Page:Hendryx--Connie Morgan with the Mounted.djvu/218

200 I'm a goner! I'm all burnin' up inside, an' my heart's on fire! But I tell you my head's clear! Tell 'em to bring my coat. It's sewed in the linin'."

An attendant handed McKeever a soggy mackinaw from which the river water still dripped to stand in little pools upon the floor. The coat sagged heavily upon one side, and as the Sergeant held it he noted that its weight far exceeded the weight of any water which the thick garment could possibly have absorbed. As Connie slit the lining with his knife, a heavy object thudded loudly upon the pine floor. Lifting the object to the bed, the boy unwound a wrapping of cloth. The next instant the officers, the hospital attendant, and the men upon the adjoining cots stared with bulging eyes upon a great nugget of gold that showed dull yellow against the grey of the blanket.

"It's streaked with red—an' it saps men's lives!" moaned the man in the cot as he sought to draw his bandaged body away from its fancied contact. Connie lifted the lump to examine it more closely. It was rudely heart-shaped in form, with one side rough as furnace slag, and the other ground smooth as velvet by the action of sand and