"Yes, my captain," the sniper said, not looking at him.
"Then get up and go." The captain still had his pistol out. "Do you hear me?"
"Yes, my captain."
"Why don't you go, then?"
"I don't want to, my captain."
"You don't want to?" The captain pushed the pistol against the small of the man's back. "You don't want to?"
"I am afraid, my captain," the soldier said with dignity.
Lieutenant Berrendo, watching the captain's face and his odd eyes, thought he was going to shoot the man then.
"Captain Mora," he said.
"Lieutenant Berrendo?"
"It is possible the soldier is right."
"That he is right to say he is afraid? That he is right to say he does not want to obey an order?"
"No. That he is right that it is a trick."
"They are all dead," the captain said. "Don't you hear me say they are all dead?
"You mean our comrades on the slope?" Berrendo asked him. "I agree with you."
"Paco," the captain said, "don't be a fool. Do you think you are the only one who cared for Julian? I tell you the Reds are dead. Look!"
He stood up, then put both hands on top of the boulder and pulled himself up, kneeing-up awkwardly, then getting on his feet.
"Shoot," he shouted, standing on the gray granite boulder and waved both his arms. "Shoot me! Kill me!"
On the hilltop El Sordo lay behind the dead horse and grinned.
What a people, he thought. He laughed, trying to hold it in because the shaking hurt his arm.
"Reds," came the shout from below. "Red canaille. Shoot me! Kill me!"
Sordo, his chest shaking, barely peeped past the horse's crupper and saw the captain on top of the boulder waving his arms. Another officer stood by the boulder. The sniper was standing at the other side. Sordo kept his eye where it was and shook his head happily.
"Shoot me," he said softly to himself. "Kill me!" Then his shoulders shook again. The laughing hurt his arm and each time he laughed his head felt as though it would burst. But the laughter shook him again like a spasm.
Captain Mora got down from the boulder.
"Now do you believe me, Paco?" he questioned Lieutenant Berrendo.
"No," said Lieutenant Berrendo.
"Cojones!" the captain said. "Here there is nothing but idiots and cowards."
The sniper had gotten carefully behind the boulder again and Lieutenant Berrendo was squatting beside him.
The captain, standing in the open beside the boulder, commenced to shout filth at the hilltop. There is no language so filthy as Spanish. There are words for all the vile words in English and there are other words and expressions that are used only in countries where blasphemy keeps pace with the austerity of religion. Lieutenant Berrendo was a very devout Catholic. So was the sniper. They were Carlists from Navarra and while both of them cursed and blasphemed when they were angry they regarded it as a sin which they regularly confessed.
As they crouched now behind the boulder watching the captain and listening to what he was shouting, they both disassociated themselves from him and what he was saying. They did not want to have that sort of talk on their consciences on a day in which they might die. Talking thus will not bring luck, the sniper thought. Speaking thus of the Virgen is bad luck. This one speaks worse than the Reds.
Julian is dead, Lieutenant Berrendo was thinking. Dead there on the slope on such a day as this is. And this foul mouth stands there bringing more ill fortune with his blasphemies.
Now the captain stopped shouting and turned to Lieutenant Berrendo. His eyes looked stranger than ever.
"Paco," he said, happily, "you and I will go up there."
"Not me."
"What?" The captain had his pistol out again.
I hate these pistol brandishers, Berrendo was thinking. They cannot give an order without jerking a gun out. They probably pull out their pistols when they go to the toilet and order the move they will make.
"I will go if you order me to. But under protest," Lieutenant Berrendo told the captain.
"Then I will go alone," the captain said. "The smell of cowardice is too strong here."
Holding his pistol in his right hand, he strode steadily up the slope. Berrendo and the sniper watched him. He was making no attempt to take any cover and he was looking straight ahead of him at the rocks, the dead horse, and the fresh-dug dirt of the hilltop.
El Sordo lay behind the horse at the corner of the rock, watching the captain come striding up the hill.
