«And now get us through today,» Robert Jordan said. «For it is thee who has the plan for this.»
«I have a good plan,» Pablo said. «With a little luck we will be all right.»
He was beginning to breathe better.
«You’re not going to kill any of us, are you?» Agustín said. «For I will kill thee now.»
«Shut up,» Pablo said. «I have to look after thy interest and that of the band. This is war. One cannot do what one would wish.»
«‘Cabrón’,» said Agustín. «You take all the prizes.»
«Tell me what thou encountered below,» Robert Jordan said to Pablo.
«Everything,» Pablo repeated. He was still breathing as though it were tearing his chest but he could talk steadily now and his face and head were running with sweat and his shoulders and chest were soaked with it. He looked at Robert Jordan cautiously to see if he were really friendly and then he grinned. «Everything,» he said again. «First we took the post. Then came a motorcyclist. Then another. Then an ambulance. Then a camion. Then the tank. Just before thou didst the bridge.»
«Then—»
«The tank could not hurt us but we could not leave for it commanded the road. Then it went away and I came.»
«And thy people?» Agustín put in, still looking for trouble.
«Shut up,» Pablo looked at him squarely, and his face was the face of a man who had fought well before any other thing had happened. «They were not of our band.»
Now they could see the horses tied to the trees, the sun coming down on them through the pine branches and them tossing their heads and kicking against the botflies and Robert Jordan saw Maria and the next thing he was holding her tight, tight, with the automatic rifle leaning against his side, the flash-cone pressing against his ribs and Maria saying, «Thou, Roberto. Oh, thou.»
«Yes, rabbit. My good, good rabbit. Now we go.»
«Art thou here truly?»
«Yes. Yes. Truly. Oh, thou!»
He had never thought that you could know that there was a woman if there was battle; nor that any part of you could know it, or respond to it; nor that if there was a woman that she should have breasts small, round and tight against you through a shirt; nor that they, the breasts, could know about the two of them in battle. But it was true and he thought, good. That’s good. I would not have believed that and he held her to him once hard, hard, but he did not look at her, and then he slapped her where he never had slapped her and said, «Mount. Mount. Get on that saddle, ‘guapa’.»
Then they were untying the halters and Robert Jordan had given the automatic rifle back to Agustín and slung his own submachine gun over his back, and he was putting bombs out of his pockets into the saddlebags, and he stuffed one empty pack inside the other and tied that one behind his saddle. Then Pilar came up, so breathless from the climb she could not talk, but only motioned.
Then Pablo stuffed three hobbles he had in his hand into a saddlebag, stood up and said, «‘Qué tal’, woman?» and she only nodded, and then they were all mounting.
Robert Jordan was on the big gray he had first seen in the snow of the morning of the day before and he felt that it was much horse between his legs and under his hands. He was wearing rope-soled shoes and the stirrups were a little too short; his submachine gun was slung over his shoulder, his pockets were full of clips and he was sitting reloading the one used clip, the reins under one arm, tight, watching Pilar mount into a strange sort of seat on top of the duffle lashed onto the saddle of the buckskin.
«Cut that stuff loose for God’s sake,» Primitivo said. «Thou wilt fall and the horse cannot carry it.»
«Shut up,» said Pilar. «We go to make a life with this.»
«Canst ride like that, woman?» Pablo asked her from the ‘guardia civil’ saddle on the great bay horse.
«Like any milk peddler,» Pilar told him. «How do you go, old one?»
«Straight down. Across the road. Up the far slope and into the timber where it narrows.»
«Across the road?» Agustín wheeled beside him, kicking his soft-heeled, canvas shoes against the stiff, unresponding belly of one of the horses Pablo had recruited in the night.
«Yes, man. It is the only way,» Pablo said. He handed him one of the lead ropes. Primitivo and the gypsy had the others.
«Thou canst come at the end if thou will, ‘Inglés’,» Pablo said. «We cross high enough to be out of range of that ‘máquina’. But we will go separately and riding much and then be together where it narrows above.»
