Robert Jordan lay behind the trunk of a pine tree on the slope of the hill above the road and the bridge and watched it become daylight. He loved this hour of the day always and now he watched it; feeling it gray within him, as though he were a part of the slow lightening that comes before the rising of the sun; when solid things darken and space lightens and the lights that have shone in the night go yellow and then fade as the day comes. The pine trunks below him were hard and clear now, their trunks solid and brown and the road was shiny with a wisp of mist over it. The dew had wet him and the forest floor was soft and he felt the give of the brown, dropped pine needles under his elbows. Below he saw, through the light mist that rose from the stream bed, the steel of the bridge, straight and rigid across the gap, with the wooden sentry boxes at each end. But as he looked the structure of the bridge was still spidery and fine in the mist that hung over the stream.
He saw the sentry now in his box as he stood, his back with the hanging blanket coat topped by the steel casque on his head showing as he leaned forward over the hole-punched petrol tin of the brazier, warming his hands. Robert Jordan heard the stream, far down in the rocks, and he saw a faint, thin smoke that rose from the sentry box.
No you must not expect victory here, not for several years maybe. This is just a holding attack. You must not get illusions about it now. Suppose we got a break-through today? This is our first big attack. Keep your sense of proportion. But what if we should have it? Don't get excited, he told himself. Remember what went up the road. You've done what you could about that. We should have portable short-wave sets, though. We will, in time. But we haven't yet. You just watch now and do what you should.
Today is only one day in all the days that will ever be. But what will happen in all the other days that ever come can depend on what you do today. It's been that way all this year. It's been that way so many times. All of this war is that way. You are getting very pompous in the early morning, he told himself. Look there what's coming now.
He saw the two men in blanket capes and steel helmets come around the corner of the road walking toward the bridge, their rifles slung over their shoulders. One stopped at the far end of the bridge and was out of sight in the sentry box. The other came on across the bridge, walking slowly and heavily. He stopped on the bridge and spat into the gorge, then came on slowly to the near end of the bridge where the other sentry spoke to him and then started off back over the bridge. The sentry who was relieved walked faster than the other had done (because he's going to coffee, Robert Jordan thought) but he too spat down into the gorge.
I wonder if that is superstition? Robert Jordan thought. I'll have to take me a spit in that gorge too. If I can spit by then. No. It can't be very powerful medicine. It can't work. I'll have to prove it doesn't work before I am out there.
The new sentry had gone inside the box and sat down. His rifle with the bayonet fixed was leaning against the wall. Robert Jordan took his glasses from his shirt pocket and turned the eyepieces until the end of the bridge showed sharp and gray-painted-metal clear. Then he moved them onto the sentry box.
The sentry sat leaning against the wall. His helmet hung on a peg and his face showed clearly. Robert Jordan saw he was the same man who had been there on guard two days before in the afternoon watch. He was wearing the same knitted stocking-cap. And he had not shaved. His cheeks were sunken and his cheekbones prominent. He had bushy eyebrows that grew together in the center. He looked sleepy and as Robert Jordan watched him he yawned. Then he took out a tobacco pouch and a packet of papers and rolled himself a cigarette. He tried to make a lighter work and finally put it in his pocket and went over to the brazier, leaned over, reached inside, brought up a piece of charcoal, juggled it in one hand while he blew on it, then lit the cigarette and tossed the lump of charcoal back into the brazier.
Robert Jordan, looking through the Zeiss 8-power glasses, watched his face as he leaned against the wall of the sentry box drawing on the cigarette. Then he took the glasses down, folded them together and put them in his pocket.
I won't look at him again, he told himself.
He lay there and watched the road and tried not to think at all. A squirrel chittered from a pine tree below him and Robert Jordan watched the squirrel come down the tree trunk, stopping on his way down to turn his head and look toward where the man was watching. He saw the squirrel's eyes, small and bright, and watched his tail jerk in excitement. Then the squirrel crossed to another tree, moving on the ground in long, small-pawed, tail-exaggerated bounds. On the tree trunk he looked back at Robert Jordan, then pulled himself around the trunk and out of sight. Then Robert Jordan heard the squirrel chitter from a high branch of the pine tree and he watched him there, spread flat along the branch, his tail jerking.
Robert Jordan looked down through the pines to the sentry box again. He would like to have had the squirrel with him in his pocket. He would like to have had anything that he could touch. He rubbed his elbows against the pine needles but it was not the same. Nobody knows how lonely you can be when you do this. Me, though, I know. I hope that Rabbit will get out of this all right. Stop that now. Yes, sure. But I can hope that and I do. That I blow it well and that she gets out all right. Good. Sure. Just that. That is all I want now.