Only one, he thought. We get only one. But from his manner of speaking he is caza mayor. Look at him walking. Look what an animal. Look at him stride forward. This one is for me. This one I take with me on the trip. This one coming now makes the same voyage I do. Come on, Comrade Voyager. Come striding. Come right along. Come along to meet it. Come on. Keep on walking. Don't slow up. Come right along. Come as thou art coming. Don't stop and look at those. That's right. Don't even look down. Keep on coming with your eyes forward. Look, he has a moustache. What do you think of that? He runs to a moustache, the Comrade Voyager. He is a captain. Look at his sleeves. I said he was caza mayor. He has the face of an Ingles. Look. With a red face and blond hair and blue eyes. With no cap on and his moustache is yellow. With blue eyes. With pale blue eyes. With pale blue eyes with something wrong with them. With pale blue eyes that don't focus. Close enough. Too close. Yes, Comrade Voyager. Take it, Comrade Voyager.
He squeezed the trigger of the automatic rifle gently and it pounded back three times against his shoulder with the slippery jolt the recoil of a tripoded automatic weapon gives.
The captain lay on his face on the hillside. His left arm was under him. His right arm that had held the pistol was stretched forward of his head. From all down the slope they were firing on the hill crest again.
Crouched behind the boulder, thinking that now he would have to sprint across that open space under fire, Lieutenant Berrendo heard the deep hoarse voice of Sordo from the hilltop.
"Bandidos!" the voice came. "Bandidos! Shoot me! Kill me!"
On the top of the hill El Sordo lay behind the automatic rifle laughing so that his chest ached, so that he thought the top of his head would burst.
"Bandidos," he shouted again happily. "Kill me, bandidos!" Then he shook his head happily. We have lots of company for the Voyage, he thought.
He was going to try for the other officer with the automatic rifle when he would leave the shelter of the boulder. Sooner or later he would have to leave it. Sordo knew that he could never command from there and he thought he had a very good chance to get him.
Just then the others on the hill heard the first sound of the coming of the planes.
El Sordo did not hear them. He was covering the down-slope edge of the boulder with his automatic rifle and he was thinking: when I see him he will be running already and I will miss him if I am not careful. I could shoot behind him all across that stretch. I should swing the gun with him and ahead of him. Or let him start and then get on him and ahead of him. I will try to pick him up there at the edge of the rock and swing just ahead of him. Then he felt a touch on his shoulder and he turned and saw the gray, fear-drained face of Joaquin and he looked where the boy was pointing and saw the three planes coming.
At this moment Lieutenant Berrendo broke from behind the boulder and, with his head bent and his legs plunging, ran down and across the slope to the shelter of the rocks where the automatic rifle was placed.
Watching the planes, Sordo never saw him go.
"Help me to pull this out," he said to Joaquin and the boy dragged the automatic rifle clear from between the horse and the rock.
The planes were coming on steadily. They were in echelon and each second they grew larger and their noise was greater.
"Lie on your backs to fire at them," Sordo said. "Fire ahead of them as they come."
He was watching them all the time. "Cabrones! Hijos de puta!" he said rapidly.
"Ignacio!" he said. "Put the gun on the shoulder of the boy. Thou!" to Joaquin, "Sit there and do not move. Crouch over. More. No. More."
He lay back and sighted with the automatic rifle as the planes came on steadily.
"Thou, Ignacio, hold me the three legs of that tripod." They were dangling down the boy's back and the muzzle of the gun was shaking from the jerking of his body that Joaquin could not control as he crouched with bent head hearing the droning roar of their coming.
Lying flat on his belly and looking up into the sky watching them come, Ignacio gathered the legs of the tripod into his two hands and steadied the gun.
"Keep thy head down," he said to Joaquin. "Keep thy head forward."
"Pasionaria says 'Better to die on thy- " Joaquin was saying to himself as the drone came nearer them. Then he shifted suddenly into "Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee; Blessed art thou among women and Blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death. Amen. Holy Mary, Mother of God," he started, then he remembered quickly as the roar came now unbearably and started an act of contrition racing in it, "Oh my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended thee who art worthy of all my love-"
Then there were the hammering explosions past his ears and the gun barrel hot against his shoulder. It was hammering now again and his ears were deafened by the muzzle blast. Ignacio was pulling down hard on the tripod and the barrel was burning his back. It was hammering now in the roar and he could not remember the act of contrition.
All he could remember was at the hour of our death. Amen. At the hour of our death. Amen. At the hour. At the hour. Amen. The others all were firing. Now and at the hour of our death. Amen.
