, Nevada. But he held himself ready to say "East"
whenever he saw Honey coming along with the bottle. The cold weather
put an end to this adventure. The ditches froze and filled with snow,
through which the sordid gravel heaps showed in a dreary fashion; so the
two friends drifted southward.

Near the small new town of Mesa, Arizona, they sat down again in the
dirt. It was milder here, and, when the sun shone, never quite froze.
But this part of Arizona is scarcely more grateful to the eye than
Nevada. Moreover, Lin and Honey found no gold at all. Some men near them
found a little. Then in January, even though the sun shone, it quite
froze one day.

"We're seein' the country, anyway," said Honey.

"Seein' hell," said Lin, "and there's more of it above ground than I
thought."

"What'll we do?" Honey inquired.

"Have to walk for a job--a good-payin' job," responded the hopeful
cow-puncher. And he and Honey went to town.

Lin found a job in twenty-five minutes, becoming assistant to the
apothecary in Mesa. Established at the drug-store, he made up the
simpler prescriptions. He had studied practical pharmacy in
Boston between the ages of thirteen and fifteen, and, besides this
qualification, the apothecary had seen him when he first came into Mesa,
and liked him. Lin made no mistakes that he or any one ever knew of;
and, as the mild weather began, he materially increased the apothecary's
business by persuading him to send East for a soda-water fountain. The
ladies of the town clustered around this entertaining novelty, and while
sipping vanilla and lemon bought knickknacks. And the gentlemen of
the town discovered that whiskey with soda and strawberry syrup was
delicious, and produced just as competent effects. A group of them were
generally standing in the shop and shaking dice to decide who should
pay for the next, while Lin administered to each glass the necessary
ingredients. Thus money began to come to him a little more steadily than
had been its wont, and he divided with the penniless Honey.

But Honey found fortune quickly, too. Through excellent card-playing he
won a pinto from a small Mexican horse-thief who came into town from the
South, and who cried bitterly when he delivered up his pet pony to the
new owner. The new owner, being a man of the world and agile on his
feet, was only slightly stabbed that evening as he walked to the
dance-hall at the edge of the town. The Mexican was buried on the next
day