“Shut up,” Pablo said. “I have to look after thy interest and that of the band. This is war. One cannot do what one would wish.”
“Cabrón,” said Agustín. “You take all the prizes.”
“Tell me what thou encountered below,” Robert Jordan said to Pablo.
“Everything,” Pablo repeated. He was still breathing as though it were tearing his chest but he could talk steadily now and his face and head were running with sweat and his shoulders and chest were soaked with it. He looked at Robert Jordan cautiously to see if he were really friendly and then he grinned. “Everything,” he said again. “First we took the post. Then came a motorcyclist. Then another. Then an ambulance. Then a camion. Then the tank. Just before thou didst the bridge.”
“Then–”
“The tank could not hurt us but we could not leave for it commanded the road. Then it went away and I came.”
“And thy people?” Agustín put in, still looking for trouble.
“Shut up,” Pablo looked at him squarely, and his face was the face of a man who had fought well before any other thing had happened. “They were not of our band.”
Now they could see the horses tied to the trees, the sun coming down on them through the pine branches and them tossing their heads and kicking against the botflies and Robert Jordan saw Maria and the next thing he was holding her tight, tight, with the automatic rifle leaning against his side, the flash-cone pressing against his ribs and Maria saying, “Thou, Roberto. Oh, thou.”
“Yes, rabbit. My good, good rabbit. Now we go.”
“Art thou here truly?”
“Yes. Yes. Truly. Oh, thou!”
He had never thought that you could know that there was a woman if there was battle; nor that any part of you could know it, or respond to it; nor that if there was a woman that she should have breasts small, round and tight against you through a shirt; nor that they, the breasts, could know about the two of them in battle. But it was true and he thought, good. That’s good. I would not have believed that and he held her to him once hard, hard, but he did not look at her, and then he slapped her where he never had slapped her and said, “Mount. Mount. Get on that saddle, guapa.”
Then they were untying the halters and Robert Jordan had given the automatic rifle back to Agustín and slung his own submachine gun over his back, and he was putting bombs out of his pockets into the saddlebags, and he stuffed one empty pack inside the other and tied that one behind his saddle. Then Pilar came up, so breathless from the climb she could not talk, but only motioned.
Then Pablo stuffed three hobbles he had in his hand into a saddlebag, stood up and said, “Qué tal, woman?” and she only nodded, and then they were all mounting.
Robert Jordan was on the big gray he had first seen in the snow of the morning of the day before and he felt that it was much horse between his legs and under his hands. He was wearing rope-soled shoes and the stirrups were a little too short; his submachine gun was slung over his shoulder, his pockets were full of clips and he was sitting reloading the one used clip, the reins under one arm, tight, watching Pilar mount into a strange sort of seat on top of the duffle lashed onto the saddle of the buckskin.
“Cut that stuff loose for God’s sake,” Primitivo said. “Thou wilt fall and the horse cannot carry it.”
“Shut up,” said Pilar. “We go to make a life with this.”
“Canst ride like that, woman?” Pablo asked her from the guardia civil saddle on the great bay horse.
“Like any milk peddler,” Pilar told him. “How do you go, old one?”
“Straight down. Across the road. Up the far slope and into the timber where it narrows.”
“Across the road?” Agustín wheeled beside him, kicking his soft-heeled, canvas shoes against the stiff, unresponding belly of one of the horses Pablo had recruited in the night.