Then, through the hammering of the gun, there was the whistle of the air splitting apart and then in the red black roar the earth rolled under his knees and then waved up to hit him in the face and then dirt and bits of rock were falling all over and Ignacio was lying on him and the gun was lying on him. But he was not dead because the whistle came again and the earth rolled under him with the roar. Then it came again and the earth lurched under his belly and one side of the hilltop rose into the air and then fell slowly over them where they lay.
The planes came back three times and bombed the hilltop but no one on the hilltop knew it. Then the planes machine-gunned the hilltop and went away. As they dove on the hill for the last time with their machine guns hammering, the first plane pulled up and winged over and then each plane did the same and they moved from echelon to V-formation and went away into the sky in the direction of Segovia.
Keeping a heavy fire on the hilltop, Lieutenant Berrendo pushed a patrol up to one of the bomb craters from where they could throw grenades onto the crest. He was taking no chances of any one being alive and waiting for them in the mess that was up there and he threw four grenades into the confusion of dead horses, broken and split rocks, and torn yellow-stained explosive-stinking earth before he climbed out of the bomb crater and walked over to have a look.
No one was alive on the hilltop except the boy Joaquin, who was unconscious under the dead body of Ignacio. Joaquin was bleeding from the nose and from the ears. He had known nothing and had no feeling since he had suddenly been in the very heart of the thunder and the breath had been wrenched from his body when the one bomb struck so close and Lieutenant Berrendo made the sign of the cross and then shot him in the back of the head, as quickly and as gently, if such an abrupt movement can be gentle, as Sordo had shot the wounded horse.
Lieutenant Berrendo stood on the hilltop and looked down the slope at his own dead and then across the country seeing where they had galloped before Sordo had turned at bay here. He noticed all the dispositions that had been made of the troops and then he ordered the dead men's horses to be brought up and the bodies tied across the saddles so that they might be packed in to La Granja.
"Take that one, too," he said. "The one with his hands on the automatic rifle. That should be Sordo. He is the oldest and it was he with the gun. No. Cut the head off and wrap it in a poncho." He considered a minute. "You might as well take all the heads. And of the others below on the slope and where we first found them. Collect the rifles and pistols and pack that gun on a horse."
Then he walked down to where the lieutenant lay who had been killed in the first assault. He looked down at him but did not touch him.
"Que cosa mas mala es la guerra," he said to himself, which meant, "What a bad thing war is."
Then he made the sign of the cross again and as he walked down the hill he said five Our Fathers and five Hail Marys for the repose of the soul of his dead comrade. He did not wish to stay to see his orders being carried out.
After the planes went away Robert Jordan and Primitivo heard the firing start and his heart seemed to start again with it. A cloud of smoke drifted over the last ridge that he could see in the high country and the planes were three steadily receding specks in the sky.
They've probably bombed hell out of their own cavalry and never touched Sordo and Company, Robert Jordan said to himself. The damned planes scare you to death but they don't kill you.
"The combat goes on," Primitivo said, listening to the heavy firing. He had winced at each bomb thud and now he licked his dry lips.
"Why not?" Robert Jordan said. "Those things never kill anybody."
Then the firing stopped absolutely and he did not hear another shot. Lieutenant Berrendo's pistol shot did not carry that far.
When the firing first stopped it did not affect him. Then as the quiet kept on a hollow feeling came in his chest. Then he heard the grenades burst and for a moment his heart rose. Then everything was quiet again and the quiet kept on and he knew that it was over.
Maria came up from the camp with a tin bucket of stewed hare with mushrooms sunken in the rich gravy and a sack with bread, a leather wine bottle, four tin plates, two cups and four spoons. She stopped at the gun and ladled out two plates for Agustin and Eladio, who had replaced Anselmo at the gun, and gave them bread and unscrewed the horn tip of the wine bottle and poured two cups of wine.
Robert Jordan watched her climbing lithely up to his lookout post, the sack over her shoulder, the bucket in one hand, her cropped head bright in the sun. He climbed down and took the bucket and helped her up the last boulder.
"What did the aviation do?" she asked, her eyes frightened.
"Bombed Sordo."
He had the bucket open and was ladling out stew onto a plate.
"Are they still fighting?"
"No. It is over."
"Oh," she said and bit her lip and looked out across the country.
"I have no appetite," Primitivo said.
"Eat anyway," Robert Jordan told him.
"I could not swallow food."
"Take a drink of this, man," Robert Jordan said and handed him the wine bottle. "Then eat."
