“Suppose it had come ’double naught’?” Smoke queried, as they made their way to the bar.

“Then your dollar’d been on ‘double naught,’” was Shorty’s answer.  “They’s no gettin’ away from it.  A hunch is a hunch.  Here’s how.  Come on back to the table.  I got a hunch, after pickin’ you for a winner, that I can pick some few numbers myself.”

“Are you playing a system?” Smoke asked, at the end of ten minutes, when his partner had dropped a hundred dollars.

Shorty shook his head indignantly, as he spread his chips out in the vicinities of “3,” “11,” and “17,” and tossed a spare chip on the green.

“Hell is sure cluttered with geezers that played systems,” he exposited, as the keeper raked the table.

From idly watching, Smoke became fascinated, following closely every detail of the game from the whirling of the ball to the making and the paying of the bets.  He made no plays, however, merely contenting himself with looking on.  Yet so interested was he, that Shorty, announcing that he had had enough, with difficulty drew Smoke away from the table.

The game-keeper returned Shorty the gold-sack he had deposited as a credential for playing, and with it went a slip of paper on which was scribbled, “Out—­$350.00.”  Shorty carried the sack and the paper across the room and handed them to the weigher, who sat behind a large pair of gold-scales.  Out of Shorty’s sack he weighed three hundred and fifty dollars, which he poured into the coffer of the house.

“That hunch of yours was another one of those statistics,” Smoke jeered.

“I had to play it, didn’t I, in order to find out?” Shorty retorted.  “I reckon I was crowdin’ some just on account of tryin’ to convince you they’s such a thing as hunches.”

“Never mind, Shorty,” Smoke laughed.  “I’ve got a hunch right now—­”

Shorty’s eyes sparkled as he cried eagerly:  “What is it?  Kick in an’ play it pronto.”

“It’s not that kind, Shorty.  Now, what I’ve got is a hunch that some day I’ll work out a system that will beat the spots off that table.”

“System!” Shorty groaned, then surveyed his partner with a vast pity.  “Smoke, listen to your side-kicker an’ leave system alone.  Systems is sure losers.  They ain’t no hunches in systems.”

“That’s why I like them,” Smoke answered.  “A system is statistical.  When you get the right system you can’t lose, and that’s the difference between it and a hunch.  You never know when the right hunch is going wrong.”

“But I know a lot of systems that went wrong, an’ I never seen a system win.”  Shorty paused and sighed.  “Look here, Smoke, if you’re gettin’ cracked on systems this ain’t no place for you, an’ it’s about time we hit the trail again.”

During the several following weeks, the two partners played at cross purposes.  Smoke was bent on spending his time watching the roulette game in the Elkhorn, while Shorty was equally bent on travelling trail.  At last Smoke put his foot down when a stampede was proposed for two hundred miles down the Yukon.