“You might call them pleasant. I’ve been thinking of you.”
Sheila found no reply to make to this, but blushed again.
“Thinking of you,” repeated Dakota. “Of the chance you took in coming out here alone—in coming into my shack. We’re twenty miles from town here—twenty miles from the Double R—the nearest ranch. It isn’t likely that a soul will pass here for a month. Suppose——”
“We won’t ‘suppose,’ if you please,” said Sheila. Her face had grown slowly pale, but there was a confident smile on her lips as she looked at him.
“No?” he said, watching her steadily. “Why? Isn’t it quite possible that you could have fallen in with a sort of man——”
“As it happens, I did not,” interrupted Sheila.
“How do you know?”
Sheila’s gaze met his unwaveringly. “Because you are the man,” she said slowly.
She thought she saw a glint of pleasure in his eyes, but was not quite certain, for his expression changed instantly.
“Fate, or Providence—or whatever you are pleased to call the power that shuffles us flesh and blood mannikins around—has a way of putting us all in the right places. I expect that’s one of the reasons why you didn’t fall in with the sort of man I was going to tell you about,” said Dakota.