An Outback Marriage

The influence of the Chief of Police was brought to bear, and many

a weary mile did the troopers of the Outer Back ride in search of

the missing man. One of them followed a Considine about two hundred

miles across country, and embodied the story of his wanderings in

a villainously written report; brief and uncouth as the narrative

was, it was in itself an outline picture of bush life. From

shearers' hut to artesian borers' camp, from artesian well to the

opal-fields, from the opal-fields to a gold-rush, from the gold-rush

to a mail-coach stable, he pursued this Considine, only to find

that, in the words of the report, "the individual was not the same."

Things looked hopeless for Mary Grant, when help came from an

unexpected quarter. A letter written in a rugged, forcible fist,

arrived for Charlie Gordon from a young fellow named Redshaw, once

a station-hand on Kuryong, who had gone out to the back-country

and was rather a celebrity in his way. His father was a pensioner

at the old station, and Redshaw junior, who was known as Flash

Jack, evidently kept in touch with things at Kuryong. He wrote Dear Sir, I hear from Gannon the trooper that you want to find Keogh. When he

left the coach that time, he went back to the station and got his

horses, and cleared out, and he is now hiding in Reeves's buffalo

camp at the back of Port Faraway. If I hear any more will let you

know.

J. REDSHAW, alas 'Flash Jack.' "What's all this?" said Pinnock, when Charlie and Carew brought him

the letter. "Who is J. Redshaw, and why does he sign "alas Flash

Jack?"

"He means Alias, don't you see? Alias Flash Jack. He is a man we

used to have on the station, and his father used to work for us--I

expect he wants to do us a good turn."

"It will be a good turn in earnest, if he puts you in the way of

finding Considine," said the lawyer. "You will have to send Hugh

up. The old man knows you and Carew, and if he saw you coming he

would take to the woods, as the Yankees say. Even when you do get

him the case isn't over, because the jury will side with Peggy.

They'll sympathise with her efforts to prove herself an honest woman.

It isn't marrying too much that will get her into trouble--it's

the other thing. But we have the date and place of her alleged

marriage with William Grant; and if this old Considine can prove,

by documents, mind you, not by his own simple word--because it's

a hundred to one the jury wouldn't believe him--I say, if he can

prove that she married him on that very day and at that very place,

then she's beaten. No one on earth could swallow the story of her

marrying two different people on the same day."