Bacallao traveled to villages where he told stories and sold vegetables and eggs to earn a living. One day, returning home after one of these trips, he noticed a scuff on the back of his horse under the saddle.
Bacallao also knew a lot about horsemanship. He took a handful of wood ash from the hearth, sprinkled it on the wound and released the horse into the pasture - let him rest, and then, lo and behold, the ash and time would heal the wound.
Two Sundays later, Bacallao went to the pasture to fetch his horse. He decided to go to a neighboring town for a cockfight - maybe his rooster would emerge victorious and the owner would get a few coins. Bacallao walked around the entire pasture, searched all the nooks and crannies, but the horse was gone. He returned home covered in mud, with wet feet, because it had been raining like buckets for a whole week.
Bacallao had already decided that his glorious horse, which more than once brought him victory at the races and took him to the village beauties, was lost forever. But then one day he went out into the meadow and saw something like a bed moving towards him, completely covered with magnificent ripe pumpkins.
Not believing his eyes, Bacallao carefully approached - like all peasants, he was curious, and he wanted to take a closer look at the wonder. And how surprised he was when he saw that it was his horse. And the pumpkins on her back grew from seeds that, along with the ash, got into the wound. After all, it is customary for Cuban peasants to store pumpkin seeds in ashes so that they dry evenly and do not lose their viability until the next sowing...
Translated from Russian · original on wisdomlib.ru