The sick-sweet stench of death was thick and nauseous as Starbuck crouched beside the corpse and steeled himself. Then he reached out for what was left of his enemy. There but for the grace of God, he thought, and he pulled the neck of Ridley’s jacket to free the remnants of the garment from the bloody corpse, and something deep in the body made a gurgling sound that almost made Starbuck retch. The jacket would not come clear of the bloody mess and Starbuck realized he would have to undo the leather belt that was somehow still in place around the eviscerated mess. He plunged his fingers into the cold, jelly-like horror, and found the buckle. He undid it, heaved, and a portion of the corpse rolled away to reveal the revolver that Ridley had fired at Starbuck.

It was the pretty, ivory-handled English gun that Washington Faulconer had shown to Starbuck in his study at Seven Springs. The gun was now choked with Ridley’s blood, but Starbuck wiped it on the grass, cuffed more of the blood away with his sleeve, then pushed the beautiful weapon into his empty holster. He then unthreaded the cap box and the cartridge case from Ridley’s belt. There were a dozen dollar coins in the case, which he pushed into one of his own blood-soaked pockets.

Yet he had not come here simply to loot his enemy’s body, but rather to take back a treasure. He wiped his fingers on the grass, took another deep breath, then went back to the bloody remnants of the gray jacket. He found a leather case which seemed to have held a drawing, though the paper was now so soaked with blood that it was impossible to tell just what the drawing might have shown. There were three more silver dollars in the pocket and a small, blood-wet leather bag, which Starbuck pulled open.

The ring was there. It looked dull in the fading light, but it was the ring he had wanted; the silver French ring that had belonged to Sally’s mother and which Starbuck now pushed into his own pocket as he stepped back from the corpse. “You son of a bitch,” he said again, then he walked away past Ridley’s dead horse. Across the valley the smoke of the camp fires drifted away from the hill to veil the sunset.