"This of Sordo has taken away desire," Primitivo said. "Eat, thou. I have no desire."
Maria went over to him and put her arms around his neck and kissed him.
"Eat, old one," she said. "Each one should take care of his strength."
Primitivo turned away from her. He took the wine bottle and tipping his head back swallowed steadily while he squirted a jet of wine into the back of his mouth. Then he filled his plate from the bucket and commenced to eat.
Robert Jordan looked at Maria and shook his head. She sat down by him and put her arm around his shoulder. Each knew how the other felt and they sat there and Robert Jordan ate the stew, taking time to appreciate the mushrooms completely, and he drank the wine and they said nothing.
"You may stay here, guapa, if you want," he said after a while when the food was all eaten.
"Nay," she said. "I must go to Pilar."
"It is all right to stay here. I do not think that anything will happen now."
"Nay. I must go to Pilar. She is giving me instruction."
"What does she give thee?"
"Instruction." She smiled at him and then kissed him. "Did you never hear of religious instruction?" She blushed. "It is something like that." She blushed again. "But different."
"Go to thy instruction," he said and patted her on the head. She smiled at him again, then said to Primitivo, "Do you want anything from below?"
"No, daughter," he said. They both saw that he was still not yet recovered.
"Salud, old one," she said to him.
"Listen," Primitivo said. "I have no fear to die but to leave them alone thus-" his voice broke.
"There was no choice," Robert Jordan told him.
"I know. But all the same."
"There was no choice," Robert Jordan repeated. "And now it is better not to speak of it."
"Yes. But there alone with no aid from us-"
"Much better not to speak of it," Robert Jordan said. "And thou, guapa, get thee to thy instruction."
He watched her climb down through the rocks. Then he sat there for a long time thinking and watching the high country.
Primitivo spoke to him but he did not answer. It was hot in the sun but he did not notice the heat while he sat watching the hill slopes and the long patches of pine trees that stretched up the highest slope. An hour passed and the sun was far to his left now when he saw them coming over the crest of the slope and he picked up his glasses.
The horses showed small and minute as the first two riders came into sight on the long green slope of the high hill. Then there were four more horsemen coming down, spread out across the wide hill and then through his glasses he saw the double column of men and horses ride into the sharp clarity of his vision. As he watched them he felt sweat come from his armpits and run down his flanks. One man rode at the head of the column. Then came more horsemen. Then came the riderless horses with their burdens tied across the saddles. Then there were two riders. Then came the wounded with men walking by them as they rode. Then came more cavalry to close the column.
Robert Jordan watched them ride down the slope and out of sight into the timber. He could not see at that distance the load one saddle bore of a long rolled poncho tied at each end and at intervals so that it bulged between each lashing as a pod bulges with peas. This was tied across the saddle and at each end it was lashed to the stirrup leathers. Alongside this on the top of the saddle the automatic rifle Sordo had served was lashed arrogantly.
Lieutenant Berrendo, who was riding at the head of the column, his flankers out, his point pushed well forward, felt no arrogance. He felt only the hollowness that comes after action. He was thinking: taking the heads is barbarous. But proof and identification is necessary. I will have trouble enough about this as it is and who knows? This of the heads may appeal to them. There are those of them who like such things. It is possible they will send them all to Burgos. It is a barbarous business. The planes were muchos. Much. Much. But we could have done it all, and almost without losses, with a Stokes mortar. Two mules to carry the shells and a mule with a mortar on each side of the pack saddle. What an army we would be then! With the fire power of all these automatic weapons. And another mule. No, two mules to carry ammunition. Leave it alone, he told himself. It is no longer cavalry. Leave it alone. You're building yourself an army. Next you will want a mountain gun.
Then he thought of Julian, dead on the hill, dead now, tied across a horse there in the first troop, and as he rode down into the dark pine forest, leaving the sunlight behind him on the hill, riding now in the quiet dark of the forest, he started to say a prayer for him again.
"Hail, holy queen mother of mercy," he started. "Our life, our sweetness and our hope. To thee do we send up our sighs, mournings and weepings in this valley of tears-"
He went on with the prayer the horses' hooves soft on the fallen pine needles, the light coming through the tree trunks in patches as it comes through the columns of a cathedral, and as he prayed he looked ahead to see his flankers riding through the trees.
