After the train started he had stood on the rear platform and watched the station and the water tower grow smaller and smaller and the rails crossed by the ties narrowed toward a point where the station and the water tower stood now minute and tiny in the steady clicking that was taking him away.
The brakeman said, “Dad seemed to take your going sort of hard, Bob.”
“Yes,” he had said watching the sagebrush that ran from the edge of the road bed between the passing telegraph poles across to the streaming-by dusty stretching of the road. He was looking for sage hens.
“You don’t mind going away to school?”
“No,” he had said and it was true.
It would not have been true before but it was true that minute and it was only now, at this parting, that he ever felt as young again as he had felt before that train left. He felt very young now and very awkward and he was saying good-by as awkwardly as one can be when saying good-by to a young girl when you are a boy in school, saying good-by at the front porch, not knowing whether to kiss the girl or not. Then he knew it was not the good-by he was being awkward about. It was the meeting he was going to. The good-by was only a part of the awkwardness he felt about the meeting.
You’re getting them again, he told himself. But I suppose there is no one that does not feel that he is too young to do it. He would not put a name to it. Come on, he said to himself. Come on. It is too early for your second childhood.
“Good-by, guapa,” he said. “Good-by, rabbit.”
“Good-by, my Roberto,” she said and he went over to where Anselmo and Agustín were standing and said, “Vamonos.”
Anselmo swung his heavy pack up. Agustín, fully loaded since the cave, was leaning against a tree, the automatic rifle jutting over the top of his load.
“Good,” he said, “Vamonos.”
The three of them started down the hill.
“Buena suerte, Don Roberto,” Fernando said as the three of them passed him as they moved in single file between the trees. Fernando was crouched on his haunches a little way from where they passed but he spoke with great dignity.
“Buena suerte thyself, Fernando,” Robert Jordan said.
“In everything thou doest,” Agustín said.
“Thank you, Don Roberto,” Fernando said, undisturbed by Agustín.
“That one is a phenomenon, Inglés,” Agustín whispered.
“I believe thee,” Robert Jordan said. “Can I help thee? Thou art loaded like a horse.”
“I am all right,” Agustín said. “Man, but I am content we are started.”
“Speak softly,” Anselmo said. “From now on speak little and softly.”
Walking carefully, downhill, Anselmo in the lead, Agustín next, Robert Jordan placing his feet carefully so that he would not slip, feeling the dead pine needles under his rope-soled shoes, bumping a tree root with one foot and putting a hand forward and feeling the cold metal jut of the automatic rifle barrel and the folded legs of the tripod, then working sideways down the hill, his shoes sliding and grooving the forest floor, putting his left hand out again and touching the rough bark of a tree trunk, then as he braced himself his hand feeling a smooth place, the base of the palm of his hand coming away sticky from the resinous sap where a blaze had been cut, they dropped down the steep wooded hillside to the point above the bridge where Robert Jordan and Anselmo had watched the first day.
Now Anselmo was halted by a pine tree in the dark and he took Robert Jordan’s wrist and whispered, so low Jordan could hardly hear him, “Look. There is the fire in his brazier.”
It was a point of light below where Robert Jordan knew the bridge joined the road.
“Here is where we watched,” Anselmo said. He took Robert Jordan’s hand and bent it down to touch a small fresh blaze low on a tree trunk. “This I marked while thou watched. To the right is where thou wished to put the máquina.”