He lay there now and looked away from the road and the sentry box and across to the far mountain. Just do not think at all, he told himself. He lay there quietly and watched the morning come. It was a fine early summer morning and it came very fast now in the end of May. Once a motorcyclist in a leather coat and all-leather helmet with an automatic rifle in a holster by his left leg came across the bridge and went on up the road. Once an ambulance crossed the bridge, passed below him, and went up the road. But that was all. He smelled the pines and he heard the stream and the bridge showed clear now and beautiful in the morning light. He lay there behind the pine tree, with the submachine gun across his left forearm, and he never looked at the sentry box again until, long after it seemed that it was never coming, that nothing could happen on such a lovely late May morning, he heard the sudden, clustered, thudding of the bombs.
As he heard the bombs, the first thumping noise of them, before the echo of them came back in thunder from the mountain, Robert Jordan drew in a long breath and lifted the submachine gun from where it lay. His arm felt stiff from its weight and his fingers were heavy with reluctance.
The man in the sentry box stood up when he heard the bombs. Robert Jordan saw him reach for his rifle and step forward out of the box listening. He stood in the road with the sun shining on him. The knitted cap was on the side of his head and the sun was on his unshaved face as he looked up into the sky toward where the planes were bombing.
There was no mist on the road now and Robert Jordan saw the man, clearly and sharply, standing there on the road looking up at the sky. The sun shone bright on him through the trees.
Robert Jordan felt his own breath tight now as though a strand of wire bound his chest and, steadying his elbows, feeling the corrugations of the forward grip against his fingers, he put the oblong of the foresight, settled now in the notch of the rear, onto the center of the man's chest and squeezed the trigger gently.
With that second shot came the cracking boom of grenades from around the corner below the bridge. Then there was the noise of grenades from well up the road to the left. Then he heard rifle-firing up the road and from below came the noise of Pablo's cavalry automatic rifle spat-spat-spat-spatting into the noise of grenades. He saw Anselmo scrambling down the steep cut to the far end of the bridge and he slung the submachine gun over his shoulder and picked up the two heavy packs from behind the pine trunks and with one in each hand, the packs pulling his arms so that he felt the tendons would pull out of his shoulders, he ran lurching down the steep slope to the road.
The old man came running toward him, holding his carbine in one hand. "_Sin novedad_," he shouted. "There's nothing wrong. _Tuve que rematarlo_. I had to finish him."
Robert Jordan, kneeling, opening the packs in the center of the bridge taking out his material, saw that tears were running down Anselmo's cheeks through the gray beard stubble.
"_Yo mat?uno tambien_," he said to Anselmo. "I killed one too," and jerked his head toward where the sentry lay hunched over in the road at the end of the bridge.
"Yes, man, yes," Anselmo said. "We have to kill them and we kill them."
Robert Jordan was climbing down into the framework of the bridge. The girders were cold and wet with dew under his hands and he climbed carefully, feeling the sun on his back, bracing himself in a bridge truss, hearing the noise of the tumbling water below him, hearing firing, too much firing, up the road at the upper post. He was sweating heavily now and it was cool under the bridge. He had a coil of wire around one arm and a pair of pliers hung by a thong from his wrist.
"Hand me that down a package at a time, _viejo_," he called up to Anselmo. The old man leaned far over the edge handing down the oblong blocks of explosive and Robert Jordan reached up for them, shoved them in where he wanted them, packed them close, braced them, "Wedges, _viejo!_ Give me wedges!" smelling the fresh shingle smell of the new whittled wedges as he tapped them in tight to hold the charge between the girders.
Now as he worked, placing, bracing, wedging, lashing tight with wire, thinking only of demolition, working fast and skillfully as a surgeon works, he heard a rattle of firing from below on the road. Then there was the noise of a grenade. Then another, booming through the rushing noise the water made. Then it was quiet from that direction.
"Damn," he thought. "I wonder what hit them then?"
There was still firing up the road at the upper post. Too damned much firing, and he was lashing two grenades side by side on top of the braced blocks of explosive, winding wire over their corrugations so they would hold tight and firm and lashing it tight; twisting it with the pliers. He felt of the whole thing and then, to make it more solid, tapped in a wedge above the grenades that blocked the whole charge firmly in against the steel.
