ock he
built up the fire and at five roused Duggan. The old river-man sprang
up with the enthusiasm of a boy. He came back from the lake with his
beard and head dripping and his face glowing. All the mountains held no
cheerier comrade than Duggan.

They were on the trail at six o'clock and hour after hour kept steadily
up the Little Fork. The trail grew rougher, narrower, and more
difficult to follow, and at intervals Duggan halted to make sure of the
way. At one of these times he said to Keith:

"Las' night proved there ain't no danger from her, Johnny. I had a
dream, an' dreams goes by contraries an' always have. What you dream
never comes true. It's always the opposite. An' I dreamed that little
she-devil come up on you when you was asleep, took a big bread-knife,
an' cut your head plumb off! Yessir, I could see her holdin' up that
head o' yourn, an' the blood was drippin', an' she was a-laughin'--"

"SHUT UP!" Keith fairly yelled the words. His eyes blazed. His face was
dead white.

With a shrug of his huge shoulders and a sullen grunt Duggan went on.

An hour later the trail narrowed into a short canon, and this canon, to
Keith's surprise, opened suddenly into a beautiful valley, a narrow
oasis of green hugged in between the two ranges. Scarcely had they
entered it, when Duggan raised his voice in a series of wild yells and
began firing his rifle into the air.

"Home-coming," he explained to Keith, after he was done. "Cabin's just
over that bulge. Be there in ten minutes."

In less than ten minutes Keith saw it, sheltered in the edge of a thick
growth of cedar and spruce from which its timbers had been taken. It
was a larger cabin than he had expected to see--twice, three times as
large.

"How did you do it alone!" he exclaimed in admiration. "It's a wonder,
Andy. Big enough for--for a whole family!"

"Half a dozen Indians happened along, an' I hired 'em," explained
Duggan. "Thought I might as well make it big enough, Johnny, seein' I
had plenty of help. Sometimes I snore pretty loud, an'--"

"There's smoke coming out of it," cried Keith.

"Kept one of the Indians," chuckled Duggan. "Fine cook, an' a
sassy-lookin' little squaw she is, Johnny. Her husband died last
winter, an' she jumped at the chance to stay, for her board an' five
bucks a month. How's your Uncle Andy for a schemer, eh, Johnny?"

A dozen rods from the cabin was a creek. Duggan halted here to water
his horse and nodded for Keith to go