"Thou are very close. Sabes? In the daylight this clump shows clearly from below."
"Do not worry, Ingles. Where goest thou?"
"I go close below with the small maquina of mine. The old man will cross the gorge now to be ready for the box of the other end. It faces in that direction."
"Then nothing more," said Agustin. "Salud, Ingles. Hast thou tobacco?"
"Thou canst not smoke. It is too close."
"Nay. Just to hold in the mouth. To smoke later."
Robert Jordan gave him his cigarette case and Agustin took three cigarettes and put them inside the front flap of his herdsman's flat cap. He spread the legs of his tripod with the gun muzzle in the low pines and commenced unpacking his load by touch and laying the things where he wanted them.
"Nada mas," he said. "Well, nothing more."
Anselmo and Robert Jordan left him there and went back to where the packs were.
"Where had we best leave them?" Robert Jordan whispered.
"I think here. But canst thou be sure of the sentry with thy small maquina from here?"
"Is this exactly where we were on that day?"
"The same tree," Anselmo said so low Jordan could barely hear him and he knew he was speaking without moving his lips as he had spoken that first day. "I marked it with my knife."
Robert Jordan had the feeling again of it all having happened before, but this time it came from his own repetition of a query and Anselmo's answer. It had been the same with Agustin, who had asked a question about the sentries although he knew the answer.
"It is close enough. Even too close," he whispered. "But the light is behind us. We are all right here."
"Then I will go now to cross the gorge and be in position at the other end," Anselmo said. Then he said, "Pardon me, Ingles. So that there is no mistake. In case I am stupid."
"What?" he breathed very softly.
"Only to repeat it so that I will do it exactly."
"When I fire, thou wilt fire. When thy man is eliminated, cross the bridge to me. I will have the packs down there and thou wilt do as I tell thee in the placing of the charges. Everything I will tell thee. If aught happens to me do it thyself as I showed thee. Take thy time and do it well, wedging all securely with the wooden wedges and lashing the grenades firmly."
"It is all clear to me," Anselmo said. "I remember it all. Now I go. Keep thee well covered, Ingles, when daylight comes."
"When thou firest," Robert Jordan said, "take a rest and make very sure. Do not think of it as a man but as a target, de acuerdo? Do not shoot at the whole man but at a point. Shoot for the exact center of the belly-if he faces thee. At the middle of the back, if he is looking away. Listen, old one. When I fire if the man is sitting down he will stand up before he runs or crouches. Shoot then. If he is still sitting down shoot. Do not wait. But make sure. Get to within fifty yards. Thou art a hunter. Thou hast no problem."
"I will do as thou orderest," Anselmo said.
"Yes. I order it thus," Robert Jordan said.
I'm glad I remembered to make it an order, he thought. That helps him out. That takes some of the curse off. I hope it does, anyway. Some of it. I had forgotten about what he told me that first day about the killing.
"It is thus I have ordered," he said. "Now go."
"Me voy," said Anselmo. "Until soon, Ingles."
"Until soon, old one," Robert Jordan said.
He remembered his father in the railway station and the wetness of that farewell and he did not say Salud nor good-by nor good luck nor anything like that.
"Hast wiped the oil from the bore of thy gun, old one?" he whispered. "So it will not throw wild?"
"In the cave," Anselmo said. "I cleaned them all with the pullthrough."
"Then until soon," Robert Jordan said and the old man went off, noiseless on his rope-soled shoes, swinging wide through the trees.
Robert Jordan lay on the pine-needle floor of the forest and listened to the first stirring in the branches of the pines of the wind that would come with daylight. He took the clip out of the submachine gun and worked the lock back and forth. Then he turned the gun, with the lock open and in the dark he put the muzzle to his lips and blew through the barrel, the metal tasting greasy and oily as his tongue touched the edge of the bore. He laid the gun across his forearm, the action up so that no pine needles or rubbish could get in it, and shucked all the cartridges out of the clip with his thumb and onto a handkerchief he had spread in front of him. Then, feeling each cartridge in the dark and turning it in his fingers, he pressed and slid them one at a time back into the clip. Now the clip was heavy again in his hand and he slid it back into the submachine gun and felt it click home. He lay on his belly behind the pine trunk, the gun across his left forearm and watched the point of light below him. Sometimes he could not see it and then he knew that the man in the sentry box had moved in front of the brazier. Robert Jordan lay there and waited for daylight.
42
During the time that Pablo had ridden back from the hills to the cave and the time the band had dropped down to where they had left the horses Andres had made rapid progress toward Golz's headquarters. Where they came onto the main highroad to Navacerrada on which the trucks were rolling back from the mountain there was a control. But when Gomez showed the sentry at the control his safe-conduct from the Lieutenant-Colonel Miranda the sentry put the light from a flashlight on it, showed it to the other sentry with him, then handed it back and saluted.
"Siga," he said. "Continue. But without lights."
The motorcycle roared again and Andres was holding tight onto the forward seat and they were moving along the highway, Gomez riding carefully in the traffic. None of the trucks had lights and they were moving down the road in a long convoy. There were loaded trucks moving up the road too, and all of them raised a dust that Andres could not see in that dark but could only feel as a cloud that blew in his face and that he could bite between his teeth.
They were close behind the tailboard of a truck now, the motorcycle chugging, then Gomez speeded up and passed it and another, and another, and another with the other trucks roaring and rolling down past them on the left. There was a motorcar behind them now and it blasted into the truck noise and the dust with its klaxon again and again; then flashed on lights that showed the dust like a solid yellow cloud and surged past them in a whining rise of gears and a demanding, threatening, bludgeoning of klaxoning.
Then ahead all the trucks were stopped and riding on, working his way ahead past ambulances, staff cars, an armored car, another, and a third, all halted, like heavy, metal, gun-jutting turtles in the hot yet settled dust, they found another control where there had been a smash-up. A truck, halting, had not been seen by the truck which followed it and the following truck had run into it smashing the rear of the first truck in and scattering cases of small-arms ammunition over the road. One case had burst open on landing and as Gomez and Andres stopped and wheeled the motorcycle forward through the stalled vehicles to show their safe-conduct at the control Andres walked over the brass hulls of the thousand of cartridges scattered across the road in the dust. The second truck had its radiator completely smashed in. The truck behind it was touching its tail gate. A hundred more were piling up behind and an overbooted officer was running back along the road shouting to the drivers to back so that the smashed truck could be gotten off the road.
There were too many trucks for them to be able to back unless the officer reached the end of the ever mounting line and stopped it from increasing and Andres saw him running, stumbling, with his flashlight, shouting and cursing and, in the dark, the trucks kept coming up.