Pushing himself up on his hands he turned his head and saw the old man coming down the ledge. With him was another man, also in a black peasant’s smock and the dark gray trousers that were almost a uniform in that province, wearing rope-soled shoes and with a carbine slung over his back. This man was bareheaded. The two of them came scrambling down the rock like goats.
They came up to him and Robert Jordan got to his feet.
«‘Salud, Camarada’,» he said to the man with the carbine and smiled.
«‘Salud’,» the other said, grudgingly. Robert Jordan looked at the man’s heavy, beard-stubbled face. It was almost round and his head was round and set close on his shoulders. His eyes were small and set too wide apart and his ears were small and set close to his head. He was a heavy man about five feet ten inches tall and his hands and feet were large. His nose had been broken and his mouth was cut at one corner and the line of the scar across the upper lip and lower jaw showed through the growth of beard over his face.
The old man nodded his head at this man and smiled.
«He is the boss here,» he grinned, then flexed his arms as though to make the muscles stand out and looked at the man with the carbine in a half-mocking admiration. «A very strong man.»
«I can see it,» Robert Jordan said and smiled again. He did not like the look of this man and inside himself he was not smiling at all.
«What have you to justify your identity?» asked the man with the carbine.
Robert Jordan unpinned a safety pin that ran through his pocket flap and took a folded paper out of the left breast pocket of his flannel shirt and handed it to the man, who opened it, looked at it doubtfully and turned it in his hands.
So he cannot read, Robert Jordan noted.
«Look at the seal,» he said.
The old man pointed to the seal and the man with the carbine studied it, turning it in his fingers.
«What seal is that?»
«Have you never seen it?»
«No.»
«There are two,» said Robert Jordan. «One is S. I. M., the service of the military intelligence. The other is the General Staff.»
«Yes, I have seen that seal before. But here no one commands but me,» the other said sullenly. «What have you in the packs?»
«Dynamite,» the old man said proudly. «Last night we crossed the lines in the dark and all day we have carried this dynamite over the mountain.»
«I can use dynamite,» said the man with the carbine. He handed back the paper to Robert Jordan and looked him over. «Yes. I have use for dynamite. How much have you brought me?»
«I have brought you no dynamite,» Robert Jordan said to him evenly. «The dynamite is for another purpose. What is your name?»
«What is that to you?»
«He is Pablo,» said the old man. The man with the carbine looked at them both sullenly.
«Good. I have heard much good of you,» said Robert Jordan.
«What have you heard of me?» asked Pablo.
«I have heard that you are an excellent guerilla leader, that you are loyal to the republic and prove your loyalty through your acts, and that you are a man both serious and valiant. I bring you greetings from the General Staff.»
«Where did you hear all this?» asked Pablo. Robert Jordan registered that he was not taking any of the flattery.
«I heard it from Buitrago to the Escorial,» he said, naming all the stretch of country on the other side of the lines.
«I know no one in Buitrago nor in Escorial,» Pablo told him.
«There are many people on the other side of the mountains who were not there before. Where are you from?»
«Avila. What are you going to do with the dynamite?»
«Blow up a bridge.»
«What bridge?»
«That is my business.»
«If it is in this territory, it is my business. You cannot blow bridges close to where you live. You must live in one place and operate in another. I know my business. One who is alive, now, after a year, knows his business.»
«This is my business,» Robert Jordan said. «We can discuss it together. Do you wish to help us with the sacks?»
«No,» said Pablo and shook his head.
The old man turned toward him suddenly and spoke rapidly and furiously in a dialect that Robert Jordan could just follow. It was like reading Quevedo. Anselmo was speaking old Castilian and it went something like this, «Art thou a brute? Yes. Art thou a beast? Yes, many times Hast thou a brain? Nay. None. Now we come for something of consummate importance and thee, with thy dwelling place to be undisturbed, puts thy fox-hole before the interests of humanity. Before the interests of thy people. I this and that in the this and that of thy father. I this and that and that in thy this. ‘Pick up that bag’.»
Pablo looked down.
«Every one has to do what he can do according to how it can be truly done,» he said. «I live here and I operate beyond Segovia. If you make a disturbance here, we will be hunted out of these mountains. It is only by doing nothing here that we are able to live in these mountains. It is the principle of the fox.»
«Yes,» said Anselmo bitterly. «It is the principle of the fox when we need the wolf.»
«I am more wolf than thee,» Pablo said and Robert Jordan knew that he would pick up the sack.
«Hi. Ho. . . ,» Anselmo looked at him. «Thou art more wolf than me and I am sixty-eight years old.»
He spat on the ground and shook his head.
«You have that many years?» Robert Jordan asked, seeing that now, for the moment, it would be all right and trying to make it go easier.
«Sixty-eight in the month of July.»
«If we should ever see that month,» said Pablo. «Let me help you with the pack,» he said to Robert Jordan. «Leave the other to the old man.» He spoke, not sullenly, but almost sadly now. «He is an old man of great strength.»
«I will carry the pack,» Robert Jordan said.
«Nay,» said the old man. «Leave it to this other strong man.»
«I will take it,» Pablo told him, and in his sullenness there was a sadness that was disturbing to Robert Jordan. He knew that sadness and to see it here worried him.
«Give me the carbine then,» he said and when Pablo handed it to him, he slung it over his back and, with the two men climbing ahead of him, they went heavily, pulling and climbing up the granite shelf and over its upper edge to where there was a green clearing in the forest.
They skirted the edge of the little meadow and Robert Jordan, striding easily now without the pack, the carbine pleasantly rigid over his shoulder after the heavy, sweating pack weight, noticed that the grass was cropped down in several places and signs that picket pins had been driven into the earth. He could see a trail through the grass where horses had been led to the stream to drink and there was the fresh manure of several horses. They picket them here to feed at night and keep them out of sight in the timber in the daytime, he thought. I wonder how many horses this Pablo has?
He remembered now noticing, without realizing it, that Pablo’s trousers were worn soapy shiny in the knees and thighs. I wonder if he has a pair of boots or if he rides in those ‘alpargatas’, he thought. He must have quite an outfit. But I don’t like that sadness, he thought. That sadness is bad. That’s the sadness they get before they quit or before they betray. That is the sadness that comes before the sell-out.
Ahead of them a horse whinnied in the timber and then, through the brown trunks of the pine trees, only a little sunlight coming down through their thick, almost-touching tops, he saw the corral made by roping around the tree trunks. The horses had their heads pointed toward the men as they approached, and at the foot of a tree, outside the corral, the saddles were piled together and covered with a tarpaulin.
As they came up, the two men with the packs stopped, and Robert Jordan knew it was for him to admire the horses.
«Yes,» he said. «They are beautiful.» He turned to Pablo. «You have your cavalry and all.»
There were five horses in the rope corral, three bays, a sorrel, and a buckskin. Sorting them out carefully with his eyes after he had seen them first together, Robert Jordan looked them over individually. Pablo and Anselmo knew how good they were and while Pablo stood now proud and less sad-looking, watching them lovingly, the old man acted as though they were some great surprise that he had produced, suddenly, himself.
«How do they look to you?» he asked.
«All these I have taken,» Pablo said and Robert Jordan was pleased to hear him speak proudly.
«That,» said Robert Jordan, pointing to one of the bays, a big stallion with a white blaze on his forehead and a single white foot, the near front, «is much horse.»
He was a beautiful horse that looked as though he had
