"Oh, but I'm not going on," said Denis hastily. "I must go back to—her."
"With them feet and without your tucker?"
And the lean brown lad stood with his bare arms akimbo, a stained statue in a flannel shirt and moleskins.
"At once," said Denis. "I've wasted time enough; and if there are stairs there's no difficulty. Go you back to the homestead, and tell them to send down everything they can think of for a young lady. Food and clothes; mind, she hasn't had a bite since dinner yesterday."
The young Australian doffed his wide-awake with a sweep.
"Why, mister!" he got out, but that was all. "I'm sorry I didn't call you 'mister' before," he added, after the stare of an idolater. "I'll never leave it out again!"
Denis was limping along only a few minutes later when the sound of a gallop made him look round for the rider who had just left him; and the same horse it was, but a different horseman, for whom the stirrups were grotesquely short. In a few seconds he had bobbed and bounded into a blue-eyed man with fair beard blowing and tanned face filled with humane distress.
"Get on this horse," he cried, flinging himself off. "If you don't, I'll carry you myself! There—let me give you a hand; my name's Kitto; this is my run. Everything's following in the buggy, but here's a biscuit to begin on; the beds will be made and aired by the time we get you both back. But only two of you—only two!"
Mr. Kitto had a heart of gold, and wore it on his sleeve; rarer still was a tact almost incongruous in that desolate spot. Not a question had Denis to answer as the horse ambled under him and the squatter strode alongside. But when they came to the mouth of a long stair tunneled through the soft sandstone, it was Mr. Kitto who looked curiously at the rude steep steps.
"Nobody has come up here," said he. "We had a dust-storm yesterday before the wind went round, and the sand on these top steps is as it drifted."