«Good,» said Robert Jordan.
They rode down through the timber toward the edge of the road. Robert Jordan rode just behind Maria. He could not ride beside her for the timber. He caressed the gray once with his thigh muscles, and then held him steady as they dropped down fast and sliding through the pines, telling the gray with his thighs as they dropped down what the spurs would have told him if they had been on level ground.
«Thou,» he said to Maria, «go second as they cross the road. First is not so bad though it seems bad. Second is good. It is later that they are always watching for.»
«But thou—»
«I will go suddenly. There will be no problem. It is the places in line that are bad.»
He was watching the round, bristly head of Pablo, sunk in his shoulders as he rode, his automatic rifle slung over his shoulder. He was watching Pilar, her head bare, her shoulders broad, her knees higher than her thighs as her heels hooked into the bundles. She looked back at him once and shook her head.
«Pass the Pilar before you cross the road,» Robert Jordan said to Maria.
Then he was looking through the thinning trees and he saw the oiled dark of the road below and beyond it the green slope of the hillside. We are above the culvert, he saw, and just below the height where the road drops down straight toward the bridge in that long sweep. We are around eight hundred yards above the bridge. That is not out of range for the Fiat in that little tank if they have come up to the bridge.
«Maria,» he said. «Pass the Pilar before we reach the road and ride wide up that slope.»
She looked back at him but did not say anything. He did not look at her except to see that she had understood.
«‘Comprendes?'» he asked her.
She nodded.
«Move up,» he said.
She shook her head.
«Move up!»
«Nay,» she told him, turning around and shaking her head. «I go in the order that I am to go.»
Just then Pablo dug both his spurs into the big bay and he plunged down the last pine-needled slope and cross the road in a pounding, sparking of shod hooves. The others came behind him and Robert Jordan saw them crossing the road and slamming on up the green slope and heard the machine gun hammer at the bridge.
Then he heard a noise come sweeeish-crack-boom! The boom was a sharp crack that widened in the cracking and on the hillside he saw a small fountain of earth rise with a plume of gray smoke. Sweeish-crack-boom! It came again, the swishing like the noise of a rocket and there was another up-pulsing of dirt and smoke farther up the hillside.
Ahead of him the gypsy was stopped beside the road in the shelter of the last trees. He looked ahead at the slope and then he looked back toward Robert Jordan.
«Go ahead, Rafael,» Robert Jordan said. «Gallop, man!»
The gypsy was holding the lead rope with the pack-horse pulling his head taut behind him.
«Drop the pack-horse and gallop!» Robert Jordan said.
He saw the gypsy’s hand extended behind him, rising higher and higher, seeming to take forever as his heels kicked into the horse he was riding and the rope came taut, then dropped, and he was across the road and Robert Jordan was kneeing against a frightened packhorse that bumped back into him as the gypsy crossed the hard, dark road and he heard his horse’s hooves clumping as he galloped up the slope.
Wheeeeeeish-ca-rack! The flat trajectory of the shell came and he saw the gypsy jink like a running boar as the earth spouted the little black and gray geyser ahead of him. He watched him galloping, slow and reaching now, up the long green slope and the gun threw behind him and ahead of him and he was under the fold of the hill with the others.
I can’t take the damned pack-horse, Robert Jordan thought. Though I wish I could keep the son of a bitch on my off side. I’d like to have him between me and that 47 mm. they’re throwing with. By God, I’ll try to get him up there anyway.
He rode up to the pack-horse, caught hold of the hackamore, and then, holding the rope, the horse trotting behind him, rode fifty yards up through the trees. At the edge of the trees he looked down the road past the truck to the bridge. He could see men out on the bridge and behind it looked like a traffic jam on the road. Robert Jordan looked around, saw what he wanted finally and reached up and broke a dead limb from a pine tree.
He dropped the hackamore, edged the pack-horse up to the
