She must know about this.

Maybe all women would fight for their young or for their men, but he knew of no other girl who could drive a Bear Cat with the precision and skill with which Linda drove.

He knew no other girl who was master of the secrets of the desert and the canyons and the mountains.

Certainly he knew no other girl who would tug at great boulders and build a fireplace and risk burning her fingers and scorching her face to prepare a meal for him.

So he watched Linda and so he thought.
At first he thought she was the finest pal a boy ever had, and then he thought how he meant to work to earn and keep her friendship; and then, as the fire reddened Linda's cheeks and she made running comments while she deftly turned her skewers of brigand beefsteak, food that half the Boy Scouts in the country had been eating for four years, there came an idea with which he dallied until it grew into a luring vision.
"Linda," he asked suddenly, "do you know that one of these days you're going to be a beautiful woman ?" Linda turned her skewers with intense absorption.