“And some time she may catch you,” Paula said.
“That’s why I’m giving her up. It isn’t exactly a strain on me, but soon or late she’s bound to get me if there’s anything in the law of probability. It may be a million-to-one shot, but heaven alone knows where in the series of the million that fatal one is going to pop up.”
“You’re a wonder, Red Cloud,” Paula smiled.
“Why?”
“You think in statistics and percentages, averages and exceptions. I wonder, when we first met, what particular formula you measured me up by.”
“I’ll be darned if I did,” he laughed back. “There was where all signs failed. I didn’t have a statistic that applied to you. I merely acknowledged to myself that here was the most wonderful female woman ever born with two good legs, and I knew that I wanted her more than I had ever wanted anything. I just had to have her—”
“And got her,” Paula completed for him. “But since, Red Cloud, since. Surely you’ve accumulated enough statistics on me.”
“A few, quite a few,” he admitted. “But I hope never to get the last one—”
He broke off at sound of the unmistakable nicker of Mountain Lad. The stallion appeared, the cowboy on his back, and Dick gazed for a moment at the perfect action of the beast’s great swinging trot.
“We’ve got to get out of this,” he warned, as Mountain Lad, at sight of them, broke into a gallop.