"The other side now, _viejo_," he shouted up to Anselmo and climbed across through the trestling, like a bloody Tarzan in a rolled steel forest, he thought, and then coming out from under the dark, the stream tumbling below him, he looked up and saw Anselmo's face as he reached the packages of explosive down to him. Goddamn good face, he thought. Not crying now. That's all to the good. And one side done. This side now and we're done. This will drop it like what all. Come on. Don't get excited. Do it. Clean and fast as the last one. Don't fumble with it. Take your time. Don't try to do it faster than you can. You can't lose now. Nobody can keep you from blowing one side now. You're doing it just the way you should. This is a cool place. Christ, it feels cool as a wine cellar and there's no crap. Usually working under a stone bridge it's full of crap. This is a dream bridge. A bloody dream bridge. It's the old man on top who's in a bad spot. Don't try to do it faster than you can. I wish that shooting would be over up above. "Give me some wedges, _viejo_." I don't like that shooting still. Pilar has got in trouble there. Some of the post must have been out. Out back; or behind the mill. They're still shooting. That means there's somebody still at the mill. And all that damned sawdust. Those big piles of sawdust. Sawdust, when it's old and packed, is good stuff to fight behind. There must be several of them still. It's quiet below with Pablo. I wonder what that second flare-up was. It must have been a car or a motorcyclist. I hope to God they don't have any armored cars come up or any tanks. Go on. Put it in just as fast as you can and wedge it tight and lash it fast. You're shaking, like a Goddamn woman. What the hell is the matter with you? You're trying to do it too fast. I'll bet that Goddamn woman up above isn't shaking. That Pilar. Maybe she is too. She sounds as though she were in plenty trouble. She'll shake if she gets in enough. Like everybody bloody else.
He leaned out and up into the sunlight and as he reached his hand up to take what Anselmo handed him, his head now above the noise of the falling water, the firing increased sharply up the road and then the noise of grenades again. Then more grenades.
"They rushed the sawmill then."
It's lucky I've got this stuff in blocks, he thought. Instead of sticks. What the hell. It's just neater. Although a lousy canvas sack full of jelly would be quicker. Two sacks. No. One of that would do. And if we just had detonators and the old exploder. That son of a bitch threw my exploder in the river. That old box and the places that it's been. In this river he threw it. That bastard Pablo. He gave them hell there below just now. "Give me some more of that, _viejo_."
The old man's doing very well. He's in quite a place up there. He hated to shoot that sentry. So did I but I didn't think about it. Nor do I think about it now. You have to do that. But then Anselmo got a cripple. I know about cripples. I think that killing a man with an automatic weapon makes it easier. I mean on the one doing it. It is different. After the first touch it is it that does it. Not you. Save that to go into some other time. You and your head. You have a nice thinking head old Jordan. Roll Jordan, Roll! They used to yell that at football when you lugged the ball. Do you know the damned Jordan is really not much bigger than that creek down there below. At the source, you mean. So is anything else at the source. This is a place here under this bridge. A home away from home. Come on Jordan, pull yourself together. This is serious Jordan. Don't you understand? Serious. It's less so all the time. Look at that other side. _Para qu?_ I'm all right now however she goes. As Maine goes, so goes the nation. As Jordan goes so go the bloody Israelites. The bridge, I mean. As Jordan goes, so goes the bloody bridge, other way around, really.
"Give me some more of that, Anselmo old boy," he said. The old man nodded. "Almost through," Robert Jordan said. The old man nodded again.
Finishing wiring the grenades down, he no longer heard the firing from up the road. Suddenly he was working only with the noise of the stream. He looked down and saw it boiling up white below him through the boulders and then dropping down to a clear pebbled pool where one of the wedges he had dropped swung around in the current. As he looked a trout rose for some insect and made a circle on the surface close to where the chip was turning. As he twisted the wire tight with the pliers that held these two grenades in place, he saw, through the metal of the bridge, the sunlight on the green slope of the mountain. It was brown three days ago, he thought.
Out from the cool dark under the bridge he leaned into the bright sun and shouted to Anselmo's bending face, "Give me the big coil of wire."
The old man handed it down.
For God's sake don't loosen them any yet. This will pull them. I wish you could string them through. But with the length of wire you are using it's O.K., Robert Jordan thought as he felt the cotter pins that held the rings that would release the levers on the hand grenades. He checked that the grenades, lashed on their sides, had room for the levers to spring when the pins were pulled (the wire that lashed them ran through under the levers), then he attached a length of wire to one ring, wired it onto the main wire that ran to the ring of the outside grenade, paid off some slack from the coil and passed it around a steel brace and then handed the coil up to Anselmo. "Hold it carefully," he said.
He climbed up onto the bridge, took the coil from the old man and walked back as fast as he could pay out wire toward where the sentry was slumped in the road, leaning over the side of the bridge and paying out wire from the coil as he walked.
"Bring the sacks," he shouted to Anselmo as he walked backwards. As he passed he stooped down and picked up the submachine gun and slung it over his shoulder again.
It was then, looking up from paying out wire, that he saw, well up the road, those who were coming back from the upper post.
There were four of them, he saw, and then he had to watch his wire so it would be clear and not foul against any of the outer work of the bridge. Eladio was not with them.
