the strength of the
broken jaw. That jaw had done him a lot of good. Never grew quite
right after that, got one of the centers of ossification, the doc had
said, and Dan had been god's gift to the pen-and-brush men with that
heavy, angular jaw--a fighter's jaw, they called it.

* * * * *

That started it, of course. He knew then that he could beat Paul. Good
to know. But never _sure_ of it, always having to prove it. The
successes came, and always he let Paul know about them, watched Paul's
face like a cat. And Paul would squirm, and sneer, and tell Dan that
in the end it was brains that would pay off. Sour grapes, of course.
If Paul had ever squared off to him again, man to man, they might have
had it over with. But Paul just seemed content to sit and quietly hate
him.

Like the night he broke the Universalists in New Chicago, at the
hundred-dollar-a-plate dinner. He'd told them, that night. That was
the night they'd cold-shouldered him, and put Libby up to run for
Mayor. Oh, he'd raised a glorious stink that night--he'd never enjoyed
himself so much in his life, turning their whole twisted machine right
over to the public on a silver platter. Cutting loose from the old
crowd, appointing himself a committee of one to nominate himself on an
Independent Reform ticket, campaign himself, and elect himself. A
whippersnapper of thirty-two. Paul had been amused by it all, almost
indulgent. "You _do_ get melodramatic, don't you, Dan? Well, if you
want to cut your own throat, that's your affair." And Dan had burned,
and told Paul to watch the teevies, he'd see a thing or two, and he
did, all right. He remembered Paul's face a few months later, when
Libby conceded at 11:45 PM on election night, and Dan rode into office
with a new crowd of livewires who were ready to help him plow into New
Chicago and clean up that burg like it'd never been cleaned up. And
the sweetest part of the victory pie had been the look on Paul's face
that night--

So they'd fought, and he'd won and rubbed it in, and Paul had lost,
and hated him for it, until that mysterious day--when had it really
happened?--when "that big-brained brother of mine" changed subtly into
"Christ, man, quit floundering! Who wants engineers? They're all over
the place, you'll starve to death" and then finally, to "poor Paul."

When had it happened? Why?

Dan wondered, suddenly, if he had ever really forgiven Paul that blow
to the jaw--