“What is it he says?” Sordo asked.
Joaquín told him. Sordo rolled to one side and pulled himself up so that he was crouched behind the gun again.
“Maybe the planes aren’t coming,” he said. “Don’t answer them and do not fire. Maybe we can get them to attack again.”
“If we should insult them a little?” the man who had spoken to Joaquín about La Pasionaria’s son in Russia asked.
“No,” Sordo said. “Give me thy big pistol. Who has a big pistol?”
“Here.”
“Give it to me.” Crouched on his knees he took the big 9 mm. Star and fired one shot into the ground beside the dead horse, waited, then fired again four times at irregular intervals. Then he waited while he counted sixty and then fired a final shot directly into the body of the dead horse. He grinned and handed back the pistol.
“Reload it,” he whispered, “and that every one should keep his mouth shut and no one shoot.”
“Bandidos!” the voice shouted from behind the rocks.
No one spoke on the hill.
“Bandidos! Surrender now before we blow thee to little pieces.”
“They’re biting,” Sordo whispered happily.
As he watched, a man showed his head over the top of the rocks. There was no shot from the hilltop and the head went down again. El Sordo waited, watching, but nothing more happened. He turned his head and looked at the others who were all watching down their sectors of the slope. As he looked at them the others shook their heads.
“Let no one move,” he whispered.
“Sons of the great whore,” the voice came now from behind the rocks again.
“Red swine. Mother rapers. Eaters of the milk of thy fathers.”
Sordo grinned. He could just hear the bellowed insults by turning his good ear. This is better than the aspirin, he thought. How many will we get? Can they be that foolish?
The voice had stopped again and for three minutes they heard nothing and saw no movement. Then the sniper behind the boulder a hundred yards down the slope exposed himself and fired. The bullet hit a rock and ricocheted with a sharp whine. Then Sordo saw a man, bent double, run from the shelter of the rocks where the automatic rifle was across the open ground to the big boulder behind which the sniper was hidden. He almost dove behind the boulder.
Sordo looked around. They signalled to him that there was no movement on the other slopes. El Sordo grinned happily and shook his head. This is ten times better than the aspirin, he thought, and he waited, as happy as only a hunter can be happy.
Below on the slope the man who had run from the pile of stones to the shelter of the boulder was speaking to the sniper.
“Do you believe it?”
“I don’t know,” the sniper said.
“It would be logical,” the man, who was the officer in command, said. “They are surrounded. They have nothing to expect but to die.”
The sniper said nothing.
“What do you think?” the officer asked.
“Nothing,” the sniper said.
“Have you seen any movement since the shots?”
“None at all.”
The officer looked at his wrist watch. It was ten minutes to three o’clock.
“The planes should have come an hour ago,” he said. Just then another officer flopped in behind the boulder. The sniper moved over to make room for him.
“Thou, Paco,” the first officer said. “How does it seem to thee?”
The second officer was breathing heavily from his sprint up and across the hillside from the automatic rifle position.
“For me it is a trick,” he said.
“But if it is not? What a ridicule we make waiting here and laying siege to dead men.”
“We have done something worse than ridiculous already,” the second officer said. “Look at that slope.”
He looked up the slope to where the dead were scattered close to the top. From where he looked the line of the hilltop showed the scattered rocks, the belly, projecting legs, shod hooves jutting out, of Sordo’s horse, and the fresh dirt thrown up by the digging.
“What about the mortars?” asked the second officer.