At this moment he found himself in front of the pulquería, at the door of which he rapped. Naturally impatient, angered, too, by the accident which had happened to him, and the tremendous struggle he had been engaged in, the count was about to carry out his threat of beating in the door, when it was opened.
"Válga me Dios!" he exclaimed wrathfully, "Is this the way you allow people to be assassinated before your doors, without proceeding to their assistance?"
"Oh, oh!" the pulquero said sharply, "Is anyone dead?"
"No, thanks to Heaven!" the count replied; "But I had a narrow escape of being killed."
"Oh!" the pulquero said with great nonchalance, "If we were to trouble ourselves about all who shout for help at night, we should have enough to do; and besides, it is very dangerous on account of the police."
The count shrugged his shoulders and walked in, leading his horse after him. The door was closed again immediately.
The count was unaware that in Mexico the man who finds a corpse, or brings the assassin to trial, is obliged to pay all the expenses of a justice enormously expensive in itself, and which never affords any satisfaction to the victim. In all the Mexican provinces people are so thoroughly convinced of the truth of what we assert, that, so soon as a murder is committed, everyone runs off, without dreaming of helping the victim; for, in the case of death supervening, such an act of charity would entail many annoyances on the individual who tried to imitate the good Samaritan.
In Sonora people do better still: as soon as a quarrel begins, and a man falls, they shut all the doors.