They summoned him to court, but he did not appear.
He already knew what this meant: the snares that men set in order to ruin the honourable. If they were going to rob him, let them seek him out on these lands which had become a part of his very flesh and blood, for as such he would defend them.
One day they gave him notice that the court was going to begin proceedings to expel him from his land that very afternoon; furthermore, they would attach everything he had in his cabin to meet his debts. He would not be sleeping there that night.
This news was so incredible to poor old Barret that he smiled with incredulity. This might happen to others, to those cheats who had never paid anything; but he, who had always fulfilled his duty, who had even been born here, who owed only a year's rent,—nonsense! Such a thing could not happen, even though one were living among savages, without charity or religion!
But in the afternoon, when he saw certain men in black coming along the road, big funereal birds with wings of paper rolled under the arm, he no longer was in doubt. This was the enemy. They were coming to rob him.
And suddenly there was awakened within old Barret the blind courage of the Moor who will suffer every manner of insult but who goes mad when his property is touched. Running into the cabin, he seized the old shot-gun, always hung loaded behind the door, and raising it to his shoulder, took his stand under the vineyard, ready to put two bullets into the first bandit of the law to set foot upon his fields.
His sick wife and four daughters came running out, shouting wildly, and threw themselves upon him, trying to wrest away the gun, pulling at the barrel with both hands. And such were the cries of the group, as they struggled and contended for it, reeling from one pillar of the grape-arbour to the other, that people from the neighbourhood began to run out, arriving in an anxious crowd, with the fraternal solidarity of those who live in deserted places.
It was Pimentó who prudently made himself master of the shot-gun and carried it off to his house. Barret staggered behind, trying to pursue him but restrained and held fast by the strong arms of some strapping young fellows, while he vented his madness upon the fool who was keeping him from defending his own.
"Pimentó,—thief! Give me back my shot-gun!"
But the bully smiled good-naturedly, satisfied that he was behaving both prudently and paternally with the old madman. Thus he brought him to his own farm-house, where he and Barret's friends watched him and advised him not to do a foolish deed. Have a care, old Barret! These people are from the court, and the poor always lose when they pick a quarrel with it! Coolness and evil design succeed above everything.