And not only did they leave their work, but they passed the warning on to all their countrymen, to avoid earning a day's wages in those fields of Barret's as they would flee from the devil.
The owners of the land even asked for protection in the daily papers. And the rural police went out over the huerta in pairs, stopping along the roads to surprise gestures and conversations, but always without results.
Every day they saw the same thing. The women sewing and singing under the vine-arbours; the men bending over in the fields, their eyes upon the ground, their active arms never resting; Pimentó, stretched out like a grand lord under the little wands of bird-lime, waiting for the birds, or torpidly and lazily helping Pepeta; in the tavern of Copa, a few old men, sunning themselves or playing cards. The countryside breathed forth peace, and honourable stolidity; it was a Moorish Arcadia. But those of the "Union" were on their guard; not a farmer wanted the land, not even gratuitously; and at last, the owners had to abandon their undertaking, let the weeds cover the place and the house fall into decay, while they hoped for the arrival of some willing man, capable of buying or working the farm.
The huerta trembled with satisfaction, seeing how this wealth was lost, and the heirs of Don Salvador were being ruined.
It was a new and intense pleasure. Sometimes, after all, the will of the poor must triumph, and the rich must get the worst of it. And the hard bread seemed more savoury, the wine better, the work less burdensome, as they thought of the fury of the two misers, who with all their money had to endure the rustics of the huerta laughing at them.
Furthermore, this patch of desolation and misery in the midst of the vega, served to make the other landlords less exacting. Taking this neighbourhood as an example, they did not increase their rents and even agreed to wait when the half year's rent was late in being paid.
Those desolate fields were the talisman which kept the dwellers of the huerta intimately united, in continuous contact: a monument which proclaimed their power over the owners; the miracle of the solidarity of poverty against the laws and the wealth of those who were the lords of the land without working it or sweating over their fields.
All this, which they thought out confusedly, made them believe that on the day when the fields of old Barret should be cultivated, the huerta would suffer all manner of misfortunes. And they did not expect, after a triumph of ten years, that any person would dare to enter those abandoned fields except old Tomba, a blind and gibbering shepherd, who in default of an audience daily related his deeds of prowess to his flock of dirty sheep.
Hence the exclamations of astonishment, the gestures of wrath, over all the huerta, when Pimentó published the news from field to field, from farm-house to farm-house, that the lands of Barret now had a tenant, a stranger, and that he ... he ... (whoever he might be), was here with all his family, installing himself without any warning, ... as if they were his own!