For Whom The Bell Tolls

"But thou are very cheerful now, Ingles."

"Yes."

"Me also. In spite of this of the Maria and all."

"Do you know why?"

"No."

"Me neither. Perhaps it is the day. The day is good."

"Who knows? Perhaps it is that we will have action."

"I think it is that," Robert Jordan said. "But not today. Of all things; of all importance we must avoid it today."

As he spoke he heard something. It was a noise far off that came above the sound of the warm wind in the trees. He could not be sure and he held his mouth open and listened, glancing up at Primitivo as he did so. He thought he heard it but then it was gone. The wind was blowing in the pines and now Robert Jordan strained all of himself to listen. Then he heard it faintly coming down the wind.

"It is nothing tragic with me," he heard Agustin say. "That I should never have the Maria is nothing. I will go with the whores as always."

"Shut up," he said, not listening, and lying beside him, his head having been turned away. Agustin looked over at him suddenly.

"Que pasa?" he asked.

Robert Jordan put his hand over his own mouth and went on listening. There it came again. It came faint, muted, dry and far away. But there was no mistaking it now. It was the precise, crackling, curling roll of automatic rifle fire. It sounded as though pack after pack of miniature firecrackers were going off at a distance that was almost out of hearing.

Robert Jordan looked up at Primitivo who had his head up now, his face looking toward them, his hand cupped to his ear. As he looked Primitivo pointed up the mountain toward the highest country.

"They are fighting at El Sordo's," Robert Jordan said.

"Then let us go to aid them," Agustin said. "Collect the people. Vamonos."

"No," Robert Jordan said. "We stay here."

25

Robert Jordan looked up at where Primitivo stood now in his lookout post, holding his rifle and pointing. He nodded his head but the man kept pointing, putting his hand to his ear and then pointing insistently and as though he could not possibly have been understood.

"Do you stay with this gun and unless it is sure, sure, sure that they are coming in do not fire. And then not until they reach that shrub," Robert Jordan pointed. "Do you understand?"

"Yes. But--"

"No but. I will explain to thee later. I go to Primitivo."

Anselmo was by him and he said to the old man:

"Viejo, stay there with Agustin with the gun." He spoke slowly and unhurriedly. "He must not fire unless cavalry is actually entering. If they merely present themselves he must let them alone as we did before. If he must fire, hold the legs of the tripod firm for him and hand him the pans when they are empty."

"Good," the old man said. "And La Granja?"

"Later."

Robert Jordan climbed up, over and around the gray boulders that were wet now under his hands as he pulled himself up. The sun was melting the snow on them fast. The tops of the boulders were drying and as he climbed he looked across the country and saw the pine woods and the long open glade and the dip of the country before the high mountains beyond. Then he stood beside Primitivo in a hollow behind two boulders and the short, brownfaced man said to him, "They are attacking Sordo. What is it that we do?"

"Nothing," Robert Jordan said.

He heard the firing clearly here and as he looked across the country, he saw, far off, across the distant valley where the country rose steeply again, a troop of cavalry ride out of the timber and cross the snowy slope riding uphill in the direction of the firing. He saw the oblong double line of men and horses dark against the snow as they forced at an angle up the hill. He watched the double line top the ridge and go into the farther timber.

"We have to aid them," Primitivo said. His voice was dry and flat.

"It is impossible," Robert Jordan told him. "I have expected this all morning."

"How?"

"They went to steal horses last night. The snow stopped and they tracked them up there."

"But we have to aid them," Primitivo said. "We cannot leave them alone to this. Those are our comrades."

Robert Jordan put his hand on the other man's shoulder.

"We can do nothing," he said. "If we could I would do it."

"There is a way to reach there from above. We can take that way with the horses and the two guns. This one below and thine. We can aid them thus."

"Listen--" Robert Jordan said.

"That is what I listen to," Primitivo said.

The firing was rolling in overlapping waves. Then they heard the noise of hand grenades heavy and sodden in the dry rolling of the automatic rifle fire.

"They are lost," Robert Jordan said. "They were lost when the snow stopped. If we go there we are lost, too. It is impossible to divide what force we have."

There was a gray stubble of beard stippled over Primitivo's jaws, his lip and his neck. The rest of his face was flat brown with a broken, flattened nose and deep-set gray eyes, and watching him Robert Jordan saw the stubble twitching at the corners of his mouth and over the cord of his throat.