An Outback Marriage by Banjo Paterson (the mitten read aloud TXT) 📕

at home the matter passed from her mind, except that she remembered well enough what was written on the odd-looking little scrap.

“I will give you a certificate as a competent wardsman if ever you want one,” she said to Carew as he helped her out of the buggy. “I don’t know what I’d have done without you.”

“You’d have managed somehow, I’ll bet,” he said, looking at the confident face before him. “Quite a bit of fun, wasn’t it? I hope we have a few more excursions together.”

And she felt that she rather hoped so, too.

XXIII Hugh Goes in Search

Who does not remember the first exciting news of the great Grant v. Grant will case? The leading Q.C.’s. watched eagerly for briefs; juniors who held even the smallest briefs in connection with it patronised their fellows, and explained to them intricate legal dodges which they themselves had thought out and “pumped into” their learned leaders. “Took me a doose of a time to get him to see it, but I think he has got it at last,” they used to say. The case looked like lasting for years, for there would be appeals and counter-appeals, references, inquiries and whatnot; and in getting ready for the first fight the lawyers on each side worked like beavers.

Blake let it be known among the clans that he was going to fight the case for Peggy, and that there was going to be a lawsuit such as the most veteran campaigner of them all had never even dimly imagined⁠—a lawsuit with the happiness of a beautiful woman and the disposal of a vast fortune at stake. Word was carried from selection to selection, across trackless mountain-passes, and over dangerous river crossings, until even Larry, the outermost Donohoe, heard the news in his rocky fastness, miscalled a grazing lease, away in the gullies under the shadows of Black Andrew mountain. By some mysterious means it even reached Briney Doyle, who was camped out near the foothills of Kosciuszko, running wild horses into trap-yards. This occupation had taken such hold on him that he had become as wild as the horses he pursued, and it was popularly supposed that the other Doyles had to go out with horses to run him in whenever they wanted him.

Peggy brought in the copy of her marriage certificate, an old and faded piece of paper which ran⁠—“This is to certify that I, Thomas Nettleship, duly ordained clergyman of the Church of England, have this day solemnized a marriage between William Grant, Bachelor, and Margaret Donohoe, Spinster.”

The name of Pike’s Hotel and the date were nearly illegible, but there the document was; and though it was not the original certificate, it was pretty clear that Peggy could never have invented it. Its production made a great impression. It certainly went far to convince Blake.

He had cross-examined all the witnesses, had checked their accounts by each other, had followed William Grant’s career at that time, had got on to the history of the bush missionary; and everything fitted in. Martin Doyle⁠—Black Martin’s son Martin⁠—was letter-perfect in his part. Peggy could give the details of the ceremony with unfaltering accuracy fifty times a day if need be, and never contradict herself. So at last he gave up trying to find holes in the case, and determined to go in and win.

On the other side there was trouble in the camp⁠—no witnesses could be found, except Martin Doyle, and he was ready to swear to the wedding. At last it became evident that the only chance of overthrowing Peggy’s case was to find Considine; but the earth seemed to have swallowed him up.

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