Robert Jordan carried the wire clear past the end of the bridge, took a ioop around the last stanchion and then ran along the road until he stopped beside a stone marker. He cut the wire and handed it to Anselmo.
"Hold this, _viejo_," he said. "Now walk back with me to the bridge. Take up on it as you walk. No. I will."
At the bridge he pulled the wire back out through the hitch so it now ran clear and unfouled to the grenade rings and handed it, stretching alongside the bridge but running quite clear, to Anselmo.
"Take this back to that high stone," he said. "Hold it easily but firmly. Do not put any force on it. When thou pullest hard, hard, the bridge will blow. _Comprendes?_"
"Yes."
"Treat it softly but do not let it sag so it will foul. Keep it lightly firm but not pulling until thou pullest. _Comprendes?_"
"Yes."
"When thou pullest really pull. Do not jerk."
Robert Jordan while he spoke was looking up the road at the remainder of Pilar's band. They were close now and he saw Primitivo and Rafael were supporting Fernando. He looked to be shot through the groin for he was holding himself there with both hands while the man and the boy held him on either side. His right leg was dragging, the side of the shoe scraping on the road as they walked him. Pilar was climbing the bank into the timber carrying three rifles. Robert Jordan could not see her face but her head was up and she was climbing as fast as she could.
"How does it go?" Primitivo called.
"Good. We're almost finished," Robert Jordan shouted back.
There was no need to ask how it went with them. As he looked away the three were on the edge of the road and Fernando was shaking his head as they tried to get him up the bank.
"Give me a rifle here," Robert Jordan heard him say in a choky voice.
"No, hombre. We will get thee to the horses."
"What would I do with a horse?" Fernando said. "I am very well here."
Robert Jordan did not hear the rest for he was speaking to Anselmo.
"Blow it if tanks come," he said. "But only if they come onto it. Blow it if armored cars come. If they come onto it. Anything else Pablo will stop."
"I will not blow it with thee beneath it."
"Take no account of me. Blow it if thou needest to. I fix the other wire and come back. Then we will blow it together."
He started running for the center of the bridge.
Anselmo saw Robert Jordan run up the bridge, coil of wire over his arm, pliers hanging from one wrist and the submachine gun slung over his back. He saw him climb down under the rail of the bridge and out of sight. Anselmo held the wire in his hand, his right hand, and he crouched behind the stone marker and looked down the road and across the bridge. Halfway between him and the bridge was the sentry, who had settled now closer to the road, sinking closer onto the smooth road surface as the sun weighed on his back. His rifle, lying on the road, the bayonet fixed, pointed straight toward Anselmo. The old man looked past him along the surface of the bridge crossed by the shadows of the bridge rail to where the road swung to the left along the gorge and then turned out of sight behind the rocky wall. He looked at the far sentry box with the sun shining on it and then, conscious of the wire in his hand, he turned his head to where Fernando was speaking to Primitivo and the gypsy.
"Leave me here," Fernando said. "It hurts much and there is much hemorrhage inside. I feel it in the inside when I move."
"Let us get thee up the slope," Primitivo said. "Put thy arms around our shoulders and we will take thy legs."
"It is inutile," Fernando said. "Put me here behind a stone. I am as useful here as above."
"But when we go," Primitivo said.
"Leave me here," Fernando said. "There is no question of my travelling with this. Thus it gives one horse more. I am very well here. Certainly they will come soon."
"We can take thee up the hill," the gypsy said. "Easily."
He was, naturally, in a deadly hurry to be gone, as was Primitivo. But they had brought him this far.
"Nay," Fernando said. "I am very well here. What passes with Eladio?"
The gypsy put his finger on his head to show where the wound had been.
"Here," he said. "After thee. When we made the rush."
"Leave me," Fernando said. Anselmo could see he was suffering much. He held both hands against his groin now and put his head back against the bank, his legs straight out before him. His face was gray and sweating.
"Leave me now please, for a favor," he said. His eyes were shut with pain, the edges of the lips twitching. "I find myself very well here."
"Here is a rifle and cartridges," Primitivo said.
"Is it mine?" Fernando asked, his eyes shut.
"Nay, the Pilar has thine," Primitivo said. "This is mine."
"I would prefer my own," Fernando said. "I am more accustomed to it."
"I will bring it to thee," the gypsy lied to him. "Keep this until it comes."
"I am in a very good position here," Fernando said. "Both for up the road and for the bridge." He opened his eyes, turned his head and looked across the bridge, then shut them as the pain came.
The gypsy tapped his head and motioned with his thumb to Primitivo for them to be off.
"Then we will be down for thee," Primitivo said and started up the slope after the gypsy, who was climbing fast.
