last of Australia's bushrangers was dead.
Now came a lone figure on a worn and shambling camel. It was a gray-bearded man who stopped dead at the sight of Sam and the revolver. Then the newcomer slid off, making a choked sound, and ran forward to the motionless body of Trenholm.
"Tom!" cried Sam. "Take care of these girls. I—"
But for several long seconds the elder brother paid no heed.
"An' you wouldn't save him for me, kid!" he said then. "He was mine. I—" the words died in a mutter.
"I couldn't," said Sam. "It's all in the Varney family, though."
That was when the force of Territorial police reached them, to exclaim and stare in fascinated triumph down at the corpse of the most dreaded raider of the mulga.
Chapter XII
Little Texas.
The Yank Varneys were exonerated. Not much more remains to be told—or can be told, since these lives are far from ended.
Sam's leg took a long time to mend. Tom stayed right with him. So did Elinor and Claire. In the end Sam was forced to desperate measures of plain speaking with the widow, who after her rescue did her best to earmark the Texan as her own property.
Sam finally blurted out to her that he loved Claire. And that was a good fortnight before he got up courage enough to say so to the right person. It was just possible that the girl with blue eyes and freckles had a faint idea, though, since she just smiled happily and sat down upon his knee saying something obscure about being relieved that her husband-to-be wasn't tongue-tied.
The rewards for Trenholm were paid promptly, and that meant capital for the Varneys. Sam insisted that Tom was a full partner, over the latter's protests. But when they got down to the details of starting a cow ranch in the kangaroo grass country, Tom forgot all about his scruples in enthusiasm for another sight of some Texas whiteface breeding stock.
Real luck perched on the Varney banner, though it did not come until after their tiny ranch was started. Sam did not win the grand prize for his idea regarding the rabbit plague. But down in New South Wales, one year later, the Commission solemnly voted him $10,000 as a special award. Gluttons had been tried out, and certainly killed rabbits wholesale in the cooler parts of Australia.
Because too few of the Canadian killers could be secured, and because gluttons did not thrive where tropical temperatures were the rule, they were not the final answer to the problem, though they certainly helped.
The only unhappy man of all the contingent, perhaps, was Inspector Goelitz. He offered Sam the inspectorship on the division of the dead Randall Smith. But Sam shook his head. Claire positively refused to have anything more to do with the fence.
"Sorry," the ex-cameleer smiled. "I'm going to be busy down at Three Flags. I want you to come and see us, though."
"Three flags?"
"Yeah, the ranch. We're going to fly the Australian flag, the Lone Star banner, and the American flag!"
"Well," shrugged Goelitz ruefully, shaking hands in farewell, "that surely ought to scare away the bunyips!"
