On this memorable day of the riot his arms were not folded on his chest.
His hand grasped the barrel of the gun grounded on the threshold; he
did not look up once at the white dome of Higuerota, whose cool purity
seemed to hold itself aloof from a hot earth. His eyes examined the
plain curiously. Tall trails of dust subsided here and there. In
a speckless sky the sun hung clear and blinding. Knots of men ran
headlong; others made a stand; and the irregular rattle of firearms came
rippling to his ears in the fiery, still air. Single figures on foot
raced desperately. Horsemen galloped towards each other, wheeled round
together, separated at speed. Giorgio saw one fall, rider and horse
disappearing as if they had galloped into a chasm, and the movements of
the animated scene were like the passages of a violent game played upon
the plain by dwarfs mounted and on foot, yelling with tiny throats,
under the mountain that seemed a colossal embodiment of silence. Never
before had Giorgio seen this bit of plain so full of active life; his
gaze could not take in all its details at once; he shaded his eyes with
his hand, till suddenly the thundering of many hoofs near by startled
him.

A troop of horses had broken out of the fenced paddock of the Railway
Company. They came on like a whirlwind, and dashed over the line
snorting, kicking, squealing in a compact, piebald, tossing mob of bay,
brown, grey backs, eyes staring, necks extended, nostrils red, long
tails streaming. As soon as they had leaped upon the road the thick dust
flew upwards from under their hoofs, and within six yards of Giorgio
only a brown cloud with vague forms of necks and cruppers rolled by,
making the soil tremble on its passage.

Viola coughed, turning his face away from the dust, and shaking his head