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.