Fernando lay back against the bank. In front of him was one of the whitewashed stones that marked the edge of the road. His head was in the shadow but the sun shone on his plugged and bandaged wound and on his hands that were cupped over it. His legs and his feet also were in the sun. The rifle lay beside him and there were three clips of cartridges shining in the sun beside the rifle. A fly crawled on his hands but the small tickling did not come through the pain.
"Fernando!" Anselmo called to him from where he crouched, holding the wire. He had made a loop in the end of the wire and twisted it close so he could hold it in his fist.
"Fernando!" he called again.
Fernando opened his eyes and looked at him.
"How does it go?" Fernando asked.
"Very good," Anselmo said. "Now in a minute we will be blowing it."
"I am pleased. Anything you need me for advise me," Fernando said and shut his eyes again and the pain lurched in him.
Anselmo looked away from him and out onto the bridge.
That is over, he told himself, and thou canst try to atone for it as for the others. But now thou has what thou asked for last night coming home across the hills. Thou art in battle and thou hast no problem. If I die on this morning now it is all right.
Then he looked at Fernando lying there against the bank with his hands cupped over the groove of his hip, his lips blue, his eyes tight shut, breathing heavily and slowly, and he thought, If I die may it be quickly. Nay I said I would ask nothing more if I were granted what I needed for today. So I will not ask. Understand? I ask nothing. Nothing in any way. Give me what I asked for and I leave all the rest according to discretion.
He listened to the noise that came, far away, of the battle at the pass and he said to himself, Truly this is a great day. I should realize and know what a day this is.
But there was no excitement. It was all calm now and the sun beat down on his neck and on his shoulders as he crouched and as he looked up he saw the high, cloudless sky and the slope of the mountain rising beyond the river and he was not happy but he was neither lonely nor afraid.
Up the hill slope Pilar lay behind a tree watching the road that came down from the pass. She had three loaded rifles by her and she handed one to Primitivo as he dropped down beside her.
"Get down there," she said. "Behind that tree. Thou, gypsy, over there," she pointed to another tree below. "Is he dead?"
"Nay. Not yet," Primitivo said.
"It was bad luck," Pilar said. "If we had had two more it need not have happened. He should have crawled around the sawdust pile. Is he all right there where he is?"
Primitivo shook his head.
"But I remember with the blowing of the train the lamp of the engine blew by over my head and pieces of steel flew by like swallows."
"Thou hast poetic memories," Pilar said. "Like swallows. _Joder!_ They were like wash boilers. Listen, gypsy, thou hast comported thyself well today. Now do not let thy fear catch up with thee."
"Well, I only asked if it would blow this far so I might keep well behind the tree trunk," the gypsy said.
"Keep it thus," Pilar told him. "How many have we killed?"
She raised her head and looked down at Anselmo crouched behind the stone marker.
"Patience, woman," Anselmo called up, holding the wire lightly but firmly. "He is terminating his work."
"But what in the name of the great whore does he take so much time about?"
"Es muy _concienzudo!_" Anselmo shouted. "It is a scientific labor."
"Calm yourself, woman," Anselmo called from the road. "He is doing an enormous work. He is finishing it now."
"The hell with it," Pilar raged. "It is speed that counts."
Just then they all heard firing start down the road where Pablo was holding the post he had taken. Pilar stopped cursing and listened. "Ay," she said. "Ayee. Ayee. That's it."
Robert Jordan heard it as he swung the coil of wire up onto the bridge with one hand and then pulled himself up after it. As his knees rested on the edge of the iron of the bridge and his hands were on the surface he heard the machine gun firing around the bend below. It was a different sound from Pablo's automatic rifle. He got to his feet, leaned over, passed his coil of wire clear and commenced to pay out wire as he walked backwards and sideways along the bridge.
He heard the firing and as he walked he felt it in the pit of his stomach as though it echoed on his own diaphragm. It was closer now as he walked and he looked back at the bend of the road. But it was still clear of any car, or tank or men. It was still clear when he was halfway to the end of the bridge. It was still clear when he was three quarters of the way, his wire running clear and unfouled, and it was still clear as he climbed around behind the sentry box, holding his wire out to keep it from catching on the iron work. Then he was on the road and it was still clear below on the road and then he was moving fast backwards up the little washed-out gully by the lower side of the road as an outfielder goes backwards for a long fly ball, keeping the wire taut, and now he was almost opposite Anselmo's stone and it was still clear below the bridge.
