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 but one.