as taciturn, and a good shot with revolver and rifle. They knew he had come from a far-off place called Texas, and that he was thirty-two years old. Not much in that on which to build a defense. Except the one noted and peculiar fact that Yanks did not seem to lie. Not the way Chinks or Cockneys did, anyhow. Tom Varney, of course, had sworn harshly that his tale was true. The police might have been ready to believe. Not these men.
When the crowd had drunk itself into a lynching fury, and had come surging to the iron shack after Tom Varney, they found a hole burrowed under on? wall, and the prisoner gone. That tore it.
He had left one scribbled letter, with the plea that it be mailed to his kid brother back in Texas. The letter read:
Dear Sam:
I'm damn glad you stayed on the ranch. I'm in bad trouble. They say I stole about nine thousand dollars. Acourse its a lie, but I cant prove it, lessen I can bring in the head of Paxton Trenholm in a sack. Likely I'll lose out, but anyhow I aint being taken alive by police or anybody. And I aim to get Trenholm.
Goodbye, kid. Love,
Tom.
The police took charge of the letter. After a time it occurred to someone that it might be a good idea, after all, to keep other Yank Varneys out of Australia. So the police did mail the letter to Sam Houston Varney, at Sweetwater, Texas, with a grimly explanatory enclosure—stating their case against Tom.
But if their intention was to keep young Sam out of the Antipodes, they had adopted exactly the wrong tactics. Within a week after receiving that horrible message, Sam had sold the paternal ranch and small herd, and was on the Pacific Ocean bound for Melbourne—and more trouble than he ever dreamt existed.
Two months had passed. The hunt for Tom Varney had subsided. Then it was a tall, bronzed, gray-eyed young man in a broad-brimmed black hat, presented himself at the headquarters of the West Australian Provincial Police, at Kalgoorlie. Sam Varney had reached there by railroad, but had found it practically impossible to go one step further toward the mine town of Kargie. Larrikins, indigent prospectors, and men hauling liquor, made the trip. But Sam Varney was not accompanying any of these—not until the money in his belt had been put down on the line for a certain purpose.
"I'm Tom Varney's brother—you'll remember, I reckon, a man named Tom Varney?" he said quietly to the policeman.
"Hm. Yes, we remember Tom Varney. Why?"
"He's accused of stealing $9,200," was the reply. "That's a lie. However, till I can prove it ain't true, here's all of the money I c'd raise. You'll find $8,500 there. Also there's my I. O. U. for $700. I'll take that up soon's I can. G'bye."
And dropping the money belt before the astonished officer, Sam Houston Varney strode out of the office, paying no heed to the voices which called after him.
"Well—I'm an emu's uncle!" gasped the desk policeman. Or words to that effect. "Perhaps we don't need to worry about keeping Varneys from Texas out of Australia, after all?"