Then he heard the truck coming down the road and he saw it over his shoulder just coming onto the long slope and he swung his wrist once around the wire and yelled to Anselmo, "Blow her!" and he dug his heels in and leaned back hard onto the tension of the wire with a turn of it around his wrist and the noise of the truck was coming behind and ahead there was the road with the dead sentry and the long bridge and the stretch of road below, still clear and then there was a cracking roar and the middle of the bridge rose up in the air like a wave breaking and he felt the blast from the explosion roll back against him as he dove on his face in the pebbly gully with his hands holding tight over his head. His face was down against the pebbles as the bridge settled where it had risen and the familiar yellow smell of it rolled over him in acrid smoke and then it commenced to rain pieces of steel.
After the steel stopped falling he was still alive and he raised his head and looked across the bridge. The center section of it was gone. There were jagged pieces of steel on the bridge with their bright, new torn edges and ends and these were all over the road. The truck had stopped up the road about a hundred yards. The driver and the two men who had been with him were running toward a culvert.
Fernando was still lying against the bank and he was still breathing. His arms straight by his sides, his hands relaxed.
Anselmo lay face down behind the white marking stone. His left arm was doubled under his head and his right arm was stretched straight out. The loop of wire was still around his right fist. Robert Jordan got to his feet, crossed the road, knelt by him and made sure that he was dead. He did not turn him over to see what the piece of steel had done. He was dead and that was all.
He looked very small, dead, Robert Jordan thought. He looked small and gray-headed and Robert Jordan thought, I wonder how he ever carried such big loads if that is the size he really was. Then he saw the shape of the calves and the thighs in the tight, gray herdsman's breeches and the worn soles of the rope-soled shoes and he picked up Anselmo's carbine and the two sacks, practically empty now and went over and picked up the rifle that lay beside Fernando. He kicked a jagged piece of steel off the surface of the road. Then he swung the two rifles over his shoulder, holding them by the muzzles, and started up the slope into the timber. He did not look back nor did he even look across the bridge at the road. They were still firing around the bend below but he cared nothing about that now.
He was coughing from the TNT fumes and he felt numb all through himself.
He put one of the rifles down by Pilar where she lay behind the tree. She looked and saw that made three rifles that she had again.
"The old one?" she asked him, looking at his face.
"Dead."
He coughed again, wrackingly, and spat on the ground.
"I don't forget anything," he said. "You have a big voice," he said to Pilar. "I have heard thee bellow. Shout up to the Maria and tell her that I am all right."
"We lost two at the sawmill," Pilar said, trying to make him understand.
"So I saw," Robert Jordan said. "Did you do something stupid?"
"Why don't you go up with the horses?" Robert Jordan said. "I can cover here better than thee."
"Thou art to cover Pablo."
"The hell with Pablo. Let him cover himself with _mierda_."
"I'll cover him. But obscenity all of you. Thou and Pablo both."
"If I had had the exploder the old man would not have been killed. I could have blown it from here."
"If, if, if--" Pilar said.
The anger and the emptiness and the hate that had come with the let-down after the bridge, when he had looked up from where he had lain and crouching, seen Anselmo dead, were still all through him. In him, too, was despair from the sorrow that soldiers turn to hatred in order that they may continue to be soldiers. Now it was over he was lonely, detached and unelated and he hated every one he saw.
"If there had been no snow--" Pilar said. And then, not suddenly, as a physical release could have been (if the woman would have put her arm around him, say) but slowly and from his head he began to accept it and let the hate go out. Sure, the snow. That had done it. The snow. Done itto others. Once you saw it again as it was to others, once you got rid of your own self, the always ridding of self that you had to do in war. Where there could be no self. Where yourself is only to be lost. Then, from his losing of it, he heard Pilar say, "Sordo--"
"What?" he said.
"Sordo--"
"Yes," Robert Jordan said. He grinned at her, a cracked, stiff, too-tightened-facial-tendoned grin. "Forget it. I was wrong. I am sorry, woman. Let us do this well and all together. And the bridge _is_ blown, as thou sayest."
"Yes. Thou must think of things in their place."
"Rafael," Robert Jordan said, "come down here with me. Here. Good. See those coming out of the culvert. There, above the truck? Coming toward the truck? Hit me one of those. Sit. Take it easy."
The gypsy aimed carefully and fired and as he jerked the bolt back and ejected the shell Robert Jordan said, "Over. You threw against the rock above. See the rock dust? Lower, by two feet. Now, careful. They're running. Good. _Sigue tirando_."
"I got one," the gypsy said. The man was down in the road halfway between the culvert and the truck. The other two did not stop to drag him. They ran for the culvert and ducked in.
"Don't shoot at him," Robert Jordan said. "Shoot for the top part of a front tire on the truck. So if you miss you'll hit the engine. Good." He watched with the glasses. "A little lower. Good. You shoot like hell. _Mucho! Mucho!_ Shoot me the top of the radiator. Anywhere on the radiator. Thou art a champion. Look. Don't let anything come past that point there. See?"
