Under the Volcano - Malcolm Lowry [128]
Yet it was not that time stood still. Rather was it time was moving at different speeds, the speed at which the man seemed dying contrasting oddly with the speed at which everybody was finding it impossible to make up their minds.
However the driver had given up blowing his horn, he was about to tinker with the engine, and leaving the unconscious man the Consul and Hugh walked over to the horse, which, with its cord reins, empty bucket saddle, and jangling heavy iron sheaths for stirrups, was calmly chewing the convolvulus in the hedge, looking innocent as only one of its species can when under mortal suspicion. Its eyes, that had shut blandly at their approach, now opened, wicked and plausible. There was a sore on its hipbone and on the beast's rump a branded number seven.
"Why--good God--this must be the horse Yvonne and I saw this morning!"
"You did, eh? Well." The Consul made to feel, though did not touch, the horse's surcingle. "That's funny... So did I. That is, I think I saw it." He glanced over at the Indian in the road as though trying to tear something out of his memory. "Did you notice if it had any saddlebags on when you saw it? It had when I think I saw it."
"It must be the same fellow."
"I don't suppose if the horse kicked the man to death it would have sufficient intelligence to kick its saddlebags off too, and hide them somewhere, do you--"
But the bus, with a terrific hooting, was going off without them.
It came at them a little, then stopped, in a wider part of the road, to let through two querulous expensive cars that had been held up behind. Hugh shouted at them to halt, the Consul half waved to someone who perhaps half recognized him, while the cars, that both bore upon their rear number-plates the sign "Diplomático," surged on past, bouncing on their springs, and brushing the hedges, to disappear ahead in a cloud of dust. From the second car's rear seat a Scotch terrier barked at them merrily.
"The diplomatic thing, doubtless."
The Consul went to see to Yvonne; the other passengers, shielding their faces against the dust, climbed on board the bus which had continued to the detour where, stalled, it waited still as death, as a hearse. Hugh ran to the Indian. His breathing sounded fainter, and yet more laboured. An uncontrollable desire to see his face again seized Hugh and he stooped over him. Simultaneously the Indian's right hand raised itself in a blind groping gesture, the hat was partially pushed away, a voice muttered or groaned one word: "Compañero."
--"The hell they won't," Hugh was saying, why he scarcely knew, a moment later to the Consul. But he'd detained the camion, whose engine had started once more, a little longer, and he watched the three smiling vigilantes approach, tramping through the dust, with their holsters slapping their thighs.
"Come on, Hugh, they won't let you on the bus with him, and you'll only get hauled into jail and entangled in red tape for Christ knows how long," the Consul was saying. "They're not the pukka police anyhow, only those birds I told you about... Hugh--"
"Momentito--" Hugh was almost immediately expostulating with one of the vigilantes--the other two had gone over to the Indian--while the driver, wearily, patiently, honked. Then the policeman pushed Hugh towards the bus: Hugh pushed back. The policeman dropped his hand and began to fumble with his holster: it was a manoeuvre, not to be taken seriously. With his other hand he gave Hugh a further shove, so that, to maintain balance, Hugh was forced to ascend the rear step of the bus which, at that instant suddenly, violently, moved away with them. Hugh would have jumped down only the Consul, exerting his strength, held him pinned to a stanchion.
"Never mind, old boy, it would have been worse than the windmills."--"What windmills?"
Dust obliterated the scene...
The bus thundered on, reeling, cannonading, drunk. Hugh sat staring at the quaking, shaking floor.
--Something like