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The sounds of the fight had only continued to grow more severe as Reggie looked for the others -- then a dreadful silence fell. A chilling howl came from the clearing and raised the hair on the back of the lad's neck, and at last it seemed that it was over. He could not seem to find any of his companions despite his careful looking. He chanced calling their names, but still no response came, and so he decided to turn back.
As he entered the clearing, Bingo glanced up at him and the others who were straggling in. He was looking at the dead bodies with a startling sorrow. Reggie slowly approached, transfixed and oddly fascinated.
"Can we burn the body or heap up some stones?" Bingo said. "If it's safe to do so, burning the bodies would be the fastest."
Reggie kneeled by one of the fallen Big Folk and stared. "I guess maybe we could. We couldn't let the fire get out of control, though... 'cause I don't think we could carry enough stones."
Something winking on the ground next to the dead man caught his eye. Closer inspection revealed that it was a small coin, not worth much but not undesireable either. It appeared to have fallen out of the man's pocket. Figuring that the man wasn't going to miss anything of his, Reggie began rummaging through the other pockets. He found several more coins, a good length of string, and some trinkets: two blue beads, a little carven figure of a fox, and what seemed to be a spare buckle of some sort. All this he put into his own pocket, and moved on to the next one, feeling like some kind of scavenger, but hoping nonetheless to find something useful. After all, stealing from dead men was no worse than stealing from live ones.
All in all, what he obtained was mostly unremarkable. A key, a little metal file, a pair of gloves which were far too big for hobbits' hands -- just the simple sorts of things that people were likely to keep in their pockets for one reason or another. But he took all that he found anyway, showing his findings to the others.
"You never know what you might need," he said, shrugging. "They've got knives... d'you think we ought to take those too, instead of leaving them out where other ruffians can find them?"
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