And planes don't shatter themselves among the Utah peaks with no one getting hurt at all.
A miracle, sure. Two miracles, even. But not four in a row and within a few weeks of one another.
IT took Charley quite a while to establish some line of similarity. When he did, it was a fairly thin line. But thick enough, at least, to justify more worry.
The line of similarity, was this: All the stories were "running" or developing stories.
There had been a stretch of two days during which the world waited for the facts of the plane crash. It had been known for days before the race that Midnight would run and that he didn't have a chance. The story of the doomed little girl had been a matter of public interest for weeks. The old coon dog had been in the cave a week or more before the men gave up and went back to their homes.
In each of the stories, the result was not known until some time after the situation itself was known. Until the final fact was actually determined, there existed an infinite number of probabilities, some more probable than others, but with each probability's having at least a fighting chance. When you flip a dime into the air, there always exists the infinitesimal probability, from the moment you flip it until it finally lands heads or tails, that it will land on edge and stay there. Until the fact that it is heads or tails is established, the probability of its landing on edge continues to remain.
And that was exactly what had happened, Charley told himself :
The dime had been flipped four times, and four times running it had stood on edge.
There was one minor dissimilarity, of course . . . the plane crash. It didn't quite fit.
Each event had been a spin of the dime, and while that dime was still in air, and the public held its breath, a little girl had gotten well, somehow, and a dog had escaped from a cave, somehow, and a 64 to 1 shot had developed whatever short-lived properties of physique and temperament are necessary to make long shots win.