but one.

The pony stood thirteen two, and was as long as a steamboat. He had
white eyelashes, pink nostrils, and one eye was bright blue. If you
spoke pleasantly to him, he rose instantly on his hind-legs and tried
to beat your face. He did not look as if he could run, and that was what
made him so valuable. Honey travelled through the country with him, and
every gentleman who saw the pinto and heard Honey became anxious to get
up a race. Lin always sent money for Wiggin to place, and he soon
opened a bank account, while Honey, besides his racing-bridle, bought a
silver-inlaid one, a pair of forty-dollar spurs, and a beautiful saddle
richly stamped. Every day (when in Mesa) Honey would step into the
drug-store and inquire, "Lin, wher're yu' goin'?"

But Lin never answered any more. He merely came to the soda-water
fountain with the whiskey. The passing of days brought a choked season
of fine sand and hard blazing sky. Heat rose up from the ground and hung
heavily over man and beast. Many insects sat out in the sun rattling
with joy; the little tearing river grew clear from the swollen mud, and
shrank to a succession of standing pools; and the fat, squatting cactus
bloomed everywhere into butter-colored flowers big as tulips in the
sand. There were artesian wells in Mesa, and the water did not taste
very good; but if you drank from the standing pools where the river
had been, you repaired to the drug-store almost immediately. A troop of
wandering players came dotting along the railroad, and, reaching Mesa,
played a brass-band up and down the street, and announced the powerful
drama of "East Lynne." Then Mr. McLean thought of the Lynn marshes that
lie between there and Chelsea, and of the sea that must look so cool.
He forgot them while following the painful fortunes of the Lady Isabel;
but, going to bed in the back part of the drug-store, he remembered how
he used to beat everybody swimming in the salt water.

"I'm goin'," he said. Then he got up, and, striking the light, he
inspected his bank account. "I'm sure goin'," he repeated, blowing the
light out, "and I can buy the fatted calf myself, you bet!" for he had
often thought of the bishop's story. "You bet!" he remarked once more in
a muffled voice, and was asleep in a minute. The apothecary was sorry to
have him go, and Honey was deeply grieved.

"I'd pull out with yer," he said, "only I can do business round Yuma and
westward with the pinto."

For three farewe