"An Eye for an Eye" earned much deserved Emmy Awards for director Jerry Thorpe, Jack Woolf winning for Best Cinematography, a divisive entry that demonstrates the difficulty of writing for a pacifist hero in the violent Old West. Caine comes to the aid of an old Confederate soldier, Amos Buchanan (Harry Townes), whose daughter Annie (Lane Bradbury) was the victim of rape perpetrated by three Yankee soldiers. Despising the unwanted child in her womb, the girl is further embittered when the post captain (Ross Elliott) is no help to her, eagerly waiting for brother Samuel (Tim McIntire) to avenge his sister's honor in a duel at dawn with wicked Sergeant Straight (L. Q. Jones). With Union soldiers still intent on punishing the South for lives lot, their Rebel counterparts little different, vengeance assumed to be sweet merely leaves a sour taste in one's mouth. Caine's response to the sad fate of Annie's child: "before we wake, we cannot know that what we dreamed does not exist...before we die we cannot know that death is not the greatest joy." Keye Luke's Master Po insists that death need never be feared: "a man who knows how to live has no place for death to enter!" Tim McIntire went on to play a villainous deputy in a second season entry, "The Well," returning the third season as Caine's long lost brother for the series finale (L. Q. Jones would again walk the path of evil in another third season episode, "The Last Raid").
