They started Friday evening, and on Sunday afternoon, the three were still in their little rope-chairs, playing the hundredth game of cards, with the jug of aguardiente on the little table before them, leaving the cards only to swallow the savoury blood-pudding which gave great fame to Copa, because he knew so well how to preserve it in oil.
And the news, spreading itself throughout all the plain, made all the people come in a procession from a league roundabout. The three bullies were not alone for a moment. They had their supporters, who assumed the duty of occupying the fourth place in the game, and upon the coming of the night, when the mass of spectators retired to their farms, they remained there, watching them play in the light of the candle dangling from a black poplar-tree, for Copa was an impatient fellow, incapable of putting up with the tiresome wager, and so when the hour for sleep arrived, he would close the door, and after renewing their supply of brandy leave the players in the little square.
Many feigned indignation at the brutal contest, but at bottom they all felt satisfaction in having such men for neighbours. Such men were reared by the huerta! The brandy passed through their bodies as if it were water.
All the neighbourhood seemed to have an eye fixed upon the tavern, spreading the news about the course of the bet with prodigious celerity. Two pitchers had already been drunk, and no effect at all. Then three ... and still they were steady. Copa kept account of the drinking. And the people, according to their preference, bet for one or the other of the three contestants.
This event, which for two days had stirred up so much interest in the vega, and did not yet seem to have any end, had reached the ears of Batiste. He, a sober man, incapable of drinking without feeling nauseated and having a headache, could not avoid feeling a certain astonishment, bordering on admiration, for these brutes whose stomachs, it seemed to him, must be lined with tin-plate. It would be a spectacle worth seeing.
And with a look of envy, his eyes followed those who were going toward the tavern. Why should he not go also? He had never entered the house of Copa, in other times the den of his enemies: but now the extraordinary nature of the event justified his presence ... and, the devil! after so much work and such a good harvest, an honest man could allow himself a little self-indulgence.
And crying out to his sleeping wife to tell her where he was going, he set out on the road toward the tavern.
The mass of people which filled the little plaza in front of the house of Copa were like a swarm of human ants. All the men of the neighbourhood were there without any coats or waistcoats, with corduroy trousers, bulging black sash and a handkerchief wound around their heads in the form of a mitre. The old people were leaning upon their heavy staffs of yellow Lira-wood, with black arabesque work; the young people with shirt-sleeves rolled up, displayed sinewy and ruddy arms, and as though in contrast moved slender wands of ash between their thick, calloused fingers. The tall black poplars which surrounded the tavern gave shade to the animated groups.
Batiste noticed attentively for the first time the famous tavern with its white walls, its painted blue windows, and its hinges inset with showy tiles of Manises.
It had two doors. One was to the wine-cellar. Through the open doors could be seen two rows of enormous casks, which reached up to the ceiling, heaps of empty and wrinkled skin-sacks, large funnels and enormous measures tinged red by the continuous flow of liquid; there at the back of the room stood the heavy cart which went to the very ends of the province to deliver purchases of wine. This dark and damp room exhaled the fumes of alcohol, the perfume of grape-juice which so intoxicated the sense of smell and disturbed the sight that one had the feeling that both earth and air would soon be drenched with wine.