All were watching him from the corner of their eye, but he never heard from the fields adjoining the road a single word of insult. They shrugged their shoulders with scorn, bent over the earth, and worked feverishly until he was lost from sight.
The only person who spoke to him was old Tomba, the crazy shepherd, who recognized him despite his sightless eyes, as though he could scent the atmosphere of calamity around Batiste. And it was ever the same.... Was he not going to abandon the accursed lands?
"You are making a mistake, my son; they will bring you misfortune."
Batiste received the refrain of the old man with a smile.
Grown familiar with peril, he had never feared it less than he did now. He even felt a certain secret joy in provoking it, in marching directly toward it. His tavern exploit had changed his character, previously so peaceful and long-suffering; awakened in him a boastful brutality. He wished to show all these people that he did not fear them, that even as he had burst open Pimentó's head, so was he ready to take up arms against the whole huerta. Since they had driven him to it, he would be a bully and a braggart long enough for them to respect him and allow him to live peacefully ever afterward.
And possessed of this dangerous determination, he even abandoned his lands, passing the afternoons along the roads of the huerta under the pretext of hunting, but in reality to exhibit his shotgun and his look of a man who has few friends.
One afternoon, while hunting swallows in the ravine of Carraixet, the darkness surprised him.
The birds seemed to be following the mazes of some capricious quadrille as they flew about restlessly, reflected in the deep and quiet pools bordered with tall rushes. This ravine, which cut across the huerta like a deep crack, gloomy, with stagnant water, and muddy shores, where there bobbed up and down some rotting, half-submerged canoe, presented a desolate and wild aspect. No one would have suspected that behind the slope of the high banks, farther on beyond the rushes and the cane-brake, lay the plain with its smiling atmosphere and its green vistas. Even the light of the sun seemed dismal, as it sank to the depths of the ravine, sifting through the wild vegetation and pallidly reflecting itself in the dead waters.
Batiste spent the afternoon firing at the wheeling swallows. A few cartridges still remained in his belt, and at his feet, forming a mound of blood-stained feathers, he already had two dozen birds. What a supper! How happy the family would be!
It grew dark in the deep ravine: from the pools, a fetid vapour came forth, the deadly respiration of malarial fever. The frogs croaked by the thousand, as though saluting the stars, contented at not hearing the firing which interrupted their song, and obliged them to dive head-long, disturbing the smooth crystal of the stagnant pools.