For Whom The Bell Tolls

If things had been unreal before, they were suddenly real enough now. It was as though a reflex lens camera had been suddenly brought into focus. It was then he saw the low-bodied, angled snout and squat green, gray and brown-splashed turret with the projecting machine gun come around the bend into the bright sun. He fired on it and he could hear the spang against the steel. The little whippet tank scuttled back behind the rock wall. Watching the corner, Robert Jordan saw the nose just reappear, then the edge of the turret showed and the turret swung so that the gun was pointing down the road.

"It seems like a mouse coming out of his hole," Agustin said. "Look, Ingles."

"He has little confidence," Robert Jordan said.

"This is the big insect Pablo has been fighting," Agustin said. "Hit him again, Ingles."

"Nay. I cannot hurt him. I don't want him to see where we are."

The tank commenced to fire down the road. The bullets hit the road surface and sung off and now they were pinging and clanging in the iron of the bridge. It was the same machine gun they had heard below.

"Cabron!" Agustin said. "Is that the famous tanks, Ingles?"

"That's a baby one."

"Cabron. If I had a baby bottle full of gasoline I would climb up there and set fire to him. What will he do, Ingles?"

"After a while he will have another look."

"And these are what men fear," Agustin said. "Look, Ingles! He's rekilling the sentries."

"Since he has no other target," Robert Jordan said. "Do not reproach him."

But he was thinking, Sure, make fun of him. But suppose it was you, way back here in your own country and they held you up with firing on the main road. Then a bridge was blown. Wouldn't you think it was mined ahead or that there was a trap? Sure you would. He's done all right. He's waiting for something else to come up. He's engaging the enemy. It's only us. But he can't tell that. Look at the little bastard.

The little tank had nosed a little farther around the corner.

Just then Agustin saw Pablo coming over the edge of the gorge, pulling himself over on hands and knees, his bristly face running with sweat.

"Here comes the son of a bitch," he said.

"Who?"

"Pablo."

Robert Jordan looked, saw Pablo, and then he commenced firing at the part of the camouflaged turret of the tank where he knew the slit above the machine gun would be. The little tank whirred backwards, scuttling out of sight and Robert Jordan picked up the automatic rifle, clamped the tripod against the barrel and swung the gun with its still hot muzzle over his shoulder. The muzzle was so hot it burned his shoulder and he shoved it far behind him turning the stock flat in his hand.

"Bring the sack of pans and my little maquina," he shouted, "and come running."

Robert Jordan ran up the hill through the pines. Agustin was close behind him and behind him Pablo was coming.

"Pilar!" Jordan shouted across the hill. "Come on, woman!"

The three of them were going as fast as they could up the steep slope. They could not run any more because the grade was too severe and Pablo, who had no load but the light cavalry submachine gun, had closed up with the other two.

"And thy people?" Agustin said to Pablo out of his dry mouth.

"All dead," Pablo said. He was almost unable to breathe. Agustin turned his head and looked at him.

"We have plenty of horses now, Ingles," Pablo panted.

"Good," Robert Jordan said. The murderous bastard, he thought. "What did you encounter?"

"Everything," Pablo said. He was breathing in lunges. "What passed with Pilar?"

"She lost Fernando and the brother--"

"Eladio," Agustin said.

"And thou?" Pablo asked.

"I lost Anselmo."

"There are lots of horses," Pablo said. "Even for the baggage."

Agustin bit his lip, looked at Robert Jordan and shook his head. Below them, out of sight through the trees, they heard the tank firing on the road and bridge again.

Robert Jordan jerked his head. "What passed with that?" he said to Pablo. He did not like to look at Pablo, nor to smell him, but he wanted to hear him.

"I could not leave with that there," Pablo said. "We were barricaded at the lower bend of the post. Finally it went back to look for something and I came."

"What were you shooting at, at the bend?" Agustin asked bluntly.

Pablo looked at him, started to grin, thought better of it, and said nothing.

"Did you shoot them all?" Agustin asked. Robert Jordan was thinking, keep your mouth shut. It is none of your business now. They have done all that you could expect and more. This is an intertribal matter. Don't make moral judgments. What do you expect from a murderer? You're working with a murderer. Keep your mouth shut. You knew enough about him before. This is nothing new. But you dirty bastard, he thought. You dirty, rotten bastard.

His chest was aching with climbing as though it would split after the running and ahead now through the trees he saw the horses.

"Go ahead," Agustin was saying. "Why do you not say you shot them?"