This story is about a pearl diver named Kino and his trustworthy wife Juana and their infant son Coyotito. They are a very, very poor indeginess family that tries to make it through there lives by selling pearls that Kino dives for in the Golfo de California in the canoe that his grandfather gave him. In the beginning of the story Coyotito gets stung by a scorpian that makes him very ill so Kino and Juana take him to the doctors but they just get rejected by the doctor for not having any money. Later that day when Kino is pearl diving he discovers the pearl of the world when he looked into the pearl all he could see were his dreams of sending Coyotito to school and having a winchester carbine rifle and getting married to Juana and when he gets back to shore he announces it to everybody and soon the news travels through the town and reaches the doctor. Then the doctor comes racing over to there small brush house and treats the baby but when he treats the baby he actually gives the baby poison to make him sicker and sicker so he could continue treating him and they would be forced to pay him for what he has done.
Then Kino goes to the pearl buyers to sell his pearl in exchange for money but what Kino didn't no was that the pearl buyers were already planing to not give Kino the money he deserved, for whatever reason they could through out there. So Kino figured out their little trick and he left the pearl buyers office. Later that night somebody tried to rob him of his pearl but was unsuccessful and he got away.
After that Juana tried to through the pearl back into the ocean because she thought it was bringing evil upon the family. So she ran down to the ocean about to through the pearl of the world into the ocean, but just then Kino came up behind her and renched the pearl out of her hand. Right after he stopped her from throwing the pearl back into the ocean he brutaly beat her up. On Kino's way back to the small brush house somebody attacks him again but this time the man who attacked him did not get away because Kino slit the man's throat. When Juana came back up shore she saw kino laying on the floor and next to him she saw a stranger with a slit neck. So she toke action by waking up kino giving him the pearl that he drooped in the fight and dragged the dead man behind some bushes. Kino and Juana both new that it was to late to get rid of the pearl now people whould still go luck for them and still try to kill then. So kino told Juana to go get Coyotito who was still sleeping in the house cuz there was no time to wayst they had to leave for a big city to sell the pearl immediately. When Juana got back to their house she saw that somebody had destroyed it looking for the pearl, when she got Coyotito out she saw somebody setting their house on fire so she ran back to where Kino was standing looking at his canoe that somebody had broken a hole in the bottom of, he looked furious and he got even more mad when Juana told him the bad news. The sun was rising their, escape plan was ruined, and people were standing around the ashes of there small brush house. They knew they had to hide until the next night to go north so they could go to a big city. They ran into Kino's brother Juan Tohmas' house. When Juan Tohmas saw them he went out to go get them supplies for their journey.
It was the next night and Kino, Juana and Coyotito all left to start heading north. They walked all night and all day until they reached a clearing , so they settled down in the clearing for a while until kino saw some trakers fallowing them (two men on feet looking for foot prints and one man on horse bak holding a rifle) so they franticly headed for the mountains but the trackers were right on their tail so they hid in a cave for a while. Then suddenly Kino spotted the trackers 30 feet below them two of them were sleeping and one was still awake keeping watch with the rifle. Kino knew that if he could get down ther and kill the tracker with the rifle first he could take out the other ones so he took of his dirty white clothes and climed down the mountain slowly with his knife, when he reached the bottom of the mountain he hid behind a bush waiting for the right time to attack but before he could attack he heard a crying noise coming from the cave, the trackers also heard it they thought it mite have been a coyote so the sleeping trackers woke up. The tracker with the rifle pointed up at the cave and fired and then suddenly the crying stopped. Realizing what had just happened Kino knew the time was now so he leaped for the tracker and sliced his neck then he stabbed the other one, the last one was trying to clime up the mountain to safety but before he reached the top kino fired the rifle and made contact making the man tumble down into a puddle at the bottom of the mountain, Kino walked up to the half awake man floating in the water and fired a second shot right between his eyes.
When Kino and Juana came back to the city of La Paz they walked straight down to the ocean and kino looked into Juanas eyes and through the pearl back into the ocean . And Juana was holding Coyotitos lifeless body in her shawl over her shoulder.
