“Yes. But–”
“No but. I will explain to thee later. I go to Primitivo.”
Anselmo was by him and he said to the old man:
“Viejo, stay there with Agustín with the gun.” He spoke slowly and unhurriedly. “He must not fire unless cavalry is actually entering. If they merely present themselves he must let them alone as we did before. If he must fire, hold the legs of the tripod firm for him and hand him the pans when they are empty.”
“Good,” the old man said. “And La Granja?”
“Later.”
Robert Jordan climbed up, over and around the gray boulders that were wet now under his hands as he pulled himself up. The sun was melting the snow on them fast. The tops of the boulders were drying and as he climbed he looked across the country and saw the pine woods and the long open glade and the dip of the country before the high mountains beyond. Then he stood beside Primitivo in a hollow behind two boulders and the short, brownfaced man said to him, “They are attacking Sordo. What is it that we do?”
“Nothing,” Robert Jordan said.
He heard the firing clearly here and as he looked across the country, he saw, far off, across the distant valley where the country rose steeply again, a troop of cavalry ride out of the timber and cross the snowy slope riding uphill in the direction of the firing. He saw the oblong double line of men and horses dark against the snow as they forced at an angle up the hill. He watched the double line top the ridge and go into the farther timber.
“We have to aid them,” Primitivo said. His voice was dry and flat.
“It is impossible,” Robert Jordan told him. “I have expected this all morning.”
“How?”
“They went to steal horses last night. The snow stopped and they tracked them up there.”
“But we have to aid them,” Primitivo said. “We cannot leave them alone to this. Those are our comrades.”
Robert Jordan put his hand on the other man’s shoulder.
“We can do nothing,” he said. “If we could I would do it.”
“There is a way to reach there from above. We can take that way with the horses and the two guns. This one below and thine. We can aid them thus.”
“Listen–” Robert Jordan said.
“That is what I listen to,” Primitivo said.
The firing was rolling in overlapping waves. Then they heard the noise of hand grenades heavy and sodden in the dry rolling of the automatic rifle fire.
“They are lost,” Robert Jordan said. “They were lost when the snow stopped. If we go there we are lost, too. It is impossible to divide what force we have.”
There was a gray stubble of beard stippled over Primitivo’s jaws, his lip and his neck. The rest of his face was flat brown with a broken, flattened nose and deep-set gray eyes, and watching him Robert Jordan saw the stubble twitching at the corners of his mouth and over the cord of his throat.
“Listen to it,” he said. “It is a massacre.”
“If they have surrounded the hollow it is that,” Robert Jordan said. “Some may have gotten out.”
“Coming on them now we could take them from behind,” Primitivo said. “Let four of us go with the horses.”
“And then what? What happens after you take them from behind?”
“We join with Sordo.”
“To die there? Look at the sun. The day is long.”
The sky was high and cloudless and the sun was hot on their backs. There were big bare patches now on the southern slope of the open glade below them and the snow was all dropped from the pine trees. The boulders below them that had been wet as the snow melted were steaming faintly now in the hot sun.
“You have to stand it,” Robert Jordan said. “Hay que aguantarse. There are things like this in a war.”
“But there is nothing we can do? Truly?” Primitivo looked at him and Robert Jordan knew he trusted him. “Thou couldst not send me and another with the small machine gun?”