“That,” said Robert Jordan, pointing to one of the bays, a big stallion with a white blaze on his forehead and a single white foot, the near front, “is much horse.”
He was a beautiful horse that looked as though he had come out of a painting by Velasquez.
“They are all good,” said Pablo. “You know horses?”
“Yes.”
“Less bad,” said Pablo. “Do you see a defect in one of these?”
Robert Jordan knew that now his papers were being examined by the man who could not read.
The horses all still had their heads up looking at the man. Robert Jordan slipped through between the double rope of the corral and slapped the buckskin on the haunch. He leaned back against the ropes of the enclosure and watched the horses circle the corral, stood watching them a minute more, as they stood still, then leaned down and came out through the ropes.
“The sorrel is lame in the off hind foot,” he said to Pablo, not looking at him. “The hoof is split and although it might not get worse soon if shod properly, she could break down if she travels over much hard ground.”
“The hoof was like that when we took her,” Pablo said.
“The best horse that you have, the white-faced bay stallion, has a swelling on the upper part of the cannon bone that I do not like.”
“It is nothing,” said Pablo. “He knocked it three days ago. If it were to be anything it would have become so already.”
He pulled back the tarpaulin and showed the saddles. There were two ordinary vaquero’s or herdsman’s saddles, like American stock saddles, one very ornate vaquero’s saddle, with hand-tooled leather and heavy, hooded stirrups, and two military saddles in black leather.
“We killed a pair of guardia civil,” he said, explaining the military saddles.
“That is big game.”
“They had dismounted on the road between Segovia and Santa Maria del Real. They had dismounted to ask papers of the driver of a cart. We were able to kill them without injuring the horses.”
“Have you killed many civil guards?” Robert Jordan asked.
“Several,” Pablo said. “But only these two without injury to the horses.”
“It was Pablo who blew up the train at Arevalo,” Anselmo said. “That was Pablo.”
“There was a foreigner with us who made the explosion,” Pablo said. “Do you know him?”
“What is he called?”
“I do not remember. It was a very rare name.”
“What did he look like?”
“He was fair, as you are, but not as tall and with large hands and a broken nose.”
“Kashkin,” Robert Jordan said. “That would be Kashkin.”
“Yes,” said Pablo. “It was a very rare name. Something like that. What has become of him?”
“He is dead since April.”
“That is what happens to everybody,” Pablo said, gloomily. “That is the way we will all finish.”
“That is the way all men end,” Anselmo said. “That is the way men have always ended. What is the matter with you, man? What hast thou in the stomach?”
“They are very strong,” Pablo said. It was as though he were talking to himself. He looked at the horses gloomily. “You do not realize how strong they are. I see them always stronget always better armed. Always with more material. Here am I with horses like these. And what can I look forward to? To be hunted and to die. Nothing more.”
“You hunt as much as you are hunted,” Anselmo said.
“No,” said Pablo. “Not any more. And if we leave these mountains now, where can we go? Answer me that? Where now?”
“In Spain there are many mountains. There are the Sierra de Gredos if one leaves here.”
“Not for me,” Pablo said. “I am tired of being hunted. Here we are all right. Now if you blow a bridge here, we will be hunted. If they know we are here and hunt for us with planes, they will find us. If they send Moors to hunt us out, they will find us and we must go. I am tired of all this. You hear?” He turned to Robert Jordan. “What right have you, a foreigner, to come to me and tell me what I must do?”