Why not me? Grawson asked himself. Why not me? And Grawson’s lips twisted. Him, with his face like a grizzly, his teeth, those hands like clubs!

“He won’t fire,” Grawson had told Frank.

“I know,” Frank had said, and smiled.

Grawson had gone to Clare, had begged her. “My choice is Frank,” she said.

“He won’t fire!” said Grawson, sitting up on the cane seat.

“We’re in the station, Sir,” said the porter. The man made no move with his whisk broom.

Grawson looked out.

He reached into his pocket and took out a liberty quarter and turned it over. He looked at the eagle on the reverse, with arrows in his talons.

“Like an avenging eagle,” said Grawson looking at the man, “I come like an avenging eagle with arrows in my claws.”

“Sir?” asked the man.

“Here,” said Grawson, holding out the quarter and dropping it into the black palm.

The man lifted the whisk broom.

“No,” said Grawson. “Don’t touch me.” And he left the car.

He heard the quarter drop to the floor behind him, but he did not turn.

“Like an avenging eagle,” muttered Grawson, bundling up the platform, carrying his coat, the newspaper under one arm, his wicker suitcase in his left hand. “With arrows,” he added. “With arrows.”

Edward Chance had black hair, gray eyes, a thin face, not handsome, an unhappy face. There was little noticeable, little remarkable about Edward Chance, saving perhaps that he had once shot and killed a man. Chance had a good memory, and the patience to think things out, and ambition, and something to make up for. And his craft, medicine, was more than a business with him, more than a professional skill. It was a way of healing for his own heart too, and his heart had need of its healing, for the single bullet that had torn through the heart of Frank Grawson with such swift, irreversible finality had left its second wound in the heart of Cain.