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.
"You are too high up here," he said. "There's a truck up the road where you can't see it. They thought it was planes. You better get farther down. I'm going down with Agustin to cover Pablo."
"The old one?" she asked him, looking at his face.
"Dead."
He coughed again, wrackingly, and spat on the ground.
"Thy bridge is blown, _Ingles_," Pilar looked at him. "Don't forget that."
"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?"
"Go and obscenity thyself, _Ingles_," Pilar said. "Fernando and Eladio were men, too."
"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_."
"Nay, _Ingles_. He came back. He has fought much below there. Thou hast not listened? He is fighting now. Against something bad. Do you not hear?"
"I'll cover him. But obscenity all of you. Thou and Pablo both."
"_Ingles_," Pilar said. "Calm thyself. I have been with thee in this as no one could be. Pablo did thee a wrong but he returned."
"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."
"Then I go now to Agustin. Put thy gypsy much farther down so that he can see well up the road. Give those guns to Primitivo and take this _maquina_. Let me show thee."
"Keep the _maquina_," Pilar said. "We will not be here any time. Pablo should come now and we will be going."
"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?"
"That you should get about thy business with Agustin," Pilar said. "Desist from thy lecture. I have seen terrain in my time."
"Put Primitivo farther up there," Robert Jordan said. "There. See, man? This side of where the bank steepens."
"Leave me," said Pilar. "Get along, _Ingles_. Thou and thy perfection. Here there is no problem."
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.
Then, the horse tied again, she with the saddle up now, the blanket smoothed, hauling tight on the cinch she heard the big, deep voice from the timber below, "Maria! Maria! Thy _Ingles_ is all right. Hear me? All right. _Sin Novedad!_"
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."
"Me too. But now I must go to Agustin."
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.
Robert Jordan dropped down to where Agustin lay in the clump of scrub pines behind the automatic rifle and more planes were coming all the time.
"What passes below?" Agustin said. "What is Pablo doing? Doesn't he know the bridge is gone?"
"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."
"I have not heard him," Agustin said. "Not for five minutes. No. There! Listen! There he is. That's him."
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.
He watched still more planes coming over in the high cloudless blue sky and he watched Agustin's face as he looked up at them. Then he looked down at the shattered bridge and across to the stretch of road which still was clear. He coughed and spat and listened to the heavy machine gun hammer again below the bend. It sounded to be in the same place that it was before.
"And what's that?" Agustin asked. "What the unnameable is that?"
"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.
Lying there, by Agustin, watching the planes going over, listening for firing behind him, watching the road below where he knew he would see something but not what it would be, he still felt numb with the surprise that he had not been killed at the bridge. He had accepted being killed so completely that all of this now seemed unreal. Shake out of that, he said to himself. Get rid of that. There is much, much, much to be done today. But it would not leave him and he felt, consciously, all of this becoming like a dream.
"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."
Then Agustin grabbed his arm and pointed and he looked across the gorge and saw Pablo.
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.
