On the second day of this third week he saw advancing toward him a solitary horseman.  The stranger was possibly a mile away when he discovered him, and he was coming straight down the flat of the valley.  That he was not accompanied by a pack-horse surprised Keith, for he was bound out of the mountains and not in.  Then it occurred to him that he might be a prospector whose supplies were exhausted, and that he was easing his journey by using his pack as a mount.  Whoever and whatever he was, Keith was not in any humor to meet him, and without attempting to conceal himself he swung away from the river, as if to climb the slope of the mountain on his right.  No sooner had he clearly signified the new direction he was taking, than the stranger deliberately altered his course in a way to cut him off.  Keith was irritated.  Climbing up a narrow terrace of shale, he headed straight up the slope, as if his intention were to reach the higher terraces of the mountain, and then he swung suddenly down into a coulee, where he was out of sight.  Here he waited for ten minutes, then struck deliberately and openly back into the valley.  He chuckled when he saw how cleverly his ruse had worked.  The stranger was a quarter of a mile up the mountain and still climbing.

“Now what the devil is he taking all that trouble for?” Keith asked himself.

An instant later the stranger saw him again.  For perhaps a minute he halted, and in that minute Keith fancied he was getting a round cursing.  Then the stranger headed for him, and this time there was no escape, for the moment he struck the shelving slope of the valley, he prodded his horse into a canter, swiftly diminishing the distance between them.  Keith unbuttoned the flap of his pistol holster and maneuvered so that he would be partly concealed by his pack when the horseman rode up.  The persistence of the stranger suggested to him that Mary Josephine had lost no time in telling McDowell where the law would be most likely to find him.

Then he looked over the neck of his pack at the horseman, who was quite near, and was convinced that he was not an officer.  He was still jogging at a canter and riding atrociously.  One leg was napping as if it had lost its stirrup-hold; the rider’s arms were pumping, and his hat was sailing behind at the end of a string.

“Whoa!” said Keith.

His heart stopped its action.  He was staring at a big red beard and a huge, shaggy head.  The horseman reined in, floundered from his saddle, and swayed forward as if seasick.

“Well, I’ll be—­”

“Duggan!”

“Johnny—­Johnny Keith!”

 XXIV

For a matter of ten seconds neither of the two men moved.  Keith was stunned.  Andy Duggan’s eyes were fairly popping out from under his bushy brows.  And then unmistakably Keith caught the scent of bacon in the air.

“Andy—­Andy Duggan,” he choked.  “You know me—­you know Johnny Keith—­you know me—­you—­”