A moment later he was holding the box, and, when certain he was alone, he opened it to reveal a massive, pristine, and beautiful sapphire. As he snapped the box shut and had it taken away, Juniper and his friend Jim emerged from the latter’s house, guns broken over their arms, both wearing beige, broad-brimmed hats to keep the dying sun off of their necks and faces. They had a bantering style of conversation that sounded as if it had been picked up from a thousand other conversations before. It was clear how much closer they were than Juniper and Lysander.

“A farthing says you’ll never eat what you shoot,” Juniper said with a laugh.

“A farthing? I’ve played higher stakes than that with women.”

“That serving girl of mine you like, then.”

“What do I have to eat?” “First thing either of us shoots.”

“What if it’s the dirt?” “Bet’s a bet.” “How much dirt would I have to eat?”

“Nice haunch of it.”

“Farthing for the first meat, let’s go back to that. Don’t shoot anything too horrible.”

“I’m insulted you’d suggest it.” It was a little more than a mile outside of camp, away from Lahore-and that city’s dangers, which these two men knew all too well-that they found a decent patch of land. It had a few bushes and trees scattered around it. They didn’t have a dog, but Juniper shot into the undergrowth and drove a few birds out into the open, where the two men had a clear look at them. They observed the birds fluttering, partially obscured, soon to be dead. Ruminatively, Juniper said, “What do you miss most? About England?” His interlocutor thought it over. “I wish I hadn’t left it so badly with my family, you know. I miss them.” “I do, too.”

“Only six months, I suppose.” Then both men heard a scratching emerge from the undergrowth that lay off to their side. A Shot. Thefall of a body. Another shot. The fall of a body. A Lone figure, Lysander’s batman, rose from his hidden spot and ran off full bore back west. and then a long, long silence, in the empty land that stretched blank as far as the eye could see, in every direction, forty-five hundred miles away from piccadilly circus.