"Watch me break the windshield in the truck," the gypsy said happily.
"Nay. The truck is already sick," Robert Jordan said. "Hold thy fire until anything comes down the road. Start firing when it is opposite the culvert. Try to hit the driver. That you all should fire, then," he spoke to Pilar who had come farther down the slope with Primitivo. "You are wonderfully placed here. See how that steepness guards thy flank?"
"Put Primitivo farther up there," Robert Jordan said. "There. See, man? This side of where the bank steepens."
Just then they heard the planes.
Maria had been with the horses for a long time, but they were no comfort to her. Nor was she any to them. From where she was in the forest she could not see the road nor could she see the bridge and when the firing started she put her arm around the neck of the big white-faced bay stallion that she had gentled and brought gifts to many times when the horses had been in the corral in the trees below the camp. But her nervousness made the big stallion nervous, too, and he jerked his head, his nostrils widening at the firing and the noise of the bombs. Maria could not keep still and she walked around patting and gentling the horses and making them all more nervous and agitated.
She tried to think of the firing not as just a terrible thing that was happening, but to realize that it was Pablo below with the new men, and Pilar with the others above, and that she must not worry nor get into a panic but must have confidence in Roberto. But she could not do this and all the firing above and below the bridge and the distant sound of the battle that rolled down from the pass like the noise of a far-off storm with a dried, rolling rattle in it and the irregular beat of the bombs was simply a horrible thing that almost kept her from breathing.
Then later she heard Pilar's big voice from away below on the hillside shouting up some obscenity to her that she could not understand and she thought, Oh, God no, no. Don't talk like that with him in peril. Don't offend any one and make useless risks. Don't give any provocation.
Then she commenced to pray for Roberto quickly and automatically as she had done at school, saying the prayers as fast as she could and counting them on the fingers of her left hand, praying by tens of each of the two prayers she was repeating. Then the bridge blew and one horse snapped his halter when he rose and jerked his head at the cracking roar and he went off through the trees. Maria caught him finally and brought him back, shivering, trembling, his chest dark with sweat, the saddle down, and coming back through the trees she heard shooting below and she thought I cannot stand this longer. I cannot live not knowing any longer. I cannot breathe and my mouth is so dry. And I am afraid and I am no good and I frighten the horses and only caught this horse by hazard because he knocked the saddle down against a tree and caught himself kicking into the stirrups and now as I get the saddle up, Oh, God, I do not know. I cannot bear it. Oh please have him be all right for all my heart and all of me is at the bridge. The Republic is one thing and we must win is another thing. But, Oh, Sweet Blessed Virgin, bring him back to me from the bridge and I will do anything thou sayest ever. Because I am not here. There isn't any me. I am only with him. Take care of him for me and that will be me and then I will do the things for thee and he will not mind. Nor will it be against the Republic. Oh, please forgive me for I am very confused. I am too confused now. But if thou takest care of him I will do whatever is right. I will do what he says and what you say. With the two of me I will do it. But this now not knowing I cannot endure.
Maria held the saddle with both hands and pressed her cropped head hard against it and cried. She heard the deep voice shouting again and she turned from the saddle and shouted, choking, "Yes! Thank you!" Then, choking again, "Thank you! Thank you very much
When they heard the planes they all looked up and the planes were coming from Segovia very high in the sky, silvery in the high sky, their drumming rising over all the other sounds.
"Those!" Pilar said. "There has only lacked those!"
Robert Jordan put his arm on her shoulders as he watched them. "Nay, woman," he said. "Those do not come for us. Those have no time for us. Calm thyself."
"I hate them."
He circled the hillside through the pines and all the time there was the throbbing, drumming of the planes and across the shattered bridge on the road below, around the bend of the road there was the intermittent hammering fire of a heavy machine gun.
"Maybe he can't leave."
"Then let us leave. The hell with him."
"He will come now if he is able," Robert Jordan said. "We should see him now."
There was a burst of the spot-spot-spotting fire of the cavalry submachine gun, then another, then another.
"That's the bastard," Robert Jordan said.
"It has been going since before I blew the bridge," Robert Jordan said. He looked down at the bridge now and he could see the stream through the torn gap where the center had fallen, hanging like a bent steel apron. He heard the first of the planes that had gone over now bombing up above at the pass and more were still coming. The noise of their motors filled all the high sky and looking up he saw their pursuit, minute and tiny, circling and wheeling high above them.
"I don't think they ever crossed the lines the other morning," Primitivo said. "They must have swung off to the west and then come back. They could not be making an attack if they had seen these."
"Most of these are new," Robert Jordan said.
