Tim Denton was a Pioneer, with all the comradeship which lay in the word,
and he was that sort of lover who has seen one woman, and can never see
another--not the product of the most modern civilisation. Before Laura
had had Playmates he had given all he had to give; he had waited and
hoped ever since; and when the ruthless gossips had said to him before
Mary Jewell's house that she was in love with the Faith Healer, nothing
changed in him. For the man, for Ingles, Tim belonged to a primitive
breed, and love was not in his heart. As he rode out to Sloly's Ranch,
he ground his teeth in rage. But Laura had called him to her, and:
"Well, what you say goes, Laura," he muttered at the end of a long hour
of human passion and its repression. "If he's to go scot-free, then he's
got to go; but the boys yonder'll drop on me, if he gets away. Can't you
see what a swab he is, Laura?"

The brown eyes of the girl looked at him gently. The struggle between
them was over; she had had her way--to save the preacher, impostor though
he was; and now she felt, as she had never felt before in the same
fashion, that this man was a man of men.

"Tim, you do not understand," she urged. "You say he was a landsharp in
the South, and that he had to leave-"

"He had to vamoose, or take tar and feathers."

"But he had to leave. And he came here preaching and healing; and he is
a hypocrite and a fraud--I know that now, my eyes are opened. He didn't
do what he said he could do, and it killed Mary Jewell--the shock; and
there were other things he said he could do, and he didn't do them.
Perhaps he is all bad, as you say--I don't think so. But he did some