“I will climb it like a goat,” Agustín said.
“And thy brother?” he asked Eladio. “Thy famous brother has mucked off?”
Eladio was standing against the wall.
“Shut up,” he said.
He was nervous and he knew they all knew it. He was always nervous and irritable before action. He moved from the wall to the table and began filling his pockets with grenades from one of the rawhide-covered panniers that leaned, open, against the table leg.
Robert Jordan squatted by the pannier beside him. He reached into the pannier and picked out four grenades. Three were the oval Mill bomb type, serrated, heavy iron with a spring level held down in position by a cotter pin with pulling rig attached.
“Where did these come from?” he asked Eladio.
“Those? Those are from the Republic. The old man brought them.”
“How are they?”
“Valen más que pesan,” Eladio said. “They are worth a fortune apiece.”
“I brought those,” Anselmo said. “Sixty in one pack. Ninety pounds, Inglés.”
“Have you used those?” Robert Jordan asked Pilar.
“Qué va have we used them?” the woman said. “It was with those Pablo slew the post at Otero.”
When she mentioned Pablo, Agustín started cursing. Robert Jordan saw the look on Pilar’s face in the firelight.
“Leave it,” she said to Agustín sharply. “It does no good to talk.”
“Have they always exploded?” Robert Jordan held the graypainted grenade in his hand, trying the bend of the cotter pin with his thumbnail.
“Always,” Eladio said. “There was not a dud in any of that lot we used.”
“And how quickly?”
“In the distance one can throw it. Quickly. Quickly enough.”
“And these?”
He held up a soup-tin-shaped bomb, with a tape wrapping around a wire loop.
“They are a garbage,” Eladio told him. “They blow. Yes. But it is all flash and no fragments.”
“But do they always blow?”
“Qué va, always,” Pilar said. “There is no always either with our munitions or theirs.”
“But you said the other always blew.”
“Not me,” Pilar told him. “You asked another, not me. I have seen no always in any of that stuff.”
“They all blew,” Eladio insisted. “Speak the truth, woman.”
“How do you know they all blew?” Pilar asked him. “It was Pablo who threw them. You killed no one at Otero.”
“That son of the great whore,” Agustín began.
“Leave it alone,” Pilar said sharply. Then she went on. “They are all much the same, Inglés. But the corrugated ones are more simple.”
I’d better use one of each on each set, Robert Jordan thought. But the serrated type will lash easier and more securely.
“Are you going to be throwing bombs, Inglés?” Agustín asked.
“Why not?” Robert Jordan said.
But crouched there, sorting out the grenades, what he was thinking was: it is impossible. How I could have deceived myself about it I do not know. We were as sunk when they attacked Sordo as Sordo was sunk when the snow stopped. It is that you can’t accept it. You have to go on and make a plan that you know is impossible to carry out. You made it and now you know it is no good. It’s no good, now, in the morning. You can take either of the posts absolutely O.K. with what you’ve got here. But you can’t take them both. You can’t be sure of it, I mean. Don’t deceive yourself. Not when the daylight comes.
Trying to take them both will never work. Pablo knew that all the time. I suppose he always intended to muck off but he knew we were cooked when Sordo was attacked. You can’t base an operation on the presumption that miracles are going to happen. You will kill them all off and not even get your bridge blown if you have nothing better than what you have now. You will kill off Pilar, Anselmo, Agustín, Primitivo, this jumpy Eladio, the worthless gypsy and old Fernando, and you won’t get your bridge blown. Do you suppose there will be a miracle and Golz will get the message from Andrés and stop it? If there isn’t, you are going to kill them all off with those orders. Maria too. You’ll kill her too with those orders. Can’t you even get her out of it? God damn Pablo to hell, he thought.