“Who’s Butts?”

“Butts?  Ah—­well—­a—­Butts is the smartest fellow with his fingers in all ’laska”; and McGinty showed his big yellow teeth in an appreciative smile.

“Smart at washin’ gold out?”

“Smarter at pickin’ it out.”  The bartender joined in Si’s laugh as that gentleman repeated, “Yes, sir! handiest feller with his fingers I ever seen.”

“What does he do with his fingers?” asked the Boy, with impatient suspicion.

“Well, he don’t dare do much with ’em up here.  ’Tain’t popular.”

“What ain’t?”

“Butts’s little game.  But Lord! he is good at it.”  Butts had been introduced as a stalking-horse, but there was no doubt about Si’s admiration of his “handiness.”  “Butts is wasted up here,” he sighed.  “There’s some chance for a murderer in Alaska, but a thief’s a goner.”

“Oh, well; you were sayin’ that gold o’ yours came from—­”

“Poor old Butts!  Bright feller, too.”

“How far off is your—­”

“I tell you, sir, Butts is brains to his boots.  Course you know Jack McQuestion?”

“No, but I’d like to hear a little about your—­”

“Y’ don’ know Jack McQuestion?  Well, sir, Jack’s the biggest man in the Yukon.  Why, he built Fort Reliance six miles below the mouth of the Klondyke in ’73; he discovered gold on the Stewart in ’85, and established a post there. Everybody knows Jack McQuestion; an”—­quickly, as he saw he was about to be interrupted—­“you heard about that swell watch we all clubbed together and give him?  No?  Well, sir, there ain’t an eleganter watch in the world.  Is there?”

“Guess not,” said the bartender.

“Repeater, you know.  Got twenty-seven di’mon’s in the case.  One of ’em’s this size.”  He presented the end of a gnarled and muscular thumb.  “And inside, the case is all wrote in—­a lot of soft sawder; but Jack ain’t got anything he cares for so much.  You can see he’s always tickled to death when anybody asks him the time.  But do you think he ever lets that watch out’n his own hands?  Not much.  Let’s anybody look at it, and keeps a holt o’ the stem-winder.  Well, sir, we was all in a saloon up at Circle, and that feller over there—­Butts—­he bet me fifty dollars that he’d git McQuestion’s watch away from him before he left the saloon.  An’ it was late.  McQuestion was thinkin’ a’ready about goin’ home to that squaw wife that keeps him so straight.  Well, sir, Butts went over and began to gas about outfittin’, and McQuestion answers and figures up the estimates on the counter, and, by Gawd! in less ‘n quarter of an hour Butts, just standin’ there and listenin’, as you’d think—­he’d got that di’mon’ watch off’n the chain an’ had it in his pocket.  I knew he done it, though I ain’t exactly seen how he done it.  The others who were in the game, they swore he hadn’t got it yet, but, by Gawd, Butts says he’ll think over McQuestion’s terms, and wonders what time