Steve laughed. “Look down,” he said; “don’t you see the sheep tracks?”
“I don’t,” she confessed; “it’s too dark to see anything but a blur of sand.”
“Look up, then,” he answered; “the stars aren’t blurred anyway, and they point the way. I wish they weren’t so confoundedly bright. A bank of thick black cloud would mean a lot to me just now.”
“You’re thinking of rain?” said Ess.
“Does one think of anything else these days?” he said. “And now, to-night, rain would mean more to me than ever it did.”
“Why more than yesterday?” she asked.
“Wait till we’re driving back and I can talk in comfort, and I’ll tell you,” he said, and thereafter they rode in silence, the shuffling hoof-beats in the sand and the creak of saddlery the only sounds that broke the stillness.
“There’s the clump of trees we were camped at,” he said presently. “And there’s the buggy. We’ll find the horses near—hark! There they are,” as the buggy horses neighed loudly.
“Now we’ll have a cup of tea,” he said. “I haven’t got to-day’s dust out of my throat yet, and I don’t suppose you have.”
He leaped from his horse and helped the girl down, and fastened the reins to the buggy wheel. In three minutes he had collected a handful of sticks, started a fire, and stood the billy beside it, tilted the water into it from a waterbag, and left it to boil while he went off after the buggy horses. It was boiling when he came back, and he dropped a handful of tea in it and lifted it off the fire.