacFarlane, looked on the scene from her seat in the front row of the officers' marquee and felt herself quite intoxicated with the glamour of it all.
Mrs. MacFarlane was an American, brought up in the Eastern States and hence new to the West and particularly to such martial pageantry as this.
She was also an uncommonly pretty woman, small and graceful, with seductive eyes of baby blue, fringed with very long lashes; well marked and arched eyebrows; a mass of hair so fair that it was almost white; a little tip-tilted nose; and lips that seemed perpetually to ask for kisses. She had a voice which alternately cooed and purred and sometimes did both at once. Intensely feminine, she revelled in her frills and ribbons and exotic perfume, had always an eye for a good-looking man, craved masculine attention as a child craves candy, and, when any prospects of the kind were in sight, was alive to nothing else whatever. If attacked, she would instantly resort to tears. Altogether, she was of the type which some women call 'sweet' and others 'cattish.' Most men would call her 'pussy.' But she made her presence felt; and there was 'more in her than met the eye.'
No one could quite understand how a pretty woman of her stamp, who so admired physical beauty in men and was herself able to appeal to them after a certain fashion, had come to marry a big, grumpy, bear of a fellow like MacFarlane. Some months before, returning from the East on leave, MacFarlane had electrified every man and woman connected with the Force by bringing with him this unknown beauty as his bride. How on earth had he managed it—when, even now, she clearly revealed her preference by furtively ogling all handsome men, even the constables? Never mind; she had accepted him. Some day, perhaps, when the novelty of her present life wore off and she had settled down to await Eternity in the rough dreariness of pioneer barrack life with MacFarlane for company—well—things might happen.
Time enough to think of these things when they came! At present, reclining in her chair, watching the sports with the dreamy little smile which she knew became her so well, she was perfectly content.
Beside her sat Mrs. Jim Jackson, wife of the now prominent rancher, a large, good-humoured lady of much animation, with an insatiable love for gossip. From Mrs. Jackson she learned much concerning the sports and the sportsmen.