"We are here to do what we can do.
But this is complicated."
"And on paper very simple," Robert Jordan grinned.
"On paper the bridge is blown at the moment the attack starts in order that nothing shall come up the road.
It is very simple."
"That they should let us do something on paper," El Sordo said.
"That we should conceive and execute something on paper."
"Paper bleeds little," Robert Jordan quoted the proverb.
"But it is very useful," Pilar said. "_Es muy util_.
What I would like to do is use thy orders for that purpose."
"Me too," said Robert Jordan.
"But you could never win a war like that."
"No," the big woman said.
"I suppose not.
But do you know what I would like?"
"To go to the Republic," El Sordo said.
He had put his good ear close to her as she spoke. "_Ya iras, mujer_.
Let us win this and it will all be Republic."
"All right," Pilar said.
"And now, for God's sake let us eat."
12
They left El Sordo's after eating and started down the trail.
El Sordo had walked with them as far as the lower post.
"_Salud_," he said.
"Until tonight."
"_Salud, Camarada_," Robert Jordan had said to him and the three of them had gone on down the trail, the deaf man standing looking after them.
Maria had turned and waved her hand at him and El Sordo waved disparagingly with the abrupt, Spanish upward flick of the forearm as though something were being tossed away which seems the negation of all salutation which has not to do with business.
Through the meal he had never unbuttoned his sheepskin coat and he had been carefully polite, careful to turn his head to hear and had returned to speaking his broken Spanish, asking Robert Jordan about conditions in the Republic politely; but it was obvious he wanted to be rid of them.
As they had left him, Pilar had said to him,
"Well, Santiago?"
"Well, nothing, woman," the deaf man said.
"It is all right.
But I am thinking."
"Me, too," Pilar had said and now as they walked down the trail, the walking easy and pleasant down the steep trail through the pines that they had toiled up, Pilar said nothing.
Neither Robert Jordan nor Maria spoke and the three of them travelled along fast until the trail rose steeply out of the wooded valley to come up through the timber, leave it, and come out into the high meadow.
It was hot in the late May afternoon and halfway up this last steep grade the woman stopped.
Robert Jordan, stopping and looking back, saw the sweat beading on her forehead.
He thought her brown face looked pallid and the skin sallow and that there were dark areas under her eyes.
"Let us rest a minute," he said.
"We go too fast."
"No," she said.
"Let us go on."
"Rest, Pilar," Maria said.
"You look badly."
"Shut up," the woman said.
"Nobody asked for thy advice."
She started on up the trail but at the top she was breathing heavily and her face was wet with perspiration and there was no doubt about her pallor now.
"Sit down, Pilar," Maria said.
"Please, please sit down."
"All right," said Pilar and the three of them sat down under a pine tree and looked across the mountain meadow to where the tops of the peaks seemed to jut out from the roll of the high country with snow shining bright on them now in the early afternoon sun.