Robert Jordan had pushed Agustin over and he had the stock of the big automatic rifle against his shoulder and was sighting on the bend of the road. His own submachine gun lay by his left hand. It was not accurate enough for that range.
As Pablo came toward them Robert Jordan sighted on the bend but nothing came. Pablo had reached the bridge, looked over his shoulder once, glanced at the bridge, and then turned to his left and gone down into the gorge and out of sight. Robert Jordan was still watching the bend and nothing had come in sight. Agustin got up on one knee. He could see Pablo climbing down into the gorge like a goat. There had been no noise of firing below since they had first seen Pablo.
"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.
"It seems like a mouse coming out of his hole," Agustin said. "Look, _Ingles_."
"He has little confidence," Robert Jordan said.
"This is the big insect Pablo has been fighting," Agustin said. "Hit him again, _Ingles_."
"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.
"_Cabron!_" Agustin said. "Is that the famous tanks, _Ingles?_"
"That's a baby one."
"_Cabron_. If I had a baby bottle full of gasoline I would climb up there and set fire to him. What will he do, _Ingles?_"
"After a while he will have another look."
"And these are what men fear," Agustin said. "Look, _Ingles!_ He's rekilling the sentries."
"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.
Just then Agustin saw Pablo coming over the edge of the gorge, pulling himself over on hands and knees, his bristly face running with sweat.
"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.
"Bring the sack of pans and my little _maquina_," he shouted, "and come running."
Robert Jordan ran up the hill through the pines. Agustin was close behind him and behind him Pablo was coming.
"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.
"And thy people?" Agustin said to Pablo out of his dry mouth.
"All dead," Pablo said. He was almost unable to breathe. Agustin turned his head and looked at him.
"We have plenty of horses now, _Ingles_," Pablo panted.
"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--"
"Eladio," Agustin said.
"And thou?" Pablo asked.
"I lost Anselmo."
"There are lots of horses," Pablo said. "Even for the baggage."
Agustin bit his lip, looked at Robert Jordan and shook his head. Below them, out of sight through the trees, they heard the tank firing on the road and bridge again.
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."
"What were you shooting at, at the bend?" Agustin asked bluntly.
Pablo looked at him, started to grin, thought better of it, and said nothing.
"Did you shoot them all?" Agustin asked. Robert Jordan was thinking, keep your mouth shut. It is none of your business now. They have done all that you could expect and more. This is an intertribal matter. Don't make moral judgments. What do you expect from a murderer? You're working with a murderer. Keep your mouth shut. You knew enough about him before. This is nothing new. But you dirty bastard, he thought. You dirty, rotten bastard.
His chest was aching with climbing as though it would split after the running and ahead now through the trees he saw the horses.
"Go ahead," Agustin was saying. "Why do you not say you shot them?"
"Shut up," Pablo said. "I have fought much today and well. Ask the _Ingles_."
"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?" Agustin 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."
"_Cabron_," said Agustin. "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?" Agustin 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 Agustin 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, "_Que 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?" Agustin 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, _Ingles_," Pablo said. "We cross high enough to be out of range of that _maquina_. 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.
