Duggan answered with an inarticulate bellow and jumped at Keith as if to bear him to the ground.  He hugged him, and Keith hugged, and then for a minute they stood pumping hands until their faces were red, and Duggan was growling over and over: 

“An’ you passed me there at McCoffin’s Bend—­an’ I didn’t know you, I didn’t know you, I didn’t know you!  I thought you was that cussed Conniston!  I did.  I thought you was Conniston!” He stood back at last.  “Johnny—­Johnny Keith!”

“Andy, you blessed old devil!”

They pumped hands again, pounded shoulders until they were sore, and in Keith’s face blazed once more the love of life.

Suddenly old Duggan grew rigid and sniffed the air.  “I smell bacon!”

“It’s in the pack, Andy.  But for Heaven’s sake don’t notice the bacon until you explain how you happen to be here.”

“Been waitin’ for you,” replied Duggan in an affectionate growl.  “Knew you’d have to come down this valley to hit the Little Fork.  Been waitin’ six weeks.”

Keith dug his fingers into Duggan’s arm.

“How did you know I was coming here?” he demanded.  “Who told you?”

“All come out in the wash, Johnny.  Pretty mess.  Chinaman dead.  Johnny Keith, alias Conniston, alive an’ living with Conniston’s pretty sister.  Johnny gone—­skipped.  No one knew where.  I made guesses.  Knew the girl would know if anyone did.  I went to her, told her how you’n me had been pals, an’ she give me the idee you was goin’ up to the river’s end.  I resigned from the Betty M., that night.  Told her, though, that she was a ninny if she thought you’d go up there.  Made her believe the note was just a blind.”

“My God,” breathed Keith hopelessly, “I meant it.”

“Sure you did, Johnny.  I knew it.  But I didn’t dare let her know it.  If you could ha’ seen that pretty mouth o’ hern curlin’ up as if she’d liked to have bit open your throat, an’ her hands clenched, an’ that murder in her eyes—­Man, I lied to her then!  I told her I was after you, an’ that if she wouldn’t put the police on you, I’d bring back your head to her, as they used to do in the old times.  An’ she bit.  Yes, sir, she said to me, ’If you’ll do that, I won’t say a word to the police!’ An’ here I am, Johnny.  An’ if I keep my word with that little tiger, I’ve got to shoot you right now.  Haw!  Haw!”

Keith had turned his face away.

Duggan, pulling him about by the shoulders, opened his eyes wide in amazement.—­“Johnny—­”

“Maybe you don’t understand, Andy,” struggled Keith.  “I’m sorry—­she feels—­like that.”