In the cave entrance their faces all looked very sober and Robert Jordan said, “You have not seen this many planes?”
“Never,” said Pablo.
“There are not many at Segovia?”
“Never has there been, we have seen three usually. Sometimes six of the chasers. Perhaps three Junkers, the big ones with the three motors, with the chasers with them. Never have we seen planes like this.”
It is bad, Robert Jordan thought. This is really bad. Here is a concentration of planes which means something very bad. I must listen for them to unload. But no, they cannot have brought up the troops yet for the attack. Certainly not before tonight or tomorrow night, certainly not yet. Certainly they will not be moving anything at this hour.
He could still hear the receding drone. He looked at his watch. By now they should be over the lines, the first ones anyway. He Pushed the knob that set the second hand to clicking and watched it move around. No, perhaps not yet. By now. Yes. Well over by now. Two hundred and fifty miles an hour for those one-elevens anyway. Five minutes would carry them there. By now they’re well beyond the pass with Castile all yellow and tawny beneath them now in the morning, the yellow crossed by white roads and spotted with the small villages and the shadows of the Heinkels moving over the land as the shadows of sharks pass over a sandy floor of the ocean.
There was no bump, bump, bumping thud of bombs. His watch ticked on.
They’re going on to Colmenar, to Escorial, or to the flying field at Manzanares el Real, he thought, with the old castle above the lake with the ducks in the reeds and the fake airfield just behind the real field with the dummy planes, not quite hidden, their props turning in the wind. That’s where they must be headed. They can’t know about the attack, he told himself and something in him said, why can’t they? They’ve known about all the others.
“Do you think they saw the horses?” Pablo asked.
“Those weren’t looking for horses,” Robert Jordan said.
“But did they see them?”
“Not unless they were asked to look for them.”
“Could they see them?”
“Probably not,” Robert Jordan said. “Unless the sun were on the trees.”
“It is on them very early,” Pablo said miserably.
“I think they have other things to think of besides thy horses,” Robert Jordan said.
It was eight minutes since he had pushed the lever on the stop watch and there was still no sound of bombing.
“What do you do with the watch?” the woman asked.
“I listen where they have gone.”
“Oh,” she said. At ten minutes he stopped looking at the watch knowing it would be too far away to hear, now, even allowing a minute for the sound to travel, and said to Anselmo, “I would speak to thee.”
Anselmo came out of the cave mouth and they walked a little way from the entrance and stood beside a pine tree.
“Qué tal?” Robert Jordan asked him. “How goes it?”
“All right.”
“Hast thou eaten?”
“No. No one has eaten.”
“Eat then and take something to eat at mid-day. I want you to go to watch the road. Make a note of everything that passes both up and down the road.”
“I do not write.”
“There is no need to,” Robert Jordan took out two leaves from his notebook and with his knife cut an inch from the end of his pencil. “Take this and make a mark for tanks thus,” he drew a slanted tank, “and then a mark for each one and when there are four, cross the four strokes for the fifth.”
“In this way we count also.”
“Good. Make another mark, two wheels and a box, for trucks. If they are empty make a circle. If they are full of troops make a straight mark. Mark for guns. Big ones, thus. Small ones, thus. Mark for cars. Mark for ambulances. Thus, two wheels and a box with a cross on it. Mark for troops on foot by companies, like this, see? A little square and then mark beside it. Mark for cavalry, like this, you see? Like a horse. A box with four legs. That is a troop of twenty horse. You understand? Each troop a mark.”