And you, he said to himself, I am glad to see you getting a little something back that was badly missing for a time. But you were pretty bad back there. I was ashamed enough of you, there for a while. Only I was you. There wasn’t any me to judge you. We were all in bad shape. You and me and both of us. Come on now. Quit thinking like a schizophrenic. One at a time, now. You’re all right again now. But listen, you must not think of the girl all day ever. You can do nothing now to protect her except to keep her out of it, and that you are doing. There are evidently going to be plenty of horses if you can believe the signs. The best thing you can do for her is to do the job well and fast and get out, and thinking of her will only handicap you in this. So do not think of her ever.
Having thought this out he waited until Maria came up walking with Pilar and Rafael and the horses.
“Hi, guapa,” he said to her in the dark, “how are you?”
“I am well, Roberto,” she said.
“Don’t worry about anything,” he said to her and shifting the gun to his left hand he put a hand on her shoulder.
“I do not,” she said.
“It is all very well organized,” he told her. “Rafael will be with thee with the horses.”
“I would rather be with thee.”
“Nay. The horses is where thou art most useful.”
“Good,” she said. “There I will be.”
Just then one of the horses whinnied and from the open place below the opening through the rocks a horse answered, the neigh rising into a shrill sharply broken quaver.
Robert Jordan saw the bulk of the new horses ahead in the dark. He pressed forward and came up to them with Pablo. The men were standing by their mounts.
“Salud,” Robert Jordan said.
“Salud,” they answered in the dark. He could not see their faces.
“This is the Inglés who comes with us,” Pablo said. “The dynamiter.”
No one said anything to that. Perhaps they nodded in the dark.
“Let us get going, Pablo,” one man said. “Soon we will have the daylight on us.”
“Did you bring any more grenades?” another asked.
“Plenty,” said Pablo. “Supply yourselves when we leave the animals.”
“Then let us go,” another said. “We’ve been waiting here half the night.”
“Hola, Pilar,” another said as the woman came up.
“Que me maten, if it is not Pepe,” Pilar said huskily. “How are you, shepherd?”
“Good,” said the man. “Dentro de la gravedad.”
“What are you riding?” Pilar asked him.
“The gray of Pablo,” the man said. “It is much horse.”
“Come on,” another man said. “Let us go. There is no good in gossiping here.”
“How art thou, Elicio?” Pilar said to him as he mounted.
“How would I be?” he said rudely. “Come on, woman, we have work to do.”
Pablo mounted the big bay horse.
“Keep thy mouths shut and follow me,” he said. “I will lead you to the place where we will leave the horses.”
40
During the time that Robert Jordan had slept through, the time he had spent planning the destruction of the bridge and the time that he had been with Maria, Andrés had made slow progress. Until he had reached the Republican lines he had travelled across country and through the fascist lines as fast as a countryman in good physical condition who knew the country well could travel in the dark. But once inside the Republican lines it went very slowly.
In theory he should only have had to show the safe-conduct given him by Robert Jordan stamped with the seal of the S. I. M. and the dispatch which bore the same seal and be passed along toward his destination with the greatest speed. But first he had encountered the company commander in the front line who had regarded the whole mission with owlishly grave suspicion.
He had followed this company commander to battalion headquarters where the battalion commander, who had been a barber before the movement, was filled with enthusiasm on hearing the account of his mission. This commander, who was named Gomez, cursed the company commander for his stupidity, patted Andrés on the back, gave him a drink of bad brandy and told him that he himself, the ex-barber, had always wanted to be a guerrillero. He had then roused his adjutant, turned over the battalion to him, and sent his orderly to wake up and bring his motorcyclist. Instead of sending Andrés back to brigade headquarters with the motorcyclist, Gomez had decided to take him there himself in order to expedite things and, with Andrés holding tight onto the seat ahead of him, they roared, bumping down the shell-pocked mountain road between the double row of big trees, the headlight of the motorcycle showing their whitewashed bases and the places on the trunks where the whitewash and the bark had been chipped and torn by shell fragments and bullets during the fighting along this road in the first summer of the movement. They turned into the little smashed-roofed mountain-resort town where brigade headquarters was and Gomez had braked the motorcycle like a dirt-track racer and leaned it against the wall of the house where a sleepy sentry came to attention as Gomez pushed by him into the big room where the walls were covered with maps and a very sleepy officer with a green eyeshade sat at a desk with a reading lamp, two telephones and a copy of Mundo Obrero.