“We have only to wait, Susie.”
“Yes, I thought that before, and look what happened.”
“The situation is different now.”
“But maybe he’ll reform and we’ll never get another crack at him,” she said dolefully.
Ralston shook his head.
“Don’t let that disturb you. Take certain natures under given circumstances, and you can come pretty near foretelling results. Smith will do the same thing again, only on a bigger scale; that is, unless he learns that he has been found out. He won’t be afraid of you, because he will think that you are as deep in the mire as he is; but if he thought I suspected him, or the Indians, it would make him cautious.”
“You don’t think he’s charmed, or got such a stout medicine that nobody can catch him?”
Ralston could not refrain from smiling at the Indian superstition which cropped out at times in Susie.
“Not for a moment,” he answered positively. “He appears to have been fortunate—lucky—but in a case like this, I don’t believe there’s any luck can win, in the long run, against vigilance, patience, and determination; and the greatest of these is patience.” Ralston, waxing philosophical went on: “It’s a great thing to be able to wait, Susie—coolly, smilingly, to wait—providing, as the phrase goes, you hustle while you wait. One victory for your enemy doesn’t mean defeat for yourself. It’s usually the last trick that counts, and sometimes games are long in the playing. Wait for your enemy’s head, and when it comes up, whack it! Neither you nor I, Susie, have been reared to believe that when we are swatted on one cheek we should turn the other.”
“No;” Susie shook her head gravely. “That ain’t sense.”