He had the feeling of something that had started normally and had then brought great, outsized, giant repercussions. It was as though you had thrown a stone and the stone made a ripple and the ripple returned roaring and toppling as a tidal wave. Or as though you shouted and the echo came back in rolls and peals of thunder, and the thunder was deadly. Or as though you struck one man and he fell and as far as you could see other men rose up all armed and armored. He was glad he was not with Golz up at the pass.
"You swallowed too much of that smoke," he told himself. But he knew it was not that. He could feel, solidly, how unreal it all was through the absolute reality and he looked down at the bridge and then back to the sentry lying on the road, to where Anselmo lay, to Fernando against the bank and back up the smooth, brown road to the stalled truck and still it was unreal.
"You better sell out your part of you quickly," he told himself. "You're like one of those cocks in the pit where nobody has seen the wound given and it doesn't show and he is already going cold with it."
"Nuts," he said to himself. "You are a little groggy is all, and you have a let-down after responsibility, is all. Take it easy."
They saw Pablo come running around the corner of the bend in the road. At the sheer rock where the road went out of sight they saw him stop and lean against the rock and fire back up the road. Robert Jordan saw Pablo, short, heavy and stocky, his cap gone, leaning against the rock wall and firing the short cavalry automatic rifle and he could see the bright flicker of the cascading brass hulls as the sun caught them. They saw Pablo crouch and fire another burst. Then, without looking back, he came running, short, bowlegged, fast, his head bent down straight toward the bridge.
"You see anything up above? On the rocks above?" Robert Jordan asked.
"Nothing."
Robert Jordan watched the bend of the road. He knew the wall just below that was too steep for any one to climb but below it eased and some one might have circled up above.
If things had been unreal before, they were suddenly real enough now. It was as though a reflex lens camera had been suddenly brought into focus. It was then he saw the low-bodied, angled snout and squat green, gray and brown-splashed turret with the projecting machine gun come around the bend into the bright sun. He fired on it and he could hear the spang against the steel. The little whippet tank scuttled back behind the rock wall. Watching the corner, Robert Jordan saw the nose just reappear, then the edge of the turret showed and the turret swung so that the gun was pointing down the road.
"He has little confidence," Robert Jordan said.
"Nay. I cannot hurt him. I don't want him to see where we are."
The tank commenced to fire down the road. The bullets hit the road surface and sung off and now they were pinging and clanging in the iron of the bridge. It was the same machine gun they had heard below.
"That's a baby one."
"After a while he will have another look."
"Since he has no other target," Robert Jordan said. "Do not reproach him."
But he was thinking, Sure, make fun of him. But suppose it was you, way back here in your own country and they held you up with firing on the main road. Then a bridge was blown. Wouldn't you think it was mined ahead or that there was a trap? Sure you would. He's done all right. He's waiting for something else to come up. He's engaging the enemy. It's only us. But he can't tell that. Look at the little bastard.
The little tank had nosed a little farther around the corner.
"Here comes the son of a bitch," he said.
"Who?"
"Pablo."
Robert Jordan looked, saw Pablo, and then he commenced firing at the part of the camouflaged turret of the tank where he knew the slit above the machine gun would be. The little tank whirred backwards, scuttling out of sight and Robert Jordan picked up the automatic rifle, clamped the tripod against the barrel and swung the gun with its still hot muzzle over his shoulder. The muzzle was so hot it burned his shoulder and he shoved it far behind him turning the stock flat in his hand.
"Pilar!" Jordan shouted across the hill. "Come on, woman!"
The three of them were going as fast as they could up the steep slope. They could not run any more because the grade was too severe and Pablo, who had no load but the light cavalry submachine gun, had closed up with the other two.
"Good," Robert Jordan said. The murderous bastard, he thought. "What did you encounter?"
"Everything," Pablo said. He was breathing in lunges. "What passed with Pilar?"
"She lost Fernando and the brother--"
"And thou?" Pablo asked.
"I lost Anselmo."
"There are lots of horses," Pablo said. "Even for the baggage."
Robert Jordan jerked his head. "What passed with that?" he said to Pablo. He did not like to look at Pablo, nor to smell him, but he wanted to hear him.
"I could not leave with that there," Pablo said. "We were barricaded at the lower bend of the post. Finally it went back to look for something and I came."
Pablo looked at him, started to grin, thought better of it, and said nothing.
His chest was aching with climbing as though it would split after the running and ahead now through the trees he saw the horses.
"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.
"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."
"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."
"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 Pablo stuffed three hobbles he had in his hand into a saddlebag, stood up and said, "_Qu?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."
"Yes, man. It is the only way," Pablo said. He handed him one of the lead ropes. Primitivo and the gypsy had the others.
"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, tel