Gary couldn't believe what he held in his hands. "After all these years of searching..." he murmured, his voice barely discernible through the rumblings of the earth around the underground cave. His breath was coming infrequently and there were times when he was gasping for air, using all of his strength at an attempt to harvest in the life-sustaining gas. But it was worth it.

Thinking aloud, Gary recounted how he had gotten to be in this situation. "All my life...stories of the hidden treasure...inside this small chest..digging through history books...trusting superstitious natives...deceitful enemies...disloyal friends...struggling down the tunnel...cave-in...dying soon..." Gary knew that his body could not handle the environment he was in much longer. He was trapped. His legs broken, crushed underneath tons of fallen limestone, the oxygen supply of the small cave slowly being depleted, scratches and bruises covering his body, he was ready to despairingly surrender to death.

He had found it by a stroke of well-timed luck. Clearing a spot among the rubble in which to die, he uncovered it. It was just sitting there. That old, rusted, dirty, beautiful chest. It fit every description he had ever heard. In his mind, Gary pictured the object contained inside this chest. A ring, small, simple in design, made only from bronze, yet treasured among historians. This was the ring of Temujin, better known to all as Chinggis Khan, leader of the greatest Mongol army of all time. Legend says that Temujin was given the ring as a youth. He wore it constantly and even considered it to be a sort of good luck charm, aiding him in his battles. It was never known why the Mongol leader chose to have the ring buried in a chest of its own, though many speculations were floating about. None of this mattered to Gary though. He only wanted to complete what his great-grandfather had started.

For four generations the men in Gary's family had searched for this ring. Gary was to be the last one. Not only because he had found it, but because he had no family - no children, no one to take up the challenge had he not completed it. Gary was imagining the look of pride his father would have worn had he been there. He took a deep breath, finally pried open the chest...and broke down crying.

He felt as if his whole life had suddenly become meaningless. It was empty. The chest was empty. Gary had prepared to die knowing that he had found Chinggis Khan's ring without anyone ever knowing he had. Instead, he died completely alone and dejected at the bottom of a tunnel that had collapsed in on itself with no one knowing where he was and no one back home in Wyoming ever caring where he had gone.