Pedro de Alarcon
Old Buscabeata's back began to curve during the period of which I am going to tell,and the reason was that he was sixty years old,forty of which had been spent working a piece of ground on the banks of the River Costilla.That year he had cultivated on his farm a crop of enormous pumpkins,and these pumpkins had attained an orange color both inside and out,which showed that it was now the month of June.Buscabeatas knew each one of them perfectly by its form,its state of ripeness,and even by its name,especially the forty which were fattest and richest in colour.He spent all his days gazing at them tenderly,and sadly exclaiming,"Soon we shall have to part!"
One afternoon he decided on the sacrifice.He pointed to the ripest of his beloved pumpkins,which had cost him so much effort,and said the terrible words,"Tomorrow I will cut these forty and take them to the Cadiz market.Happy is the man who ill eat them!" And he walked back to the house with slow steps,and spent the night with the agony of a father who is going to marry off his daughter on the following day."My poor dear pumpkins!" he sighed again and again,unable to fall asleep.But then he thought,"What else can I do but sell them?I cultivated them for that purpose.At least I will receive fifteen duros for them."
Imagine then his extreme astonishment,fury and desperation when,going the following morning to the farm,he discovered that he had been robbed during the night of his forty pumpkins.To save time I will merely say that he was filled with tragic fury and that he repeated again and again the terrible words,"Oh,if I catch you,if I catch you!"
Then he began to reflect,coldly,and he decided that his beloved pumpkins couldnot be in Rota,his native village.It would be impossible to put them on sale there because they would be recognized.Besides,pumpkins fetched a very low price there.
"They are in Cadiz!" He decided after much thought."That rascal,the robber,robbed me last night at nine or ten o'clock and escaped with them at midnight in the cargo boat.I will take the boat this very morning for Cadiz,and I will be very much surprised if I do not catch the robber and recover the daughters of my labour." So saying,he yet remained about twenty minutes near the scene of the disaster as if counting the missing pumpkins or planning terrible punishments for the robber,until it was eight o'clock and he left in the direction of the boat.