He knew of the threats of Pimentó, who supported by all the huerta, swore that this wheat should not be cut by him who had sowed it, and Batiste almost forgot his sons in thinking about his fields, of the series of green waves which grew and grew under the rays of the sun and which must turn into golden piles of ripe wheat.
The silent and concentrated hatred followed him out upon the road. The women drew away, with curling lips, and did not deign to salute him, as is the custom in the huerta; the men who were working in the fields adjoining the road, called to each other with insolent expressions which were directed indirectly at Batiste; and the little children shouted from a distance, "Thug! Jew!" without adding more to such insults, as if they alone were applicable to the enemy of the huerta.
Ah! If he had not had the fists of a giant, those enormous shoulders and that expression of a man who has few friends, how soon the entire vega would have settled with him! Each one hoping that the other would be the first to dare, they contented themselves with insulting him from a distance.
Batiste, in the midst of the sadness which this solitude inspired in him, experienced one slight satisfaction. Already close to the farm-house, when he heard the barkings of the dog who had scented his approach, he saw a boy, an overgrown youth, seated on a sloping bank with the sickle between his legs, and holding some piles of cut brushwood at his side, who stood up to greet him.
And the salutation, the trembling voice of a timid boy with which he spoke to him, impressed him pleasantly.
The friendliness of this child was a small matter, yet he experienced the impression of a feverish man upon feeling the coolness of water.
He gazed with tenderness at the blue eyes, the smiling face covered by a coat of down, and searched his memory as to who the boy might be. Finally he remembered that he was the grandson of old Tomba, the blind shepherd whom all the huerta respected; a good boy who was serving as a servant to a butcher at Alboraya, whose herd the old man tended.
"Thanks, little one, thanks," he murmured, acknowledging the salute.
And he went ahead, and was welcomed by his dog, who leaped before him, and rubbed himself against his corduroy trousers.