"Well," he admitted slowly, "I guess I was pretty sure. Of course I couldn't be dead certain. It might have been anybody's tracks … that is," he corrected with a quick broadening of the smile, "anybody with a foot the right size to fit into a boot like that."
"Like what?" she asked in turn.
"Like the one that made the tracks by the creek where you came into the main trail, where you stopped to drink."
"You saw that?"
"If I hadn't seen it how was I to guess that it was you ahead of me?" he demanded. And when she frowned a little and did not answer for a moment he gave his attention to the black coffee which she had poured for him. "You sure know how to make coffee right," he complimented her with a vast show of sincerity. "This is the best I ever tasted."
"I'm glad you like it," she retorted as the frown fled before a hint of laughter. "I found it already made in the pot and just warmed it over!"
"Oh," said Thornton. And then with much gravity of tone but with twinkling eyes, "Come to think of it it isn't the taste of it that a man notices; it's the being just hot enough. I never had any coffee better warmed-up than this."
"Thank you." She stirred the sugar in her own cup of muddy looking beverage and without glancing up at him this time, went on, "You mean that you didn't know who I was when you saw me?"
"At the bank in Dry Town?"
"Of course not. Back there on the trail."