“I’ll give you that sheep if you can carry it!”
And then the poor devil would nearly split his sides trying to carry the heavy beast.... When the rich alfalfa grower had guests he would order a turkey, to be put on the spit. And the guests would be overcome with amazement when they saw the enormous alfalfa-fattened bird brought on the table. They always thought it must be a sheep roasted whole.
The Basque’s prosperity made it possible for him to be generous toward the poverty of others, and even indulgent to theft; but he could not tolerate Manos Duras and other cattle thieves because they took live animals from him.
“Let them take all the meat they want,” he used to say. “I know what it is to be poor, and I know what it is to be hungry. But at least, pucha! Let them leave me the skins....”
More than once as he rode around through his enormous estate he broke into curses at sight of the entrails and other remains of a sheep left near the ditches. But if, a few paces from the scene of the slaughter, he came upon the hide still quite fresh spread out on the wire fence, he would smile and mutter,
“That’s all right. Just so long as they’re decent and only take what they need to satisfy their hunger....”
Meanwhile the boliche owner was dreaming of some day being as rich as his compatriot. He too would own immense alfalfa fields.... And, talking interminably of this fodder with the other men there who also owned barren tracts of hard-baked soil, and were also awaiting the transformation to be wrought by irrigation, he never noticed the length of the night hours; for, like children listening to a marvelous tale, he went through the same emotions at the same words without ever tiring.
“If the day would only come when we shall see our fields all red and covered with water as though we were going to make bricks of the watered clay....”
The thought of it was sheer ecstasy.... Then they would look at the clock. It was late! They had to go to bed, for they must be up at dawn. Instinctively, as they left the boliche, they all turned their eyes toward the dark river that silently, for thousands of miles, slipped through the arid lands without once bestowing on them the gentle caress of its touch, a caress that would have brought forth so many wonders.
But, while waiting for the moment when he would wake up to find himself a millionaire, Antonio Gonzalez decided that one of the best ways of turning an honest penny was to arrange Sunday horse races. For this enterprise he needed don Roque’s permission; and it was not so easy to get it.