No doubt Pimentó was the instigator of this attack. It was he who was preventing these fields from being cultivated. So the rural police arrested the bully of the huerta, and took him off to prison.
But when the moment of taking oath arrived, all of the district filed by before the judge declaring the innocence of Pimentó, and from these cunning rustics not one contradictory word could be forced.
One and all told the same story. Even failing old women who never left their farm-houses declared that on that day, at the very hour when the two reports were heard, Pimentó was in a tavern of Alboraya, enjoying a feast with his friends.
Nothing could be done with these people of imbecile expression and candid looks, who lied with such composure as they scratched the back of their heads. Pimentó was set free, and a sigh of triumph and of satisfaction came from all the houses.
Now the proof was given: now it was known that the cultivation of these lands was paid for with men's lives.
The avaricious masters would not yield. They would cultivate the land themselves. And they sought day-labourers among the long-suffering and submissive people, who, smelling of coarse sheep-wool and poverty, and driven by hunger, descended from the ends of the province, from the mountainous frontiers of Aragon, in search of work.
The huerta pitied the poor churros.[F] Unfortunate men! They wanted to earn a day's pay; what guilt was theirs? And at night, as they were leaving with their hoes over the shoulder, there was always some good soul to call to them from the door of the tavern of Copa. They made them enter, drink, talked to them confidentially with frowning faces but with the paternal and good-natured tone of one who counsels a child to avoid danger; and the result was that on the following day these docile churros, instead of going to the field, presented themselves en masse to the owners of the land.
"Master: we have come to get our pay."
All the arguments of the two old bachelors, furious at seeing themselves opposed in their avarice, were useless.
"Master," they responded to everything, "we are poor, but we were not born like dogs behind a barn."