Page:Hendryx--Connie Morgan with the Mounted.djvu/54

36 ?” Connie looked again and turned a puzzled face toward the big officer.

“Yes,” he answered, “it does, but”

“There ain’t no ‘buts’ about it. Look-a-here, kid. You’re a-gettin’ your first lesson in police work. It’s a business that calls on a man for all the power of observation he’s got, because, most always, up here in the North, there ain’t no witnesses to what’s goin’ on, an’ a man’s got to depend on the sign. But observation ain’t all. You’ve got to be sure of yourself. It don’t do a man no good to be right if he don’t know he’s right. If a man’s right an’ don’t know he’s right, he might better be wrong—see? Now, take our friend, here. You say: ‘It’s smallpox.’ I say: ‘No, it ain’t.’ An’ you believed me, an’ let it go at that.”

The big officer smote his palm with a mighty fist. “When you seen that there blotched-up face you know’d doggone well it was smallpox! Now, why didn’t you stick to it? When you know a thing, stick to it, no matter who tells you contrary; me, or the Commissioner, or the Governor-General, or the King, hisself—it doesn’t make no difference what we think about it. Just you say to yourself: