It was only wanting to keep her hold on life.
To keep it through Maria.
When you get through with this war you might take up the study of women, he said to himself.
You could start with Pilar.
She has put in a pretty complicated day, if you ask me.
She never brought in the gypsy stuff before.
Except the hand, he thought.
Yes, of course the hand.
And I don't think she was faking about the hand.
She wouldn't tell me what she saw, of course.
Whatever she saw she believed in herself.
But that proves nothing.
"Listen, Pilar," he said to the woman.
Pilar looked at him and smiled.
"What is it?" she asked.
"Don't be so mysterious," Robert Jordan said.
"These mysteries tire me very much."
"So?" Pilar said.
"I do not believe in ogres, soothsayers, fortune tellers, or chicken-crut gypsy witchcraft."
"Oh," said Pilar.
"No.
And you can leave the girl alone."
"I will leave the girl alone."
"And leave the mysteries," Robert Jordan said.
"We have enough work and enough things that will be done without complicating it with chicken-crut.
Fewer mysteries and more work."
"I see," said Pilar and nodded her head in agreement.
"And listen, _Ingles_," she said and smiled at him. "Did the earth move?"
"Yes, God damn you.
It moved."
Pilar laughed and laughed and stood looking at Robert Jordan laughing.
"Oh, _Ingles_. _Ingles_," she said laughing.
"You are very comical.
You must do much work now to regain thy dignity."
The Hell with you, Robert Jordan thought.
But he kept his mouth shut.
While they had spoken the sun had clouded over and as he looked back up toward the mountains the sky was now heavy and gray.
"Sure," Pilar said to him, looking at the sky.
"It will snow."
"Now?
Almost in June?"
"Why not?
These mountains do not know the names of the months.
We are in the moon of May."
"It can't be snow," he said.
"It _can't_ snow."
"Just the same, _Ingles_," she said to him, "it will snow."
Robert Jordan looked up at the thick gray of the sky with the sun gone faintly yellow, and now as he watched gone completely and the gray becoming uniform so that it was soft and heavy; the gray now cutting off the tops of the mountains.
"Yes," he said.
"I guess you are right."