For Whom The Bell Tolls

"Up the hill."

"What kind?"

"Don't know name. With pans."

"How many rounds?"

"Five pans."

"Does any one know how to use it?"

"Me. A little. Not shoot too much. Not want make noise here. Not want use cartridges."

"I will look at it afterwards," Robert Jordan said. "Have you hand grenades?"

Plenty.

"How many rounds per rifle?"

"Plenty."

"How many?"

"One hundred fifty. More maybe."

"What about other people?"

"For what?"

"To have sufficient force to take the posts and cover the bridge While I am blowing it. We should have double what we have."

"Take posts don't worry. What time day?"

"Daylight."

"Don't worry."

"I could use twenty more men, to be sure," Robert Jordan said.

"Good ones do not exist. You want undependables?"

"No. How many good ones?"

"Maybe four."

"Why so few?"

"No trust."

"For horseholders?"

"Must trust much to be horseholders."

"I'd like ten more good men if I could get them."

"Four."

"Anselmo told me there were over a hundred here in these hills."

"No good."

"You said thirty," Robert Jordan said to Pilar. "Thirty of a certain degree of dependability."

"What about the people of Elias?" Pilar shouted to Sordo. He shook his head.

"No good."

"You can't get ten?" Robert Jordan asked. Sordo looked at him with his flat, yellow eyes and shook his head.

"Four," he said and held up four fingers.

"Yours are good?" Robert Jordan asked, regretting it as he said it.

Sordo nodded.

"Dentro de la gravedad," he said in Spanish. "Within the limits of the danger." He grinned. "Will be bad, eh?"

"Possibly."

"Is the same to me," Sordo said simply and not boasting. "Better four good than much bad. In this war always much bad, very little good. Every day fewer good. And Pablo?" he looked at Pilar.

"As you know," Pilar said. "Worse every day."

Sordo shrugged his shoulders.

"Take drink," Sordo said to Robert Jordan. "I bring mine and four more. Makes twelve. Tonight we discuss all. I have sixty sticks dynamite. You want?"

"What per cent?"

"Don't know. Common dynamite. I bring."

"We'll blow the small bridge above with that," Robert Jordan said. "That is fine. You'll come down tonight? Bring that, will you? I've no orders for that but it should be blown."

"I come tonight. Then hunt horses."

"What chance for horses?"

"Maybe. Now eat."

Does he talk that way to every one? Robert Jordan thought. Or is that his idea of how to make foreigners understand?

"And where are we going to go when this is done?" Pilar shouted into Sordo's ear.

He shrugged his shoulders.

"All that must be arranged," the woman said.

"Of course," said Sordo. "Why not?"

"It is bad enough," Pilar said. "It must be planned very well."

"Yes, woman," Sordo said. "What has thee worried?"

"Everything," Pilar shouted.

Sordo grinned at her.

"You've been going about with Pablo," he said.

So he does only speak that pidgin Spanish for foreigners, Robert Jordan thought. Good. I'm glad to hear him talking straight.

"Where do you think we should go?" Pilar asked.

"Where?"

"Yes, where?"

"There are many places," Sordo said. "Many places. You know Gredos?"

"There are many people there. All these places will be cleaned up as soon as they have time."

"Yes. But it is a big country and very wild."

"It would be very difficult to get there," Pilar said.

"Everything is difficult," El Sordo said. "We can get to Gredos as well as to anywhere else. Travelling at night. Here it is very dangerous now. It is a miracle we have been here this long. Gredos is safer country than this."

"Do you know where I want to go?" Pilar asked him.

"Where? The Paramera? That's no good."

"No," Pilar said. "Not the Sierra de Paramera. I want to go to the Republic."

"That is possible."

"Would your people go?"

"Yes. If I say to."

"Of mine, I do not know," Pilar said. "Pablo would not want to although, truly, he might feel safer there. He is too old to have to go for a soldier unless they call more classes. The gypsy will not wish to go. I do not know about the others."

"Because nothing passes her for so long they do not realize the danger," El Sordo said.

"Since the planes today they will see it more," Robert Jordan said. "But I should think you could operate very well from the Gredos."

"What?" El Sordo said and looked at him with his eyes very flat. There was no friendliness in the way he asked the question.

"You could raid more effectively from there," Robert Jordan said.

"So," El Sordo said. "You know Gredos?"

"Yes. You could operate against the main line of the railway from there. You could keep cutting it as we are doing farther south in Estremadura. To operate from there would be better than returning to the Republic," Robert Jordan said. "You are more useful there."

They had both gotten sullen as he talked.

Sordo looked at Pilar and she looked back at him.

"You know Gredos?" Sordo asked. "Truly?"

"Sure," said Robert Jordan.

"Where would you go?"

"Above Barco de Avila. Better places than here. Raid against the main road and the railroad between Bejar and Plasencia."

"Very difficult," Sordo said.