"Me voy," Primitivo said, and climbed up into the high rocks with his carbine.
"Thou, Agustin," Robert Jordan said. "What do you know of the gun?"
Agustin squatted there, tall, black, stubbly joweled, with his sunken eyes and thin mouth and his big work-worn hands.
"Pues, to load it. To aim it. To shoot it. Nothing more."
"You must not fire until they are within fifty meters and only when you are sure they will be coming into the pass which leads to the cave," Robert Jordan said.
"Yes. How far is that?"
"That rock."
"If there is an officer shoot him first. Then move the gun onto the others. Move very slowly. It takes little movement. I will teach Fernando to tap it. Hold it tight so that it does not jump and sight carefully and do not fire more than six shots at a time if you can help it. For the fire of the gun jumps upward. But each time fire at one man and then move from him to another. At a man on a horse, shoot at his belly."
"Yes."
"One man should hold the tripod still so that the gun does not jump. Thus. He will load the gun for thee."
"And where will you be?"
"I will be here on the left. Above, where I can see all and I will cover thy left with this small maquina. Here. If they should come it would be possible to make a massacre. But you must not fire until they are that close."
"I believe that we could make a massacre. Menuda matanza!"
"But I hope they do not come."
"If it were not for thy bridge we could make a massacre here and get out."
"It would avail nothing. That would serve no purpose. The bridge is a part of a plan to win the war. This would be nothing. This would be an incident. A nothing."
"Que va, nothing. Every fascist dead is a fascist less."
"Yes. But with this of the bridge we can take Segovia. The Capital of a Province. Think of that. It will be the first one we will take."
"Thou believest in this seriously? That we can take Segovia?"
"Yes. It is possible with the bridge blown correctly."
"I would like to have the massacre here and the bridge, too."
"Thou hast much appetite," Robert Jordan told him.
All this time he had been watching the crows. Now he saw one was watching something. The bird cawed and flew up. But the other crow still stayed in the tree. Robert Jordan looked up toward Primitivo's place high in the rocks. He saw him watching out over the country below but he made no signal. Robert Jordan leaned forward and worked the lock on the automatic rifle, saw the round in the chamber and let the lock down. The crow was still there in the tree. The other circled wide over the snow and then settled again. In the sun and the warm wind the snow was falling from the laden branches of the pines.
"I have a massacre for thee for tomorrow morning," Robert Jordan said. "It is necessary to exterminate the post at the sawmill."
"I am ready," Agustin said, "Estoy listo."
"Also the post at the roadmender's hut below the bridge."
"For the one or for the other," Agustin said. "Or for both."
"Not for both. They will be done at the same time," Robert Jordan said.
"Then for either one," Agustin said. "Now for a long time have I wished for action in this war. Pablo has rotted us here with inaction."
Anselmo came up with the ax.
"Do you wish more branches?" he asked. "To me it seems well hidden."
"Not branches," Robert Jordan said. "Two small trees that we can plant here and there to make it look more natural. There are not enough trees here for it to be truly natural."
"I will bring them."
"Cut them well back, so the stumps cannot be seen."
Robert Jordan heard the ax sounding in the woods behind him. He looked up at Primitivo above in the rocks and he looked down at the pines across the clearing. The one crow was still there. Then he heard the first high, throbbing murmur of a plane coming. He looked up and saw it high and tiny and silver in the sun, seeming hardly to move in the high sky.
"They cannot see us," he said to Agustin. "But it is well to keep down. That is the second observation plane today."
"And those of yesterday?" Agustin asked.
"They are like a bad dream now," Robert Jordan said.
"They must be at Segovia. The bad dream waits there to become a reality."
The plane was out of sight now over the mountains but the sound of its motors still persisted.
As Robert Jordan looked, he saw the crow fly up. He flew straight away through the trees without cawing.
23
"Get thee down," Robert Jordan whispered to Agustin, and he turned his head and flicked his hand Down, Down, to Anselmo who was coming through the gap with a pine tree, carrying it over his shoulder like a Christmas tree. He saw the old man drop his pine tree behind a rock and then he was out of sight in the rocks and Robert Jordan was looking ahead across the open space toward the timber. He saw nothing and heard nothing but he could feel his heart pounding and then he heard the clack of stone on stone and the leaping, dropping clicks of a small rock falling. He turned his head to the right and looking up saw Primitivo's rifle raised and lowered four times horizontally. Then there was nothing more to see but the white stretch in front of him with the circle of horse tracks and the timber beyond.
"Cavalry," he said softly to Agustin.
Agustin looked at him and his dark, sunken cheeks widened at their base as he grinned. Robert Jordan noticed he was sweating. He reached over and put his hand on his shoulder. His hand was still there as they saw the four horsemen ride out of the timber and he felt the muscles in Agustin's back twitch under his hand.
One horseman was ahead and three rode behind. The one ahead was following the horse tracks. He looked down as he rode. The other three came behind him, fanned out through the timber. They were all watching carefully. Robert Jordan felt his heart beating against the snowy ground as he lay, his elbows spread wide and watched them over the sights of the automatic rifle.
The man who was leading rode along the trail to where Pablo had circled and stopped. The others rode up to him and they all stopped.
Robert Jordan saw them clearly over the blued steel barrel of the automatic rifle. He saw the faces of the men, the sabers hanging, the sweat-darkened flanks of the horses, and the cone-like slope of the khaki capes, and the Navarrese slant of the khaki berets. The leader turned his horse directly toward the opening in the rocks where the gun was placed and Robert Jordan saw his young, sunand wind-darkened face, his close-set eyes, hawk nose and the overlong wedge-shaped chin.
Sitting his horse there, the horse's chest toward Robert Jordan, the horse's head high, the butt of the light automatic rifle projecting forward from the scabbard at the right of the saddle, the leader pointed toward the opening where the gun was.
Robert Jordan sunk his elbows into the ground and looked along the barrel at the four riders stopped there in the snow. Three of them had their automatic rifles out. Two carried them across the pommels of their saddles. The other sat his horse with the rifle swung out to the right, the butt resting against his hip.
You hardly ever see them at such range, he thought. Not along the barrel of one of these do you see them like this. Usually the rear sight is raised and they seem miniatures of men and you have hell to make it carry up there; or they come running, flopping, running, and you beat a slope with fire or bar a certain street, or keep it on the windows; or far away you see them marching on a road. Only at the trains do you see them like this. Only then are they like now, and with four of these you can make them scatter. Over the gun sights, at this range, it makes them twice the size of men.
Thou, he thought, looking at the wedge of the front sight placed now firm in the slot of the rear sight, the top of the wedge against the center of the leader's chest, a little to the right of the scarlet device that showed bright in the morning sun against the khaki cape. Though, he thought, thinking in Spanish now and pressing his fingers forward against the trigger guard to keep it away from where it would bring the quick, shocking, hurtling rush from the automatic rifle. Thou, he thought again, thou art dead now in thy youth. And thou, he thought, and thou, and thou. But let it not happen. Do not let it happen.