And since then, twelve years before, she had seen generations of lovers
pass into the land they thought delectable; and their children flocked to
her, hung about her, were carried off by her to the ranch, and kept for
days, against the laughing protests of their parents. Flood Rawley
called her the Pied Piper of Jansen, and indeed she had a voice that
fluted and piped, and yet had so whimsical a note, that the hardest faces
softened at the sound of it; and she did not keep its best notes for the
few. She was impartial, almost impersonal; no woman was her enemy, and
every man was her friend--and nothing more. She had never had an
accepted lover since the day her Playmates left her. Every man except
one had given up hope that he might win her; and though he had been gone
from Jansen for two years, and had loved her since the days before the
Playmates came and went, he never gave up hope, and was now to return and
say again what he had mutely said for years--what she understood, and he
knew she understood.
Tim Denton had been a wild sort in his brief day.
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