He rode out of the forest onto the yellow road that led into La Granja and the horses' hooves raised a dust that hung over them as they rode. It powdered the dead who were tied face down across the saddles and the wounded, and those who walked beside them, were in thick dust.
It was here that Anselmo saw them ride past in their dust.
He counted the dead and the wounded and he recognized Sordo's automatic rifle. He did not know what the poncho-wrapped bundle was which flapped against the led horse's flanks as the stirrup leathers swung but when, on his way home, he came in the dark onto the hill where Sordo had fought, he knew at once what the long poncho roll contained. In the dark he could not tell who had been up on the hill. But he counted those that lay there and then made off across the hills for Pablo's camp.
Walking alone in the dark, with a fear like a freezing of his heart from the feeling the holes of the bomb craters had given him, from them and from what he had found on the hill, he put all thought of the next day out of his mind. He simply walked as fast as he could to bring the news. And as he walked he prayed for the souls of Sordo and of all his band. It was the first time he had prayed since the start of the movement.
"Most kind, most sweet, most clement Virgin," he prayed.
But he could not keep from thinking of the next day finally. So he thought: I will do exactly as the Ingles says and as he says to do it. But let me be close to him, O Lord, and may his instructions be exact for I do not think that I could control myself under the bombardment of the planes. Help me, O Lord, tomorrow to comport myself as a man should in his last hours. Help me, O Lord, to understand clearly the needs of the day. Help me, O Lord, to dominate the movement of my legs that I should not run when the bad moment comes. Help me, O Lord, to comport myself as a man tomorrow in the day of battle. Since I have asked this aid of thee, please grant it, knowing I would not ask it if it were not serious, and I will ask nothing more of thee again.
Walking in the dark alone he felt much better from having prayed and he was sure, now, that he would comport himself well. Walking now down from the high country, he went back to praying for the people of Sordo and in a short time he had reached the upper post where Fernando challenged him.
"It is I," he answered, "Anselmo."
"Good," Fernando said.
"You know of this of Sordo, old one?" Anselmo asked Fernando, the two of them standing at the entrance of the big rocks in the dark.
"Why not?" Fernando said. "Pablo has told us."
"He was up there?"
"Why not?" Fernando said stolidly. "He visited the hill as soon as the cavalry left."
"He told you-"
"He told us all," Fernando said. "What barbarians these fascists are! We must do away with all such barbarians in Spain." He stopped, then said bitterly, "In them is lacking all conception of dignity."
Anselmo grinned in the dark. An hour ago he could not have imagined that he would ever smile again. What a marvel, that Fernando, he thought.
"Yes," he said to Fernando. "We must teach them. We must take away their planes, their automatic weapons, their tanks, their artillery and teach them dignity."
"Exactly," Fernando said. "I am glad that you agree."
Anselmo left him standing there alone with his dignity and went on down to the cave.
Anselmo found Robert Jordan sitting at the plank table inside the cave with Pablo opposite him. They had a bowl poured full of wine between them and each had a cup of wine on the table. Robert Jordan had his notebook out and he was holding a pencil. Pilar and Maria were in the back of the cave out of sight. There was no way for Anselmo to know that the woman was keeping the girl back there to keep her from hearing the conversation and he thought that it was odd that Pilar was not at the table.
Robert Jordan looked up as Anselmo came in under the blanket that hung over the opening. Pablo stared straight at the table. His eyes were focused on the wine bowl but he was not seeing it.
"I come from above," Anselmo said to Robert Jordan.
"Pablo has told us," Robert Jordan said.
"There were six dead on the hill and they had taken the heads," Anselmo said. "I was there in the dark."
Robert Jordan nodded. Pablo sat there looking at the wine bowl and saying nothing. There was no expression on his face and his small pig-eyes were looking at the wine bowl as though he had never seen one before.
"Sit down," Robert Jordan said to Anselmo.
The old man sat down at the table on one of the hide-covered stools and Robert Jordan reached under the table and brought up the pinch-bottle of whiskey that had been the gift of Sordo. It was about half-full. Robert Jordan reached down the table for a cup and poured a drink of whiskey into it and shoved it along the table to Anselmo.
"Drink that, old one," he said.
Pablo looked from the wine bowl to Anselmo's face as he drank and then he looked back at the wine bowl.
As Anselmo swallowed the whiskey he felt a burning in his nose, his eyes and his mouth, and then a happy, comforting warmth in his stomach. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
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